The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5) Read Online Free Page B

fate.
    Max watched me coming. His eyes roamed over my body, head to feet, lingering on my breasts and hips, and I felt myself blushing. Infuriating. I was a grown woman, and he had left me. His ogling wasn’t flattering. It was rude . You didn’t stare at a stranger like that.
    And that was what we were now. Strangers.
    Too much time had passed.
    “Hello, Bee,” he said, as I drew near.
    I stopped in front of him, clutching the empty tray against me like a shield. “I go by Beth, now.” My voice was impressively steady.
    “I’ll never be able to think of you like that,” he said, gazing up at me. “You’re always Bee.”
    I didn’t want to have this conversation. I looked away from him, his earnest face, his gray eyes. My eyes fell on an empty glass on the table. “You roped someone into bringing you a drink, I see.”
    “One of those very nice waitresses,” he said. “Very accommodating. Friendly.”
    “You stay away from them,” I said. “Don’t get them involved in this.”
    He grinned, folding his arms and crossing his legs so that one foot rested on the opposite knee. “What’s this ? Is there a this ? I thought I was just some nuisance, a relic from the past hassling you in your place of employment, but if there’s a this —”
    “You’re making mountains,” I told him.
    “I don’t see any moles around here,” he said. “Beth. I’ll call you that if you want me to.”
    “I do,” I said firmly.
    “Beth. You look just the same,” he said.
    What a lie. I had been a skinny little thing as a teenager, underfed and bony, and now I was—well. I was a little chubby. More than a little. Curvy was the polite term. I didn’t mind it—I liked how I looked—but Max was a liar if he claimed I hadn’t changed at all. “Is there a point to all of this? I have work to do, but if you’re lonely and you want to chat, I can send one of the dancers over.”
    “Straight to the heart,” he said, clutching at his chest. Still that same flair for the dramatic. “Beth. I want to talk to you. Please talk to me.”
    I wanted to hug him, kiss him, punch him, knife him in the ribs. None of those impulses had any room in the life I had created for myself. The emotions were too raw and messy, too big to fit neatly into my quiet existence. I couldn’t talk to him now. Maybe not ever.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I have work to do.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    Max
     
    If Bee thought I was going to be deterred by her frankly pretty paltry efforts to get me to leave her alone, she was tragically wrong.
    Beth. I needed to start thinking of her as Beth. That was what she had asked of me.
    Ironic, really, that I was willing to call her by her preferred name, but not to fuck off into the ether the way she claimed she wanted.
    The thing was, I knew her. She hadn’t changed so much, although she obviously wanted me to think that she had. She was stubborn, proud, and she would never give in without a fight, but she hadn’t told that terrifying boss of hers to bar me from the club. If she really wanted me gone, I would be cooling my heels in a holding cell right now, arrested for trespassing or stalking or God only knew what. General creepiness. Inability to take a hint. Instead, the man at the door had let me in without any trouble, and judging by the whispering and giggling that was going on at the bar, Beth’s co-workers found the entire situation amusing rather than threatening or inappropriate.
    Beth was putting up a token resistance, but she wanted to hear what I had to say to her. She was curious. She wanted to find out why I had tracked her down after so long, and how. She wanted to know who I had become.
    I was sort of hoping to figure that out myself.
    I didn’t leave the club. I camped out with my laptop and worked on spreadsheets, aided by the steady stream of rum and Cokes a red-headed waitress kept bringing me. After my utter failure on Wednesday night, and the equally frustrating