Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (22 page)

“Calm down, will you?”
she says. “He called the house. I didn’t know if it was you or if it was
someone who needed to leave a message, so I answered. I told him you weren’t
home, but we got to talking. Turns out he’s a really nice guy. I don’t think
he’s a sleazy guy at all.”

“Have you ever watched
his movies?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “If you
think so little of him, why’s he calling your beach house?” she shoots back.

“He’s one of my oldest
friends,” I answer. “I see your point. Still, this isn’t the time to do
something like this, and whose idea was it for everyone to get naked?”

“I don’t know,” she says
in that sing-song voice that I don’t want to hear right now.

“It was your idea?” I
ask.

She shrugs. “So what? I’m
a little drunk and I wanted to see if everyone would actually do it. By the
way, this having power thing is fantastic. I haven’t even done anything and
people I’ve seen on the news are dropping trou.” She starts laughing. “Sorry,”
she says. “I heard that from Mike Humphry a little while ago and it
still
cracks me up.”

This isn’t happening.
“Why don’t we go inside and talk a minute?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I’m mad
at you.”

“You’re mad at me?” I
ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “I was
right in the middle of a perfectly wonderful conversation with Loreen LeFleur,
Janella Swiss, and Nyla Th—”

“What are you doing?” I
ask. “What is this? Have I offended you in some horrific way I don’t know
about?”

“What’s the matter with
you
?” she asks. “After everything I’ve
been through these last couple months, I’d think you’d support me having a
little fun.”

The funny thing is, I
know she didn’t cheat on me. Still, she’s not acting like herself, and I’ve
seen it happen so many times, I know exactly what’s happening.

“Ellie, we need to go
inside. Grab your clothes. I’ll get everyone home and you and I can talk. There
are some things about this kind of life you need to understand,” I tell her.

“Nah,” she says. “I’m
good. Hey, come back in, you guys!”

I turn to find about a
dozen of my stupider guests peeking their heads around the corner, watching us.
As soon as Ellie gives the green light, though, everyone’s getting back into
the pool and the hot tub. Not everyone disrobes this time, but I still see a
lot more of very familiar people than I ever wanted.

“We’ve got to go,” I tell
her.

Ellie leans back, saying,
“Where are we going?”

“How drunk are you?” I
ask.

“I only had a couple of
drinks, but ever since I got in this hot tub,
woo!
” she says, wiping her brow.

Thirty people echo,
“Woo!”

“Come on,” I tell her.
“It’s thinning your blood and making you loopy.”

“I know,” she says. “It’s
kind of fun.”

“No,” I tell her. “I’m
not going to stand here and argue with you.”

“Why do you think I told
everyone to come back in the pool?” she asks.

Ever since she came back,
I don’t know if it was Amelie, or exactly what it was, but Ellie’s starting to
lose herself the same way nearly everyone I’ve ever met who came into this
lifestyle has. I can’t let that happen.

I’m not getting through
to her this way, though, and I need to make sure I can get everyone out of here
without flipping my lid. Without a word, I start back around toward the back door
and inside the house.

Making my way through the
party toward the kitchen, I’m bombarded by three separate senators, each a
little too inebriated for distinguished conversation. I politely, then
impolitely, push my way past.

As usual, nobody’s in the
kitchen, because nobody wants to risk having to clean anything, but when I hold
my hand above the stove, I can feel the heat rising from it. There’s a bottle
of Sambuca on the counter and I ever so clumsily tip it over onto the still-hot
burners.

By the time I’m on my way
out and back to dodging politicians, smoke is starting to creep out of the
kitchen. It’s not long before someone yells, “Fire!” and everyone’s running for
the doors, though not in every case the nearest ones.

As I come onto the deck,
the people outside start to catch word. Before I’m to the side, everyone but
Ellie, nude or not, is running in some crooked direction away from the house.
Finally rounding the corner I see Ellie putting her clothes on.

“What’s going on?” she
asks. “I heard something about a fire?”

“There’s a jet that drops
flame-retardant on the stove whenever the alarm in the kitchen goes off, and it
extinguishes everything,” he says. “We were going to release it next year, but
we never quite got the cleanup part right.”

