Paris With The Billionaire: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance

by Flora Ferrari

  “I knew it instantly,” I tell her. “I glanced at the window and I knew it. It was this feeling in my gut like I’d been punched. I had to sit down and get control of myself. I’ve never felt that way before. I guess I closed myself off to emotion after all the shit that happened with my uncle when I was a kid. I don’t know.”

  “And you kept walking,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I sigh. “But when I walked by the following week, you were there. This time I watched you write. I watched you work. You have no idea how beautiful you are when you think nobody’s looking, Fiona.”

  She laughs, shaking her head at the same time, as though she can’t decide how to feel.

  “Thanks?” she murmurs, making it a question.

  “I tried to fight this insane urge to own you,” I say. “But I couldn’t. So I—”

  “So you made a fake magazine and a fake contest and left it on my usual table,” she says. “I’m right, aren’t I? That’s what you did. Us meeting here, sharing the same room, it wasn’t an accident.”

  “No,” I say. “I thought we could meet and then I’d get all this craziness out of my system. And, when we met in person and I decided that I didn’t need to pursue this, you’d get a five-star holiday with all the expenses paid. That’s how I justified it. But when I saw you, when I spoke to you, last night … It just made me all the more certain that I needed you, Fiona. I need you.”

  I move over to her, lifting my hands to frame her face. Her eyes widen and I can feel her jaw tensing, as though she doesn’t know whether to sob or scream or both.

  “I never should’ve lied to you,” I say. “I hate that I did that. And I’ll never do it again. I swear on my life. I swear on the lives of our future children.”

  She almost softens, biting her lip, but then her features harden and she turns away, brushing my hands aside and pacing over to the roof edge.

  “I don’t know what to make of all this,” she murmurs. “I think I need to speak with my sister and my mom. I need to talk this out with someone who isn’t …”

  I sigh, my chest squeezing tightly.

  With someone who isn’t you, she was going to say.

  “I understand,” I growl.

  I move over to her and pull her close to me, squeezing her body against mine, so close I can feel her heart pounding through her chest.

  “But you need to understand that this feeling isn’t going away, for either of us. I understand you need some space, that you need to talk it out. But don’t for a second think that either of us is going to stop feeling this way. We’re fated to be together. I never believed in fate before we met, but it’s the damn truth.”

  She bites her lip and then lays her cheek against my chest.

  “I feel that way, too,” she whispers. “But I’ve been wrong in the past. I need some outside perspective.”

  I stroke my hand through her hair, marveling at the miracle of this embrace, at the fact she still wants to be close to me.

  Surely that must mean something.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Fiona

  “Wait, so he planned on luring you to Paris?” Kelly says, running a hand through her short spiky blonde hair.

  I sigh, nodding, even if I don’t like the word lure very much. It makes it sound so sneaky and nefarious and cruel, but that’s not what I feel when I’m with Forrest.

  He lied to me, yes, but he told me almost right away.

  He could’ve kept it a secret for much longer.

  But then, we did things together, intimate things, before he told me.

  Shouldn’t I want to rage and scream and cry?

  I’m sitting on the balcony with my laptop open on the video call, the late-afternoon sun making the city look red and purple in turns.

  Forrest is out attending to some business, giving me some space, and even after a couple of hours, I feel my body aching with need for him.

  “Yeah, basically,” I say.

  Kelly sighs and strokes her chin, a gesture I recognize from countless times during our childhood. It’s stress and curiosity and anxiety and contemplation rolled into one.

  “Well?” I blurt, when she just goes on with her chin-rubbing.

  I’d like to talk with Mom as well, but she’s working a double shift at the restaurant and won’t be back until their late, which will be the early hours of the morning for me. I’m lucky that Kelly has a day off.

  “You know it’s an extremely weird, creepy thing to do, right?”

  I sigh, leaning back in my chair.

  “Please don’t call him weird or creepy, Kelly.”

  “What?” she says, her eyebrows shooting up like a cartoon character. “Am I missing something here? Did he or did he not create a fake magazine advertisement to lure you to Paris?”

  “Stop saying lure,” I snap. “Yes, yes, okay? Yes, but it’s not the way you’re trying to make it sound. He did it because he wanted to be with me, and he was scared of his feelings, and—”

  “I’m lost,” Kelly says. “I thought you said you two didn’t know each other?”

  “We don’t,” I murmur. “Well, I feel – we feel – like we do. We feel close, connected. It doesn’t really make sense. When I saw him yesterday, I felt all these crazy emotions. I thought it was just the writer side of myself running away with me, letting crazy ideas into my head. But then he reciprocated them. He feels the same. We’re … We’re planning on being together, Kelly.”

  Kelly frowns and stares at me. After a few moments, I touch the mousepad to check that the screen hasn’t frozen.

  “Well?” I say.

  “I’m trying to process it,” Kelly says. “It’s a lot to take in, Fi.”

  I take a sip of my tea and close my eyes, taking a deep breath.

  I let the steam make its way around my body, spreading shadowy hands.

