Making Out with the Billionaire Read online

  Making Out with the Billionaire

  Marcella Swann

  A Love & Trouble Novel

  Copyright © 2019 by Orleans Publishing.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek

  Hard Drive Chapter 1

  Hard Drive Chapter 2

  Good Girl, Bad Boy FREE

  Also by Marcella Swann

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The damn car was stuttering.

  Seriously?

  Kerry Donovan could hardly believe it but even thinking hurt. Her head was throbbing like some kind of pulsating formless creature from a sci fi movie. She scrunched her eyes, taking her perfectly manicured hand to her temples as the taxi driver swerved from one lane to the next. The faster he went, the more that tin can of a Ford late model sedan rattled.

  She looked out the window and tried to draw a breath as the taxi cut someone off with another quick jerk from one lane to another. She heard a honk and it struck like a stick. My keys. Oh, shit.

  She grabbed her purse, rifling quickly through it. Lipstick. Cancun travel guide. A pair of old earrings.

  “Shit!” She sheepishly looked over at the driver, but the guy hadn’t even noticed. The music was so loud. What was it? Hindi? Bangladesh? Pakistani?

  Kerry placed her bag on her lap in a hopeless effort to find her keys. Beads of perspiration were streaming down her forehead. It had to be the hottest day in San Francisco in forever.

  “Sir,” she said, her voice in a knot. No response. She drew a breath and girded herself to up the volume. “Sir. Driver.”

  The man, a burly block of a human with jet black hair pressed tightly around his head and a mole beneath his left eye, grunted something as he raised his eyes to the rearview mirror. Kerry didn’t bother to ask what he’d said. The headache was painful enough.

  “Sir, can you turn on the air conditioning.”

  He grunted something again.

  She turned her eyes upward. Turn the music down, dude, she thought to herself.

  “The air conditioning,” she repeated.

  The driver was chomping on gum. He stopped chewing and shook his head.

  “No . . . err.” He looked up at the rearview mirror and then motioned to the dashboard with his right hand. “Broken.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kerry muttered to herself. She turned back to her purse, her hand frantically cutting through all her stuff. As painful as it was to think in the heat, she tried to retrace her morning.

  Up at 5 a.m. Packing first thing. Then shower. Packing some more. Should have done this the night before. Damn it. Cold coffee. Makeup and hair. And the Uber guy doesn’t show. Just wigs out. Call a taxi. Late already. Getting even later.

  For a moment, Kerry let her mind wander. She’d planned this getaway with Eric, her boyfriend, for six months. Seven glorious days in Cancun. Just the two of them. It’d been a hell of a past year. He’d been made chair of the department of history at Berkeley and she’d released her second book just a month ago and was headed for the USA Today Bestseller list.

  All of that could wait, though. She needed this time away. They needed it to reconnect. Then it hit her. She was so late that she’d focused on the two humongous matching red suitcases and dashed out the door when the taxi finally arrived. She could see it now as clearly as the water in the Gulf of Mexico. Right there on the credenza by the front door, her keys.

  Another surge of pain racked her as she pulled Frommer’s guide out of her bag. She couldn’t help but smile.

  Focus Kerry, she thought to herself. Just get to the airport.

  She and the man she loved had earned the time away, and she was going to have a good time even if it killed her. And the way this was going, it just might.

  She checked the clock on her phone. It was going to be tight but no freakin’ way was she going to miss that plane. Then suddenly the car jerked to a stop and Kerry jerked forward right along with it, dropping the book. The headache came throbbing back with a vengeance.

  She leaned back. Tried to focus her eyes. She could hear the driver cursing loudly in some foreign language. Was that Farsi? The driver had mercifully turned off the music, but she could see his hand waving with disdain.

  What the hell? Kerry finally looked out the front windshield and the freeway was at a standstill. In the distance, she could see planes taking off and landing. So close.

  A vein in the cab driver’s forehead had bulged, and sweat began to bead down his face. “What plane?”

  It took Kerry a minute to gather herself, but even then she didn’t get his drift.

  “What plane?”

  “What plane err you,” he asked again with a tone that was more condescending than helpful.

  “What plane am I?” Kerry said to herself. And then after a second, she got it.

  “United. I’m flying United.”

  The man frowned and shook his head. “No goot. No goot. International?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Far. Very far terminal. Crowded.” He waved again at the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Kerry peered out the windshield again as far as she could see. The backup into SFO stretched for at least a quarter of a mile.

  “Shit.”

  She wrapped her hands around the sides of her face and let out an exasperated breath. She had 45 minutes to get to the gate. She realized her hands were sticky with sweat, and her face was like flypaper.

  “Look, Mr. Driver. I’ve had one hell of a year. Lots of good and some bad. I know this is more than you bargained for . . . but my boyfriend of four years and I . . . we’ve had our ups and downs. I finished a book this year, and it’s gonna make the USA Today Bestseller list. I know it’s not the New York Times but still . . .”

