Sugar Baby Beautiful

“Have you?”

Shaking her head, she held up a fossil masquerading as a cell phone. “Can I borrow yours? Mine died, and I didn’t bring a charger.”

I stared. “Who in this day and age still has a flip phone?” I asked, handing mine to her.

“I know, right?” She laughed. She was so close to me I smelled her perfume… lilies. “But I have a sentimental attachment to this antique.”

“From….” I stopped myself, and she glanced to me, knowing I was about to ask her something of her past.

“Cleo, it’s me,” she said into the phone as she went toward the window. “Oh no, you don’t care. I’ve been gone all day, and neither of you bothered to call, write, or even send a carrier pigeon?”

I grinned then stopped the moment I realized what I was doing, rising from the ground.

“Theo,” she called, and when I turned to her, she handed me the phone. “I just needed it for a quick second to check in. My roommates are out anyway. I’ll get going.”

She rushed past me up the stairs. I glanced at the phone and clicked the call log. Just like I figured, she’d deleted the number.

She really doesn’t want anyone to know her.

What was she so scared I would find out?

Checking to make sure she was in my room, I dialed as I stepped away from the stairs.

> “Sir.” My assistant answered.

“I need you to do a background check on someone. The name is Felicity Harper. I’ll send you more in the morning.” Not waiting to hear confirmation, I hung up.

When I turned around, she was standing in the middle of the staircase, looking out at the view, but I was sure she’d heard me.

Fuck.

“You couldn’t even make it a few hours.” She closed her eyes and shook her head angrily, then put on her shoes and marched toward the door.

“Felicity, you really expected me, being the person I am, to not know who is in my bed? I’ve never met a woman who only wanted sex from someone who could possibly give her anything she wants at any moment of the day. It’s usually an act. This is Los Angeles, not some backwater town in the middle of nowhere. Everyone wants something from someone, especially someone like me.”

“You know what, Mr. Darcy?” She flipped me off on her away out, adding, “Go screw yourself.”

I was tempted to throw the phone against the wall. Instead, I dialed the one human being who’d had almost as much bad luck with women as I did.

“Arty—”

“Calling to guilt trip me again?”

“Where are you?” I was in my room, grabbing a pair of jeans, white shirt, and leather jacket.

“I’m actually on the way to your place. Mom’s been bugging me to apologize. Jesus fucking Christ, you would think I—”

“Shut up, and let’s go for a ride,” I said as I clutched my wallet and the keys to my motorcycle.

Felicity

12:14 p.m.

“What happened?” Cleo came out of the kitchen with a bowl of kettle corn and a glass of wine. She was still wearing the dark red dress she’d gone out in.

“He’s an ass.” I sighed and threw myself on the couch after kicking off my shoes. “But I knew that when I went to his place. He arranged to do a background check on me. I told him my past was my past and to not to bring it up.”

“So you ran away.” She sat beside me, and I lifted my head onto her lap and reached over to take some of the kettle corn.