  I know my response should be something similar to Kelly’s. I should be wracked with outrage and shock and maybe a sense of betrayal.

  But I just can’t bring myself to hate Forrest in that way.

  Even if it’s only been a day for me, and three months for him, it feels like so much more.

  No, that’s not fair. It hasn’t been three months for him, not really, because we never even spoke. It’s been a day for both of us with some longing from afar mixed in.

  I try to imagine what it would be like to watch Forrest from a distance, to harbor a secret need in my heart but also be terrified by what that need could do to me.

  It must’ve been awful for him.

  But I should feel repulsed, scared, worried … Shouldn’t I?

  All I know right now is that I wish he was here. I wish his strong arms were wrapped around my body, squeezing me close to him the same way he did on the rooftop as if any second we could both melt in the sun and sink into each other.

  “Sis,” Kelly says, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “Sorry,” I sigh. “What did you say?”

  She laughs. “I said you’re smitten with this guy, and I think you just proved me right. You were thinking about him, weren’t you? I could tell. You were getting this dreamy expression on your face.”

  “And you disapprove,” I mutter.

  She clasps her hands, leaning forward. “I don’t approve or disapprove,” she says. “Who you pursue, who you choose to be with, that’s none of my business. I don’t care if you’ve got a crush on this guy and he’s got a crush on you. I mean, heck, I think it’s great. Or it would be great if it wasn’t for the lie.”

  “But he told me almost right away,” I murmur.

  “Just think how different this would be if you weren’t attracted to him,” she says. “Imagine if that Zack Sykes guy had done this, lured you to a hotel like that. It’d be a freaking horror.”

  “I know,” I say, clenching my fist and just about stopping myself from slamming my fist on the table. I place my hand down. “I understand that, Kelly. But I can’t change how I feel. There’s something here between us, something
new and interesting and—and magical. Don’t laugh.”

  “I wasn’t going to laugh, sis,” she says. “I know you’ve always wanted a fairytale romance. I just didn’t know that involved an elaborate hotel room plot.”

  “What do you think I should do?” I ask.

  “Forrest Ford seems to be a good man,” Kelly says. “He’s worked his way up from nothing. He gives to charity. He runs a gym for impoverished kids to learn self-defense—”

  “Wait, are you researching him right now?”

  Kelly grins. “I’ve been reading up on him this whole time,” she says. “You’re my sister. Of course, I’m going to do a little spying.”

  I can’t help but smile, even as I shake my head.

  “I guess I should’ve expected that huh?”

  “It’s all publicly available info. It’s not like I’m turning into some super sleuth.”

  I giggle. “So he’s a good person. I already guessed that.”

  “Yeah, on paper,” Kelly says. “But the internet only tells half the story, and probably not even that most of the time. So if you want my advice …”

  Please don’t say come home. Please don’t make me choose.

  “Be careful,” she says, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Shoot me a text every hour to let me know you’re okay.”

  “Kelly, it’s nothing like that,” I snap. “I didn’t call you because I’m in danger or anything. I called you for …”

  I trail off, and we both giggle.

  “You were going to say you called me for relationship advice, right?”

  “Yeah,” I laugh.

  “And now you realize that you’ve probably come to the worst possible person, right? You know how much I hate the idea of relationships, let alone the actual act of one.”

  I roll my eyes.

  Kelly reacted to our dad leaving by becoming about as anti-relationship as a person can get, whereas she likes to point out that I went the total opposite.

  “So of course I’m more concerned about your safety. But I also trust your judgment.”

  “Even after Zack?”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to throw that in your face, sis,” Kelly says quickly. “I was just making a point. You were a kid. You’ve grown since then. You’ve lived. Don’t beat yourself up about that.”

  “So you think I should stay?” I ask.

  She frowns for a moment.

  “I think that’s your decision,” she says. “But mostly, I just want you to be careful, emotionally and physically. This guy’s got you right where he wants you. What happens if you tell him no when he wants to hear yes?”

  I shake my head vehemently.

  “It’s not like that,” I tell her. “I promise.”

  I don’t tell her that I did tell him no last night, and his response was to leave, to accept my decision.

  She doesn’t need to know every gritty detail.

  “Okay,” Kelly says. “But make sure you text me every hour.”

  “Kelly …”

  “Just a quick text,” she says. “Use our code words.”

  I giggle. “We haven’t used those in years.”

  When we were kids, we used to use code words to try and out-fox Mom. We’d drop the word bombshell into a conversation, and that meant we were agreeing to stay up and sneak out of our rooms once Mom was asleep, to raid the kitchen.

  “I’ll write Jester each time, then.”

  Kelly smiles, but I can still detect some uncertainty behind her eyes.

  Jester means I’m having the time of my life.

  “That’s fine,” she says. “But—”

  “But be careful,” I say. “I know.”

  “So, weird stalking aside, do you really like him?”

  I laugh and nod at the same time. I can’t deny that what she’s saying is true. If there wasn’t this blistering, burning connection between me and Forrest, I’m sure I’d feel differently about what he did.

