Arrangement With A Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaire Brothers #1)

by Mandy Rosko

  Even if that person was only Martina, Isla didn’t want her to hear it.

  She decided to cover up the noise by talking and helping. “I’ll pack up my jewelry kit and the wire, don’t worry about that stuff.”

  “I won’t, Miss King.”

  * * *

  Sam was humming something to himself, tapping on the steering wheel, and even nodding his head to a tune Isla couldn’t hear. The radio wasn’t on and he wasn’t wearing headphones as he drove her home. She wished she could be in such a good mood, but that probably wouldn’t happen. At least, not until the contract came in that put Baciami back into the hands of her grandfather and parents.

  Isla turned to look out the window. There must’ve been construction or something, because traffic had slowed down considerably. It was still moving, but it was taking longer to get her back to her apartment.

  She looked back at Sam. The back of his head continued to bob a little. She’d never seen him so happy before.

  “Hey, Sam?”

  He stopped the humming and looked in the rearview mirror at her. He was smiling so damned bright. “Yes, Miss King?”

  “Why are you in such a good mood?”

  Sam’s expression changed. Confusion first, and then he looked straight ahead, his features changing into embarrassment as a tiny amount of pink seemed to darken his cheeks and nose.

  “Do I seem like I’m in a good mood?”

  She smiled at him. “Sorry to pry. I couldn’t help but notice.”

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  It was probably Isla’s downer mood that made her want to absorb whatever it was that had Sam so chipper. She couldn’t even bring herself to care that she was probably embarrassing him a little. He seemed like the proud sort.

  “Is it anything to do with you and that other guy last night?”

  Sam stiffened. Isla didn’t think it was a big deal. He apparently hadn’t seen her, so it wouldn’t matter if she told him that she’d seen him. “You looked like good friends.”

  “We’ve been talking for a little while,” Sam said.

  “That’s nice, about what?” Isla asked. It couldn’t have been a hockey game, she would’ve heard about another one so soon. “What do guys talk about that makes them so giddy the next day?”

  “I’m not giddy!” Sam said, turning his head to look at her for just a fraction of a second before he recalled where his eyes had to be, even if they were in slow traffic.

  She grinned at the back of his head. This was definitely cheering her up. “You are totally giddy.”

  Maybe the other guy was setting Sam up with a friend?

  “He looked familiar, but it was dark, who was that?”

  Sam said nothing.

  “I won’t tell Arturo,” Isla promised. “So long as you don’t mention I saw you from his bathroom window.”

  She didn’t want Sam asking Arturo any questions about what she was doing there. That was the last thing she wanted.

  Sam didn’t move right away, and then he nodded. “That was Robert.” His eyes found hers in the rearview mirror again. “What did you see?”

  Isla shrugged. “Nothing much, just that you were both laughing and seemed to be having a good time.”

  That was about all she saw, because immediately after, she’d been trying to get away from Arturo, and then she’d nearly smashed her head on the hard tile of his bathroom floor.

  “A good time, huh?” Sam asked.

  “Huh?” He sounded kind of strange.

  “Yes, please don’t tell Arturo. He wouldn’t be too happy.”

  Isla blinked. “Why wouldn’t he be happy? I think it’s nice that you have a friend. You always seemed so lonely. I mean, aside from being loyal to Arturo and his family, I guess.”

  Just because she had to leave Arturo’s house, didn’t mean she wanted to leave it on bad terms with the employees.

  “Your parents used to run a multi-million dollar business. You should know that most places don’t approve of relationships between employees,” Sam said, and he looked back at her in the mirror.

  The look on her face must have said it all, because his entire body seemed to go tense.

  “You… you weren’t….”

  Isla shook her head. “I didn’t know we were talking about that!” She sat up straight and put her fists on her lap. She’d just humiliated herself again. “I’m so sorry. I thought… I wouldn’t have stuck my nose in it had I realized.”

  “You said you saw us,” Sam said. His body language appeared the same, but she could see the tight set of his shoulders, see the way his hands gripped the steering wheel, and hear the strain in his voice.

  “I saw you talking and laughing. I thought you were with a friend, or that he might be setting you up with someone. You were in such a good mood today.”

  Though, now she knew why.

  “So, you saw nothing else?”

  “Nothing?” Isla felt her spine stiffen when she understood. She immediately shook her head. “No. I saw nothing else. Just both of you standing there.”

  If they’d been kissing, or even doing something else, she didn’t want to pry into that. That was definitely not her business.

  Sam sighed. “I completely forgot about that fucking screen,” he said, and then muttered, “I guess I got distracted.”

  “I won’t tell Arturo,” Isla said, wishing she would just vanish already, but the drive would take another half an hour at this rate.

  Sam nodded. “Thank you for that.”

  Well, she certainly was something. She’d spoiled his good mood, but she still felt like she should reassure him. “Arturo won’t have me back at the house, so you don’t have to worry about me accidentally spilling your secrets.”

  “What?” Sam glanced at her again before turning back to the road. “Last night I dropped your parents off and then drove them home. What happened since then?”

  That dark cloud settled back over Isla. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Great. She might’ve just given him a clue as to why she was in Arturo’s bathroom.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t know the details.

