Page 36 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

I gave up. I was starting to wonder why I’d tried at all. Why I kept on trying when the only thing it accomplished was making me feel small and crappy and useless. “Have it your way. Sorry to bother you.” Yet still something kept me on the phone. “Look, you’ve got people, right?”

“Excuse me?”

“People who are there for you.”

“Oh yes,” he said airily. “I’m surrounded by them. Beating them off with sticks.”

“Okay now you’re just, like,lyingto me.”

Another pause. “I…I’m not really a people person.”

“So in other words, Caspian has forced you into exile, you’re all alone, and you’re not okay.”

“Well, somebody got out the feisty side of bed this morning.”

“Bellerose…and, for the record it seems really weird to be calling you Bellerose, but I don’t quite have the balls to use Justin…you can be as salty as you like, but”—and I actually stamped my foot in the middle of a train station—“I’m trying to be your people here.”

More silence. Even deeper than before. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been there for me.”

“I was there for Caspian. You were incidental.”

“If you’re trying to hurt my feelings, you have chosen an epically bad time. Because that doesn’t even make the top ten of shitty things said to me today.”

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings.” There was something about Bellerose’s too-clean, too-sharp accent that made nearly everything sound faintly sarcastic. But right now, it seemed like he meant what he was saying. “I just don’t want you to be under any illusions.”

I’d had perilously similar talks with Caspian. Usually with unhappy outcomes. “I’m not. Whether you wanted to or not, whether you would have chosen to or not, you’ve helped me a lot. And I would like you to know that means something.”

I was ninety-nine percent certain he was going to reject me. And thirty-nine percent certain he was going to do it in a totally soul-destroying way. Because, let’s face it, soul destroying was the theme of my day.

“Very well,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

Good question. Very good question. “Um. We could meet up? Talk or something?”

“Tell me when, tell me where. I have nothing but time.”

He offered this up so matter-of-factly that it sounded bleak as fuck. “Tonight? It’ll have to be after work. So maybe sixish? The Shaston Arms, just off Carnaby Street?”

“I’ll be there.”

He’d hung up before I could even say goodbye. Bellerose was also way into efficiency.

And holy shit, we were meeting for drinks. The whole idea suddenly seemed wildly outlandish. I mean, given that all our previous conversations had revolved around whatever crisis I happened to be having at the time, what the fuck was I going to say to him? Well, I guess I’d figure it out. And rely on the fact that Bellerose had told me once he didn’t find me completely repulsive. Truly, was that not the bedrock of friendship?

***

Once I got back to the office, I fully intended to dive straight into transcribing the conversation from the recording like a proper grown-up journalist but foundered on account of it turning out to be a horrendously shitty job. Every time I heard Caspian, I wanted to cry, and every time I heard Nathaniel, I…also wanted to cry. But in a really angry way. None of which was really conducive to, y’know, professionalism.

“Hello, poppet.”

I glanced up to discover George lounging at the end of my desk and looking impossibly hot in a very fitted, bottle-green suit and skyscraper Louboutins. “Go away please,” I said virtuously. “I am very busy and important.”

“Very busy and important taking all the staples out your stapler and putting them back in again?”

“That’s very vital maintenance. Otherwise I could try to staple something and it wouldn’t work and the world would end.”

One of her eyebrows lifted in this unconvinced way. “How was the interview?”