Irresistible Billionaires by Summer Brooks
Bella
Saturday afternoons.
They were meant to be for pampering. I know most women liked to get their aesthetically pleasing, millennial girl boss self-care done on Sundays, which I sort of felt was keeping with the whole “Christian day of rest” thing.
In fact, Sunday self-care had been co-opted by the Girl Boss crowd who liked to put Korean face masks on and listen to some sad Lana Del Ray songs, while they blubbered about their most recent ex-boyfriend over a glass of overly expensive red wine.
There was a reason I rejected the Sunday self-care idea. I didn’t want to lump myself in with those women, so I’d shifted. Saturday afternoons were for pampering.
I’d sit down, paint my toenails, put on some fluffy slippers and a warm bathrobe, lay a sheet mask over my face, and watch some good action movies. Like Charlie’s Angels or Thelma and Louise.
But this Saturday had gone to hell in a handbasket, and I had nothing to blame but my infuriatingly overactive mind.
“Will you still love me
When I’m no longer
Young and beautiful.”
“When the hell did that start playing?” I demanded under my breath, slightly horrified that the very song I’d just been internally mocking had come up on my shuffled music.
Okay, so maybe there was a small part of me that didn’t totally reject the millennial Girl Boss stereotype.
“Will you still love me
When I’ve got nothing
But my aching bones.”
“NO!” I screeched at my Bluetooth sound system, grabbing the remote and pressing the “stop” button with all the fury of a caged hellion.
This Saturday afternoon, I seemed to be having some anger issues. And they all stemmed from the fact that it had been a whole twenty-two hours, forty-three minutes, and two seconds since I’d texted Logan.
Make that five seconds.
At this point, I had no choice but to believe he was purposefully ignoring me. If one of my girlfriends took this long to respond, I’d think nothing of it. That was just what women did.
But men weren’t allowed the same freedom. Logan wasn’t allowed the same freedom.
Why is that? The thought struck me, suddenly and hard as a baseball bat.
Why wasn’t Logan afforded the same privilege as the rest of my female friends? Why did I expect him to get back to me so quickly?
It was just tradition at this point, maybe. Logan always responded to me with the speed of lightning, which I'd thought had been a sign when we first met, but I’d very quickly learned that Logan had no feelings for me. He was just a fast texter.
Not today, apparently. I opened my phone once again just in case I’d happened to miss his response. I hadn’t. The text I’d crafted the day before sat there, alone and boring.
“Got news! Mura at eight?”
Maybe he was sick, or something had happened to him. My mind started to run through the plethora of awful scenarios that could possibly explain his lack of response to my very normal text.
He could have fallen so ill that he was barely able to get out of bed, in which case, I'd need to pick him up some Matzo Ball soup from the deli around the corner. I always brought it to Logan when he felt under the weather.
Or he could have gotten into a car accident and was now lying prone in some hospital bed. His wallet could have burned up in a fire, and no one knew who he was. He was just John Doe, lying all alone on a hospital bed while the doctors explained to him what happened.
He’d probably have amnesia, too. Because I knew that if Logan still had his memory, I’d be one of the first people he called.
“What if he’s been kidnapped?!” I gasped aloud, springing to my feet, and smacking my toes into the coffee table, ruining one set of perfectly painted lime green toes. “Shit.”
Someone could easily kidnap Logan. This was the hub of the tech world, after all. Almost everyone knew who he was, where he lived, and how much he was worth. Someone could easily decide that they wanted to hold him hostage in exchange for the ransom that Zach would obviously pay.
That must have been why he hadn’t texted me back. He’d been kidnapped!
What did I do about that?
“OH my God, I need to get dressed!" I cried, stripping off my robe as I dashed down the hallway toward my bedroom. I left it there, crumpled up, excusing the mess with the fact that my best friend had just possibly-almost-probably been kidnapped!
What does one wear to a rescue mission? I wondered as I considered my rather massive closet.
Probably a pair of black jeans and a dark t-shirt. That would be my best bet, I was sure of it. That’s what people always wore in the movies.
Just as I was debating between donning my black combat boots or my knee-length brown riding boots, my cell phone went off.
This is it, I thought. This is the ransom call.
It didn’t even cross my mind that, if Logan really was being held hostage, no one would be stupid enough to call me. But 24 hours without a response from Logan had forced all logic to flee my brain.
Glancing down at the Caller I.D., I was disappointed and annoyed to see that it was Clara calling.
“Yes?” I said when I answered, instead of my usually chipper greeting.
