I looked through the small hatch as the door swung again. It was old Sam, carrying all his worldly possessions in two plastic bags. Awkwardly, he pushed through, both bags in his left hand, his right sleeve swinging empty. I hurried through.
“Here you go, Sam. I’ll take those for you.” I was the only person he let help him, he’d growl at anyone else, but he had a big soft spot for me, and I always gave him his coffee before Marco got here, and then he’d fill up all day with the free refills. He beamed at me as best he could, and shuffled through to the men's room where he’d try and tidy himself up a bit. I dumped his bags on the floor by the table where he always sat. His entire life revolved around the diner. Day after day he’d be here. Damn, I didn’t want my life to be like that. I went to get his coffee while thinking hard. What was the next thing I needed to do with my plan? My plan to escape this dead-end job. My dead-end life.
It was still quite early, and I was busy with the breakfasts, when the door swung again. I glanced idly out, and my heart sank. It was the tall, out-of-place guy who’d been watching me yesterday. I scowled, and turned away. Let him find his own seat. I picked up the plates as Pete slid them onto the hot server, looking them over to remind myself which customer they belonged to.
I hit the door with my ass to swing out with both hands full of plated meals and I was hit with a sudden tingling sensation. Oh, God, what was it? I looked around. The man standing by the door waiting to be seated wasn’t the guy from yesterday. He looked just as uncomfortable, but fucking hell, this man was hot! I swallowed hard and forced my eyes away from him. I served the silent couple at their usual table and smiled mechanically at them. “Any extra table condiments?”
“No. Thanks, Toni. We’re fine.”
I nodded and went over towards the door. “Can I help you?”
I could feel my heart beginning to race out of my control, and my panties dampened. I wasn’t used to this. I had little time to meet men, go to parties. But here was someone who just by being here was making me feel like a teenager again.
He was staring at me too. He looked — I don’t know. He looked shattered. I had to pull myself together.
“You here for coffee, sir?” I asked and gestured towards the back table.
He started. “Oh. Yes, thanks.” I could see him pulling himself together. “Yes, coffee, please.” His voice was quiet, authoritative but sexy, with the faint English accent of someone who’d been over here for some years.
“Coming right up.” I swung to the back and made his coffee, finding myself choosing one of the newest mugs.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” I called to the boy’s father, who was waiting to pay for their breakfast. I knew I had to concentrate. Everyone said I was clumsy, and the one thing I didn’t want to do was tip coffee over the sexiest man I’d ever seen in here.
“There you go, sir.” I put the mug in front of him. “The menu’s there if you want anything to eat.” I glanced at his face, and then looked away fast. He was studying me curiously. I wondered for a moment if I’d got something on my face or my makeup had smeared. My insides clenched.
I hurried over to the register, feeling my face burning.
“Seven dollars, then.” I took the dad’s ten spot, and gave him his change. His wife came up and stood next to him.
“Try not to worry too much.” I felt so sorry for them. “He’ll take it out on you, because he feels secure enough with you to risk it.” I smiled at them and slammed the register shut.
“Chemo’s horrible, especially when you’re watching your kid go through it.” I made a face. “Tell me how he’s got on in the morning, okay?”
The pale woman smiled back. “We will, Toni. Thank you. You do make things easier for us all. We all tell each other about this place back on the ward.”
Marco was coming in the door at that point. He preened himself. He knew that the extra customers from the oncology ward helped his bottom line. My smile fell from my face and I turned to the back. Marco didn’t realize just how much all this shit affected me, though. I caught a glimpse of the sexy man’s face. He looked thoughtful. I scowled and swung through to the back.
Sitting there with his new clothes, all fitted as if they were made for him. His warm coat, his careful grooming. What the hell was he doing here, messing up my emotions, and making me wonder why he was watching me?
I had to pull myself together. I made Marco his coffee and set a muffin out for him. Then I went out to clear the tables.
Three of the couples had gone almost together, so I stacked the tray high, wiping and cleaning the tables and tidying the sauce bottles.
