Romance: What The Billionaire Wants by Elizabeth Ward Page A

drops to my low cut blouse, lingering on my breasts for a bit longer than necessary but then quickly shifting back to my face.
    “Sure thing,” I manage to say without stuttering and I start backing up, but he speaks again.
    “Looks like I just missed the band.”
    I smile and shrug. “You always do.”
    “Well, my job keeps me very busy. I seem to be missing a lot of things.”
    “I get that,” I say, understanding. Between studying for my master’s degree and working in the bar, I don’t get a lot of time to do much else. “Sometimes I think you just have to make time for what you want.”
    “Even if what I want is a drink before closing and a pretty girl to bring it to me?”
    I narrow my eyes at him but there’s no hiding the smile twitching at my mouth so I settle on a warning shake of my finger at him and walk back to the bar to get his drink.
    “Scotch on ice,” I hand the order to Gemma, ignoring her amused expression. “And if you could do that without the smirk, that’d be real good.”
    “Why don’t you just ask him out?” she asks, dropping a mountain of ice into the glass. “He’s not coming for the music and it’s sure not my gorgeous face that makes him smile like a boy at Christmas every time he comes in. He likes you, the poor guy has been trying to work up the courage to ask you out for two weeks.”
    “Are you kidding?” I grip the bar to stop myself from turning to look at him. “I just got free of my last boyfriend and the pain he caused. Why the hell would I want another one?”
    She grabs the bottle off the shelf and pours, lifting and lowering the nozzle with a flourish, something she liked doing even when there wasn’t an audience.
    “You don’t have to marry the guy, just, you know, spend a bit of time with him… in bed.”
    “We’re not having this conversation.”
    I grab his drink, put it on the tray and carry it out.
    But I know Gemma’s right.
    I’ve been sensing it in the way he looks like he has something to say but then he just orders another drink or makes a safe flirty comment.
    The truth is, him liking me isn’t the issue.
    Only one kind of man ever takes an interest in me, and he’s a lying cheating ass-clown.
    Ever since my father passed away before I turned seven years old, my relationships with men have been dreadful. My father, Andrew Thomas Fellows, was a great man. He was well respected in the community and was known for his charity and love. I remember him as strong, resilient and happy, even though the final two years of his life were spent slowly dying in a cold hospital bed.
    He was, and still is, the only good man to have been in my life.
    First there was my mother’s string of bad boyfriends, including arrogant lawyers, fifthly gym junkies and mocking bar owners, before she settled on Mr. A-hole himself, David Blundell. He became my stepfather when I was twelve years old and I should have learnt then that men are no good. He was verbally abusive, rude and extremely egotistical.
    But the cycle just keeps repeating itself, and I seem to have less luck with men than my mother.
    In the last two years I’ve had three relationships and all three went bad with a capital B.
    I met Karl in college and I thought we had the perfect relationship until I walked into the bar where I worked to find him with his pants around his ankles, standing between the thighs of the busty blond waitress.
    John, was the next guy and even more perfect then Karl.
    He loved dancing and shopping and watching Project Runway and America’s Next Top model with me. I should have picked up on those clues. That relationship ended pretty much the same as the first, only I caught him in my bed with another guy.
    And then there was Daryl.
    Oh, Daryl.
    Handsome, charming and delicious.
    Sexy…
    Oh so sexy.
    My hand moves instinctively to my right cheek but I pull it away. Daryl was the reason I left New York and moved to L.A.
    He was the worse.
    I didn’t find him in bed with one