Page 29 of Chosen By a Billionaire (Rags to Romance #24)

Four days later, on a Thursday afternoon, knocks were heard on her front door.

It was just before one that afternoon and she was equal parts excited and bothered.

Like the rollercoaster ride she felt she’d been on.

Because on Sunday she was upbeat. Things were going well.

Things were looking up. But as the days ticked by, she realized things weren’t so great after all.

Because even before Thursday rolled around, Jayda had her concerns.

She loved how Harrison spent that night with her in the hospital.

That was huge for her. But she couldn’t help but be disappointed when he didn’t phone her or come by and see her at all after that.

It was as if he dropped her off at her apartment and washed his hands of her.

She desperately wanted to see him again: she thought they had really hit it off.

She thought they had opened up something special between them.

But apparently those thoughts weren’t mutual.

But it only reminded her, even before Thursday, that this was no love match and wasn’t going to become one.

He only wanted her on this trip to convince his father that he was settling down with a fiancée, and that he should be the rightful heir to the Bainbridge Oil fortune.

Once he got what he wanted, that was going to be the end of his personal association with her.

He all but told her so already. And as for that roll in the hay she allowed him to have unprotected and free of any commitments whatsoever?

That was on her. Why would he want the cow now, her father would have said, when he already had the milk for free?

And that reality, that she was nothing to him but a means to an end, got her out of those love clouds and toughened her again.

He promised her a good paying job. She desperately needed a good paying job.

She was going to do her work and get it done and forget him just like he, like every man she’d ever been with, had already forgotten her.

It could not have been clearer when knocks were heard at her apartment door that Thursday afternoon.

When she opened her door and saw Carter Davenshaw standing there, instead of Harrison, she knew what time it was for certain then.

He didn’t even afford her the courtesy, she thought, of picking her up!

“He gives his apologies,” Carter said as soon as he saw the disappointment on her pretty face, “but he had an emergency meeting in Canada he couldn’t get out of.

” He began assisting her with the luggage she had waiting just inside her front door.

“But no worries. He’s going to try his best to be in Maine by the time we get there. ”

Whatever , Jayda wanted to say because that was how she felt.

He couldn’t even call her and tell her himself?

But if she came across as bitter like that then Carter would know that more happened that Friday night, after he and his nasty wife and all the other guests had left, than just a business transaction.

That was, Jayda thought, if he didn’t already know! But he was the nicest to her of all of Harrison’s friends at that party that night so she knew she had better be grateful that at least he was the one Harrison designated to be her escort.

And when they made it downstairs and she saw the limousine waiting, she felt a bit better about it all too.

It reminded her that she was in the big leagues now, although temporarily and under false pretenses, but she had to put her big girl panties on and get on with it.

Stop the whining and opining about a man who only viewed her as a business opportunity.

And since she was in it for an opportunity for herself, not to mention that big fat advance check she’d already cashed and paid next month’s rent with, she was going to stiffen her spine and do what was required to get out of this situation with a good paying job and her sense of self intact.

When Jayda and Carter were making their way downstairs to the limo, Kenny, with Makela on the passenger seat, had already pulled over across the street when they saw a limo in front of the apartment building.

He didn’t have to go down that street to get where they were going, but he thought about Jayda and had driven down it anyway.

Makela immediately questioned it, but Kenny ignored her.

Ever since his confrontation with Jayda on Saturday, he’d been thinking about her.

And how sexy she looked when she was angry.

He wanted her again. And the idea that she would already have hooked up with some other man bothered him.

Since Makela insisted she was dating some rich guy, and when he saw that limousine parked there, he had to check it out.

And when Jayda came out of that apartment building with that white dude and got into the backseat of that limo, with the driver opening the door for her as if she was royalty or somebody, he was astounded.

“Now do you believe me?” Makela said to him. “Now you know I wasn’t lying?”

But Kenny was too filled with jealousy to respond to Makela.

Makela was happy: Jayda was no longer competition for her.

But Kenny was enraged. How could she be with some new guy that fast?

They just broke up a couple weeks ago. And the guy she was with was a hot mess compared to gorgeous Kenny.

He stared at that limo as it pulled from the curb and drove her away. And he continued to stare.

“Let’s go.” When he didn’t move a muscle, Makela looked at him. “Kenny, let’s go. What’s wrong with you?”

Kenny snapped out of it, and then drove away.

But Jayda saw them parked across the street when that limousine drove past them.

She even looked back to be certain it was Kenny’s car.

And like Makela, a part of Jayda was pleased too.

All that trash talk he did to her as if she was trash.

As if she meant nothing to him. But look at her now, she thought, as she drove past them. Who was the one standing still now?

But another part of her wasn’t so easily excited. Because it wasn’t the fairytale it appeared to be. She wasn’t Harrison’s woman and he wasn’t her man. Point blank period. They were conducting business together that would benefit both of them if they were successful.

But she had Harrison on her brain. She couldn’t stop thinking about how kind he was to her that entire time she was in his penthouse.

And how wonderful it felt to be in his arms in that hospital bed.

She missed that. She missed him . She hated to admit it, but she did.

And despite all her big talk about business and getting it over with, she still wanted to see him again.

She couldn’t wait to catch that plane to Maine.

A plane which, she realized when she arrived at JFK, was a private plane. Like that limo ride, it would be another first for her. And it wasn’t one of those two-seater, single engine planes either. But this was one of those big, white, Gulfstream jets with Bainbridge IV written on it.

“That’s our ride?” she asked Carter when she saw it.

Carter smiled. There was something so refreshingly innocent about Jayda that he was beginning to really like her. “Yes. Everything Harrison does, he does big.”

Jayda smiled as they boarded the plane.

And the crew onboard was very nice to her.

When she asked one of the flight attendants, the only one that looked like her, if Harrison had to fly commercial because she was using his plane, she smiled.

“He has several planes, ma’am,” she said, and they both shared a laugh. They were all very nice.

It was an hour-and-a-half flight to Portland International Jetport in Portland, Maine, since Kennebunkport didn’t have its own airfield that could accommodate such a huge aircraft.

But the closer they got to landing, the more nervous Jayda was becoming.

How in the world was she going to convince Harrison’s father that somebody like her could fit into a world like this was beyond her ability to figure out.

Even those dinner guests said she looked ghetto.

She knew she didn’t and they were just being mean to her.

But what if she did look that way compared to them?

She was so beneath their status that maybe they couldn’t see her as anything but either rich like them, or poor. And she certainly wasn’t rich.

And to face people like that alone, without Harrison by her side, was going to be a challenge.

And although it was a job she signed on to do, and was going to do it to the best of her ability regardless, it would be nice to have Harrison with her.

Not to have any future with him: This week, when he didn’t bother to even phone her the entire time after they spent such a remarkable couple of nights together, woke her up from that fantasy.

But she couldn’t deny the fact that she felt comfortable around him.

That that man, so different from her in every way, gave her a sense of home that nobody else ever had.

But when the plane arrived at the Portland airfield and she saw no sign of Harrison or another plane with Bainbridge IV written on it, her nervousness returned.

She saw planes with Bainbridge Oil and Bainbridge III written on them, but nothing with that IV she knew meant Harrison.

He apparently had not arrived from Canada yet.

Which meant she would be going to his father’s estate alone.

But just as panic was about to set in, that same flight attendant that had joked with her about how Harrison had several planes, leaned over to her. “Mr. Harrison’s second plane landed an hour ago,” she said with a smile.