Sam watched me with his dogged devotion, and I smiled over at him.
“Bit wet outside, Sam.”
“S’right, Toni.” Sam had his hand curled around his mug. “Nice an’ warm in here though.” He gazed at me. “You okay today? You look a bit … different.”
“I’m fine Sam. You enjoy your coffee.” I couldn’t deny I felt a bit light-headed. I wondered what the well-dressed guy was doing here. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, except sitting and looking around. Why? Why was he here?
I loaded the last few items onto the tray and lifted it carefully. It was a bit fuller than usual, everyone seemed to have wanted extra toast, and those little plates made the stacking harder.
I couldn’t stop it. As I wriggled past the tables, I could see the cutlery sliding. “Damn!” I managed to keep the word under my breath, but both Sam and sexy man looked around.
As the silverware rained to the floor, Sam struggled to his feet. “Let me help.”
“No! No, Sam!” I hissed at him. “Sit back up, or I’ll get into trouble.” And he sat back, uncertain, because he knew what was likely to happen.
“Toni! Not again!” Marco’s voice roared out from the kitchen, and I made a face at the offending items.
Dumping the tray on the nearest empty table, I crouched down to pick up the silverware. My head met the stranger’s with what would have been a sickening crunch if he hadn’t seen me coming and jerked backwards.
“I’m sorry, sir. Thank you for helping.” I gritted my teeth. “I can manage, though. Please sit down.”
His face was expressionless. He nodded “All right, then. If you’re sure?”
I looked up, caught his eye. Suddenly I felt the world teeter. My whole world seemed to change in an instant. How the hell had I only just found out that love across a crowded room was a real thing? As my eyes met his, it seemed as if I already knew him. Stupid girl! I dropped my eyes fast. I couldn’t think like this, there was no way that he and I were even on the same planet.
I hurriedly collected the cutlery and piled them onto the tray. This time I was much more careful, and I made it out to the back without cocking everything up again. But I’d hardly started loading the dishwasher when Marco’s voice from the front echoed through to the back.
“Toni!” He sounded really cross this time, and I stopped doing the loading. I rolled my eyes at Pete, who grinned sympathetically back, and hurried out to the front, drying my hands.
“What can I do, Marco?”
Sam was shuffling to the men’s restroom. His head was down and he looked even more downtrodden than normal. I watched him go, ignoring Marco, whose exclamation of disgust was a sign of increasing blood pressure.
Once the door swung behind Sam, I turned to Marco. “What did he do?”
“He’s a liability, Toni. He can’t keep coming here, and it’s about time he moved to another diner. He upsets all the paying clients. Look!” He gestured towards the man at the back table.
I looked over with reluctance, knowing my body betrayed me every time I looked at him. He looked uncomfortable, but there was a smear of grease down the sleeve of his light colored coat. I knew Sam must’ve brushed past him going to the men’s room, and cursed myself for seating the stranger there.
“I’ll pay for it to be cleaned.” I gritted my teeth. “Take it out of my wages. Sam
needs somewhere to go when it’s wet.”
“It’s not that!” Marco’s blood pressure must be through the roof. I listened, head down. Maybe his wife had given him trouble this morning.
“I can’t have him here, Toni. Look at the state of his table, all his bags. Then falling onto another customer. It won’t work.”
I cast a glance at the men’s room. I really hoped Sam couldn’t hear this. Rage overtook me.
“He fought for this country. All his hopes and dreams of the future lost when he was injured obeying orders, defending us!” I couldn’t help myself, all the anger at the desperate need to change things, the helplessness of the poor, the inability to make things right. Even the sadness of the parents fighting disease in their children. It all added up to a miserable existence for them and for me. I couldn’t help them.
“Now you just don’t want him in here, because his balance is gone and he makes you uncomfortable!” I suddenly realized what I was doing. I was throwing away my job here. And I needed it.
