Just like Grey (Series ONE Complete Set): Billionaire Romance

by Jessie Cooke

  “You’re doing what you always do about this time in a relationship—questioning him and yourself. You’ve got to relax or you’re going to self-sabotage.”

  The waitress arrived with the champagne just as Nicky smiled and said, “You’re right. It’s true. This is my pattern, and of course, I’m jumping to conclusions. He’s a great guy. I mean, look at what he set up just for you tonight! If he does this for someone he met once, just think about what he’ll do for people he really knows and loves. Don’t get me wrong, but I’d like to be the one on the receiving end for once in my life.”

  Nicky raised her glass in a toast.

  “Happy birthday to my best friend,” she shouted over the noise.

  The champagne tasted more bitter than sweet as Bella tried to choke it down along with her guilt.

  Bella survived Christmas relatively unscathed, though she half-expected Nicky to call and tell her she’d received a diamond from Reece.

  That’d be just my luck, Bella thought. Instead of getting rid of him completely, I’d have to live with him forever; my best friend’s husband and my guilt. I’d deserve it.

  However, her worst fears were immobilized, and she found herself glad to be back at work on the twenty-seventh. Rita, her boss, had called her in early to discuss a new assignment, and she wanted to speak to Bella personally about it.

  Bella settled herself across the desk from Rita, awed at the intimidation this woman could wield.

  “I’ll cut to the chase, Miss Ryan—I’m becoming more and more impressed with you.”

  Bella felt her mouth drop open, and she slowly closed in as her mother’s voice echoed in her mind reminding her that she needn’t catch any flies.

  “Thank you, Ms. Turner. I’m flattered that you’re impressed.”

  “I saw the work you did on the holiday home—the special request job. That client was extremely pleased.”

  “And I still can’t know who it was?” Bella tried.

  “Negative. The client asked especially to remain anonymous, saying he or she would reveal if they so desired.”

  Darn, Bella thought. So close.

  “The good news is that there has been another request expressly for you.” Rita handed over a folder, and Bella took it to peruse the information.

  “The Oaks? Isn’t that the new town square complex out in Grapevine?”

  “Yes, and apparently it’s a very hot, up-and-coming area. A second square phase is already planned to break ground in March, and the waiting list for one of the apartments or townhomes within the new square is already building.”

  “It looks so cool,” Bella remarked as she looked at the schematic for the town square with its shops, restaurants, cafes, and apartments.

  “You’ve been requested to design and decorate one of the townhomes there. The address is indicated in the folder. It’s a clean slate—nothing there yet, so you can do whatever you wish. The client would like to meet you there today at ten, which . . .” she checked her watch, “means you had better get going.”

  Bella felt herself fly into hustle-mode, but not before she forgot her manners.

  “Ms. Turner, thank you so much. I really appreciate all that you are doing for me.”

  “Like I said, Bella, I’m impressed. You keep putting such good work out there, and I’ll continue to be happy that you represent the firm. Perhaps we’ll discuss something more permanent after this success.”

  They stood, and Bella offered her boss her hand, proud at herself for the assertion she exhibited, but intimidated once again by the strength of Rita’s grasp.

  And when Bella got to her car in the parking garage, she allowed herself a little happy dance before getting in and sailing down the interstate to Grapevine to meet this mystery person who seemed to know much more about her than she thought possible at this point in her career.

  Within minutes, she pulled into The Oaks Town Square. It was already bustling with activity as contractors and their teams worked to put finishing touches on various units of stores, cafes, and residences. A sign for REI was being mounted over a large storefront, and—of course—a Starbucks manager was polishing the glass that boasted the famous green emblem. She coasted through various traffic circles taking in the sights, and then she easily found 1 Village Drive and pulled into the marked parking space beside a silver Porsche Boxster S series—the car which, she assumed, belonged to the owner.

  Finding the door unlocked and cracked opened, she pushed it open and stuck her head into the spacious marble-floored foyer of the townhome.

  This is gracious living, she thought as she looked around at the open floor plan and beautifully lighted space. It was hard to imagine you were in a townhome with all the space she was seeing.

  “Hello?” she called. “Anyone here?” She had made her way through the foyer into the sunken living area and was approaching the formal dining room when a voice answered from behind her.

  “The lengths that I have gone through just to get you alone,” said a rich male voice that caused Bella’s nipples to harden with desire.

  She whirled around to see Reece Hamilton, dressed in a tailored navy suit standing before her, his collar opened and blue tie hanging to the side.

  “You are alone, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Bella answered. “Why?”

  A light brightened in the recesses of her mind.

  She felt the light bulbs begin to glow as she considered his greeting.

  “Wait a minute,” she began. “Nicky said you had a house on South Padre Island.”

  “Yeeesss,” he drawled.

  “But she’d never seen it, so she wouldn’t have known what it looked like,” Bella continued.

  “True,” Reece said, patiently allowing her to work all of the details out for herself, the pieces of the puzzle starting to come together.

  “And your firm built this town square,” she mused.

  “You’re getting warmer,” he said as he began his approach.