  She didn’t tell Jane the details when she got home either. She still didn’t know them herself.

  38

  The alarm blared beside her head, but Isla barely noticed it. She had her head buried in the pillows, and she reached out in a futile attempt to knock that damned alarm clock off her nightstand, but she couldn’t reach it.

  She let her arm drop back on the bed, not even bothering to look at how far away her hand still was from the offending object.

  No point. Might as well leave it going. She was getting better at sleeping through the noise anyway.

  Unfortunately, it seemed that Jane was not, and she had been fast losing her patience with Isla’s behavior, and her clock.

  The door to Isla’s room practically flew off its hinges. She jumped up in her bed, sending pillows and sheets flying with her as she stared at the attacker in her room.

  Of course it was Jane. Jane, whose shoulders were shifting up and down as she took in deep gulps of air, who looked slightly less than human as she glared white-hot daggers at Isla’s face.

  Isla cringed. She held onto her blankets like they were a shield, Jane probably noticed it, too.

  Jane panted like a mad woman, and her hair was all over the place, as though she’d just attempted to pull it all out with her small fists mere minutes before. Her eyes were a little on the crazy side.

  “What the fuck is with that noise?” she panted.

  Isla’s eyes slowly drifted to the side to where her alarm clock blared at her in an obnoxious digital sound. It had probably been a rhetorical question since Jane knew what it was, but that didn’t stop Isla from feeling a little scared of her friend in that moment.

  Isla only just then realized that her computer was also crowing like a rooster and her phone was making little jingling noises as it vibrated on the floor.
<
br />   Apparently, Isla had forgotten that in an attempt to actually get herself out of bed at a decent hour and keep herself from moping, she’d set everything she owned that had an alarm on it.

  If she’d owned a wristwatch, then it very likely would have been beeping right about now, too. No wonder Jane was pissed. It was a miracle the neighbors couldn’t hear the noise.

  Isla flew to the nightstand and clicked off everything. “I’m sorry! I forgot that I set all these!”

  “Well, turn them off!”

  “I am. I—gah!” Isla let out a very unladylike scream as her legs got tangled up in the sheets of her bed and she went down hard.

  She barely put her hands out to catch herself, but even still her whole body went down, and she officially became a crumpled mess on her bedroom floor. At least her phone was now in easier reach.

  She scrambled to grab it and slid her thumb across the screen, turning off the alarm before it could let out one more high-pitched beeping noise.

  The silence was almost worse than the noise. How had she not noticed it had been so loud? Jane obviously noticed.

  Isla carefully turned her head to look up at her friend.

  The shadow that hung over Jane was more than a little scary. She looked like she could have been possessed by a demon with the way her eyes glared into Isla, and she definitely felt the heat of that stare.

  “I was up all night finishing my chapters,” Jane said, her shoulders still bunched up.

  “Right, I’m so sorry.” And she was sorry. She knew Jane sometimes had to pull all-nighters just to get the work done that she wanted. Isla had woken up numerous times before, to either use the washroom or get some water, just to walk by Jane’s room and see the glow from her computer, listening to the soft clicking of her keyboard.

  It wasn’t exactly healthy, and it left Jane exhausted whenever she had to do this to meet her self-imposed deadlines, but if Jane didn’t do them, she’d never finish any of her books which, according to her, made her current job of working in a coffeehouse worth it.

  Jane looked pretty damned exhausted and irritable. As soothing and comforting as Jane had been when Isla had come home without an explanation, there was none of that patience for her right now.

  “I’m going back to bed. You owe me a week’s worth of caramel Frappuccinos for this.”

  Isla nodded, even though Jane wasn’t looking at her. “Right. Will do,” she said. It only seemed fair, plus, she and Jane practically lived off those things, so Isla had no problem with treating her friend for the next little while, at least until things got settled.

  It was the least she could do for what a terrible friend she’d been lately.

  Jane stumbled her way back out of the room, taking that dark cloud with her. The door to Jane’s room slammed, and only then did Isla allow herself to breathe properly.

  She kicked her legs out to untangle herself from the sheets, angry with herself, and then she leaned against the side of her bed, put her knees up, and curled her arms around them.

  The screen of her phone stared back at her from beside her. Eight in the morning. Not super early, but early enough for Isla, who’d only managed to get herself to fall asleep at around two thirty in the morning. It was even earlier for Jane, who made it a habit of not getting to bed until the first hint of dawn showed itself in the glowing horizon.

  Yeah, Isla definitely felt like a terrible best friend. She let her head fall against her knees. All this drama and heartache because she was still thinking about Arturo, and the way she’d left….

  She’d been back home for four days, and Jane had asked her what had happened, what had gone wrong. She’s allowed Isla to even have that embarrassing moment on her shoulder where she cried, and then when Isla said she didn’t want to talk about it, Jane gave her the space she needed. She had been great. Better than ever.

  Just for Isla to constantly get in the way of Jane’s sleeping and work schedule as she selfishly thought about herself, her own broken heart, and what she would do now that she was never going to get her family’s company back.

