MATCHMAKER (A Billionaire Bad Boy Romance)

by Bella Grant

  “Nothing. It’s not ready for anyone to see it.” His stock answer, and she wondered what he really did in there all day. Sometimes, when he was out, she’d sneak in and peek. There were tons of unfinished canvases, all of them with the potential to be really strong pieces. She’d tried encouraging him, helping him, but he didn’t want it. When he was ready, he’d get over the fear, and not a minute before then.

  “Okay. I’m going to bed.” She braced herself for his protest, but he went back to Halo and she stole away.

  She pulled the dress off and hung it carefully, marveling at the pretty sleekness of it. It cost fourteen hours of work at her new rate. The very idea of it made her dizzy. She pulled on her favorite purple pajama pants and one of Ricky’s old t-shirts. She listened to the sounds of the game from the living room and wondered if they’d cover the sound of her vibrator. It wasn’t like she wasn’t allowed to masturbate, but she could only imagine the fight they’d have if she didn’t want to have sex with him but did with herself.

  It was worth the risk. She brushed her teeth and washed her face before slipping into bed and turning the vibrator onto its lowest setting. She let her mind roam.

  The huge glass topped desk in Sterling’s office, the city laid out before them… She imagined herself sprawled across it, completely naked, the seven-hundred-dollar dress crumpled on the floor.

  She imagined Sterling standing over her, pants around his knees.

  She spread her legs for him, and he slid into her like a hot knife into warm butter.

  Cherise came on her vibrator much harder than she usually did, her heart pounding and breath creeping out of her in hot gasps. Feeling guilty, she glanced at the door, but the sounds of the video games continued.

  STERLING

  Sterling sifted through the six pages Cherise presented to him. Each held a large photograph of a woman with several smaller photos.

  He ran his eyes over each page, took one—a red-headed woman who was full figured. She had a nice face and beautiful eyes, but…

  He ripped the page up.

  “Nice work,” he told Cherise, meaning it. He pointed to a photo of a smiling blonde woman. “She’s my favorite. See if you can get her.”

  Her pictures showed her in a tight dress with less attractive girlfriends by her side, all of them holding fruity-looking cocktails; her on a bicycle somewhere upstate; standing in a sarong on a beach at sunset; and her sitting on a rock by the ocean, her knees drawn up to her chest.

  Yes, she would do just fine. Any of them would, really.

  He stole a glance at Cherise. She stared intently at her laptop as she sent messages to each of the perspective candidates. She bit her full bottom lip as she concentrated, and watching her made his pants fit funny.

  Well, at least his new girlfriend/fiancée/wife would be someone to have sex with. He thought about going out and trying to pick someone up or, even lazier, using one of the agencies in town. But he supposed since those days were rapidly coming to an end, he might as well stop now. Damn Ben Bachmann. He loved the man like a father—more than his father, perhaps—but this stipulation hurt. It shone a spotlight into parts of Sterling that he preferred to ignore.

  He checked his watch. He was meeting Evan at three, and they were going to take the helicopter upstate to go rock climbing for a bit.

  “I’m sorry. Am I boring you?” Cherise’s accent did not help his friskiness.

  “No. I have a three o’clock.” He was kind of bored, though. “What did you do last night after you went home?”

  “Nothing.” She said it quickly, and it made him wonder.

  “You must have done something.”

  A little color bloomed in her cheeks. She fascinated him. “Nothing at all. Got home and went to bed.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “No.”

  “Roommates?” He pictured her and another similarly attractive young woman, sitting around in their panties, chatting. Damn, he needed to snap out of it.

  “No.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Not at all. Did you meet him on one of these sites you’re steering me to?”

  “No. At an art class. He’s an artist.”

  Sterling sensed there was trouble in paradise. He decided not to pry. “I drank scotch and played video games.”

  “Ugh, seriously?”

  He laughed. “I thought you sociology-psychology types weren’t supposed to be judgmental.”