I dropped my head. “Marco, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I looked up at him, trying to produce a tremulous smile. “I really feel sorry for our vets. Maybe I could give him that table in future, then he won’t be so much in the way?” I widened my eyes, “I’m really sorry.”
My eyes flickered over to the man sitting at that table. I couldn’t help myself. He looked as if he was trying not to grin. He’d seen through my attempts to manipulate Marco. I looked away hurriedly, feeling my breathing rasping. God, I had to concentrate on my job here.
Marco’s face was a study in indecision. He wanted to make a stand, but he didn’t want to lose me, that much I knew. “Well, girl. You’ve got to manage things better.”
I sensed a movement behind me. The sexy man brushed past me as he went to the door and a jolt of electricity made me jerk. But his face was expressionless, tight.
“No offense taken, mister. I think the girl’s right. Let the vet stay.” And he pushed out of the door. I started after him since he hadn’t paid. Then I glanced at the table. A twenty dollar bill was tucked under the mug. My eyes bulged. I heard Marco chuckle.
“Well, if you get that sort of tip, girl, you’d better watch out.”
I rounded on him, then thought better of it. I sighed, “I suppose.” The man was gone. The most attractive, sexy devil I’d seen in a long time had walked out of my life, and I had no means of ever finding him again.
I looked around. The few remaining customers eating studiously, heads down. Tables cluttered with used dishes, waiting to be cleared. The smell of greasy food in the kitchen. My life wasn’t about to change any time soon.
I went to get Sam a refill of his coffee. Marco glared at me. But he wouldn’t say anything more to me today. I knew him well enough to know that.
James
I strode down the sidewalk, my coat shrugged up over my hunched shoulders against the rain. I’d even forgotten about the car, until it slid up alongside me, and Steve leapt out to open the door.
I shook my head. “Sorry, Steve. I forgot you were waiting.” That sounded lame, even to me, so I shut up and got in the back, letting him close the door behind me. I darkened the screen between us and thought back.
What the hell had happened? I’d abso-fucking-lutely had to get out of that shit place as quickly as possible. Just one look at her had me all knotted up inside — and that had never happened before. When that stupid, bloated owner had started in on her, I’d so nearly upped and punched him. But then she’d leapt to her own defense, and her sheer mastery of him had me sitting there in gaping admiration.
I could absolutely see her controlling Edward without difficulty.
And at the thought of handing her over to my weak and ineffectual brother, my belly clenched and my heart went cold. I knew I was scowling. The car headed home. I hadn’t told Steve any different, and he was probably a bit scared of asking me. He was fairly new, and I could sense his uncertainty.
I was too deep in my thoughts to bother putting it right though, and I thought back to the diner.
She was tall, not nearly as tall as I was, but she might take an inch or so off Edward. She was ungainly, stooping with an adolescent awkwardness. But she’d grow out of that soon enough. She wasn’t quite twenty, and in a few years, with the right training, she’d have an effortless elegance and her height would be an advantage to her and us. I leaned back against the seat and shut my eyes.
How did I know her body so well? Her face was familiar to me from the photo in the dossier. But I knew how she’d feel in my arms. I could scent the luxury perfume she’d soon be using. I could tell what her creamy skin would feel like when I slid my hand down the luscious curve of her ass, the perfect handful of its rounded cheek.
My cock stiffened in my pants. I tensed. I had to control myself. She wasn’t mine. And my heart sank.
I considered her background information in the dossier that Lawrence had given me a couple of days ago. This girl was Antonia Chapman, the great great granddaughter of the Earl of Amherst.
Back in the eighteenth century, the Earl’s only son had been killed in a hunting accident, and his three daughters couldn’t inherit. When he died, the title became extinct. Two of the daughters had married wasters, weak, ineffectual men who’d quickly ruined the family finances as well.
I smiled tightly. The beautiful old mansion had been sold. I believed it was now owned by a wealthy footballer. I sat up abruptly. I couldn’t — wouldn’t — let that happen to my own family home.
