Filthy Rich (Filthy Rich 1)

Aidan: You know I don’t. I never do.

Was that going to change? If we were officially an item, Aidan would take me to social events. I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready. Once the gossip sites got wind of me, they’d pick apart my life and my past. I had nothing I was ashamed of, but it was still disconcerting.

And he hadn’t asked me to attend with him tonight. He was right—I wouldn’t have gone. This thing, whatever it was, was only a few hours old, and I wasn’t ready to face a spotlight. But still, shouldn’t he have suggested it? What were we doing?

For a minute, I missed the game, with its rules and its scripts. The game made everything so easy. But no one could play a game forever—sooner or later, you had to be yourself, dealing with the problems of real life.

I tidied my place, washed dishes, laundered my sex-soaked sheets. Just a single girl’s quiet Saturday night, while her billionaire CEO maybe-boyfriend went to a multimillion-dollar benefit. At seven, my phone rang. It was Emma.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her when I answered.

“What does that mean?” Emma said.

“It means you’re calling me when you’re probably working, even though it’s Saturday night.”

“Tell me the truth,” Emma said. “Are you fucking Aidan Winters?”

I nearly dropped the phone. My fingers went numb and my throat closed. Was there a rumor already? “Why would you ask that?” I managed to ask.

“I just assumed,” my sister said in her businesslike way. “I know you have the hots for him, and he is extremely bangable. You’ve been in a relaxed mood lately. I assum

ed he was getting you off.”

My jaw was hanging open. I ignored her crudeness and said, “You guessed? And you were okay with it?”

“It isn’t protocol, but I was willing to let it slide. You’re both grownups, and like I say, there’s the bangable factor. You may be my paragon of a sister, but you’re still human.”

“I’m not a paragon,” I argued.

“Yes, you are. Which is part of the reason I didn’t call you on the Aidan thing. I wanted to see you take a chance, do something a little crazy for once. Plus orgasms with a hot guy. So what if he’s your boss? It’s everything you need in your life.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Yes, I’m fucking him. And it’s more than that. We’re… I think we’re a thing.”

Emma swore. She had a sailor mouth, foul enough to make me blush. “I’m cutting his balls off,” she said when she was finished. “That’s it. They’re gone.”

“Emma, what are you talking about?”

“I’ll send it to you,” she said. “Then you can look for his remains in the Hudson River.” She hung up.

A second later, I got a text. Emma had sent a link, and the simple message: WTF?

I clicked the link. It was a gossip site. It had been posted an hour ago. The headline read, “Meet the woman who has finally landed New York’s most eligible bachelor!”

Beneath it was a photo of a woman getting out of a black SUV. She was wearing a strapless silver dress over her flawless body. From her looks she was obviously a model. The caption read: “Supermodel Angelica Barnes, who has just broken up with her rocker boyfriend, has found herself a new piece of arm candy for tonight’s benefit at the Guggenhiem. You go, Angie!”

Getting out of the car next to her, his hand on her elbow, dressed elegantly all in black, was Aidan.

Thirty-Four

Aidan

* * *

Samantha didn’t answer my texts on Sunday. She didn’t answer my phone calls or messages. She didn’t acknowledge me at all.

Something was wrong, but what could I do? Showing up at her building and banging on her door seemed like an asshole move so early in our relationship—our real relationship, that was. If I knew Samantha at all, I knew she wouldn’t appreciate a guy who demanded her attention nonstop. Maybe she needed a day of space, especially since we were going to be back to work Monday morning. After a day of impatient fretting, I decided to make sure we talked on Monday.

Except on Monday, she didn’t come to work.