  “You have literally billions of dollars at your fingertips, and all you can think to do is play Xbox?”

  “PlayStation, actually.”

  “Ugh,” she said again.

  “I can’t be rescuing orphans and kittens at all hours of the night, can I? I have to find some time to relax. Besides, online gaming affords me a certain anonymity. No one knows who I am when I’m pwning n00bs.”

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  “I get called a lot of names—especially when I’m gaming. Ridiculous has never been one of them.”

  “Okay, she wants to meet you.”

  “Which one?”

  “Erika. The brunette.”

  “Friday night? Dinner?”

  “Don’t do dinner on a first date. In fact, I wouldn’t do Friday night for a first date. Go out for a beer, or for coffee, like on a Tuesday.”

  He must have made a face, because she continued. “If you don’t like her and you have dinner, you’re stuck sitting through an entire meal. If it’s a weeknight, you can say you have to work in the morning.”

  He laughed. He should have married Angela Calistrano when he turned twenty-one like Ben had wanted him to. Would have made life so much simpler.

  “Okay, meet her at Porter’s Tuesday night at seven.” He had a meeting Tuesday, but he could reschedule it. “Oh, now Layla wants to meet. Wednesday?”

  “Which one is Layla?”

  Cherise tried to think of a way around it, but it was easiest to just say, “The Asian one.”

  “Sure.”

  She told him the name of a different bar. “I’m making a schedule for you. I’ll give you the text of all these chat sessions since you can’t be bothered to talk to these women on your own.”

  “I’d think you’d want me to be bothered to pay you for your work.”

  “I didn’t think you’d sit there watching me.”

  “I’m not. We’re having a nice conversation.”

  “If this passes for nice conversation, I pity these women. Oh, Stephanie wants to meet. Monday or Thursday?”

  “Not Thursday.”

  “So Monday.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “What’s on Thursday?”

  “Rock climbing. The season’s almost over, and I’m not missing any good days.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “You’ve never been?”

  “I’m a city kid.”

  “Johannesburg?” She nodded. “How’s your upper body strength?”

  “Subpar.”

  “Then climbing would be hard for you. But, with practice, you’d have a great body for it.”

  “What’s that mean?” She crossed her arms and drew away from him.

  “You’re long and mostly lean. I bet you have a good reach. You’re not carrying extra weight. Would you like to try it?”

  “I’d try it, but now you’ve got me thinking I’m going to suck.”

  “You will, at first. Everyone does until you develop your muscles. I sucked for a long time. We could get you on some sixes, and I bet you wouldn’t have a problem getting to the top.”

  “Sixes?”

  “The route rating system is all based around fives. Five-five is the easiest, five-fourteen is the hardest. A five-six has nice, easy holds, lots of good places to put your feet.”

  “Why are they all fives? That’s so weird.”

  “It’s the Yosemite Decimal System. I honestly don’t know why they do it like that.”

>   “What ones do you climb?”

  “In the gym, five-twelve or so. Outside, tens and elevens.”

  “And fourteen is the highest?” He nodded.

  Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it and scowled. Trouble in paradise indeed.

  CHERISE

  Thursday, for Cherise, was a day of firsts. She cut her graduate classes, she rode in a helicopter, and she tried rock climbing in Cascade Lake, a hundred miles from home.

  The idea of taking ʻincompletes’ for the semester appealed to her more and more. He was paying her to be here. When she’d protested, he insisted her time was worth money. She’d tried to argue, saying what they were doing had nothing to do with the job.

  “Of course it does,” he told her. “You can sell me better as a product if you know me well. This is market research.”

  She gave in and decided to enjoy the ride. From the way he’d talked, she’d thought he would actually be driving the helicopter. The pilot was a man named MacReady, and Sterling’s friend and climbing partner, Evan, joined them as well.

