Page 96 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

She huffed out a long, aggrieved sigh. And then mumbled something.

“What?”

“Music. Music’s okay.”

“What about that, then? I mean, there’s university or…like…music school.”

Shit. I was out of my depth and it earned me a scowl. “No. I hate music like that.”

“Like what?”

“In a cage.” She gulped down the last of the champagne, jumped off the counter, and pulled open the fridge. Glanced over at me and grinned, feral and bright with the light shining on her face. “Another?”

My memories of the rest of evening got all bubbly. Ellery lay under the table and talked about Bartók a lot—about exile and the preservation of Hungarian folk songs. And I pitched articles to her, my ideas flowing as bounteously as the booze, though significantly poorer in quality. At some point we might have done the full Titanic pose on the balcony—with me shouting that I was king of the world to the slumbering city below. And we’d hooked my phone up to the sound system and danced and danced and danced until the stars blurred and Ellery looked almost happy.

Chapter 24

Oh God. I was dying.

I peeled open an eyelid and immediately regretted it. Light lanced straight through my skull.

What…what had happened to me? Had I been attacked? Hang on. No. I’d spent the evening with Ellery.

And now I was broken.

Probably the best thing to do was lie very still and pretend I didn’t exist. Yep. That would work.

The sound of a door opening and closing thundered across my senses like a stampede of raging wildebeest. Must have been the cleaners. Twitching my fingers in the direction of the pillow, I mashed it protectively against my face.

“Arden?”

Wait. That was Caspian’s voice. I partially self-excavated. Forced my eyes to work. Then my brain.

There was a human-shape in the doorway.

And, yep, it was definitely him. Not a hallucination. But a vision, nonetheless, in a chocolate brown pinstriped suit and a paisley tie that made him look like something from a jazz-age daydream.

“Good God,” he said. Way too loudly. His voice echoing through the spaces surrounding my wizened, dehydrated brain. “Are you ill?”

I whimpered. “No. But I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow. Unless it’s already tomorrow. Is it tomorrow now?”

“I came back early. I wanted to see you.” The bright blur bobbing about in front of him resolved itself into a bouquet of tulips—and not the fancy kind either, the kind you got from a stall. Just some flowers tied up with paper and string. “I texted. I didn’t realize you hadn’t received it.”

“I’m barely receiving oxygen right now. But I’m always happy to see you.”

His free hand came up in a gesture that didn’t seem to be anything at all and then dropped back to his side. “This was ill-conceived. I don’t know what I was…that is. I’ll come back when we agreed. I’m sorry.”

I tried to croak out something to stop him.

But then Ellery—who, given the vastness of both the bed and my hangover, I’d failed to notice had been sleeping beside me—poked her head up and drawled, “Well, isn’t this sweet.”

Caspian went white. It was awful to watch. Like when somebody gets shot in a movie and there’s this silence. And then suddenly blood everywhere. The tulips slipped from his hand and scattered at his feet. Rainbow shrapnel.

Then he turned and—

Fuck.

I dived off the bed, relieved to discover I was in boxers. And a sock. For a moment, I thought I was going to throw up, but I couldn’t tell if it was physical or mental distress, or a little bit of both. Thankfully the churning in my stomach and the spinning in my head briefly balanced each other out and I managed to stagger after Caspian.