Page 75 of Saved By the Billionaire

Old habits died hard, and though Kate was earning better than she ever had in her life, she was still frugal. She had gradually pieced together a stunning wardrobe by thrifting dresses and buying carefully off eBay, and tonight, she’d chosen a black silk dress, cut on the bias with fine spaghetti straps, and a pair of espadrilles. She’d curled her hair loosely and wore it half up, in a claw clip, and her nails were neat and natural. She sipped her drink, then replaced it on the coaster, reading the hotel’s advertising, before flipping it over and reading the reverse.

A moment’s lapse; the smallest slip in concentration. That was all it took. She couldn’t have said which she was aware of first: his shadow, extending over her, cast by the dull overhead lights, or the faintest hint of his fragrance, just a suggestion in the air, but enough to overpower her senses and drag her memory kicking and screaming back to New York, to nights spent curled up against him, breathing him in. She turned, willing herself to be wrong, and came face to face with Roman Hayes, and every fragile hope she held of being over him burst in her chest, shattering into a million shards of glass over which she would need to walk. Not just tonight, but for the rest of her life.

“So, it’s true,” he said, banal enough, sophisticated, but there was a glitter in his eyes that was pure fury.

Inside she was trembling like a leaf, caught in a storm, but it wasn’t contained to inside, she realised. As she lifted a hand to her glass, she saw that her fingers were shaking in the same way and she dropped them to her lap and clasped them there instead.

“What are you doing here?” Surely it was a dream. An illusion. Or maybe, a dastardly little voice dared to hope, he’s realised what you meant to him? Maybe this time he wants to ask you to stay forever?

But she was working and that mattered to her. This job had the power to change her life; she couldn’t lose it. She glanced past him, watching the door.

“Waiting for someone?” He moved to signal the barman, effortlessly calling his attention, and ordering two glasses of high-end champagne.

“I’m fine,” she demurred, when the opposite was the case.

He probed her with his gaze, eyes staring at her, then through her. She shivered. Two and a half months ago, she would have said she could read him like a book, but now? She had no idea what he was thinking.

“Tia told you,” she surmised. Of course Tia had. They were like siblings, and running into Kate was hardly the kind of thing the other woman would brush under the carpet.

“Yes.”

“So?” Their champagnes arrived and despite herself, Kate sipped hers quickly, closing her eyes as the bubble danced in her mouth.

“So,” he spoke slowly, watching her, leaning close enough that his knee brushed hers and she trembled for a whole new reason. “I want to know why you’ll take money from half of Sydney’s elite in exchange for that gorgeous body, but you wouldn’t take money from me.”

She stared at him, completely non-comprehending at first. Her lips parted, her mouth gaped, and then, she understood what was in his eyes, what emotions he was trying to wrangle. Anger. Desperate, aching anger. The kind of anger that could destroy a man like Roman, because he’d been on the receiving end of it so often as a child.

She reached out instinctively, her hand curling around his arm, but he jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”

She startled, shocked by the force of his judgement, by the cruelty of it. By the way it seemed to slice her in two. His statement kept splitting apart inside of her, forming new shards that burst through her, pain lancing her skin, her organs, making it impossible to breathe. She reached for the bar, needing it for support. Fuck that, actually. She needed the champagne. She drank it like water, waiting for the hit of something, anything, to soothe her frazzled nerves but nothing helped. She blinked at him, and blanched at the anger—hatred?—in his expression.

“Why would you do this?”

She shook her head, needing to deny it, hating him thinking this of her.

“You told me you were a survivor, but I stupidly didn’t think this was your style.”

She clamped her jaw together, her heart twisting and breaking. Tell him the truth. But some vestige of pride, of angry independence, held her quiet. This was none of his damned business, anyway. Never mind that he was wrong. “I can’t do this now. I’m waiting for someone.”

“That would be me.”

She stared at him, the penny dropping. He’d set her up. He’d ambushed her.

“And I paid more than twice your requested rate for a night with you, Kate, so don’t even think about storming out.”

She reached for her champagne, feeling woozy and furious and hurt and…excited…because at least he was here, in front of her, even if he was being a version of himself she’d never imagined.

“So,” he said, his smile sending a shiver down her spine because of how false it was. “Show me how this works.”

“How what works?” she asked, pressing her fingertips to her pulse, with the sense that the world was suddenly spinning way too fast.

“Do you like to be wined and dined before you’re fucked, or do we go straight upstairs?”

She gasped, the pain too much to bear now. Far too much. “Go right to hell,” she said, under her breath. No amount of money on earth was worth this. She slapped him hard, not caring that there were other people in the bar who saw it, not caring that Roman had been hit and slapped more times in his life than anyone deserved. “Go right to hell,” she repeated, doing everything she could not to cry as she turned and reached for her handbag. As a point of pride, she threw some money on the bar top for her drink, refusing to allow him to pay for even that, and then she moved to leave the bar.

She hadn’t really thought he would let her go, but if she’d stayed in that sensual, cosy space a moment later, she knew she would have passed out. She needed fresh air. She needed to breathe. She broke into a run, also not caring that the foyer was filled with the sort of well-heeled people she counted as clients, who probably knew the owner of her agency, looking left and right for a cab and careening right into the broad chest of Garrett.

“Kate.” He, at least, sounded friendly. “Are you okay?”