  She thought about Ricky. She’d told him she was working late but didn’t tell him what she was doing. He was getting moodier and moodier and downright nasty about this job. She looked at Sterling and Evan, both very attractive, well-off men. They chatted together with their heads close, a bromance for sure. She compared Ricky to them, and she felt guilty for doing so. He never left the house. He didn’t have friends.

  Sterling laughed and joked with Evan and didn’t make her feel at all like she was hired help along for a ride. All his bullshit billionaire condescension melted away, and if not for the fact they were in a private helicopter, it would feel like a normal trip out with anyone. The guy had plenty of layers, that was for sure.

  At the cliff face, he presented her with rock climbing shoes and a harness. The shoes were too small and felt miserable.

  “They’re supposed to fit like that. It’s not a good feeling. You only wear them when you’re climbing and pull them off the second you get back down.”

  He showed her how to put on the harness without being fresh or an asshole. He tightened her straps and made sure they were all safely doubled back.

  First, she watched Evan climb, with Sterling belaying him. That part looked kind of terrifying because someone else’s life was literally in your hands at that point. Sterling Waters was going to be doing that to her in a few minutes. If he got distracted, he’d drop her and she’d die.

  Evan scaled the first route easily, then sat back in his harness as Sterling lowered him down.

  “You’re up,” he said to her. The rock face looked intimidating and monstrous. “It’s a piece of cake. Follow the white chalk marks on the rock where other climbers have held on. If you ever need to take a rest, let me know and I’ll hold you in place. You can sit right down in your harness. I won’t let you fall.”

  Cherise started to climb. Hand up, then foot up. It wasn’t so bad. Each time she moved, Sterling would expertly rein in the rope so she wouldn’t have far to drop if she slipped.

  Her muscles protested, but the mechanics of it weren’t complicated. As she worked her way up the rock, her legs and arms started to shake. She took deep breaths and finally got to the top where the anchor held the rope. The day was beautiful, the sun peeping through colorful autumn leaves. From up here, she could barely see over the forest canopy to an interstate below. Tiny cars passed by.

  “Just lean back, and I’ll lower you,” Sterling called.

  The idea of letting go of the rock terrified her. She glanced down and immediately wished she hadn’t. She couldn’t even fathom how it would hurt if her body fell from this height.

  “Just sit back, I have you.”

  “I can’t.” Now the shaking was from fear, not just exertion. Her mouth tasted metallic.

  “Sure you can. The only other option is climbing down.”

  No way. Her arms and legs were too tired for that. What would she do? She looked up… Maybe she could climb up higher and walk down somehow? No, her arms were too tired.

  “I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

  Easy for him to say.

  She’d watched Evan carefully when he’d come down. He had, indeed, just sat back in the harness and let Sterling lower him.

  She’d have to let go of the wall, one way or the other. Sterling held the rope tight, so when she let go, she hardly dropped at all. She let go all at once, feeling her body settle into the harness, her heart pounding in her chest. She clutched the rope with both hands, keeping her legs out straight like they’d told her so her body wouldn’t bump against the wall.

  He lowered her gently, super-smoothly. When her feet hit solid ground again, she kind of wanted to cry. She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath the whole way down until she sucked in a big lungful of air.

  “You did great!” Sterling exclaimed, coming in to help her with the knot that held her. This close, she could smell him, a pleasing scent of sweat and, if she wasn’t mistaken, Old Spice. She’d imagined him wearing something much more expensive and mysterious. He didn’t look like a billionaire today, just a fit guy in a t-shirt with tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves, his back and armpits damp with sweat from the walk up to the cliff.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for not killing me.”

  “You’re safe as houses,” he said. “It’s only dangerous if you’re not paying attention, and no one who climbs with me will slack off. I won’t have it.”

  Evan nodded. “I’ve seen him refuse to climb with people because they’re too distracted. He’s not very nice about it, either.”

  Cherise climbed a few more times, but mostly, she watched as Sterling and Evan went up and down the rock face, graceful as mountain goats.

