Breaking the Billionaire’s Rules by Annika Martin

Author:Annika Martin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2019-02-19T05:09:22.293044+00:00

* * *

I SIP MY LATTE, waiting for my pre-luncheon interview. Why did I kiss her like that? What was I thinking?

I’d vowed to stay away from her.

But god, the way her eyes shone—burnt-sugar brown. Maddening, impossible Mia Corelli.

A shadow falls over the table, and there he is, Tarquin Walters, intrepid tabloid reporter. “I understand you’ve been kissing Meow Squad cats out on the street,” he says, sitting down. “Leaving them stunned and breathless.”

Stunned and breathless? He watches my face a little too intently. Does he sense a story? The last thing I want is for Mia to wind up in the tabloids with me. She’d hate it.

“Kissing me is always a deeply religious experience for women.”

Tarquin gives me a jaded look and orders a coffee.

“Come on,” he says, “Level with me. A delivery girl now? Do tell.” Tarquin’s doing a feature on me. The goal of a feature profiler is always to get something juicy.

“Max Hilton with the lunch-cart girl? Why not go all the way? We could do Satanist Max Hilton, all animal sacrifices and strange tattoos. Or Max Hilton with an alien baby. Or maybe Max Hilton who sings weepy show tunes and still can’t get over that first love who rejected him.”

“Gimme something real. Some interiority.”

“Tarquin, the side boob has come back in style, and the Verona Club has Delmonico steak back on the menu. Let’s grab a window table and get day drunk.”

“You’re not doing that to me again,” he says.

I smile. “Fine. Questions. Anything.”

“Lana Sheffidy.”

“Lana’s one of my best friends,” I say. “I’d tell you if there was something going on. I promise you,” I say when he protests. “Though she’s threatening to design a men’s fanny pack line for Maximillion.” A joke.

“God, no,” he says. And then he turns serious. “You ran away from home at the age of eleven. What happened?”

I sip my coffee. “Doesn’t every kid run away from home?”

He checks his iPad. “It was right after your elderly nanny, Annette O’Grady, died in a crash on the Queens Expressway.”

I stir my coffee. How did he think to connect those things? None of the reporters at the time made the connection. The narrative was that I was trying to get out of a concert.

“It was a big loss,” I say. “Annette was a sweet, caring woman. She’d been with us since I was a toddler and she was…” Everything, I think. The one who kissed my skinned knees and sung me lullabies. The one who brought laughter to my grim childhood. The one who took the sunshine when she died.

I stare into my coffee. “Annette was full of life. Missed by the whole family. She loved custard, as I recall.”

I look up, pulse racing, relieved to see that he’s back on his notes.

We discuss my upcoming pet project, Catwalk for a Cause. I give him some red meat on that one—warring factions in the fashion world. A juicy celeb cameo. I’ll let him announce it.

We talk food. A restaurant opening we’re attending.

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