Page 58 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

“I've got you a suite at the Liberty,” Bellerose was saying. “It’s the closest decent hotel to the hospital. I’ll also arrange for a car to meet you at the airport when you arrive.”

I kept nodding.

“Do you have your phone with you? The one Caspian gave you?”

Did I? Apparently I did. And my own, too. Go me, and my brief moments of competence.

“I’ve sent you all the details. And call Caspian when you land. He’ll be worrying.”

Caspian? Worrying? “Um, okay.”

“I don’t suppose you thought to bring the credit card Caspian provided when you first moved into One Hyde Park?”

I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d remembered to pack my socks.

“I didn’t think so. Here.”

Another card. Coutts again. Quietly black on the reverse. An artfully faded image of a Chinese street on the front. The logo a flash of silver. “I…I that’s…You know I can’t take his money.”

Bellerose’s lashes—which were reddish-gold, like his hair—fluttered, as if he was trying very hard not to roll his eyes. “Given you don’t have any of your own, you don’t really have a choice.”

“I do! I have £50.56.”

“There’s no shame in lack of money. Just inconvenience. How are you intending to live in a foreign country on an income of nothing?”

“Very frugally?”

“Use the card.” He picked it up and slid it into my jacket pocket. “If you don’t take proper care of yourself, Caspian will be angry.”

“W-with me?” I found myself blinking back fresh tears, overwhelmed by, at this point, basically everything.

“Much more likely with me, since it’s my job to ensure you don’t starve to death in a gutter in Boston.”

I cringed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be difficult.”

“Then might I recommend not being?”

“Oh God,” I wailed, in unfocused despair. “You hate me.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I d-don’t like it.”

“Personally, I find the way people treat you when they don’t like you infinitely preferable to their behavior when they do.”

I burst into tears.

There was a longish…well. Not a silence because I was sniffling into it. But a period of time in which I cried and Bellerose sat there uncomfortably.

“Please stop doing that,” he murmured. “You’re getting salt in your tea.”

I was trying to stop crying. I really was. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be happening.

“For heaven’s sake, I’m Caspian Hart’s assistant. My opinion about anything is utterly irrelevant.”

“N-not to Caspian.”

“Well, no. But he does not consult me about his personal life. Nor would I want him to.”