Hard Interest: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance

by Walker, Kelli

  It was tempting to say something, but she was only doing what she was paid to do.

  “I don’t want you to feel limited to a certain number. I’ll happily entertain anything within reason,” I said.

  I grabbed the pen without warning and ripped it from her hand.

  “Give that back,” Philomena said.

  Her voice rose a little louder than necessary, but she wasn’t backing down.

  “Give that back to me and there will be no questions asked. But I’m not going to ask you again, Mr. Walsh. If I have to take it from you, I will. But all you’ll see is my ass walking out that door.”

  Her fiery eyes lit a heat under my ass that made me swallow another groan. Her commanding nature was something my body wanted to tame. It was a little exciting to see the ferocious lion within this woman coming out to play.

  She certainly did surpass the expectations of the icy woman I saw on the billboard downtown.

  “I meant no disrespect,” I said as I handed her back her red pen.

  I internally cringed when she laid it back onto my precious list.

  “I apologize for raising my voice, but that’s the last thing a good friend gave me before she-.”

  I watched something roll over her eyes. Something that pushed away the fierce woman in front of me and replaced it with a vulnerability that took me by surprise. Her eyes blinked rapidly, like she was blinking back nonexistent tears. Her hand gripped the red pen so hard I thought it would burst, and I thought she was going to break down before she found a reserve of inner strength.

  And soon, the powerful woman was back in play.

  “It’s a terrible thing when somebody we care about leaves us with more questions than answers,” I said. “We all have that certain someone in our past that was a pleasure to know while they were around.”

  I watched to reach out for her hand. I wanted to get rid of that grip around her pen and comfort her. But instead of watching her walls slowly come down at the idea of someone sympathizing with her, she grew icy.

  Cold.

  Distant.

  “It’s been ten years. It’s fine,” Philomena said.

  But the tears forcing themselves to the surface told me she was anything but fine.

  I signaled for the check. This unfortunate breakdown made her almost look human. The vulnerability she was trying hard to suck down only showed me the woman she was, inside and out. I didn’t want to become the bane of her existence. I didn’t want to make anything else harder on her. I didn’t want to continue this power struggle if her being in control somehow filled a hole inside her heart. But settling for second best wasn’t in my vocabulary. She had her work cut out for her with regard to finding me a new home. But watching her work her magic was going to be a pleasure.

  “Look at what I did to your list,” she said as she wiped at it.

  The streak marks of her red pen were evident as wetness continued to fall from her apple-red cheeks.

  “Let me write you out another one. Maybe a little more sensible this time?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about it. I have it committed to memory,” I said as I looked into her eyes.

  That dark brown stare brooding behind unshed tears. Even with the overwhelming sadness that filled them, she was gorgeous.

  The check was brought to our table and Philomena tried to snatch it up. But before she could, I slid it off the table. Her eyes glowered at me as placed her red pen into her bag. But all I did was hold her stare as I flipped it open. I left a sizable gratuity for the waiter for the privacy he bestowed upon both of us, then grinned as I tucked it underneath my arm.

  “Shall we?” I asked.

  And I was shocked when she didn’t argue.

  I passed the check off to the waiter before giving him a kind smile. And the second Philomena walked in front of me, my eyes fell to her ass. I watched her hips sway deeply with each step she took as her commanding heels clacked across the floor. The woman was a vixen. A powerful force to be reckoned with. She was a hurricane encased in the tightest leather skirt imaginable, and I licked my lips as I escorted her out the front doors.

  But I threw my hands in the air in defeat when I saw all four tires on my silver Jaguar convertible flat. Slashed in the parking lot of one of the most prestigious fucking restaurants in Boston. I felt my anger raging. Bubbling up within my chest as fists fell to my side.

  Little did I know it would only take a feminine touch to bring my anger down to a slow simmer.

  Philomena

  “These things happen. My car is only a few minutes away if you don’t mind the walk. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you take things too personally. Take a breath,” I said.

  I pulled Liam away from the scene of the crime. He looked like he was about to hemorrhage a vein. Though I felt his pain. He had a beautiful car, and watching it sit on deflated tires made it look simply pathetic. Liam looked like someone had killed his puppy. Which meant it wasn’t just his vehicle. It was a status symbol meant to thumb his nose at people. And I understood how that felt. Being an immigrant meant I had to work twice as hard for the same things as any average American, but being a woman and an immigrant?

  It made that shit almost impossible.

  And I had a feeling Liam knew how I felt.

  Minus the female part of it all.

  “Mr. Walsh, come with me. I’ll get you home,” I said as I tugged on his arm. “We can send for a tow truck to take it somewhere until you can put new tires on it.”

  “I can afford new tires,” he said as he yanked away from me. “But it’s the principle that bothers me. I don’t go around kicking people and knocking them down for fun. That doesn’t mean other people get to do it to me because they’re pissed off that I have money. They may as well have stuck a knife into my chest and twisted it.”

  Wow. Very melodramatic.

  I had a black Jeep Wrangler that was my pride and joy. I loved how it maneuvered through the city and the outlying areas. I never had to worry about inclement weather keeping me from making a sale and I never had to worry about paying for the designer tag that came with most luxury vehicles.

