A Billionaire Punishes (A Billionaire Invites - Remington - Part 2) Read Online Free Page B

sugar from her nose. She looked around the tiny space I’d been living in for the past two years, as if seeing it for the first time. “Dang, girl. This place is cramped! How you can live here?”
    “Well, no longer,” I said.
    “Do your parents know you lost your job?”
    “I might have mentioned it in passing,” I said.
    “What are you going to do now?”
    “I thought about finally getting started on that cupcake business I’ve been dreaming about for years.” I shrugged, throwing more books into a box quite appropriately labeled ‘books’. “Might as well start now.”
    “I’ll help you,” she said. “I’m pretty sure that once Celeste finds out I work for her, she’ll can my ass too.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “She needs experienced people. And who else is going to do all the work for her? She can’t pick up the phones herself.”
    Tamara gave me a wistful look. “I’m going to miss you, honey. Now I’ve got no-one to talk to.”
    “You’ve got Alan,” I said.
    She chuckled. “Are you crazy? Alan and I don’t talk; we have hot, crazy sex and nothing else. No talking involved whatsoever!”
    “I’ll miss that part too,” I said, thinking about the way Remington and I used to make love, how he would kiss me tenderly, sending shivers up my spine with a single touch of his warm, soft hands. And then suddenly I was crying again, and Tamara was pressing my head to her generous bosom.
    “There, there,” she said. “I probably exaggerated. Alan and I don’t really have all that sex. Well, we do have all that sex, but we talk from time to time as well.”
    The only effect her words had on me was a renewed bout of heartbreak.
    “You can still call him and tell him you changed your mind,” Tamara suggested.
    “No, I can’t,” I said. “He’s engaged to Miss USA!”
    “More like Miss Botox, if you ask me,” she murmured.
    “I’m nothing but a meaningless fling to him!” I cried. “A short round of hot sex while he’s waiting to walk down the aisle with Avery!”
    “Well, at least there’s the hot sex,” she said.
    “I don’t want the hot sex!” I wailed. “I mean, I want the hot sex, but I also want him. All of him. Not just the part that’s not waking up next to Avery every morning. I don’t want sexy trysts in hotel rooms and back alleys. I want him in my bed. For as long as we both shall live.”
    “Mh, Remington doesn’t strike me as the back alley sort of guy.” She frowned. “Or is there something you haven’t told me?”
    “I love him, Tamara! But he doesn’t love me!” I exclaimed, finally getting to the heart of the matter.
    She sighed as I wept all over her shoulder, wetting her new turquoise shirt. She didn’t mind, which is probably why she’s my best friend.
    “If you and Alan ever break up, you can cry on my shoulder,” I finally said, blowing my nose in the handkerchief she so conveniently had tucked away in her purse.
    “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “If Alan ever tries to break up with me, I’ll kill him, and then I’ll break up with him .”
    We’d just finished packing when dad dropped by with his pick-up truck.
    “Sorry I couldn’t be here sooner,” he said, eyeing my red-rimmed eyes and tousled hair with concern. “My last job ran a bit late. Are you all right, honey? You look a bit under the weather.”
    “Getting canned can do that to a girl,” I said with a weak smile.
    “Don’t worry. You’ll get another job in no time. Smart girl like you. They’ll be fighting who gets first crack at you.”
    “Somehow I doubt it,” I said.
    “Well, at least the last guy had a good crack at you,” murmured Tamara, but she shut up when I nudged her in the ribs.
    We finished loading all the boxes and what little furniture I had into dad’s truck, and when I gave the place a final once-over, I felt grateful for the years I’d spent here. When I’d arrived, fresh from college, it had been with a head full of dreams