  Miraculously, the traffic began to move slowly but inexorably. The driver stopped chewing his gum and looked into his rearview mirror, his eyebrows furrowed. Kerry was caught in thought but drifted back.

  “Now, I’m the first to admit we’ve had our ups and downs over the years. I think I mentioned that. He’s been busy writing a historiography of the Enlightenment and me? Well, I’ve had to bear down on my book, The Power of You.”

  It seemed that with each word, the traffic gave way even more. Her voice stiffened as she sat up. “But here’s the deal, Mr. Driver.”

  The driver turned toward her ever so slightly, lifting an eyebrow and cocking an ear.

  “I think he’s finally gonna pop the question. Got it?”

  The man nodded and grunted.

  “Yeah. Dude, I’m pushing 33. So you need to get me to Terminal B. Like . . . NOW!”

  The driver jumped. The traffic jam seemed to clear just enough, and he floored it.

  In 12 minutes and 32 seconds, the yellow cab was at Terminal B. Kerry tipped him $20 and jumped out of the taxi, lugged her two overstuffed, overweight suitcases and sprinted toward the check-in. The place was a zoo; she was a hot mess. Perspiration covered her body. Her arms and shoulders ached from hoisti
ng and then wheeling the two monsters across an airport. She just kept telling herself that it would be worth it when she finally got where she was going.

  A woman on a cell phone cut her off, causing Kerry to stop suddenly and sending one of her suitcases tumbling on its side. The caster broke; the woman hardly noticed. When she checked in the bags, both hideously over the weight limit and costing her even more money, she got her phone and called Eric as she ran to get through security.

  No answer.

  As she waited in line, she texted him.

  At security. Almost there. Love u :)

  She slid the phone back in her purse and took off her shoes and loaded them onto the conveyor. For a moment, Kerry felt like the universe was getting back in sync. The keys, the cab, the hideous heat, the migraine. All of it receded. It was all Eric and Cancun and romantic sunswept beaches from here on out.

  A smile finally managed to swell from within her. Kerry was surer than anything in her life that Eric was going to propose. He’d been asking about the vacation for weeks. He’d been trying to be nonchalant, but she knew all too well. He wanted the details. He was not a man to take much interest in things outside his work. So this was a big tell.

  In fact, she’d asked him to stay over at her place the night before so they could spend an evening together (which they hadn’t in months)—and ride to the airport in the morning. But he’d declined. He had work to finish. He was planning something, she thought to herself, as she finished putting her shoes on. Planning something like a ring and a proposal.

  With that thought in mind, she looked up a saw that she had 14 gates to traverse. Shit.

  She checked her phone. Nothing. Where is he?

  Kerry gritted her teeth, gathered herself with a deep breath and then broke into a sprint.

  She weaved through people, ran around others. Cut to the edges and then toward the middle. At one point, she leaped over the walking stick of an old man. And then it happened. A toddler. Just a foot in front of her. He waddled away from his mother. Kerry was boxed in and going full speed.

  Her eyes grew wide. In a split second, she made the move to skyward. Going full speed, she went airborne, soaring over the child who looked up and giggled.

  The child’s mother rushed to grab him, letting out a screech of a scream, and surprising a clerk on a ladder across the hall who was putting the finishing touches on a massive chocolate pyramid. So startled was the woman that she dropped the final chocolate, losing her balance and falling on to the pyramid, high-end chocolate bars cushioning her fall and flying everywhere.

  Shouts went up everywhere. Kerry, for her part, managed to use her right hand, left elbow, and right knee to break her fall. For a second, everything went black. Then the pain surged through her extremities.

  A crowd gathered around her and soon enough helped her up.

  “Are you all right, dear?” An old woman asked her.

  Kerry was dazed but bound and determined. She nodded. “Got to go.”

  The place was a mess. Hundreds of Swiss chocolate bars lay strewn across the floor. The toddler was crying, clearly wanting the woman to jump over him again, and Kerry was not about to be deterred.

  She began limping her way to the terminal.

  Just get there, Kerry. Just get to the plane. It was all she kept telling herself as the gate finally came into view. There was no one boarding the plane, but the door was still open, and there were two people at the gate.

  The first was the United ticket agent. She had a lanyard around her neck and a look of annoyance on her face. Next to her was Eric. As soon as he spotted Kerry, he bolted toward her. When he reached her, she threw her arms around him.

  “I made it. You don’t know the half of what I’ve been through, but I made it.” She sagged against him. “There was no way in hell I was gonna miss this plane.”

  He pulled away.

  “Have I got a story for you.” She felt the pain in her head and her limbs but only for a second. “Let’s get on.”

  Eric stared at her. Kerry began to move toward the gate but felt something strange, something off. Eric wasn’t moving. Was he going to propose right here, right now?

  She stopped.

