Babysitting the Billionaire (5 page)

She pulled the rolling chair next to him out, trying to
ever-so-subtly move it a little farther from him and that aura of masculine
despair. But since the aura filled the room, it was rather a lame gesture. She
sat down and opened her mouth to say—what?

“Just sit. And drink.”

May pulled out her phone. “Just texting Sadie that she
doesn’t need to come back.”

He grunted. “Understatement.”

Sadie’s reply was almost immediate:
Buy food, booze, anything. Fdn will reimburse. Or we will
.

Kurck’s face was too still. If he wasn’t pouring,
lifting, and sipping heartily of the margaritas, she’d have thought him an
automaton.

“Want some salt with that?”

His fist smashed down on the table. The pitcher, now ice
only, jumped. May’s glass tipped, and before she could catch it, spilled toward
her lap.

She pushed the chair back, rolling into the back wall,
and stood up. Beau lifted his hand over her still-spinning glass and smashed
his palm onto it. May closed her eyes, praying it was safety glass.

She opened them again. No blood. But he wasn’t done. He
tipped the last of the margarita from his glass onto his tongue, and then threw
the glass at the table. This time, the glass splintered. May put her hand out
to shield her eyes.

“I told you not to talk. Now look what you’ve done.”

May had never seen anyone go from cold to red-hot in
zero seconds. She swallowed her heart back into her chest and did not look at
him.

“May. Look at me.” His voice was at the regular timbre
again.

She shuddered. “I think it’s time the bear was fed. Eat
here or...”

“Let’s get out of here.”

****

She took him to Ben’s Chili Bowl, the alcohol-soppingist
food she could think of. Then they walked, and walked, and walked. He said very
little, but whenever she made a gesture toward leaving him, he grumbled and
rumbled, and she was afraid he would cry, and they’d all end up at the
hospital. So they walked. The mild night, gorgeous with moonlight, made the raw
pain on his face, so poorly hidden, look macabre.

Finally, they reached the dusty edges of the Mall, and
May heard the nearby church bells toll.

“Midnight, Mr. Kurck. We should get you home. Work in an
hour, you know.” Men liked to work their feelings out, right? And he surely
loved his work.

“Fuck them,” he said. “If I go to work now, I’ll just
fire them all.”

Out of options, footsore, and brain-sore, May stepped
off the path and dropped to a seat on the grass.

“You’ll stain your slacks.”

She stretched her legs out. If she’d known she was going
to be hiking the entire length of DC, she’d have worn the slingbacks, not these
open-toed monstrosities.

Beau took a few steps, saw she wasn’t following, and
came back. He circled her. “You need your rest,” he said. “We should get a cab.”
He pulled her to her feet and back the half-block to

Independence Avenue

.

She told the driver to drop her off first, and then take
the gentleman to his hotel. The driver looked his commiseration with Beau, as
if he was sorry the gentleman wasn’t getting to first base tonight. Looking out
the side window, May rolled her eyes.

“Do you promise to go straight to the hotel and nowhere
else until I get there at eight? You have your leftovers, here, and plenty of
coffee in the room.”

“Don’t treat me like a child,” he said, petulance
dripping from his voice.

“I apologize. You’ll do it?”

“Aye-aye.”

Not five minutes later, the taxi slowed in front of her
row of brownstones behind

DuPont
Circle

. She took Beau’s cold hand in hers. “I wish
I could make it better,” she said, and was surprised to realize she really did.
“See you tomorrow.”

She’d forgotten to leave the porch light on, so the taxi
waited until she got her keys out and door unlocked. It was at the corner
before she’d closed it again. She rested her forehead on the painted wood. What
a day.

She kicked her shoes off and dragged herself to the
bathroom, undoing her belted dress as she walked. Dropping them and her
underthings in the hamper behind the bathroom door, she picked up her two-piece
pajamas and headed for the shower. Ten minutes of hot water running over her
head, her shoulders, her back, washed much of her tension away. It wasn’t even
her tension, she realized. It was for him.

How she felt for him. She’d never changed her life so
totally to impress someone else. He’d made so much of himself. And for what? He
wasn’t doing it for the intrinsic joy of it. Or was he? Could a person truly be
as successful as he was solely to please another? An imaginary other, in this
case.

It wasn’t until she had stepped out of the bathroom that
she heard the pounding at the door. She started for the door at a run. What if
something had happened to him?

She didn’t even look out the peephole, but threw the
bolt and jerked the door open.

Beau Kurck sat on her stoop, a box of tequila beside
him. And a crazy-wide smile rainbowing across his face.

“Beautiful May in June,” he croaked, likely thinking he
was crooning. She looked past him, wondering how many of her neighbors were
witnessing this.

“Nobody but the man with the golden-haired yappy dog,” Beau
said happily. The condo association president.
Fantastic.

“Get yourself right in here now,” she said, trying to
whisper but sounding more like a hiss. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Not nearly enough.” He lurched to his feet and handed
her a plastic bag of groceries. He picked up the box, which had more than one
kind of bottle from the clinking she heard, and stepped across her threshold.
“Finns can hold their liquor.”

“Not all Finns,” she said, leading him in and to the
right. She set the bag on the kitchen counter. Pretzels, frozen pizza, and more
Finn Crisps, along with the leftover chili and fries from Ben’s.

“This kitchen is smaller than mine,” he said, pushing
the now-empty bag to the side to set the box on the counter. “I’m not even sure
the tequila mix will fit in that tiny icebox.”

“You didn’t need to buy the biggest one.”

“I did so. And I got one for you, too. And some
tequila.”

