Breaking the Billionaire’s Rules

by Annika Martin

  Kelsey bites her lip, beaming at him.

  “Antonio Corelli. Bringing it,” I say.

  Antonio smiles. “Hugo Boss fall collection. I did a runway show last month and they gave me this one. A ten-thousand-dollar suit if not for a fray by the button.”

  “It’s a wonderful suit,” Kelsey says. “Just stunning.”

  “The bracelet gives it a slight organized-crime twist,” I observe. “Very nice. Not that Max will be close enough to see that, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” This is my gentle way of reminding him that he won’t be trotting out that backstory.

  He fingers his bracelet. “If you are asking if I am a friend—a soldier…” He gives his Euro shrug. “This is not something you should ask. I will tell you that my time in the streets made me hard. A very hard businessman. My practices…” Thoughtfully, he adjusts his suit sleeve. “They are not what you call ethical, I’m afraid. Effective, yes. Ethical, not so much, cara. Everything I have, I’ve had to fight for. And now I fight for you. I will follow you up the high-rise. I am not above helping the object of my affection in her menial chores. And if another man even looks at her sideways.” He gives Kelsey a dark look and lowers his voice. “I will slit his throat. Without a moment’s hesitation, I will do this. I will leave him to die on the street like the dog that he is.”

  “Dude, no,” I say.

  “How will this pickup artist know that I adore you?”

  “Remote visual observation,” I say.

  He frowns.

  “And you’re not following me. You’ll just be out hanging around at the rendezvous truck where I switch out carts between buildings, and he’ll see you looking at me adoringly when he walks by. It’s usually before lunch, or else right after. Okay? He’s not going to come talk to us.”

  “But if he does…”

  “You’re a guy on your lunch break who wants a date with me. And you say nothing.”

  Antonio shakes his head vociferously. “I would not stay silent,” he growls. “One sideways look from him—”

  “It won’t come to that.”

  “You never know,” Kelsey says. “It’s good for Antonio to be ready.”

  I widen my eyes at Kelsey.

  Antonio gazes at the ceiling, sucks in a breath. “Even the smallest interaction with you, when you’re loading your lunch cart out on the street, is solace to my darkened soul. Does he think to take you from me? He’ll see that the blade is just another tool to me. I am not afraid to tell him that.”

  “Yeah, you don’t want to scare him off,” Kelsey says, chastened. “Just watch her with that deep look, maybe a smile. You’ll be amazing.”

  “A smile with no subtext is but a shape of the lips.” Antonio turns his deep look to me. “How many men have I killed in this short life? One does not lurk around after a street fight in the alleyways of Milano.”

  “…cookies,” I whisper.

  “Roma, then,” he growls.

  10

  Do something outrageous. You don’t give a shit what she thinks.

  ~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM

  * * *

  MIA

  I call Rollins to try and persuade him to use the Maximillion Plaza block as the relay point—I suggest a spot that will be in perfect view of Max walking across the street for his pre-lunch visit. It’s just a block over from where we usually are.

  Rollins is not so sure—in addition to the innocent-country-boy-in-the-city thing he has going on, he’s a dedicated rule follower. Rollins never met a rule he doesn’t want to marry in a little white chapel on a windswept prairie.

  I promise him I’ll tell the other delivery cats and take all the heat, and he finally agrees.

  I arrange my delivery schedule so that I can meet Antonio out there just before eleven.

  The timing works like clockwork, which I guess is the point of using a clock. Rollins brings me a new cart and switches out the old like the Indy 500 pit crew of sandwich delivery that he is. I’m refilling the chips and utensils just as Antonio arrives in his beautiful suit.

  “Can I help you?” Rollins asks, because Antonio looks more like somebody we’d deliver to than somebody we’d know.

  “I’m past help,” Antonio says darkly. “So far past help.”

  “It’s cool, he’s my cousin,” I explain.