  Maybe she’d buy her friend a month’s worth of Frappuccinos.

  Isla looked back down at her phone, and the time it was giving her. She might as well get ready. She had no idea when it was going to arrive, but she’d gotten a text late last night from Orlando saying he was bringing her some papers today, so she might as well stay up now that she was awake.

  It was basically the reason why she hadn’t been able to fall asleep last night. She’d spent all night tossing and turning, thinking about whatever it could be that Arturo was putting in the new contract.

  The contract was the only communication from Arturo she’d received since he kicked her out. Maybe it was for that reason she had gotten desperate and called Orlando’s phone, just to hear him say it in his real voice that he was bringing the papers over.

  Orlando hadn’t been able to give her any details, not even a real reason why he wanted to deliver the contract himself, instead of getting someone else to do it, or even to email it to her for her to sign on her tablet.

  It had just made for an awkward conversation with long pauses, and it had been very clear that Orlando knew Isla probably wasn’t coming back. That had just made it worse, especially since he’d been the one to stand up for her again and again whenever he thought Arturo was being mean.

  She had been too weak to summon any courage at all that would allow her to just ask what Arturo was doing, or to pass on a message.

  So she’d thanked Orlando and hung up the phone before she’d made things more embarrassing for herself. Now today was the day. The day she would be getting to see what it was that Arturo wanted her to agree to.

  Maybe he’d turn her into his personal secretary, someone who would be able to service him in ways he wouldn’t allow Sylvia to do.

  Just the thought brought on all kinds of fantasies, the sort of things she probably wouldn’t be thinking about at all had she not read so many Billionaire and CEO romance novels with Jane.

  Jane’s bookshelf was full of that sort of thing, and because of Isla’s depression, she’d borrowed a couple and had spent part of her moping time reading through them.

  Plowing through them was more like it. She didn’t even fully understand why. It wasn’t like she and Arturo had anything going on other than sex. They didn’t even like each other.

  They weren’t important to each other.

  No. No more. She was going to cut this out. Isla got to her feet, grabbed her phone, and went to her vanity. She had more than enough products on here to make her look and smell better than she felt. No point sitting around and doing nothing while she waited for Orlando to get here. She didn’t want to be seen looking like this anyway. One glance in the mirror and she wanted to look away. The bags under her eyes had aged her into her mid-thirties almost overnight. That would take a couple of hours before that swelling went down.

  God, she was gross. She hadn’t showered at all yesterday, and had spent all day in her pajamas. She needed a long bath and a clean change of clothes.

  And a nice vat of skin cream.

  She should’ve known that Murphy’s Law would come into effect and strike at the absolute worst possible time. Her phone buzzed again, but this time not from the alarm.

  A call. Orlando’s name was on her screen. She added him as a contact after he’d first texted her, and she picked up without thinking about it.

  “Orlando?”

  “Hey, Isla, yeah, it’s me. I’m downstairs now. Your doorman just let me in. I’m coming up with your new contract.”

  “I… what?”

  He sounded shocked. “Is this a bad time?”

  Isla felt the tiny muscle just beneath her right eye twitch. “N-no, of course not. I just thought you’d be coming later.”

  “If it’s a bad time, I can come back later.”

  She yanked open the first drawer of her vanity and pulled out some dry shampoo. This would have to do. She
was already lifting strands of her hair and spraying it down. “No, it’s fine. I’m ready. Come on up.”

  “Isla—”

  She hung up before he could say anything else. She had to hurry. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  Her phone rang again, but she ignored it as she ran into the bathroom she shared with Jane. At the very least, she needed to brush her teeth and splash her face with cold water.

  The phone rang again, but again she ignored it. She’d already told him to come up. What was he doing? If Arturo had come with him, she didn’t want to look like a total slob. At the very least, she could try and make it so that her messy look was done on purpose.

  A chime for a text came in.

  Frustrated, she looked at it, knowing it was Orlando.

  I don’t know your apartment number.

  Oh. Well shit. Isla quickly tapped in the number and sent it off, ignoring the little drops of water her fingers had left behind.

  With the extra four minute she bought herself before Orlando knocked on the front door, she managed to get into a nice pink summer dress from Desigual and ballet flats. She only managed to get on a tinted moisturizer and some lip gloss, but she figured she looked all right enough.

  Just before reaching the door, she quickly turned around and ran back to her room, though. “Be right there!”

  Earrings! How could she have forgotten? And without a necklace her chest felt a little too bare. Also, she knew that the right kind of necklace would draw attention to her cleavage.

  Okay, now she was ready. Pink pearl earrings and a matching pearl teardrop necklace and she looked pretty damned good for only seven minutes of prep work.

  Isla fluffed her stupid hair, trying to get it to work right for her, and when she opened the door, she realized too late that she hadn’t put on any deodorant.

  She froze on the spot, wanting to vanish into a puddle on the floor. Orlando took one pitying look at her, as though he could see everything that was wrong with her, see that she’d just fallen out of bed and had been a mess for absolutely no reason for days. Silvio stood beside him. Isla had almost mistaken him for Arturo. Now she was glad that Arturo wasn’t here to see her. Or smell her.