  But surely that same comment could be made about any relationship.

  The whole point of relationships is that you give your partner some leeway, a little benefit of the doubt instead of throwing them under the bus right away.

  “It wasn’t weird stalking,” I say. “It was appreciation from afar.”

  “He couldn’t have picked a better person to pull that stuff with,” my sister laughs. “Did he know you were a hopeless romantic soon-to-be-bestselling romance writer?”

  I roll my eyes. “He knew I was a writer and that was it. He said he knew, just from looking at me, that he wanted to be with me. He said I’m pretty when I think nobody’s watching. Or something like that, anyway.”

  “So, you do like him, then,” Kelly says.

  Like doesn’t feel like the right word, but I nod anyway because I don’t know what the right word is.

  I can hardly start throwing the word love around after just a day of actual face-to-face talking.

  Can I?

  “I still don’t approve of what he did,” Kelly goes on. “But if you want to give him a chance, I won’t stand in your way.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “That means a lot. I thought you were going to freak.”

  “Maybe I would—maybe I should. But …”

  “What?” I urge when she falls silent.

  “It’s you, Fi. You seem different. I’ve never seen you like this before. Even with those letters when we were kids, you weren’t … I don’t know. It’s hard to find the right word. I guess that’s why you’re the writer, huh? But you’re glowing, Fi. You look like your full of light or something. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  “Not really,” I tell her. “But I guess I’m in a not-making-sense sort of mood because I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I’m glowing.”

  “Just be careful you don’t burn up.”

  “I know. I will. I love you, sis.”

  “I love you, too. And remember—”

  “Hot sauce, I know.”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “Definitely not hot sauce.”

  Hot sauce was the code word we came up with that meant one of us was going to sneak out and that the other one shouldn’t be worried. It’s basically the opposite of checking in with her every hour.

  “Bye-bye,” I say. “I’ll text you in precisely sixty minutes.”

  “You better.”

  We end the call and I lean back, moving my gaze over toward the city, to the Tower and the yawning sun-touched landscape all around it.

  He lied. But then told me the truth and said he was sorry.

  Can I forgive him?

  Have I already forgiven him?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Forrest

  “And she has agreed to come?” I say, standing at the top of the staircase with one hand tapping the wooden rail and my other gripping the cellphone in a vise like grip.

  Business ran longer than expected, keeping me busy until long after the sun set, leaving me to stress and over-think about all the ways Fiona could be suffering at my revelation.

  I had an image locked in my mind, vicious and unfair, of returning to the room to find that she’s taken her things and left a simple note for me on the balcony.

  I hate you. I never want to see you again. You’re dead to me.

  The words bounce around and around in my mind, feeling real, as though Fiona is whispering them close to my ear. And yet I can’t find it in me to regret telling her.

  The only thing I regret is not telling her that first night on the balcony.

  Did I really believe I could just get over my need for her? Was I ever really that naïve?

  “Yes,” my driver says.

  “Good,” I sigh. “See you soon.”

  I look down over the bookshop, closed and privately hired for the evening. It’s called Shakespeare and Company and it’s one of the most famous, if not the most famous bookshops in the world.

  I’ve had faux-candles brought in for the evening, flickering yellow but without a nake
d flame to threaten the paperbacks.

  I stand at the top of the double staircase, looking down upon the entrance, every wall lined with stacks upon stacks of books. It has a ramshackle look about it, but that only adds to its charm.

  Even though I know Fiona is on the way, I keep expecting something to happen to ruin it, for a scythe to slice through our closeness before it has a chance to truly begin.

  I drum my fingers against the banister, the tempo and the sound matching the rhythm of my pounding heartbeat, thundering in my chest as I curse myself for not telling my woman sooner.

  Goddamn, I hope she can forgive me.

  But hope is one hell of a weak word were my woman is concerned. There’s no damn way I can leave this up to hope, not when being with her is the only thing I can think about now.

  I always do my duty where business is concerned, but today I found my mind returning over and over again to my woman, to the shape of her body curving deliciously under my hand … to the future, where our children will smile up at her and laugh and delight in her attentive mothering … to her book signings and events, where I’ll stand in the rear of the room, in the shadows, brimming with pride as my woman takes the spotlight and captivates the crowd.

  I can’t stop the endless cycle of these thoughts, going on and on and on, making me wish I could slip through time and live them now.

  I own her the same way men owned women tens of thousands of years ago when there were too many dangers in the wild to worry about anything other than primal protection.

  She’s mine, and if she doesn’t forgive me, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  I won’t be able to stop thinking about her.

  If another man tries to stake a claim on her, I don’t trust myself to be lenient. I know I would explode like a wild animal if I ever saw them out in public together.

  Just the thought of Fiona leaning against another man the way she leans against me, resting her head against his chest, almost sends me into a ferocious temper.

  I squeeze the railing hard, grinding my teeth.

  The bell above the door tinkles.

  “Forrest?” she calls.

  Her voice shimmers through me, causing hands of longing to claw deep inside of me and spread wide-reaching fingers, owning me just the same way I own her.