  Antonio slides his hand up the side of the truck, gazing down at me. It’s a smoldering, sensual, uniquely male stance. “Do not minimize it, cara,” he says. “Do not minimize what we are to each other. We are more than mere cousins.”

  Rollins straightens, nervously restocking chips.

  I widen my eyes at Antonio.

  Antonio turns to Rollins. “I came to look at her beauty, hoping that it would ease the despair and darkness in my heart.”

  “Oh,” Rollins says.

  “Antonio, stop being funny.”

  “Pah! You wish me to hide my love. I will not. I had no beauty coming up on the streets of Roma, you know.” He turns to a wide-eyed Rollins. “I sold myself, I hurt people. The blade was my friend. I am not proud. But everything I went through is worth it…”

  “Okay…” I say. “But do you remember our discussion?”

  Rollins is busying himself with the condiments box.

  Antonio glances significantly over my shoulder, then back at me, and he turns a thousand-watt smile on me.

  “I ask you,” he says, tilting his head, which adds hot-guy dimension to the smile. “Who is that dog over there who thinks he can look at you? I will cut out his heart as easily as I’d plunge a knife into a ripe tomato. Your body is not for men to feast their eyes on.”

  He’s spotted Max. I pull out my phone and put it on selfie-mode. My breath catches as I see that familiar pair of shoulders behind me.

  I gaze up at Antonio, who looks down at me besotted. Beatific, even, like a monk, having endured years of darkness for this one chance to gaze upon the divine. “All my problems disappear when I set my eyes upon you,” he whispers. “All of them!”

  I smile back at him. Now I’m turning on the drama. “You really are amazing,” I say.

  “I know I am,” he says.

  “I appreciate it, I do.” I’m also relieved that there was no weird confrontation.

  “Well, all the lessons you have given me. You have taught me so much.” Acting, he means.

  “You’ve been putting in the work.”

  Antonio sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets.

  “Gone?” I ask.

  “Gone, cara.”

  I lower my voice. “You think he even saw?”

  “I don’t know. He seemed…absorbed in thought.”

  “Do I get to check off the box if he didn’t see?”

  Antonio looks at me sadly.

  Rollins stands behind him, fussing with a cart, a look of alarm etched upon his features.

  * * *

  I EXECUTE my deliveries for Maximillion Plaza at peak efficiency, getting peak tips. I never looked forward to my route this much before.

  Blade, the guy on the twentieth floor who really loves that movie, is excited about the whitefish I recommended. He’s been talking me up on the floor and it’s suddenly my most lucrative floor. He asks me whether I’m appearing in any shows coming up and I tell him about my upcoming audition for Anything Goes. He’s sure I’ll get it.

  By the elevators on Blade’s floor, there’s a pair of enlarged photos of Max.

  In one of them, he’s looking bored in a fabulous suit, sprawled on a kingly piece of furniture. A woman stands behind him with her hand in his hair.

  My belly grinds at the sight. Which just goes to show the devastating power of prize-positioning. Max has many flaws, but ignorance was never one of them.

  I only wish he’d seen Antonio admiring me, so that I could be prize-positioned, too.

  What did all of that maneuvering get me instead? Rollins thinks I’m dating my murderous gigolo cousin.

/>   But I really want to be able to X off a golden-rule box today. I’m thinking about the Do Something Outrageous one. My gaze falls to the twelve bags of cheesy puffs still in my cart. A plan starts to form.

  On the twenty-second floor I start giving the cheesy puffs away. “You get an extra free one!” I say to my excited customers. I’ll have to settle up with the Meow Squad powers that be, but who cares about obstacles like that when you’re on the do-something-outrageous warpath?

  I strategically work it out as only a delivery cat can so that I have precisely one bag left when I get into the elevator going up to his floor. One of the willowy, statuesque receptionists is riding with me; I’d hoped to have privacy for this part of my plan, but then again, it’s not like people sit around staring at each other in elevators, right? Elevators are a zone of ignoring each other.

