The Billionaire Bad Boys Club(39)
Author: Emma Holly

“I like my independence. I need it, if it comes to that.”

“Was I acting like I wanted to chain you up?” His dick twitched with left-field interest in that idea. Rebecca would look adorable shackled to a wall.

“No,” she admitted. She was silent for a moment. If she said it wasn’t him, it was her, he was going to reach through the phone and strangle her. “I just don’t feel comfortable with this hookup, given who you are and who I am and the fact that your business partner is my boss. I shouldn’t have let my hormones run away with me. I should have been more sensible.”

“Rebecca, I think—” Zane hesitated, every self-protective instinct urging him to shut up. With an effort, he ignored them. “I think this could be more than a hookup.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Look, Zane, I really have to go.”

And then she hung up on him.

“She hung up on me,” he marveled to no one. He didn’t dial her back. He had sufficient pride to restrain himself that much. He didn’t break out his black book either. Replacement sex with some other woman only would have proved how much realer making love to Rebecca was.

He went back upstairs to dress. Forget taking the boat out tonight. He’d go home. Hopefully, Trey would be in. They’d do something, or nothing, and they’d go to bed together.

He was pulling on his trousers when he noticed what was draped across the back of the bedside chair: Rebecca’s skimpy silver dress, the one that had stopped his heart when he saw her in it on the stairs. He’d bought that for her, to show her how beautiful she was. He was pretty sure he’d succeeded. She’d admitted she couldn’t resist keeping it.

“Fuck,” he bit out.

If she’d left this behind, she truly didn’t mean to see him again.

CHAPTER NINE

Idle Hands

REBECCA had plenty to keep her busy in the wake of cutting things short with Zane. She pulled her semi-new crew together, putting them through their paces in the fully loaded Lounge kitchen. Her friend Raoul bounced around like a kid in a candy story. Trey’s choice of equipment—and his willingness to buy more—made him her head chef’s new hero.

“Finally!” he crowed. “Everything is how you like it. We’ll throw mud in the faces of those culos at Wilde’s Bistro.”

Rebecca secretly hoped so but merely smiled when he said this.

She and the crew tinkered with her recipes: cooking times, temperatures, this ingredient or that. The results Rebecca achieved by herself, with every detail under her control, weren’t the same as what a busy brigade of line cooks produced. Rebecca’s crew was skilled and proud of it. Nonetheless, some needed coaching to reach her high standards. Those who weren’t used to her methods tried her patience, but they worked through it. They all knew consistency was key. They weren’t aiming to be Joe’s Diner. At this level of play, one crappy plate could tarnish a reputation—and forget a crappy night.

Rebecca heard everyone’s input at group tastings, including wait staff and busboys. She wanted them to feel they had a stake in the restaurant’s fate, though it went without saying she had the final word.

If a trial went well, she grew cautiously excited about their prospects. If it sucked, she tried not to dwell on it.

When she went home, it was to an abandoned construction zone. The twins’ friend Jesse had excavated one side of her house and patched the foundation. This was followed by what she believed was called dimple-boarding, repairing the drainage system, and filling the trench again. That done, Jesse’s crew had moved inside. Every night she’d go down to survey progress, hating that she couldn’t tell if the work was done correctly. The basement apartment seemed to be moving along okay, enough that she didn’t regret having signed some darned big checks.

As she’d expected, Pete and Charlie’s contribution had only gone so far.

You have to trust them, she reminded. The twins were young but not idiots. They’d taken their friend’s measure in deeper ways than she could by Googling.

She tried to ignore the fact that the thought of having a boarder in her home made her stomach lurch. Zane had temporarily managed to calm her on that prospect. On her own, she didn’t have the knack.

Zane hadn’t tried to contact her again, aside from shipping the infamous silver dress to her. He’d included a scribbled note in the FedEx box. No one but you would look right in this, it said, a statement she was irritatingly unable to interpret. Was the message meant to be angry or romantic? And what right did she have to care? He’d signed the note Z, like he was Zorro or something.

One night, Jesse “happened” to stay later than his crew. When she made her usual foray to the cellar, he’d asked her out for a beer. Rebecca turned him down politely, then went upstairs and cried. She knew she’d been stressed lately but, even for her, this was ridiculous. She also knew it wasn’t Jesse she was sorry to have refused. What she did regret didn’t matter. Staying away from Zane was the reasonable choice.

Pulling herself together, she dove into getting the restaurant ready even more determinedly.

~

Trey stared out his office window in a futile attempt to stop obsessing about Rebecca. As he did, their executive assistant knocked on the open door.

“Sir,” she said. “I thought you’d like your mail.”

Elaine was attractive but blissfully uninterested in men. Dressed in a smart brown suit, she set the short stack in his inbox. “The latest Bad Boys is in there,” she informed him.

The magazine was more Zane’s baby, but it had been TBBC’s first successful project. Elaine knew he liked to keep up with it.

“Thanks,” he said. “Any plans for the weekend?”

“Gardening,” she answered. “And possibly a movie.”

He didn’t ask what she was growing or which movie. Elaine didn’t invite her bosses to get familiar. Now and then, he and Zane invented stories about her wild secret life, but the truth was they found it easier not to know. Elaine was efficient, trustworthy, and never complicated their lives. Right then, that trait seemed more precious than rubies.

“Mr. Hayworth?” she added before she left. “I sent the list of responders for Monday night to your computer. It looks like most everyone you asked is coming.”

“Good,” he said. “Thanks for doing that.”

Trey didn’t want to think about Monday night, their scheduled preview for The Bad Boys Lounge. If he thought about it, he’d wonder how much Rebecca was worrying, which was sure to lead to wanting to go to her.