The Billionaire Player (In Too Deep)

CHAPTER24

LARISA

For three days now, I had been staring at his email. Three long days of not knowing whether to be flattered or insulted.

Tanner was offering me double my usual rate, and with no budget being set on the project, that meant I’d be able to take my time to do it right without budgetary constraints rushing me. At the same time, I could be making a bundle while working my dream job. That combined with the freedom he’d promised made for a very attractive offer.

In the back of my mind, there was a vindictive voice whispering about how I should be more insulted that he thought I could be bought and paid for. That nothing about the notion was flattering and that I should tell him to go straight to hell.

It was a very small voice, though. I might not know him as well as I thought I did, but with hindsight being twenty-twenty, I was pretty sure I knew him well enough to know that he didn’t actually think he could buy me. The more likely scenario, given what I knew about him, was that he was trying to get back in my good graces by making me an offer I couldn’t refuse, which would mean that I had to see him again. In turn, that meant he’d have another opportunity to explain himself and he likely wouldn’t stop trying to make me listen until I heard him out.

And that was where the flattery came in. I couldn’t believe he was willing to spend that amount of money just to get me back to the proverbial table after I’d quit. I’d been agonizing over it ever since the email came in, and now that I’d cooled down, I’d realized that I had most definitely overreacted.

The fact of the matter was that the job to redesign the interior of his new house was a completely separate issue from our disastrous near kiss. I’d never walked out on a job because of personal issues with a client, and it had been terribly unprofessional of me to do it with him.

“So suck it up,” I lectured myself quietly, clicking on the icon to respond to the email. It was yet another testament to my unprofessional behavior that it’d already taken me three days just to get this far. I should’ve replied the same day I got the email, and if not then, then I should’ve done it the very next day.

My turnaround time on responses was something I was proud of, but I’d really botched it on this one. I’d needed the time to gain some perspective, though. If I had replied that day, I wouldn’t have said the same thing as I was typing now.

The truth of it was that I’d overreacted because I really liked him. I’d really thought there might be something between us, and when that other woman had shown up, I’d been disappointed and humiliated.

Neither of those things had anything to do with the job I’d agreed to do for him, though. My personal feelings had been hurt, but professionally, I knew I was capable of getting said job done. Thinking I wouldn’t be able to do the job to the best of my ability had simply been heat-of-the-moment fears, and now that the heat of that moment was over, I’d realized that I still had a vision for that house and there was nothing stopping me from making it a reality.

I’d acted horribly, but the job was still mine for the taking if I wanted it, and I did want it. If he hadn’t already appointed someone else in the three days it’d taken me to get my head on straight, that was. I wouldn’t blame him if he’d already replaced me, though.

Three days was unacceptable wait time for a client of a firm the size of mine. As my fingers flew across my keyboard, I mentally crossed them that he hadn’t found someone else in the meantime. That house had been haunting my dreams, and the way I’d behaved would bother me forever if I didn’t apologize, even if he had found someone else.

Mind made up, I did a quick reread of the email I’d just typed, and then I hit send before I could overthink it. The message wasn’t long or overly complicated. I simply apologized and told him that I was happy to continue doing the work for our previously agreed-upon fee. While I hadn’t said anything about it, I regretted dropping him as a client and I couldn’t accept his offer of being paid double for my services. It would make me feel dirty and dishonest if I did. Just because he could afford to pay more didn’t mean my regular fees weren’t still fair for what I offered.

Since I would be doing the same job for him as I did for everyone else, he would be charged the same as everyone else. His money didn’t mean I deserved to be paid more.

While I still had some misgivings about working for him, I’d also remembered that I was a big girl. Going back to the job didn’t mean I had to give him a chance on a personal level. It also didn’t mean I had to open my heart or my legs to him, and it certainly didn’t mean I had to delve into his sex life and whether or not it was as active as that girl had made it sound.

Work was work and sex was sex. So far, I’d managed to keep the two things entirely separate—as they should be—and I simply had to keep doing exactly that. It wouldn’t even be that hard. I’d only been doing it my entire adult life.

Once I saw that the email had been sent, I pushed my chair away from my desk in the living room of my apartment and started scouting around for something to eat. I was starving, but as it turned out, I really needed to go grocery shopping.

These last few days, I’d been holed up licking my wounds. As I result, I now had to settle for some canned soup for lunch. Butternut, which wasn’t even my favorite. I like creamed tomato best, but I kept a few cans of butternut for Brit since she couldn’t get enough of the stuff. My best friend might not technically have been my roommate anymore, but whenever her husband went out of town, she often ended up having dinner here and sleeping over anyway.

Almost as soon as I dumped the contents of the can into a pot, my laptop dinged with an incoming email. Wow. That was fast.

I didn’t know how I knew, but I just had a feeling that it was Tanner’s reply, and once I ran back to my laptop to check, my suspicion was confirmed. It was from him, and he wanted to video-call me.

Shit.Acting on instinct, I glanced down and thanked my lucky stars that I’d showered already. Since I mostly worked from home, that wasn’t always the case, even if it was almost lunch time. I tried to get up, get showered, and get dressed every morning just like everyone else did before work, but when I didn’t have any meetings planned for the day, it just didn’t always happen. I would start working while I was still in bed, and then I got so immersed sometimes that I only snapped out of it well after noon.

Luckily, I’d had a quick, early morning meeting, and as a result, I was dressed professionally and looking presentable enough. Sure, my outfit wasn’t sexy, but it didn’t have to be. I ran a hand through my hair just in case it’d gotten a little unruly, and then I applied a fresh coat of lip gloss. Nothing out of the ordinary before I took a meeting with a client with my camera on.

Tapping out a quick response, I told him I was available, and not a minute after I sent the email, the call came in. I was seated in front of my laptop, but I could tell he was using his phone. As soon as the call connected, he smiled at me through the screen, moving around in a very upscale apartment that looked like it was somewhere in the city.

“Hey, you,” he said, and my heart skipped a beat. Those blue eyes were just so damn sparkly that they couldn’t be ignored, and even wearing an old baseball shirt, he was every bit as hot as I remembered. Maybe even more so in his casual clothes. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Now that I’ve got you on the line, I’d like to apologize personally for my behavior the other day. It wasn’t very professional of me and I can assure you that it will not happen again.”

“That was on me,” he said immediately, shooting me a sheepish grin that made his dimple pop and my panties melt.

Damn. That dimple definitely still has a very direct effect on my underwear.

What he said next yanked my thoughts back to the matter at hand, though. “I don’t blame you for taking off on me or for quitting. I’d have done the same thing. You should make me pay for it, which is why I offered you double your rate. It’s still on the table if you want to change your mind.”