  I retreat to the back of the elevator and pull open the last cheesy puff bag and stuff a handful into my mouth, allowing bright orange crumbs to cascade down my shirt. I stifle a grin, imagining Max’s face after I tell him I’m out of cheesy puffs and he specifically sees them all over my front.

  I shove another bunch in, kind of smashing them into my mouth, so that they get into my hair a little bit.

  It’s right about here that I realize the statuesque beauty is watching me in the reflection of one of the slim, highly polished panels. She quickly looks away.

  My pulse races. I think about saying something, but what? There are some instances when explaining an awkward thing will only make it more awkward.

  Finally the elevator arrives at the top floor. She gets out first and walks off—eager, perhaps, to tell her willowy, statuesque co-workers the cautionary tale of the lunch-cart girl.

  I keep Kelsey’s faith in me in mind as I knock on Max’s door wearing a cat suit full of orange cheesy puffs. “Meow Squad.”

  There’s a largish puff right on the center of my chest, a bright orange badge of outrageousness. I’m so X-ing off that box.

  “Come,” he says.

  I push in. “When did people stop saying come in? I don’t know how I feel about come, just on its own.”

  Max has his jacket off again, his tie is a little bit loose, and his dress shirt is tight over his sternly crossed arms, creating a definite guns-n-stuff effect. Arm muscles ahoy. Just looking at him makes my head feel light.

  He says, “I think of it as a Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation thing.”

  I snort, as if that’s so uncool, though in my own personal hierarchy of pop culture references, Jean-Luc Picard beats Deckard from Blade Runner. Leave it to Max.

  I pull his lunch from my cart. “I’m going to guess you want layout.”

  I go around without his telling me to. I flatten out the bag, feeling his stare, hungry and heavy on my skin.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering you a sesame chili salmon sandwich with kimchi fried rice today,” I say. I’m thinking about the knuckles kiss, much as I’m trying not to.

  He probably forgot about it by now. A brief knuckle kiss is just a drop of water in the vast ocean of Max Hilton’s daily moves.

  His arms are still lusciously crossed. I imagine flattening the shirt fabric over them, smoothing the shirt so that it perfectly outlines the contours of his muscles, and then I’d smooth some more, soft fabric over steely strength, like a party for my hands. And then maybe my lips could get involved. And then maybe my teeth.

  “Am I ever going to get what I ordered again? You’re not a very proficient lunch-cart girl.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Go ahead and play this sad little game if you want,” he says, “just know that I don’t like mushrooms, bacon, ham, or cilantro.”

  “Oh, I’m not the one playing a sad little game, my friend.”

  “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  I place a napkin and knife and fork next to his new sandwich. He knows exactly what it means. Ordering from the Meow Squad. Requesting me.

  “Who’s your little friend out there?” he asks.

  I still. He saw Antonio and me out there? Was he pretending he didn’t see? “Out where?”

  “Out where,” he snorts. “The strapping fella in Hugo Boss out by your lunch-cart truck?” I get the sense he’s going for lightness in the strapping fella bit, but it sounds slightly adversarial, too.

  Is he jealous? Excitement surges through me. I’ve never been somebody excited by jealousy before.

  “Ah,” I say with faraway eyes. “Antonio.” I’m stoking it now. What’s going on with me?

  I continue my machinations, reveling in his covetous gaze. I set out his mustards with my usual flourish. He picks up a pen, moves it carelessly around in his fingers. His hands really are large. And warm and soft.

  “Please,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Ah, Antonio,” he echoes, matching my intonation exactly. “He’s a friend. You look at him like a friend. Like one of your galpals.”

  I give him a sympathetic look. “Poor Max Hilton. I think that’s maybe what you wanted to see.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “That was not a galpal face,” I say. I set a bag of Lay’s plain potato chips next to his sandwich.

  “What is this?” He picks them up, brow furrowed. “Where’s my array?”

  “Can’t you just access the image from the last time I displayed them in your robot memory files?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Ungh.” I go back to the cart and pluck out four bags of chips. I hold them up. “We have Lay’s, barbeque, cool ranch, and baked sea salt.”

