let me drop her.
“I am going to the coast for the weekend,” he says abruptly.
Okay, have fun with that. “Am I to do anything in particular while you are away?”
He glances back to his phone. The screen lights his brutally handsome features. “I want you to join me.”
My heart forgets to take the next beat. “You do?” I gape at him. What the hell is going on in that brain? And how exactly does flying in a helicopter-of-death without a change of clean underwear fit into my job description? I’m happy to go above and beyond in my role, but I also want advance notice, and a toothbrush.
At last, after at least a minute, his gaze snaps back to my face. “Well?”
“Excuse me?” I’m still reeling.
“Are you coming, then?”
“I just asked if—”
“I’m not interested in hearing my words parroted. What is your answer?” His tone is curt. Asshole curt. Yet the tension radiating off him is nearly palpable, a tightness vibrating the air.
My chest throbs. He is going to require me to go on high blood pressure medication.
“You have ten seconds to decide. Yes or no, Bethanny.”
No one ever calls me by my full name except him.
“What good is an assistant unwilling to assist,” he mutters, keeping his voice pitched loud enough that I’ll hear every word.
Oh hell no. But shit, I am pitching my new app concept to the Zavtra Tech Ideas Circle next week. An idea that I’m hoping will launch me from the Fishbowl and into the ocean. I’m ready to swim with the sharks.
I bite the inside of my cheek as my stomach muscles tense. Do it, play nice. Suck up. My pulse spikes and not just because of the impending flight. Don’t freak out. This is for some work function. You can impress. Except, crap, I don’t even have my purse. It’s locked in my desk.
“Yes, fine. Okay,” I say when time dwindles down to the final seconds. I want to get on his good side before pitching my app to his investment team. Also, I really don’t want to go home and spend the night with my creeper roommate, and maybe…just maybe…I’m desperate for something that feels different, wholly unexpected. A few years ago, I survived a near brush with death, a car accident that killed my best friend, Pippa. Now I’m forgetting the present to live focused on the future, a day without debts, when I can stand on my own two feet. But I shouldn’t forget about the adventure in today.
Is it possible that dislike and attraction can be two sides of the same coin? As much as Z drives me crazy, I’d be kidding myself not to admit the draw to the man across from me, the man I have spoken to hourly for months but have never seen face-to-face. The man whose aftershave is a peppery, pine blend that makes me want to inhale deeper, except he just muttered something to Katya that sounded like Idi and oh God, oh God, my breath comes out in a burst. We are airborne.
Okay, okay, this is really happening. And if I’m choppering off into the night with my boss, then it’s high time to stop projecting that Z’s some sort of secret, brooding romantic antihero. Even though he’s wildly attractive.
And a young billionaire.
Many times over.
Crap, let’s face it—ain’t no one kicking that fantasy out of bed.
But in real life, this guy is a dickhole who cares more about his precious fish than the warm-blooded employee sitting beside him.
The office is out of sight in an instant, and it doesn’t take more than a few minutes until the lights of Silicon Valley are gone, and we are choppering over the coastal dividing range. Below could be my parents’ winery where they’re sleeping snug, undisturbed by the knowledge they won their financial security at the price of mine.
I glance back to Z time and again but never once does he look out the window or toward me. The way he grips his phone is unnerving. He doesn’t run his finger over the screen or tap out any texts. I don’t get the impression he is doing anything except staring emptily. Guess he’s got enough billions to afford eccentricity.
New lights in the distance take on a familiar shape. That’s Monterey Bay, where I grew up. We cut south of Santa Cruz and angle over Moss Landing and then past Monterey and Carmel. The lights vanish again, and that’s because we are flying along Big Sur,