Ilse usually took her time admiring the views, but today everything might as well have been buried under a mountain of lashes. Her thoughts were completely consumed by thebillionaire, causing Ilse to cycle faster in a futile attempt to run away from them.
By the time she made it to her workplace, Ilse was in a bad mood, and she had the craziest urge to pretend the lamppost in the corner was the billionaire so she could give it a nice, hard kick.
I hate you, Jaak de Konigh.
But deep in her heart, she knew she was lying to herself.
Crouching down to lock her bike into place, Ilse began roughly yanking a chain around it, wishing it were the billionaire she was strangling with the chain.
I hate you, Jaak de Konigh.
Her cellphone suddenly started to ring, the ringtone telling her it was the billionaire calling. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, a glance at the screen told her it was exactly eight forty-five, and Ilse scowled at how surprisingly prompt he was.
Why did fate seem to hate her so that it just had to make Jaak de Konigh in possession of practically every trait she desired in a man?
Answering the call, she said right away, “You may think you are being sweet with your wake-up call, but common sense tells me you have an ulterior motive.”
“That’s not common sense, babe,” the billionaire said gently, “but bias.”
Oh.She glared at her phone. How awful it felt whenever the billionaire managed to have the last word!
“I’m just calling to make sure you got to your workplace in one piece.”
Ilse blinked. “Why wouldn’t I have?”
“No particular reason,” the billionaire answered easily, “but I just prefer to check up on you all the same.”
“You’re being very controlling.”
“I believe the word you mean to use is ‘concerned.’”
No, it wasn’t,Ilse thought darkly, even though she knew his choice of term was probably more accurate.
“Let’s have lunch together later.”
“No.”
“And after your last tour, whatever time it ends, let’s have a nightcap at Café Alles,ja?”
“No.”
Switching from Dutch to English, the billionaire murmured dulcetly, “I love how you pretend you don’t want to be with me, babe. It just makes me want you more.”
And that had been the start of Ilse’s unconventional relationship with the billionaire.
Then again, she wasn’t sure if ‘relationship’ was even the right word. It had been three weeks since then, and the billionaire had changed her life so much she barely recognized it herself.
In the past three weeks, Ilse had found herself spending almost as much time with the billionaire as she had with Jan. He dropped by the office almost every day to have lunch with her,and in the evenings he would wait for her last tour to end before taking her to Café Alles, which had become their favorite haunt.
And then there were the calls, Ilse thought uneasily. The billionaire called her several times a day, and not once had he sounded bored with their conversations. Those calls were the sweetest, the loveliest, the most exciting, and more often than not the billionaire would seduce her with his knowledge of literature, quoting everything from Shakespeare to Fitzgerald, Freud to Sun Tzu, and when she was struggling with a rare bout of migraine, the billionaire would effectively lull her to sleep by reading the local news to her...in English, French, Spanish, German, or Japanese.
It depended on his mood, really.
He was doing so much to make her feel good, and wasn’t that what people in a relationship were supposed to do?
Chapter Five
Jaak closed his eyes as he listened to the familiar sounds of Ilse getting ready to take a shower.Four weeks,the billionaire thought to himself broodingly. They had been seeing each other for four weeks now, and it was the craziest four weeks of his adult life.
