Page 2 of Grumpy Billionaire Seeking Wife (Billionaires Seeking Wives Club #1)

“I’m talented at other things, as well.” He winks and then starts to unbuckle his pants, and all commotion breaks out in the room. I press my lips together and try not to laugh. This isn’t the job of my dreams, but it always leads to comical relief.

“He did not pull his pants down!” Erica screeches with laughter as we chow down on pork gyoza and mentai fries. My stomach is happy, and my heart is content as I sit with my friends in the small, crowded restaurant.

“He did.” I giggle and take a long sip of the peach sake that we were all sharing. “Abigail nearly had a fit.”

“Oh, I bet.” Erica claps gleefully, her long, dark hair bouncing against her back as she moves.

Her brown eyes are bright, and her good mood is contagious.

“We really need to interview some of the residents at your job for our podcast when we start it. They will have some awesome and hilarious insights into romance and literature.”

“Yeah, that would be cool.” I nod, wondering if Abigail would ever let that happen. She’d be going on about legal and privacy laws and all sorts of bullshit, like I was trying to sell their bank account information to hackers in Russia as opposed to trying to start a podcast with my best friend.

“So then what happened?” Suki eats a piece of sushi delicately, her short straight black bob framing her face beautifully and highlighting her cheekbones in a way that makes all of us girls jealous.

“Abigail banned him from the show and started screaming and shouting, so I had to escort him to his room.” I giggle. “Which was his plan all along. About ten minutes later, MaryAnn came knocking at the door.”

“No way! What are you saying here? To hang out or to hang out?” Helena asks, and all three girls lean forward for my answer.

“Don’t leave us hanging, Sab.” Helena’s dark brown eyes are glittering, and I can tell she’s already slightly buzzed because normally she’s very serious about everything.

She’s pre-med and almost always studying, so I’m glad to see her out with us tonight.

“Well…” I grin as I grab a piece of agedashi tofu and dip it into the sauce before eating it slowly.

The girls glare at me as I leave them hanging, but I feel a bit guilty for salaciously retelling stories from Creative Humans Retirement Center.

It’s not like the residents would care that my friends and I talked about their exploits, but it does sometimes make me feel like a bit of a gossip reporter, and that is not something I aspire to be.

“Tell us, Sab.” Erica pokes me in the side. “And preferably sometime this year.”

“Let’s just say that MaryAnn wasn’t planning on reading him a bedtime story.”

“Get it, grandma.” Helena laughs and plays with the thick black plait that is hanging over her shoulder. “I hope to be having fun like that when I’m old.”

“You don’t even have fun like that now,” Suki jokes, and Helena mock glares at her.

They both laugh and grab some fries. “So, do you guys want to order anything else?” Suki asks.

“I was thinking maybe the salmon yakisoba and some skewers.” She looks down at the large menu and scrolls through it.

“And another bottle of sake.” She giggles and then sighs. “I have sad news, guys.”

“Oh, no, what happened?” I ask quickly. “Is everything okay?”

“Cody and I broke up.” She makes a face, and her eyes water. “He’s a jerk, and I told him that I didn’t want to grow old with a man like him.”

“Grow old with?” Erica sounds bemused. “Did he propose or something?” The disbelief drips from her tongue, and I shift my thigh to the side to hit her. Sometimes she can be a bit too blunt.

“Well, no, but we all know it was headed down that road,” Suki says with a shrug as she grabs another piece of sushi. I don’t know if she truly believes what she’s saying or if this is some sort of coping mechanism, but I decide to keep my mouth shut.

“The only road that was going down was STD Boulevard,” Erica says loudly. “Girl, that man was not going to marry you. Did he even make it official?”

“Well...” Suki pauses, and Helena and I exchange nervous glances because Suki sometimes lives life in a reality that is not real and doesn’t always take it well when she’s called out.

“Fine, he was a fuckboy.” She makes a face.

“He literally came to my dorm room, smelling like sex, with another girl’s panties in his pocket. ”

“No way.” My jaw drops. “What a prick.”

“And he had the gall to pretend like they were my panties. I don’t wear granny panties.

” She fumes. “Anyway, there we were, on my bed, fooling around, my bra was off, and he was pulling down my shorts, when I saw these panties fall to the bed.” She pauses.

“Well, it suddenly hit me that this was not going anywhere.”

“It suddenly hit you?” Erica raises an eyebrow. “The man’s been dicking every undergrad he can on campus.”

“Well, I didn’t like to think of that.” Suki frowns and then stops immediately as she says frown lines lead to wrinkles, and it’s never too early to start worrying about wrinkles.

She says that’s why she rarely smiles, as well.

Suki is a funny one. I’m not sure if we would have been friends if she hadn’t been roommates with Erica freshman year, even though I’d wanted to be roommates with Erica, as we’d been best friends since we were kids.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Helena says finally. “He was bad news.”

“I guess.” Suki makes a face. “Now I’m in the singles’ club with you losers.”