“What?” she asks.

I bend down and hand
Ellie her shirt. I tell her, “We need to talk.”

Chapter
Nineteen

Mulholland

Ellie

It’s been three days
since I’ve been back home. By home, I mean home, home.

After that party, Nick
and I had a talk. I dare say it didn’t go quite the way either of us wanted it
to. He says I’m changing, that I need some time away from all the distractions
of New York.

He says he’s going to
join me here when he can, but we’ll see if
that
ever happens.

I know I should be at the
store right now, trying to hock what I have for next month’s rent, but I don’t
feel much like going anywhere.

I’ve hardly left my room,
except to take care of Max and Sammie. Naomi left them with a friend of hers
who does that sort of thing for a living. She takes excellent care of animals
and all, but the woman can’t get it through her mind that not every animal
needs a poodle cut.

Sammie has little puffs
of straight, short fur sticking up in the oddest directions while Max looks
like a canine social deviant. The way Bernice lets them run around her
fenced-in three-acre lot with other animals, though, the two couldn’t care less
about the bad groom job.

They’re happy, so I’ve
learned to live with the occasional look from people on the street when I take
Max out for a walk. Problem is, Max’s walks are the only time I’ve left the
apartment since I’ve been back.

Nick says I’m changing,
that I’m losing that thing about me that he fell in love with oh, so very long
ago. The thing is I
know
I’m starting
to change. I’m getting sick of people walking over me all the time.

How much money I have or
what I do doesn’t matter. I sat down with a lot of people who will be talked
about for generations, and small-town as I am, we got along just fine.

My door opens and Naomi
walks into the room.

I sit up in bed, saying,
“Where have you been?”

“You’re not going to
believe this,” she says. “When everyone ran out of the party because you were
stripping or whatever—”

“That did
not
happen,” I interrupt. “Along with
everyone else, I removed my clothes in a very mature, even ladylike way.
Besides, everyone left because of the smoke coming out of the kitchen.”

“Whatever,” Naomi says.
“Anyway, so I was looking online because I found Nick’s secret liquor cabinet.
By that, I mean, it’s like bigger than this whole apartment and there’s
booze—booze everywhere!”

“What’d you steal?” I
ask, lying back in bed and covering my face with my blanket.

A moment later, Naomi’s
on top of me, pulling the cover back off, saying, “I didn’t steal anything.”

“Okay, what’d you try to
steal?” I ask.

“A bottle of Jose Davolos
Cognac,” she says. “If that maid lady wanted a big payout, instead of spreading
your tits all over the world, she should have just snagged a bottle of that and
sold it on eBay.”

“You tried to steal a
two-million dollar bottle of cognac?” I ask.

“Calm down, I put it back
right after I took it off the shelf,” she says.

I lean up on my elbows
and ask, “And why did you do that?”

She looks away a moment,
saying, “There may have been an alarm.”

“Okay, so why aren’t you
in prison?” I ask. “You know when you’re out on bail you’re not supposed to
leave the state, right?”

“Oh stop that,” she says,
slapping my arm. “Nobody’s arresting anybody. I did have to play some shadow
games with that one maid, though. I think her name is Fern or something
old-fashiony like that.”

“Her name is literally
Jane Doe,” I respond.

“Whatever,” Naomi says.
“The point is, she does
not
stop
looking. After a while, I started to get hungry, though, so I was eating some
crackers and drinking some water—”

“What were you really
having?” I interrupt.

“Okay, the crackers were
imported and I may have slathered them with caviar, but the water was just
water,” she says.

“You’re a sterling
example of knowing proper boundaries,” I respond.

“I know right,” she says.
It takes her this long before she’s looking down at me, saying, “Are you all
right?”

“I think it’s over,” I
tell her. “That party—I don’t even know if that’s what did it. Ever since I got
back there, I just feel like I can’t do anything right.”

“It’s not over,” she
says. With a laugh, she adds, “You
were
pretty wasted, though. I almost took some pictures to show you, but I thought
that might be a bad idea after the other thing.”

“How bad was I?” I ask.

Naomi returns, “You don’t
remember?”