  By the time they were back in the helicopter, her arms, shoulders and legs had started to ache. So many little muscles she never even knew she had. Jeez, she would sleep well tonight.

  STERLING

  Sterling was an old hand at dating. He’d been out with five different women. He didn’t have any interesting stories to tell after any of them, nothing particularly good, nothing notably bad. A series of average New York women.

  Sterling sat at the table in the back of Half Lounge, the bar where he’d agreed to meet tonight’s date. He’d gotten himself a beer and sipped it. As with each of these dates, Sterling wondered if this woman would be the one to change his life. Tonight was Jenna Kerrigan, the blonde. He liked her picture and the brief chat transcripts Cherise sent him.

  He thought about the warm afternoon a few weeks ago when he’d taken Cherise climbing. She had a good shape for the sport, and if they could build more muscle on her, she’d be quite good at it.

  He scanned the face of everyone who walked through the door. He wanted to spot Jenna before she saw him, but he also wanted to make sure he didn’t recognize anyone here at the bar. He didn’t think he would. It was a little hipster place on the south end, dimly lit and cozy. The music wasn’t too loud, and the little stage was dark with no promise of live music tonight. Good. A live band was distracting, and it meant a lot of leaning in close and shouting in someone’s ear.

  He recognized her when she came in, wearing a long white coat against the promise of rain. Her blonde hair fell around her shoulders in waves, silky and soft.

  He could picture her attending functions with him. She looked the part. She spotted him, and he raised a hand. At the bar, she ordered something pink in a martini glass. A cosmo?

  She smiled and slid into the chair across from him.

  He liked her hands—soft and delicate, with a French manicure. A contrast from his own, made rough and calloused from the rock climbing. Unbidden, he thought of Cherise’s hands, how she’d told him they hurt after her afternoon on the rocks. She wore dark nail polish, but it was always chipped like she was too busy for such things.

  Jenna talked about her job in an accounting firm. “What do you do?”

  He and Cherise had talked
around how to answer this question, and he’d had experience navigating it with his prior dates. “I’m a business owner.”

  “Oh, what kind?”

  “Caps and trades, stock market stuff.”

  Her eyebrows went up. He asked her where she went to school, and she described a tiny Catholic university forty-five minutes east of Pittsburgh.

  “Are you Catholic?” he asked.

  She nodded. She told him how she’d been married once, when she was younger, to her high school sweetheart, but he had died a few years ago. She was just starting to explore the murky waters of dating again. “I’m sorry, that was probably too much. I have no idea what I’m doing here. Just kind of winging it, you know?”

  Sterling agreed that he did know. She was the one. She would make Ben happy, and she would appear sweet and innocent on his arm. He bought her another drink.

  He stayed out with her until a little after ten, when she apologetically said she needed to go home to get ready for work in the morning.

  “Can I walk you to your car?” he asked.

  “I’m taking the bus.”

  “Can I give you a ride home?” She hesitated, and he remembered he was a virtual stranger. “Or I can see you to your bus stop?”

  “No, I think a ride would be nice, thanks.”

  He’d borrowed Evan’s BMW for the evening. A nice car, but not quite as ostentatious as what he normally drove. It would indicate he had money, just not how much.

  He pulled up outside her building and remembered Cherise’s instructions not to instigate a kiss the first night he’d met someone. If he felt it went really well, he could offer a hug.

  Jenna accepted, and he took her into his arms. Her hair smelled like coconut, and he was reminded instantly of the whiffs he’d caught of Cherise’s shampoo.

  Dammit, she was worming her way into his brain.

  As she pulled away, Jenna brushed her lips across his cheek, smiled shyly at him, and left the car, stepping out into the storm. He sat for a moment, confident he’d made a good match.

  Even through it was after ten, he told his phone to call Cherise. She answered on the second ring, alert and awake. Good, he hadn’t wanted to wake her up.