  “Kerry, I’m not going.” His voice was flat in that way it could be when he wanted to make a point.

  Kerry looked at the ticket agent, who was now glowering at them.

  “What?”

  Eric stepped toward Kerry and grabbed her at the bicep.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just put it out there . . . “

  Eric looked away, and Kerry instantly sensed that a proposal wasn’t forthcoming now—or ever.

  “I’m getting on that flight.” He nodded toward a gate that was also boarding for Puerto Vallarta.

  Kerry instantly noticed the young woman standing uncomfortably by the gate. It was Jan, Eric’s graduate assistant. Something horrible clicked into place.

  “I’m leaving you, Kerry . . .” Eric’s voice began to seem distance to Kerry, as if it was drifting in the air, filling the spaces all about her except in her ears.

  “. . . I need to own my manhood, Kerry. I think you would appreciate that.”

  Appreciate that? Kerry suddenly couldn’t breathe. I could castrate the asshole this very minute. Can he appreciate that?

  “I need to own my I Ching, you know? Jan has put me in touch with my Eastern side, that transcendental thing. I was clearly Asian in a different life.” He smiled at the thought.

  What the fuck is he talking about? Asian? Really? He grew up in Wisconsin.

  “And let’s face it, Kerry, we were never all that compatible.”

  At that very moment, the final boarding call for his new flight came over the public address.

  “Goodbye, Kerry.” He began to walk away.

  “How long?”

  Eric stopped.

  “Umm . . . I’d say we found our core selves six months ago.”

  Kerry felt an electrical surge through her body. She limped the few steps to Eric and looked him in the eyes and felt a calmness overtake her. “Six months?”

  “It was almost mystical. Meta.”

  Kerry nodded her head, seemingly agreeing with the harmonic convergence of his decision to shag a graduate assistant that could be his daughter.

  She raised her hand, pointing her index finger in the air.

  “One thing.” She flicked her index finger to call him closer toward her. He complied, taking a step and standing just inches away.

  “Meta this, asshole.” She reared back and kicked him in the shin. Rising above his muffled squeal were the only words she conjured. “Bill Clinton.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Kerry was still at the airport, black mascara streaked and mottled on her face, red rings around the edges of her eyes. Her hair lay limp on her head, and she rested her bruised forearm on a baggie full of ice, which was mostly melted by now.

  It didn’t matter. She was on her fourth vodka tonic at a hideously tacky airport bar called the Tiki Cabana. It had rows of Christmas lights of various faded colors strung throughout the ceiling, a thatched hut motif through the few tables that dotted the place, and the bartender had a sombrero and sarape draped around his neck and shoulders.

  Soon after she’d arrived, Kerry had wondered how he managed to work in that idiotic getup, but the curiosity didn’t last long. She had too much to occupy her thoughts already.

  “Give me another one.” She lifted her empty glass but didn’t bother to eye the bartender. He knew the drill.

  She was slumped over the bar, sitting on the edge of a high chair next to the wall that had some plastic looking grotesqueness that was supposed to pass as a totem of a fearsome warrior scowling, his teeth bared. At the top of the totem, there was a sign with one arrow pointing left to Cancun and the other point right to Tahiti.

  Kerry scarcely noticed. She plopped the glass on the bar and felt her world spin round her. She wanted to cry, and with b
ooze doing its thing, there was also the absurd urge to laugh.

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  Kerry heard the question but didn’t know whether it was coming out of her head, which she fully acknowledged was reeling, or from somewhere else. She closed her eyes.

  The bartender placed the drink by her, and Kerry could sense that he was lingering for a moment. She just waited for him to go away. These weren’t the kind of problems that would get better by talking to the bartender.

  “Get another bag full of ice, please. For the arm,” a feminine voice spoke, and Kerry heard the bartender walk away, supposedly to fulfil the request.

  “No,” Kerry said.

  “What? You don’t want the ice? It looks pretty swollen.”

  Kerry opened her eyes. She hadn’t noticed the woman sitting two high chairs away, but that wasn’t surprising. She hadn’t really noticed anything but the fact that she’d been dumped at a freaking airport.

  “No. I don’t believe in reincarnation.”

  “Well, that’s interesting because I’m training to be a witch, you know. Wicca and all that. And in my practice, I’m learning to get in touch with people’s auras. And you, I’m telling you, you have the aura of a witch in another life.”

  Kerry took a drink and let the vodka burn through her.

  “Some fuckin’ day.”

  “Missed a flight, aye? Me, too. Traffic was, as they say, a bitch.”

  She wondered how long the woman had been sitting there. Kerry turned slightly to get a better look at her. The young woman had tousled and wavy hair that went this way and that but was held together, oddly, by a red bandanna. She was wearing some kind of flouncy Boho hippie pants and tie-dyed halter top.

  Strange. But it worked for her and Kerry wasn’t sure if it was hippie retro thing or just shabby chic.