She didn’t say anything. She closed her eyes and pinched
the bridge of her nose. At this rate, she’d need another shower to get to
sleep.
Or a big ole drink.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She looked up at him, startled. “I
realized when I saw you go in your house alone what an asshole I’d been to you
today. Since we met, really. I’m sorry I scared you in the restaurant. I’m
sorry I don’t know how to treat ladies right.” He looked so forlorn she reached
out for him, and then pulled her hand back. That was not her role. Her role was
to sober him up, get him in a taxi and to the hotel, and keep on the high and
narrow.

But he’d apologized, and he looked like he meant it. And
hotel rooms are lonely, and sterile. And his hair was in his eyes, and somebody
should push it to the side. And maybe kiss him all better.

She pinched her nose harder, but her wayward mind
already was conjuring pictures of this Beau, splayed across the bright blue of
her futon. They matched.

So be it. She reached up and around his shoulder,
catching him in a side-hug. “I’ll drink with you if you want. But remember, I’m
no Finn.”

He squeezed her back. Was that a sob? But when he let
her go, there was no trace of tears. She must have imagined it.

He stalked past the counter and into the combined dining
room/living room/studio as if he were sober. Like a cat, looking at everything
quickly instead of sniffing it. He must have decided all was well, for he slipped
out of his suit coat and started unbuttoning his shirt.

With every button he loosened, May’s temperature rose a
notch. Two down, and a hint of light brown chest hair. Three, and a nipple was
exposed. She swallowed, suddenly flushed and bothered.

“Whoa there, cowboy. What’s up?”

“I’m sick of this monkey suit. Do you have anything that
would fit me?” He paused, on Number Four, belly button, and looked up at her.
At least he looked a little sheepish before he burst into bitter laughter.

She’d do anything to stop that poisonous humor. “Wait. I
do think I have a shirt at least. The slacks, well…”

“We’ll stick with the shirt. I can unbutton the
trousers.”

May scurried across the tiny hall and into her bedroom
before her blush hit full-on. From the lower drawer, she pulled out the team
Penguin shirt she’d done last year. Coming back around the corner at a quick
clip, May froze mid-step.

All the buttons were undone; the shirt was at his waist.
His back was as beautifully sculpted as his face. He must work out every day.
She hoped she wasn’t smiling inanely. The T-shirt dropped out of her nerveless
hands and onto the floor.

He heard the sound and turned, then grinned. “Enjoying
the show?”

May remembered to shut her mouth and swallow. He rolled
his hips as he walked toward her. She didn’t remember his gait as being so
rolling, or so hot. He stopped an arm’s length away, looking as if he were
trying to gauge her mood.

She scowled. “You know you have a hot bod. What of it?”

He grinned. She thought he was going to touch her, and
if he touched her, she thought, she was going to explode right then and there.
But he bent down and picked up the T-shirt.

“Black, appropriate. And XXL, even too big for me. But
look.” He flicked the T-shirt over his shoulder and held out his wrists to her.
They were still cuffed by the shirt.

“The penguins.”

“Beautiful but not easy to manage.”

“Not easy for you.” She reached for the closest one.
Something sang through her veins at the touch, but she swallowed it down. Quick
bend-snap, bend-snap. “Shackles off, Mr. Kurck.”

“Beau.” He rubbed his wrists as if they had actually
been handcuffed. She saw his shoulders flex, and grabbed the tail of the
T-shirt as it and the
Oxford
slid to the ground.

He stretched up and back, making a noise something like
a growl-sigh, a sun salutation in the middle of the night. “That’s more like
it.”

May fought the urge to run the base of her palm up his
middle, from the divot of his solar plexus, skimming the dusting of hair, on
up, up, up to that marvelous cheek-jawline. Instead, she fisted the T-shirt and
pushed it into his solar plexus.

His arms snapped down and caught the shirt, briefly
trapping her hand in it. “I thank you, Miss Reed.”

“May.” Something was wrong with her voice, her throat
was so tight. She had to calm down. Where was that drink? She fled to the
kitchen and poured herself a tumbler of water twice as big as her margarita
glass.

He was there before she turned the faucet off. “You’re
not going to keep up that way. That’s cheating.”

“We people who have to work tomorrow call it
self-preservation. And what about your shift, Mr.—Beau?”

He shrugged and turned away from her. Plopping down on
her futon, he said. “Don’t forget the crisps. Real crisps, chips they call them
here. And I called in unwell.”

“You called in sick?”

“I had to. Otherwise the first person to piss me off
would’ve been fired. And then the first person to tell me off for firing them
would be fired. Last time, I fired half my staff before I passed out.”

“How long ago was last time?” She turned one of the
dining-room chairs around to face him and sat on it. Their feet shared her tiny
coffee table, along with two years’ worth of Print magazines and two weeks’
worth of newspapers.

He thought about it. “Seven, eight?” He narrowed his
eyes at her. “Why are you sitting so far away from me? How are we going to
share the crisps that way?”

She tossed him the package underhand, even though she had
played fastball as a girl. Not the time for that, really.

He opened them easily. She hadn’t been able to figure
out the packaging. “Don’t like crisps?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come over here and try one. I promise not to flirt at
you. No, what is the word? Pass-making?”

“Make a pass. You have been flirting since you walked in
the door.”

“Before that,” he said, nodding. “Rest assured, we Finns
can drink ‘til morning. But perform? Not so much. Have no fear.”

His honesty startled a laugh out of her. “So you didn’t
come here for a pity fuck?”

Even his blush was rugged, the pink fighting to get
through his day-old beard. “Okay, maybe. More like a pity snuggle.”

“I’ll give you a pity spare bed. How’s that?”

“Fair compromise.” His gaze snapped to hers. “You’re not
gay, too?”

“No, I’m not.” She felt inappropriately pleased at his
expression of relief, and then stung as the sides of his face dragged into
gloom.