  “You’re the one that requested my services . . . twice,” she said.

  “Oh, I’ve most certainly been desiring your services,” he said. Having finally closed the distance between them, he reached out to finger the long braid she’d hastily done for her early meeting with Rita today.

  “I like your hair like this,” he said as he worked his fingers under the band holding it together, “but it’s so beautiful flowing freely as well.” His fingers raked through the braid, gently loosening the strands.

  Bella felt as if his fingers were loosening more than her hair. She felt it deep within.

  Bella tried to keep her body from responding to Reece’s touch. She didn’t want it to tingle and yearn like it was doing. She tried to distract herself by looking around the space.

  “So, you want this decorated too? Same neutral theme or did you have something else in mind?”

  She broke away from him and approached the large arched window that overlooked the main square.

  “Whatever you want,” Reece responded as he approached her from behind. He wove his arms around her and pulled himself up against her. She could feel his excitement bulging into the small of her back, and it made her moist.

  “How much time will you be spending here? I mean, don’t you already have a main residence and a holiday home? What’s this one for?”

  “You.” His answer was breathed onto the back of her neck through the cascade of waves the braid had made.

  She whirled around and pushed back on him, a frown on her face.

  “Me? What exactly do you think is going on here? I’m just going to move into a place you provide me so that I can be your part-time lover? All so you can continue to lead on my best friend? She knows something is wrong, by the way. And she thinks it’s her fault.”

  “Wrong?”

  “She thinks you’re gonna dump her. Says you’re colder than you once were to her. Already suspects you have someone else. And it’s gonna break her heart! And you know what’s the
worst part? The someone else is me, her best friend! What kind of friend am I?”

  “We didn’t know,” Reece said tenderly as he tried to approach her again.

  “You knew you had a girlfriend . . . one who’d already had her heart broken by a cheater. You knew that much. I . . . was just stupid.”

  “Bella, Bella, you’re not stupid,” Reece slid his arms around her, and the rational voice in her head told her to push away; get back; get out; deny the job; anything to get away from this situation, but her heart and her body were inching ever closer to him, a force within her singing to the tune his body was playing.

  “You didn’t know, and we can’t help what is happening. And what about Christo?” Reece asked.

  “Christo?” Bella said in confusion.

  “Don’t make me out to be the only cheater in this.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, you’re with Christo, something that I haven’t really liked, but I’m dealing with it. It happened, but . . . well, I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you.”

  Bella’s head was spinning. Where had he gotten the idea that she and Christo were together? Nicky?

  “Tell me?” Bella asked.

  “I’ve been following him, Bella—only because I had a sneaking suspicion at the masquerade, the first one. And I know you’re gonna think that I’m making this up and that it’s my ego talking, but, I think had he been given the chance and enough encouragement, he’d have attempted to make a move on me himself. And then, when I saw you with him afterwards, I wondered what kind of guy he really was. I didn’t want him leading you on. I did some research on my own, then had a friend of mine follow him for a while. I have pictures, Bella. He spends a lot of time at BJ’s, Zippers, the Hidden Door. Do you know these places?”

  Bella nodded. “Gay bars.”

  “Exactly, and he’s with the same guy all the time, at all of them.” Here Reece reached out a finger to trace her cheek and remove a strand of hair away from her face. “What I’m trying to tell you, honey, is . . . Christo is gay. He’s got a boyfriend. He may not be all that you think.”

  Bella wished aloud for a chair; she wanted to sink down into something, suddenly feeling less able to hold herself up. Too much was happening too fast, and it was making her feel as if she were on a carousel that had been going way too long and picking up speed.

  “He has a boyfriend?” she whispered. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

  “Maybe the same reason you didn’t tell him about us?” Reece offered.

  She looked into Reece’s eyes and realization hit her like cold water.

  “Oh, wait, you think Christo and I are a couple.” It was a statement, not a question, and Reece’s face revealed the question that now he was having. “Oh, no. No no no no no no,” Bella said quickly. “Christo is gay.”

  Reece took a step back.

  “You knew?”

  “I know he’s gay,” she provided. “Didn’t know he had a boyfriend,” she mumbled.

  “So, wait, you live with a gay guy?”

  “Believe it or not, less drama than living with a girl.”

  “So, you’re not a cheater?”

  “Not like that,” Bella admitted, “but apparently I cheat on my best friend with her own boyfriend.”

  A gush of breath that had been held in too long whooshed out of Reece’s lungs, and he began to chuckle.

  “Do you know how horrible I’ve felt?” he asked.

  “Hopefully at least a fraction of how horrible I have felt,” she answered.

  “No, not about Nicky—I mean, I do feel horrible about that—but I’m talking about Christo.”

  “Christo?”

  Reece shook his head.

  “Maybe we should just start over.” He walked her over to the arched widow, turned her towards it, pushed himself against her from the back, and then whispered into her hair again.

  “I want this to be your place. I want to have you here, all the time, no strings attached.”

  His hands traveled from her belly slowly down her skirt and stopped to put pressure on what once had been the unpainted triangle he’d kissed so tenderly.