  Like Liam’s Jaguar.

  He took a walk with me back to the headquarters of my company and I walked us down to the garage. We approached my car and he circled it, whistling an appreciation. His throbbing anger faded into some type of cross between impressed and shocked. At least I had taken his mind off his problems.

  “You can take it for a spin, if you want,” I said.

  “Trust me. I do,” Liam said.

  “Be careful with her, though. I can count on one hand the number of people I allow to get into the driver’s seat. Not even my father has had the privilege of driving it. He’d be very envious of you right now.”

  “I’m honored. I’ll get us to my place in one piece. Just don’t do anything to make me run up a flagpole.”

  His eyes fell to my feet and I couldn’t help the grin that slid across my cheeks.

  “Actually, if you’re up for the change of plans, there’s a property not too far from here that sits on a two-hundred mile stretch of private beach. And the view of the sunset is spectacular,” I said.

  “Does that mean you’ll keep your hands and feet inside the compartment at all times?” Liam asked as he opened the door to my Wrangler.

  “I promise to keep my hot little hands and feet off you. Cross my heart and hope to die with the threat of a needle in my eye.”

  I made the motion of the Boy Scout salute with two fingers raised in the air.

  “I doubt seriously you were ever a part of the Scouts,” Liam said.

  It felt weird to be on the passenger side when I was more accustomed to having my two hands on the steering wheel directing the action. But watching him crank my sexy baby to life did get my own engines roaring. I’d always been an empowered woman. My mother raised me to be strong and independent. My father taught me to not rely on anyone for anything, and I took those less
ons to heart. I didn’t share my body with just anyone. Rather, I was waiting for the day one man could take control.

  Men who dropped to my feet were nice for a one-night stand, but not enough to keep up with the pace of life I preferred. Men who wanted me to hold the whip in the bedroom, so to speak, were also men who wanted me to take charge of the relationship. Who wanted me making all the decisions. My fantasies revolved around something a little more ensnaring. Being pinned to the wall or bent over in with his hands grasping my hair for leverage.

  I wanted a man that didn’t fear fighting me for what he wanted. A man who got a thrill from the fight I put up. A man who stayed in his lane and rode his car alongside mine instead of trying to force me to give up my car and get into his.

  My eyes glanced over at Liam and a thrill unlike anything I had felt before ran through my veins.

  His calloused hands wrapped around the wheel of my Jeep and I wondered what they would feel like stripping me of my defenses. Running quickly along my skin. He had muscles that rippled like rocks in a pond, and I could see him pinning me to a wall and rendering me immobile with his hips.

  Liam was equipped with all the tools to treat me just right.

  But did he have the fight to match mine?

  “Those eyes are telling, Miss Wright,” Liam said.

  “Then what do they tell you?” I asked.

  “If I said anything, then I’d be giving away my secrets.”

  “Then let me start by telling you what I already know about who you are as a man.”

  His eyebrow quirked, and I knew I had his attention.

  “I know you’re an Irish American. I know you came here with your parents seeking the American dream. That’s one thing we have in common. The Galway Bay is actually one of my favorite places to frequent to watch a Saturday night game. There was a man bartending the last time I was there. Took my breath away with how he slung drinks around. He has this tattoo with an unfurled rose tip pierced with a stone-tipped arrow. It had initials engraved on the shaft.”

  I traced the outline of it in the air, remembering it as if it were yesterday.

  “I know who you’re talking about. Believe it or not, he’s a self-taught bartender. And once he gets a few drinks into the girls and they ask him to, he’ll gladly take his shirt off to a chorus of applause. That man has no shame and loves to play the instigator to make a crowd of women go wild. The bar actually dedicates one night a month to a woman’s only review of his talents.”

  He turned on the high beams of my car, cutting through the night like a hot butter knife. He drove my car like he owned it. Like he’d memorized every detail of it before putting his hands on it. He was treating my baby to a strength and natural fluidity that spawned from his fingertips, and my body quivered with jealousy.

  “No one can say women don’t have the capacity to get a little crazy. We might claim that men objectify us, but we do the same thing when there’s a piece of candy that’ll melt in our mouths as well as our hands,” I said.

  “He’s always been my secret weapon, and I have no plans to get rid of him anytime soon. You should see him when they start throwing money to encourage his behavior,” Liam said with a chuckle.

  I watched him fiddle with the radio until he found some classic rock and roll from the eighties.

  My recollection of that evening was spotty at best. A few kamikazes made me lose my inhibitions in a guaranteed sort of way. I’d been looking for a stress relief after a particularly rough week at work and found it within the arms of that bartender that night. The breeze of the ocean wafted through my hair as Liam rolled down my window, and I had this vivid flash of dancing with that bartender, his arms around my waist. His knee pressed between my thighs.

  His large hands encompassing my ass.

  “Well, I hope you’re not feeling jealous. He was nothing more than a piece of meat to admire. I imagine he has a long list of candidates waiting to be a notch on his bedpost. That barmaid was watching him like a hawk that night. I suspect there’s history between those two,” I said.