  “No cheesy puffs today?”

  “I ran out.”

  He zeroes in on the bright orange cheesy puff crumbs. “You’re telling me you ran out?”

  I show him the empty cheesy puffs box, quivering with maybe too much excitement. “The very last bag was eaten. Quite recently!” I bite my tongue—hard—applying intense, anti-laughter pressure.

  He stands.

  I’m fighting not to smile. Bite bite bite.

  He’s coming for me.

  I back up.

  He keeps coming. I’m a deer in the blazing headlights. If a deer ate the car’s dinner. And the car is barreling down the road.

  I hit the wall. His hands hit the wall on either side of me.

  My knees are jelly.

  “What are you doing, Mia?”

  I can feel his warmth deep in my chest—it’s like he has his own personal force field.

  His eyes bore into mine, and then he drops his gaze to my shirt.

  My pulse pounds.

  He picks a bit of cheesy puff off my chest and holds it between us, evidence of my impudence. “Who ate my cheesy puffs?”

  Excited shivers rain over me. “I did,” I whisper into his face.

  We both seem to hold our breath. It’s like we’re in some kind of strange limbo.

  Sexiest. Re-enactment. Of Goldilocks. Ever.

  His pulse drums hot and steady beneath the hard line of his jaw. I imagine pressing my lips to the tender skin there. Desire floods my veins.

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “I don’t know.” Something’s melting in my belly.

  He drops the puff bit, his face lit with beautiful fury.

  He brushes some bits off the center of my chest, my shoulder. The feeling of his hand on me is electric.

  And then he moves to my cheek, swiping it with his thumb, rough velvet on hot silk. There might have been a crumb there. Really, I don’t care.

  His chest rises and falls, seemingly in unison with mine. His expression is so serious. I remember it from that summer—it was the way he looked when he cared about getting something right.

  I feel this rush of frustration. I want us to be different. Free of our factions and fraught history.

  He slides his thumb across my lower lip. The urge to take it into my mouth is nearly unbearable. I would suck it so hard. I would reach down and touch hi
s cock and suck the hell out of his thumb.

  “Look at you.” He reaches to my hair, brushes a possibly real or maybe imaginary crumb off, then slides a strand through his fingers. He watches his progress through lowered lashes. He says, “You look beautiful with cheesy puffs on you.”

  I swallow with difficulty. “Thank you.”

  Again he slides my hair through his fingers, watching intently, as though he’s really into making sure the crumbs are gone. The lightest sheen of whisker stubble glints on his cheeks.

  He tucks another strand behind my ear. Then he brushes some more back.

  I’m catatonic with lust.

  And confusion.

  What is Max doing?

  He tucks my hair again, this time grazing the shell of my ear. The bright swipe of his touch ripples over my body. It arrows down between my legs.

  My breath hitches.

  I want him to press himself right into me and make me come. Coming like that is not a thing with me, but right now, it would be.

  I want him so badly, I might burst into flames.

  He draws his mouth close to my ear, right there where he tucked away the hair. His breath is warm velvet on my ear.

  I close my eyes.

  My entire skeletal system is turning into jelly at this point. I imagine gripping his shoulders, pulling him to me.

  “That,” he whispers, “is your non-galpal face.”

  My eyes fly open. “Oh my god!” I push him away. “You are so full of shit.”

  He just watches me, amused.

  “You think you’re all that.”

  He lowers his voice to a hard rumble. “You’ll bring the cheesy puffs next time.”

  I snort. “Definitely not.” I grab my cart and leave, fling open the door and almost bump into Parker.

  I step back.

  Parker Westbrook, his brainiac business partner, a budding sax player back at the Shiz.

  Parker still has his same chubby cheeks and nerdy glasses and generally disheveled bearing—the pile of folders and magazines he’s carrying looks like it’s about to explode.

  “Parker!” I say, then I remember he was another rich kid who was unkind to me. “Hi,” I add, in a more morose tone.