“What’s up, sourpuss?” Clara replied. I could hear water in the background and knew she was washing the dishes. Zach had tried to convince her to hire a maid when they’d first gotten married, but she wouldn’t have it. She was used to doing things herself, and that was how it would stay.
I’d just opened my mouth to tell her that I was such a sourpuss because my best friend was kidnapped when I realized how absolutely ridiculous that sounded.
It appeared that my overactive imagination couldn’t stomach the fact that Logan simply hadn’t responded to me.
“I’m just tired,” I covered quickly. “I’m sorry. How are you?”
“Nauseous,” Clara groaned. “All that stuff women say about pregnancy really is true. I can’t eat anything but saltines and lemon tea.”
“Remind me never to get pregnant,” I muttered with a laugh. “That does not sound like a diet I want to exist on.”
“That’s because you mostly subsist on sushi, and raw fish is a very strict no go when you’re with child.”
“No more sushi dates with Logan,” I groaned out of habit. “Can’t do that.”
“Speaking of Logan, I want to know your opinion on something,” Clara said, and for some odd reason, my heart began to pump at the speed of light. “Zach came back from his place last night and said he doesn’t think we should tell Logan about the baby yet. That he’s not in the right place for it. What do you think?”
“Zach was at Logan’s?” I blurted out.
“Uh, yeah, keep up here… oh no.”
“Clara, what’s wrong?” The immense dread in my friend’s voice, coupled with the already engorged heart that was now slamming against my ribcage like a drum set, made me go into a hyper-worried mode.
“I gotta go. I’m gonna puke.”
And with that, Cara hung up the phone, well before I could comfortably get my thousand and one questions in.
Damn.
I couldn’t tell if it was just age or the fact that Clara and Sarah had such different life goals than I did, but lately, it felt like every time I spoke to them, I only got about an eighth of what I wanted to say in. That had happened last night when Sarah had left early to take care of a work emergency, and Clara had fallen asleep on the couch by nine o’clock.
It had started to feel like I didn’t matter anymore. And I knew that was a completely narcissistic and totally wrong thing to say, but more and more, I felt like I was simply a nice bookend in people’s lives, when they meant so much more to me.
I certainly felt like I was a bookend in Logan’s life.
No, you know what, you’re being ridiculous, I inwardly chided myself. And I was. Logan would never relegate me to such an unimportant status. One missed text didn’t mean he no longer cared about me or our friendship.
I should just call him and clear everything up. Just let him know that I really needed a sushi night. If he cared about me- and I knew he did- he would make it work.
Right?
But I couldn’t sound so desperate on the phone. I had to make it seem casual like it was no big deal.
“No big deal,” I repeated to myself as I listened to the dial tone.
And then there was a click, and everything went out of my head, replaced not by air, but by a vacuum.
“Hey, you.” Logan’s smooth, sultry voice had a unique talent for putting me at ease in any situation. But, now that I had assured that stupidly nagging voice in the back of my head that he had not, in fact, been kidnapped, the sound of his vocal cords rubbing together did not bring me any sort of peace.
“You broke the rules, Sir Logan,” I replied, making a rather concerted effort to keep my tone light and joking, when inside, all I wanted to do was demand to know why he didn’t seem interested in being my friend anymore.
After one missed text and invitation to dinner, one could say I was a bit of a drama queen.
“Huh?” He asked, with genuine fear in his eyes. Most people wouldn’t know it to look at him, or even talk to him, but Logan absolutely loathed breaking the rules.
“The friendship rule!” I answered. “I texted you last night, in need of some serious binging on delicious sushi, and you never replied to my text! That’s, like, the single most important tenet of our friendship.”
“I thought our friendship relied on the fact that we tell each other everything and always support one another.”
Oh, he was good. And he knew it. The man was a whiz with women, even in platonic ways, and always knew the perfect thing to say to make my heart melt.
But not this time. I was determined to ensure that not a single ounce of my growing understanding ebbed into our conversation.
“That’s a fine way to get out of sushi!” I said instead, attempting to inject what I hoped was semi-believable anger into my tone. “Admit it, your tastebuds have been ruined from all that liquor you drink, and you can no longer tell Atlantic salmon from Pacific.”
An overly exaggerated outraged cry wobbled over the phone line, and I grinned, swallowing a snicker so I could maintain my vocal facade.
“How dare you!” Logan cried, adopting what I was fairly sure was meant to be an English accent, though it came out sounding more like a strangled baby’s voice.
Despite my apprehension, I adopted the same exact voice. I had to. It was tradition.