  “I’ve heard some stories,” Liam said. “Rachel—the barmaid? — confided in me about her feelings for him. Though they have a strictly platonic relationship. That’s a hard-and-fast rule for my bars. None of the employees can romantically interact. Other than that? I try not to interfere in their love lives. That kind of drama I can do without.”

  “No special lady then?” I asked with a smirk.

  “No lady deemed special enough.”

  “Ah, so we have standards, then.”

  “I don’t settle in my life. Not with my businesses, and not with my women.”

  The look he shot me made my toes curl in my heels.

  I watched the tension of the conversation twitch in his thick biceps. I wondered where that stress came from. What he was thinking about that made them pulse for my viewing pleasure. I wanted to reach out and touch them. To run my fingertips along the sunken outlines of his chiseled structure. Cut from a marble of the Gods, he was. And I had a hard time taking my eyes off him once I focused my attention.

  He was the first man in a long time that made me think he could be the exception to the rule. The one client I tested whose resolve I wanted to crack. We had started something in the restaurant and I was hoping we were going to finish it. I envisioned a bearskin rug with a fire blazing beside us. I envisioned his twitching muscles dripping with sweat as he worked for my succulent pleasure. I imagined his callused hands fisting my hair, tossing me about like the rag doll I knew he could turn me into.

  I forced my gaze back out the window as I gave him direction on where to take us.

  He was the recipient of the woman I hadn’t shown to many. He was in good company with my memories of that bartender and one magical night with a man that had an oral compulsion to please. The list of those memorable moments was short, but they were forever imprinted in my mind like that tattoo on the bartender’s shoulder.

  The hum of the engine vibrating underneath me was doing half the job for him. The power was undeniable, but it wasn’t an economical choice for those who were trying to save a dollar at the pump. I was well aware that money was flying out the window, but there was no way that I was going to give up the one guilty pleasure that didn’t fit with the image I peddled to the public.

  Liam turned into the driveway and began to ascend to where the gleaming white beach house was located. There was a two-car garage as per his request, and the sound of the ocean was prominent when we got out of the Jeep. It was getting warmer and I was tempted to take off my top. But I wasn’t necessarily talking about the Jeep.

  The idea of stripping naked and taking a dip in the stretch of private beach the house sat on seemed like a wonderful idea.

  Especially with the prospect of Liam following my lead.

  “So, this is it,” Liam said.

  “This is the place. Take a look inside. But don’t wait long. The sunset over the water is beginning,” I said.

  He walked straight through to the front double doors and all the way to the sliding glass doors that led out to the balcony from the kitchen. He was drawn to the spectacular sight of those colorful leaves on the trees surrounding the property. And it really was a sight. Beautiful trees on both sides of the house before stepping foot onto the porch and gazing out over the ocean.

  I let him soak it in without saying a word.

  “I don’t know about you, but I feel this pull. A draw to be a little reckless tonight. It might be a little naughty, but something tells me you can handle it,” Liam said.

  His gravelly lilt pierced my trance of his body. His outline was soaked in the setting summer sun as sweat trickled down the nape of his neck. I licked my lips mindlessly before he gave me a backward glance over his shoulder. Then he turned back out to the ocean and quickly slid his leather coat off his shoulders.

  Then, his shirt came over his head. Exposing to me the sculpted muscles I knew were lingering underneath the puny fabric.


  I was treated to a striptease and becoming sex drunk with every inch of skin exposed on his body. His hands fiddled with his belt before sliding it from the loops of his pants. The He snapped it, causing me to jump. His fingers pulled down his zipper, and my ears homed in on every metallic track that came undone.

  Holy hell. Had that man read my mind in the car on the way here?

  Liam turned his eyes back towards me and I snapped my gaze up to his. The sly grin on his cheeks churned my gut, and for the first time in my life my knees grew weak. Yes. I was sure of it. Somehow, he’d read my mind in the car. Somehow, he could read me as well as I could read him.

  And I loved it.

  “If you’re expecting me to stop you, then you’re going to be waiting a while,” I said.

  “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of all of me, Miss Wright,” he said.

  He dropped his pants to his ankles and my eyes raked down the lean hamstrings of his legs. All he had left was a skimpy pair of underwear that showed me so much more than what it was hiding. I took a step towards him. I wanted to be closer to him. I wanted to feel his sculpted ass cheeks in the palms of my hands. But he put his hand out to keep me from getting any closer. Those same masculine hands that had manhandled my Jeep into submission halted me in my tracks, and I felt every part of my body screaming out in defiance.

  Then, those same hands slid into the waistband of his underwear. Lowering them to give me a brief peek at the rippling lines that disappeared into a place I wanted so desperately to be.

  I could’ve spent a weekend getting to know his body. Holding my breath and never coming back up for air. He turned back towards the sunset and I almost dropped to my knees to show I wasn’t worthy. I didn’t want anything to ruin the moment. I wanted him to keep going. To relieve himself of the last barrier between my hands and the swollen cock I could see the outline of. I swallowed hard, licking my lips.

  But then, my eyes focused. The sexual drunkenness I was experiencing lifted the foggy haze of lust from my eyes momentarily before reality slapped me across the face.