“You were always in the singles’ club, girlfriend.” Erica rolls her eyes and grabs her glass to take another drink. “We should all join a dating app and go speed dating. That would be fun.” She looks at me. “Right, Sab?”

“I mean, I guess.” I pull out my phone to see if Connor has texted me yet. Nothing. “It would be nice to go on a few dates and try to meet the love of my life.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t count on that.” Erica is always the practical one. I think it might stem from having two older brothers who never seemed to settle down. “But it would be fun and could lead to some awesome stories for the podcast.”

“True,” I nod. My heart races as a phone starts beeping, but I quickly realize it’s not for me.

“It’s Wes,” Erica says, staring at her phone. Wes is her eldest brother, a man I love to hate. He’s gorgeous and rich and now runs their billion-dollar family business. But I still remember when he was just a guy, walking around her house, annoying the shit out of me. “Let me see what he wants.”

“Okay.” I feign disinterest in the call, even though the mere mention of Wes Carrington’s name makes my heart pound.

The image of him half-naked in a towel, dripping with water after a shower, is clear in my head.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday.

He’d given me a wide grin and shook his wet hair, getting some drops on me.

“Sorry for making you wet.” He’d almost whispered the words, and I’d practically melted into the ground.

I still want to die of embarrassment at the thought of what happened next.

I am not going to think about it. As far as I am concerned, Wes Carrington and I no longer exist on the same planet.

It is definitely difficult to lead that delusional life, being best friends with his sister, but I have successfully been able to avoid him for the last year.

“What’s up, big bro number one? I’m here with the girls, grabbing dinner...” She pauses and grins. “Sabrina, Suki, and Helena. No, we’re not going to get into any trouble.” She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. What did you want?”

I look over at Suki, who is motioning to one of the servers to place an additional order. “Will you ask him to bring some more gyoza, as well, please?”

“Of course.” She nods. “I love potstickers.” She looks over at Erica and leans forward. “Tell your hottie brothers to come and join us. I’m single now and ready to mingle.”

Helena groans loudly, and I just look away and blush. I do not want to see Wes, and if he shows up, I will have to find a reason to leave.

“He’s out of town,” Erica says, as she shakes her head. “And Miles is at a concert for some jazz musician I’ve never heard of.”

Phew!

“No, Wes, no one was asking anything about you. I will speak to Mom and Dad next week and let you know how I feel about the idea. I’m not super into it.

You know that Sabrina and I are starting our podcast. I hope that’s hugely successful by the time we graduate in May, and.

..fine, I’ll speak to you later.” She hangs up and lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“The big bro doesn’t seem to think that our podcast idea is a winner. ”

“He’s just a hater,” I say, though I don’t actually disagree with him.

I find it very unlikely that we’ll both be able to live in Manhattan off the money we make from our upcoming podcast. Erica seems to think we will be hugely successful, but I don’t know if she understands how hard it is to actually make money.

She grew up as the spoiled only daughter of a billionaire, and while she’s never acted like a spoiled princess, she certainly has never wanted for anything in her life.

Not like me. As the only child of a single mom, I’ve known what it is like to worry about being able to pay the bills and have enough for groceries.

I can still remember the sound of my mom crying in her bedroom, but that may have been due to my dad leaving us, alongside our dire finances.

“Yes, he is.” She grabs another french fry, dips it into some ketchup, and takes a bite.

There’s a thoughtful expression on her face, and I wonder what scheme she is thinking up.

I know her well enough to know when she’s coming up with a plan because I’m often the one she ropes into said plan, and they normally always end up horribly.

“So, I have an idea,” she says gleefully, and I groan loudly.

“I knew it,” I mumble and wait for her to continue. Her brown eyes are bright as she garners our attention. She waits for me to become silent again and then continues.

“So, we’re all single, right?”

“I mean I am, unless Cody—” Suki starts and then stops as we all give her intimidating stares. “Fine.” She presses her lips together.

“Let’s all join this new dating app I read about online,” Erica continues excitedly. “It’s this cool app where you meet really hot guys, but it’s different in that you can go on a group date.”

“A group date?” Helena looks as skeptical as I feel. “How does that work?” She and I exchange glances and a brief smile. We are both thinking the same thing. This already sounds like a bad idea.

“Well, we all create our own accounts and attempt to match with some good-looking, fun-loving men. The first one of us to make a good connection will set up a date, and then we will all go on it. So it will be four on four, as opposed to one on one.” She beams as if her explanation is reasonable and fun-sounding.

It sounds absolutely atrocious to me. “So, who’s in?

” She whips out her phone. “Let's all download the app now.” She turns to me with a flick of her hair, and her lips curl up. “Don’t overthink it, Sabrina. Even if the dates don’t work out, it will be perfect fodder for our podcast. You’ll see. ”

“I guess.” I reluctantly grab my phone and place it in her hands so she can download the app for me.

The last thing I want to do is go on more bad dates, but I’d rather have the possibility of a good date than wait for Connor to text me.

As far as I am concerned, the poet is well and truly dead to me.

He can lie in the graveyard in my head, right alongside Wes, never to be in my thoughts again.