  She could feel the heat from his hand and from her body responding, the dampness already beginning.

  “I’m not your toy,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be kept, and I will not be your ‘other woman’, your concubine.” She wanted to turn. She wanted to kiss him, but she kept her resolve. If there was one thing she would do her best to keep, it was what little integrity she had left.

  “Nicky and I are not going to last,” he informed her. “I only started going out with her to try and get to you. But life brought us together through someone different: Christo, and now that I understand your relationship with him, there’s nothing to stop us.” His hands were sliding down the length of her skirt, and she knew what he’d do before he even did it.

  Hooking his fingers under the edge of her skirt, he began to pull it up her leg slowly.

  “I think we should christen your new place,” he said as he kissed the side of her neck gently.

  She took a deep breath in, hoping to calm herself and clear her head, but it only become muddied with his scent which brought to mind the other times she had breathed him and taken him into her completely.

  Before she allowed her head to clear, she pressed back against him, her back arched slightly so that he could feel the roundness of her buttocks against him. His fingers had found the gentle fabric crotch of her pantyhose, and he tickled and stroked her through the nylon.

  But she could still feel it, and it excited her as much as he had when he had his lips on her that first encounter. She leaned her head back against his chest, her neck long and inviting, and he responded by nibbling her ear and neck as his other hand continued to stroke. She flashed forward to the scene from the outside; the workers looking up into the arched window seeing a woman, her skirt hiked, her long hair covering her face, being taken from behind as her hands splayed against the glass of the grand window of 1 Village Drive, the first of the townhomes in the town square.

  She turned to him. “If we’re gonna do this, we should at least get away from the window. I’d like to maintain some semblance of dignity.”

  He laughed, pulled a condom from his wallet, and then tossed it on the floor.

  In the meantime, Bella wiggled out of her skirt and pantyhose, the hum of her body drowning out the voice of rationale, and one look at Reece without his coat and shirt made her nipples stretch towards him to be touched.

  13

  Reece’s hands and lips were all over Bella’s body, and yet she felt the absence of his touch in too many spaces. She wanted more and more on every inch or her, in every crevice, filling up all the empty spaces that had gone untouched for so long. He had taken her to a place where no one and nothing existed but them, their one-ness; a place she felt the sky break open inside of her body and soul and the sunshine emanating from without to light the rest of the world around her.

  But he was her best friend’s boyfriend.

  “I can’t believe I did this . . . again. I’m a horrible person; a horrible friend,” Bella said.

  Reece stroked her hair, her cheeks, and traced a finger down her neck.

  “I told you—it’s not going to last with Nicky. In fact, I should have ended it long ago.”

  “Yeah, the moment you fucked me,” Bella said, righteous anger surging forward. “This is it. I won’t see you after this,” she informed him.

  “But this is what is good. This makes me happy. When I’m around Nicky, I don’t feel like this.”

  Bella narrowed her eyes at him.

  “What exactly is ‘this’?” she asked, pressuring him to pinpoint and define exactly what he thought they had.

  “I know it isn’t exactly conventional—most things aren’t with me,” Reece admitted. “But . . . well, I find myself falling for you, Bella.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Bella said, sitti
ng up to fasten the white cotton bra she had just put her arms through. “There is no falling happening except into bed—or on the floor-- and that is not the foundation for the kind of relationship I’d like to have. Not to mention, there’s still the issue of your girlfriend in the picture.”

  She rubbed at a carpet-burned knee before reaching for the rest of her clothes that had been scattered around the room.

  “Well, I meant it as an escape from a cheating Christo, but my offer for you to live here still stands,” Reece said as he looked around the room.

  “Evasion—another great foundation for a real relationship,” she smirked. “And, I don’t know if I could fully trust you, Reece. I mean, you are a cheater.”

  “Yes, but remember: I thought you were a cheater too.”

  “Yes, but remember: I wasn’t.”

  Bella had fully dressed herself and Reece still sat completely naked upon the white carpet of the bedroom. Her nipples strained against her blouse, obviously not completely satiated, but she did all she could to ignore them.

  “Bella, give me one weekend.”

  “To what?”

  “To convince you that I’m worth it. I’ll take you to the island. We’ll have a proper weekend of dates and dinners. I’ll show you how I can woo a woman. I will be honest with Nicky and break things off. We can have real conversation face-to-face, not behind some mask. Let me treat you the way you’re supposed to be treated.”

  She had been shaking her head, but the sincerity in Reece’s voice had stilled the movement. She knew there was a magnetism beyond just the physical, but she didn’t want to be cast as “the other woman” to her best friend.

  “And what are we supposed to do about Nicky?” Bella asked. “How am I ever gonna face her? Tell her the truth?”

  Reece had finally risen and put on his pants. He was buckling them as he approached her to draw him towards her.

  “I’ll do what I should have done months ago and break up with her. The earlier stuff she doesn’t have to know. I’ll bear the brunt of all of this; I’m used to being the bad guy.”

  Gently, tenderly, he kissed her forehead, then her nose, and then her lips.