Page 48 of Her New Billionaire Bosshole

Ignoring the feeling, I tap the button to call him, waiting as it rings, then goes to voicemail.

Frustration rising in me, I hang up and call Skylar instead.

“Hey, Sophie,” she says, answering on the first ring and sounding nervous. “Elliot is just about to go into a meeting. He can call you back.”

“Put him on the phone, please.” I try to keep the emotion from my voice. “It’s important.”

“I’m sorry, Sophie?—”

“Skylar.”

“I can’t. But?—”

I hang up on her, hands shaking.

I’ve just started my car when there’s a ding on my phone, an address in downtown Dallas, and a message from Olivia, who clearly understands just how pissed off I am right now.

Just be careful, Soph.

Parking in downtown Dallas is just about as difficult and expensive as you’d imagine, but, for the first time in my life, I don’t even look at the parking fee as I swing into one of the huge, high-rise parking garages a block down from the place I need to go.

Then I’m climbing out, jamming my thumb into the key fob and not really caring if it locks at all, walking down the street untilI see the tall, modern-looking building that matches the address Olivia sent me.

I push into the lobby, finding the elevator and breezing right past the receptionist, who doesn’t even notice my presence until the elevator dings and I step inside, quickly reviewing my options and hitting the button for the highest floor — I have a gut feeling that’s where this meeting will be.

The receptionist stands up so quickly her chair clatters to the ground behind her, the wheel still spinning in the air as the elevator doors close.

“Miss—” she says, breathless and walking toward me. “Wait?—”

But the doors clamp together, and I’m headed up. I try to take a deep breath, try to calm myself down, to be able to think clearly, instead of letting the rage in my veins take over, but I can’t.

Instead, I’m thinking of all the time we’ve spent together since I met him for the first time in that hallway. He and I in that hotel room in Miami, the city glittering just outside the massive windows. Sharing the drinks and the meal. Him admitting to me that he’d bought the team to get back at his rival, like I’d ever thought he bought the team from a love of soccer.

The strange, almost warm sense of camaraderie I felt when he told me that.

I didn’t understand his world of money, but I did understand a rivalry. The feeling that in a world full of opponents, there’sonethat gets under your skin. One that you hate losing to more than all the others.

I think about Elliot and me sitting on the floor, eating strawberries. The way he touched me, talked to me, runninghis fingers over my body like I was something precious to him. Listening to everything I said like each word was something special.

Watching him eat chili in my car. The look on his face in the airplane. That first game, when I’d caught the paint swiped over his cheek.

That stupid, naive idea that he had actually started to care about the team. That anything could be about something other than money for a spoiled-rotten asshole like Elliot Altman.

When the elevator door dings and lets me out, I haven’t managed to calm down — in fact, I’m much, much angrier than I was when I got in. Angry at the fact that I let Elliot into my life, and this meeting is just him laughing in my face.

It’s one thing to sell the team. I guess that’s his right if he doesn’t want to be the owner anymore.

But it’s another thing to do it behind my back.

To blindside me again, even after we agreed that we’d be working together from now on. Especially after that night in Miami, and again in my office. After the way he looked at me, touched me, held me.

The way I thought he wanted me too. Even if both of us were fumbling with the right way to say it.

Luckily, the elevator is a straight shot down the hallway from a massive boardroom. It’s all glass, even facing the hallway, and when I step forward, I catch the cuff of a suit I’d recognize anywhere.

It’s the same one he was wearing the day that we met. I charge down the hallway, not pausing when I push open the door to the room, immediately silencing the conversation taking place.

Elliot sits at the head of the table, bracketed by his assistant and another man I assume must be a lawyer.