Billionaire Beast

“…I mean a long time,” she says. “Leila, we were just talking about you! Come have a seat. Rick here is going to buy you a drink. What do you want?”

Drunk in the middle of the day: is this my life now?

“I guess I don’t have to go back to work today. I’ll have a tequila sunrise,” I answer, eliciting a cheer for some reason.

The one that must be Rick—my clever deduction is due to the fact that he’s the one leaning over the bar, ordering my drink—has dark, shoulder-length hair, and there’s a tribal armband only partially hidden under his shirtsleeve.

He’s really not my type. I’m more into the clean-cut gentleman, but now that I think of it, the only “clean-cut gentleman” I ever dated was Chad.

What the hell? I’ll see if there’s something to this Rick guy other than the tattoos and the somewhat unsettling look that he’s giving me as he hands over my drink.

Boy, he is really staring me down.

All right, maybe Rick’s not the guy, but I do feel like letting loose and maybe doing something stupid.

“So, what do you guys do?” I ask, scanning each of the four men in turn, looking for anyone who doesn’t look like they’d kill me in my sleep.

“Finance,” they all answer at once.

That explains it.

“We’re in finance, too,” Annabeth says.

“No, we’re not,” I rebut. The tone catches the guys off guard. “I mean, we’re in brokerage, but that’s hardly the…” I trail off, realizing just how full of crap I am. If Annabeth and I aren’t in finance, what are we?

Annabeth just smiles and touches my arm.

“Will you guys excuse us for a minute?”

Four men with blank faces nod, startlingly in unison.

We get about 10 feet away from the bar when Annabeth turns on her heel and asks, “What’s your deal? Those guys are totally into us.”

“I don’t know,” I hedge. “I guess they’re just not my type.”

“Yeah?” she asks. “What is your type, then?”

I shrug.

“I think I know what the problem is.”

“Yeah?”

If she has any ideas, I’m more than open to hear them.

“You’re scared,” she says. “It’s been so long since you’ve gotten yourself some strange that you don’t know what to do when it’s sitting right in front of you.”

“Strange is a pretty good way to describe it,” I say, looking over at Annabeth’s brood, not one of them speaking or showing any kind of emotion whatsoever. They’re just sitting there, staring off into what I’m nearly certain is nothing.

“You need to loosen up,” she says. “Now, drink that shit down and I’m going to order us some shots.”

“I didn’t really bring that much—”

“You’re a pretty girl in a bar,” Annabeth interrupts. “The last thing in the world you have to do is buy your own drink. There’s not a man in here that wouldn’t rather see you drunk, so chug that down and let’s get it started.”

“Get what started, though?” I ask, my adventurousness almost completely dissolved already.

“A nice, pleasant, one-hour relationship,” she says. “You need to get someone to clear out the cobwebs.”