Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1)(103)

I glared. At. My. New. Boss.

“It wasn’t just because of him that we offered you the job. Frankie showed me slides from your previous marketing campaigns. He told me your ideas. And I loved them.”

For some unknown reason, he seemed more concerned with calming me down than offended by my unprofessional behavior. Because, let’s face it, I was being far from professional. So far, I had snapped at him, glared at him, and taken it upon myself to be on a first-name basis with him.

And I knew the reason why he wasn’t acting insulted.

Kline motherf*cking Brooks.

Wes caught sight of the contract balled up in my hand. “Obviously, we’ve come at a bad time, and I just remembered I had a nine thirty phone conference.” He made a show of looking at his watch. “And it’s already nine thirty-two. I better get moving.”

Frankie’s head tilted in confusion. “But…I thought that wasn’t until noon?”

“Nope. It got changed.” Wes shook his head. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Georgia,” he said, ushering a confused Frankie out of the doorway. He pointedly glanced down at the contract before meeting my eyes again. “I’ve been friends with him for years because he’s one of the good ones. Don’t be too hard on him,” he added before heading in the other direction.

First, Kline Brooks got me to fall in love with him, before breaking my heart.

Then he called in a favor to his best friend so I’d get a new job, before couriering over a contract to sign his entire business over to me.

Was this real life? Was he f*cking joking with this right now?

The shock of meeting Wes was quickly replaced by anger.

I strode out of my office and didn’t even bother telling my secretary I would be gone. Hell, with the floor show I had just provided my new boss, I’d have been shocked if they’d let me come back.

But I didn’t even care to rehash that horribly awkward meet and greet in my head. I was solely focused on getting to Kline’s office and letting him know how I felt about his offer.

Once my feet hit the sidewalk, I hailed a taxi and felt a surge of adrenaline rush through my veins because I was ten minutes away from shoving that ridiculous offer straight up his ass.





“In all the pining and whining you did over this chick, you failed to ever mention she was scary,” Wes said into my ear.

I rolled my eyes. He’d had to listen to me talk about her for a f*cking week. That was it.

“Scary?” I asked.

“Fucking scary. I wouldn’t want to be you right now.”

Hope bloomed and blossomed in my chest. “She’s on her way?”

“Yep, as we speak. And she. Is. Pissed.”

I smiled. God, I loved when she was fired up.

“How long ago did she leave?”

“Oh, about twenty minutes or so,” he relayed in my ear as bedlam broke out in the office outside my door. I could see Dean running toward the office through the window, a look of pure glee on his face, and Thatch gave me the nod from the other side just as Georgia burst through the door.

She looked like Heaven and Hell and the sole reason for the constant ache in my chest for the last several days.

Hate and love and uncertainty all lined the edges of her face as she warred with herself at the sight of me.

I wanted desperately to pull her into my arms and feel the warmth of her seep into the cold of me, but I knew I had work to do before it was even a remote possibility.

I steeled my features and rounded my desk, leaning into the edge of it with the calm of a man who wasn’t mere seconds away from coming out of his skin.

“Good, you’re here.”

Thatch slammed the door behind her and held it shut. Unable to resist, she ran to it, testing the effectiveness of all of his muscles with three sharp tugs. He didn’t budge, one hand on the knob and the other still free to throw her a jaunty wave and a smile through the window.

She growled as she turned to me, stomping her foot in the most adorable way, and then made every effort to kill me with her eyes.

I put everything I had into not smiling and glanced at my watch.

It almost worked.

“And for the first time in your life, you’re on time.”

She pinched her eyebrows together in question and didn’t do it lightly. There was real anger there, harnessed between them. She was raging, and every single piece of her wanted me to know it.

I nodded to the tattered remnants of the contract, another victim of her wrath, clutched in her hand. “The meeting at ten?” I explained with the lilt of a question. “It was all outlined in the contract.”

“Right,” she scoffed. “The f*cking contract. What kind of a sick f*ck does something as mentally unstable as this? Your company?! The whole motherf*cking company,” she shouted and rambled. “An insane person. You’ve obviously lost all your marbles. Maybe Walter stole them, I don’t f*cking know.”

She shook her head, her wild brown hair cascading and swinging and reeling me the f*ck in. A handful of days without her, and she’d dyed it again.

She sure was something.

“What I do know is that if the meeting is at ten—” she glanced at her watch “—and it’s nine fifty-nine, that makes me early.”

I bit my lip and pressed my palms into the top of the desk to keep me there.