No one ever knew what happened to the third daughter. But the eldest, Antonia, had gone to America with her husband. Their family history made interesting reading, but children had been few, and when Antonia’s only surviving daughter had become pregnant out of wedlock, she’d vanished from the family records. None of her surviving nephews and nieces knew of her existence, or what had happened to her.
I slipped the file from the folder still sitting on the back seat of the limo. Before I opened it, I stared out. The car was driving through the city outskirts now, a wider, cleaner street. Up to the billionaire’s part of Silicon Valley. Better than the narrow, crowded downtown street where the diner stood, and the bitter taste of the cheap coffee was still in my throat.
I looked down. I was surprised how interested I’d been in the history of this family. Normally, I’d have been bored. This girl? Okay, if you say so. Give her money, send her off to that finishing school, pass her to Edward and let me get on with my comfortable life.
But no. I’d sat, fascinated, reading the story of these long-dead people who’d made mistakes in their lives, had to live with the consequences.
I’d waited, striding the room impatiently, while Lawrence had instructed teams of investigators and genealogists, finding what had happened to a missing pregnant girl nearly fifty years ago. I smiled.
Lawrence had been puzzled.
“Sir, there are three other suitable girls from other families we’ve already found. Shall we research those, and put this one aside? There might not even be a female descendant.”
I’d shaken my head. “No. I want to find out.” I couldn’t tell him. Tell him that I’d looked at an old photo of Elizabeth, the Lady Antonia’s daughter. Her eyes had looked out at me. I had to find out what had happened to her. The consequences of her uncle’s reckless riding to hounds had cost her the chance of an aristocratic life, a suitable marriage, and had led to abandonment by her family, having to raise her child alone in a strange country. That we’d found out she’d ended up here, in San Francisco, had seemed beyond coincidence.
I watched as my own luxurious home swung into view as the car rolled to a halt outside the wide steps. I picked up the folder and stepped out as the limo slowed to a halt. Lawrence was waiting beside the steps, his eyes on my face.
“Decent coffee, Lawrence. A decent cup of coffee as soon as we can.” I took the wide steps quickly and the great door swung open for me. I wondered how this Antonia would take it. The un
derstated taste, the quiet staff, a place to relax, where you didn’t need to do anything unless you wanted to. Food would arrive at the table, what you wanted would be bought for you, the house cleaned, maintained, filled with flowers. Everything done to ensure your comfort.
I looked around. I’d earned this. I’d slogged my guts out, worked every hour there was, taught myself everything I needed to know.
And I’d been lucky too. Who’d have predicted that apps would be the way to go? The big software firms had their share of the market, and I wouldn’t take them on. But apps were easy to get into. Yes, I’d been lucky. Lucky enough to have the money to live on in the beginning so that I had time to learn, lucky enough to have the sort of brain that could see what to do, control the team I built around me as I built my empire. Lucky enough too, in the apps that I chose to develop. They’d sold like crazy. I smiled in relief as I threw myself into my chair, and David entered the room at the same time from the service door, bearing a tray. The coffee aroma finally heralded home, and I sighed.
“Thank you, David. It smells heavenly.”
He smiled. “Thank you, sir. I’ve taken the liberty of adding Scottish shortbread. You didn’t eat breakfast.”
I looked at the tray, and my mouth watered, imagining the soft, crumbly biscuits.
“Great, thanks.” I nodded at him and got out the dossier again.
Soon, I’d need to see her again, tell her what I had planned, work out how to get her to agree.
“Sit with me, Lawrence.” He’d never come and join me without being told to, but he was a very useful sounding board, and never tried to take advantage of his position.
“Well, your men were right. It’s an absolutely foul little hole.” I shuddered again. “The coffee!”
I looked over at him. “But you know, she’s absolutely perfect for what we need. She’s exactly like that photo of Elizabeth, her grandmother.” I flipped through to the old photo. Staged, black and white, old-fashioned hairstyle and hard makeup, she still mesmerized me.
Pawn of the Billionaire Page 2