Between Desire and Denial: A Fake Dating Romance (Hardy Billionaires)

The next morning, I stretched in bed, thinking I could coax Olive into morning sex, have some breakfast with her, and do all the things you do after a good night of screwing around. I wasn’t even opposed to cuddling her this morning. I’d enjoyed doing it last night.

Except, I woke up to my phone ringing and when I grabbed for it, I saw her side of the bed empty and completely made up. I couldn’t help the pang in my chest at that. “What do you need, Dex?” I answered the call as I walked through my place, smelling sweet honey-covered apples all around me but finding no Olive anywhere. I checked the bathroom, the other room connected to the en suite, and even looked out at the balcony.

She’d left me like I was a shitty, dirty one-night stand she was ashamed of. And if that’s all she wanted from me, that was fine. I didn’t do more than one-nights with women anyway.

Dex blabbered about work on the other line. “So, you going to that ridiculous HOA community meeting? It sounds like they’re pulling strings with New Haven City to make sure you can’t renovate your condo complex and get companies in your new office building there.” New Haven City was a large, vibrant metropolis hub. It was a powerhouse of business startups and innovation. But for some reason, the city was continually blocking my office building and I’d finally found out it had to do with Paradise Grove.

“Paradise Grove is going to be the bane of my fucking existence,” I growled and winced as I thought about how I’d pried into Olive’s upbringing just a tad. She’d grown up in the community I was now invested in. I’d actually researched the place after I’d become intrigued, hearing her talking to Kee about it.

I liked risky investments, and with land available near the exclusive community situated right outside a big city, putting in for a bid to build there was a great opportunity to turn risks into rewards.

“It should be the bane of your existence,” my older brother reminded me. “You wanted to invest in this shit. Not me. Now you took your chance and what do you always say? Enjoy the dumbass dance?”

“It’ll work out.” I walked over to her half-made side of the bed and threw the blankets off just to mess it up. I was still more than a little irritated she’d left me this morning.

“Or just admit it was a bad one, bro.” Dex chuckled like he was excited about me losing my ass on this.

“You bet on this being a bad investment, didn’t you?” My older brothers always acted like I made bad decisions.

“Dom said it was going to be and Declan said he wanted nothing to do with it. I merely said I thought you’d stop investing time and money in a few months, and—”

“And so there’s a fucking bet between you fuckers,” I concluded, my competitive blood spiking.

Then I heard Kee in the background, and Dex grumbled, “Why do you need to talk to my brother the night after our wedding?”

“Because he’s my best friend, you idiot,” she said before her voice became clearer. “Did you see Olive leave last night? I can’t get ahold of her.”

“Was I supposed to be watching over her?” I growled in irritation.

“No, you big baby.” She tsked. “It was just a question. She didn’t answer her phone this morning.”

“Pretty sure her and Rufford had a spat. She’s probably nursing her wounds.”

I heard Kee sigh. “Right. I saw that coming from the way he was so distant with her. I should swing by her hotel room and—”

“Enjoy your first morning of marriage, Kee. Olive’s just fine. I’ll check on her.” I winced immediately and then pinched the bridge of my nose. In the past, it would have been so easy to handle a small problem like this for Kee, but now I’d slept with her friend. “I’ll call you later.”

I hung up and punched Olive’s number. It rang once, then twice, then went directly to voicemail.

She was ignoring me? I hated that she thought she could and that it was the best option she landed on. So, I did what I shouldn’t have. I pulled up the hotel registry and figured out her room number. These were the benefits of being part owner.

I called her room’s phone from mine. That way, she wouldn’t know who was calling.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded laced with sleep and confusion. I glanced at the time. It was a bit early after what we’d been doing all night, but I didn’t care.

“You’re ignoring me when I gave you orgasm after orgasm last night?”

“Dimitri?” she murmured, like she couldn’t believe it.

“Who else would it be, Olive? You have some other guy last night too?”

“Oh, shut up,” she grumbled as I heard rustling. “Why are you calling me?”

“Why weren’t you in my damn bed?” I said back even though I wasn’t supposed to be calling about that.

I was met with silence, a long tense silence I didn’t at all feel comfortable with. Normally, there was no vulnerability when I was with a woman, no questions about how she felt, no worries that I might be bothering her. With Olive, I thought of all those things at once.

“I needed to sleep. So, I came back to my room.”

“You couldn’t sleep next to me?” I sounded like a butthurt reject.