“I think I remember most
everything,” I answer. “Honest opinion: was I or was I not the most
embarrassing person you’ve ever seen at a party.”

“No,” she says. “But I’ve
been to a lot more parties than you.”

She always has to have
the upper hand somewhere.

“It’s not on the news or
anything, is it?” I ask. “I haven’t exactly been watching a lot of television
the last while.”

“You’re fine. Nobody
snitched,” Naomi says. “I kind of do think more people could have seen your
naked belly flop into the hot tub, though. That was the most amazing thing I’ve
ever seen.” She starts laughing and she grabs herself between the legs with
both hands, saying, “Ow, my vag!”

I was hoping it hadn’t
been that noticeable. At the time, everyone was kind enough to pretend it
hadn’t happened. I guess I got into a false comfort zone.

“You’re not telling me
something,” I say. “I said it was probably over, you said it’s not. What don’t
I know?”

Naomi giggles, “Well, for
one thing, you kind of need to turn your hips before you hit the water, otherwise
you’re going to get smacked right in the—”

“
Not
what I’m talking about,” I interrupt.

“Oh yeah, right,” she
says. “So, I was going through some of Nick’s stuff for perfectly valid
purposes and I came across something.”

“Did you want to tell me
what it was, or …”

“He’s not breaking up
with you,” she says.

“Then why would he send
me home?” I ask. “If he’s so gaga over me, why am I lying in my apartment in
Mulholland while my annoying kleptomaniac sister keeps clutching herself
randomly, mouthing that stupid word.”

“You’re the one that said
it,” she says.

I snap back, “Well, it
hurt.”

Finally, I’m able to let
out at least a little laugh.

Naomi climbs on top of me
and starts tapping my forehead. “You’re not listening to me,” she says. I’d try
to fight her off, but she’s already kneeling on my arms.

“Okay,” I say, thrashing
my head and trying to avoid those bony fingers. “What were you going to tell
me?”

“I can’t tell you now,”
she says. “The moment’s passed. It was supposed to be this glorious thing and
now you’ve ruined it by making me discipline you.”

“Just get off of me!” I
grunt as I manage to roll my bodyweight enough that Naomi loses her balance and
falls onto the bed next to me.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Oh, poor Max,” she says.
“He kind of looks like a posh lion, don’t you think?”

I reach over and twist
Naomi’s ear, saying, “What was it you wanted to tell me so bad?”

“Ow!” she says, swatting
at my hand, but only succeeding in making it worse. “Okay, okay,” she says.
“Let go and I’ll tell you.”

“I fell for that too many
times when I was six,” I tell her. She’s so focused on protecting that ear, she
leaves the other one wide open, so with my free hand, I latch onto that one.

“Fine!” she shouts. “It’s
a ring!”

I release my sister from
my kung-fu grip. “What?”

“Ellie,” she says,
rubbing both her ears, “he bought you a ring.”

“Oh shut up,” I say and
smack one of her hands covering an ear.

She pulls the hand away
from her ear sharply and she’s moving her jaw around, saying, “That was
horrible. Don’t do that to anyone ever.”

“Maybe he had thoughts,
but you weren’t there for the last conversation,” I tell her.

“Well, then tell me about
it,” she says. “Enlighten me.”

I wince. “I kind of only
remember bits and pieces,” I admit. “That hot tub after the liquor was a bad idea.”

“Hey, at least you didn’t
pee in there,” she says.

“That’s true,” I agree.
“What I do remember, though, it wasn’t the kind of conversation you have when
you’re about to pop the question.”

“Say whatever you want,”
she says, resting her head on her hand. “He got you a ring.”

“Are you doing that thing
where you lie to me just to see if I can tell?” I ask. “This really isn’t the
time or the topic—”

“Yeah,” she says, “gotta
level with you. I would have taken that course and everything, but then I
realized I didn’t want to after all, so I just watched a few episodes of the
show they made about it.”

“So you’re an admitted
liar telling me to trust you?” I ask.

She jabs me in the ribs
just to show me she can and says, “Don’t believe me then. The thing was freaking
huge, though. You should have seen it.”