“Well, sir, I can only state the truth,” I shrugged. “You have no taste! That is the only defensible reason for not responding to my calling card. It is, of course, understandable to be highly embarrassed by your lack of a palate.”
“I assure you, my palate is in perfectly fine order!” He shot back.
“Oh, really?” I replied snidely. “Then I trust you will have no issue in partaking in one of the traditional sushi dinners with yours truly, tonight at seven o’clock?”
Instead of the expected answer“Yes, of course,” the other end of the line went completely silent.
That was the exact moment I was convinced I was about to have a heart attack. Why else would a sudden pain have just appeared in the left side of my chest?
“Logan,” I prompted, dropping the accent. If he was going to ignore tradition, then I might as well do the same. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course it is,” he replied, far too fast for it to actually be believable.
But no matter how little I believed him, those words infuriated me.
“So then why are you acting so strange?” I demanded, my tongue flicking back and forth in anger so quickly I was worried it might actually start a fire.
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind,” he countered.
“You always have a lot on your mind,” I snorted. “That’s one of the many perks of being you. But it’s never caused you to ignore me for an entire day before, not to mention the way you’ve been—”
I cut myself off then, at once unsure and worried about what was going to come out of my mouth. I wasn’t even sure what my next words might have been, but I worried they would have sounded a lot like: “the way you’ve been looking at me, and frankly, it doesn’t seem totally friendly.”
But that might have just been conjecture. Maybe my subconscious was forcing me to see things based on what I maybe, possibly, almost definitely wanted to be real.
It couldn’t be, though for a million and one reasons, starting with the fact that he was my best friend in the entire world. I didn’t want to risk ruining that.
“Because what?” Logan demanded, his voice so loud and dramatic I would have laughed out loud had I not been in the midst of terrible inner turmoil.
“Because nothing!” I yelled back, whipping around in my living room just in time to see my neighbor in the building right across from me, pull her curtains back and open the window just a little bit. “Oh, crap.”
“Nosy Nancy?” I loved how Logan knew these things without me having to explain them further.
Mostly because he’d been here the day she’d moved in. I knew Nancy wasn’t actually her real name, but upon discovering that she was so nosy she would literally stick her ear out the window just to listen to other people’s private conversations, Logan had dubbed her Nosy Nancy, and the nickname had just stuck.
I liked to think of her as my personal Ugly Naked Guy, like on Friends. Only Nancy wasn’t ugly. Or naked. Or a guy.
“Yes.” I let out a noise that was somewhere between a sigh, a groan, and a growl. It was deep in my throat, rattling my entire neck with the force of its annoyance.
“What’s her outfit of choice today?” This had become a little game of ours whenever Nancy’s nose got a little too long for our own comfort.
“Let’s call it… house mom chic with a touch of L.A. prostitute,” I replied, eyeing the lavender shirt that adorned Nancy’s body. Admittedly, the garment was nearly impressive in the way it managed to be both baggy and revealing all at the same time.
“Ah, yes, my go-to style,” Logan joked.
Nancy caught me watching her, and gave her typical wave. I was pretty sure it was meant to be a signal that she was doing nothing but minding her own business, but I knew better.
Still, I gave my conventional wave and toothless smile back, turning away from my own thin window and walls so I could continue berating Logan in blissful privacy.
“Just when did privacy become a privilege, and not a right?” I growled in annoyance.
“It was the invention of the computer that did it if you ask me.”
“I don’t need a lecture now, Mr. Smarty Pants,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
The tension of the moment had been broken, though. I suppose I had Nancy to thank for that. Even over the phone, I could feel the energy shift back to its baseline. This high vibrational sarcasm was our normal.
“You should have the whole thing memorized, anyways,” Logan chuckled.
He paused, and just by the slightly elevated pattern of his breathing, I knew he wanted to say something. I waited, not wanting to ruin his thought process.
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you back,” he finally said. “I’ve just been really busy, you know—”
“Tell me over sushi,” I interrupted seriously. “That’s what it’s there for, remember? Or have you forgotten the first night we decided we could actually stand one another?”
“Hey, I think we could stand each other well enough before that,” he protested.
“Logan, you get my point,” I replied plainly. “So, sushi tonight?”
“Sushi tonight. Got tell Nosy Nancy to find someone else’s life to meddle in.”
“Already on it,” I shrugged. “Some new people moved in below me, and I’m just trying to come up with a dire enough plot for their dramatic story- one that’s sure to distract Nancy for a little while.”
We hung up, and for a moment, it felt like everything went back to normal. But that moment was quick and fleeting, and suddenly, there were butterflies in my stomach again.