“I don’t really sleep well next to other people,” she confessed. “Anyway, it’s not you, it’s—”

“Are you feeding me a line right now?”

“Well, you sound like you kind of might need a line,” she said quietly before I heard a giggle.

“Are you laughing at me?” Why was I completely offended?

“Dimitri, I think my intentions last night were clear.”

“Crystal. I know what we did was just a hookup,” I corrected her pointedly, my voice almost a growl.

“Oh, okay.” She cleared her throat. “Good. Then, if there’s nothing else—”

“Kee wants to know if you’re all right. I told her about Rufford and—”

“You did not tell her that we slept together, right?” She cut me off with a screechy voice. Then I heard more rustling. “I’m up. Do you want to talk about this? We should definitely talk about this. She cannot know. I can come back to your suite if you want to discuss how to handle it and—’

“You want to see me now all of a sudden?” I grumbled.

“I don’t give a crap about seeing you, Dimitri. I just need you to promise you will not tell her anything.”

“Why?” I didn’t want to tell her either but, damn, she was adamant.

“Why?” she repeated and her voice got higher. “Why? Because she’s employed me for the better part of my adulthood when I needed her, and I cannot have her thinking I’m sleeping around with her best friend.”

“Is that all I am? Your friend’s best friend?”

“Yep,” she said loudly, like it was obvious. “You’re her very rich, very annoying, very entitled, does-whatever-he-wants-and-shows-up-whenever-he-feels-like-it best friend. We barely even talk because you’re working in the corner all the time. Barely friends, Dimitri. Barely. And if she thinks I just had a total lapse in judgment because of a breakup, which I did, I will look completely vulnerable and she’ll worry. I’m her assistant. I’m supposed to worry about her.”

“Kee’s taking a break from the limelight.”

“Not only is she taking a break from the limelight, but she doesn’t need to worry about us on top of everything. She wouldn’t want to know that her friends …”

“Hooked up and had great sex?” I finished for her.

“Please don’t ever say that again. But yes. She’ll just worry that it’s going to cause a rift.”

“I don’t hide the women I sleep with, Olive. I don’t really hide anything I do at all.”

“I’m well aware of that. But we aren’t sleeping together. We slept together. Once. It will never happen again.”

Damn, that was a shot to my ego. “Olive honey, you sound so sure.”

“Do not ever use that name again either.”

“Don’t like me bringing up how you taste?” Now I was goading her just to piss her off after she’d irritated me.

“You’re literally the worst person ever to talk to in the morning.”

“Had you stayed with me, we wouldn’t be talking.”

“You know what, Dimitri?” She spoke fast now, didn’t even let me reply. “You really think I just wanted to wake up with my one-night stand that I don’t care about? I just broke up with Rufford, and now I have to deal with my heartbreak.” I heard how her voice wobbled and I hated that I heard the sadness there.

“Olive, if you want—”

“No. I don’t want anything. I have to deal with that and the shitstorm of my email I sent last night. I really don’t have time to deal with you too.” Her tone hardened.

I frowned about that email and about her university situation in general. “You said that would be fine. If it’s not, let me know, and I can—’

“It is fine,” she shrieked. “I know it’s fine because I was sad until you called and made me so mad that I don’t have any more capacity for emotion.”

“Well, I guess my charm works.” I sat on the bed and smiled as I listened to her throw anger at me. “Want to come over and see if other parts of me work too?”

“I really can’t with you right now. It’s too early and quite frankly, when we slept together, I wasn’t expecting this the next day.”

“What?”

“You talking freely about how we fucked. I do not want to deal with you or your mouth right now.”

“What’s wrong with my mouth?” I wasn’t sure why I kept egging her on, but I genuinely was enjoying myself more than I had in a long time. “You seemed pretty happy with it on your pussy last night and on your—”

“I am so mad at you I can’t even see straight. Do not call me back when I hang up, and do not ever bring last night up again. We are done, and I am done with you. When you see me around Kee, act like you did before. Got it?”

“Maybe.”

“You’d better get it, you dick.” And then she hung up.

Well, she didn’t exactly sound sad anymore. So, that was a win in my book.

I tried to forget how she spit the fire from hell at me but tasted as sweet as heaven as I looked over my schedule for the day. Thoughts of her lingered in my head, bouncing around and causing havoc a lot longer than I would have liked.

It’s when I concluded that this had to be one of the best and worst one-night stands of my life.

Maybe I never had noticed her until last night. But I wasn’t going to forget her being in the room after the night we’d had. Not for a long fucking time.