Babysitting the Billionaire Read Online Free PDF Page B

out
to shield her eyes.
    “I told you not to talk. Now look what you’ve done.”
    May had never seen anyone go from cold to red-hot in
zero seconds. She swallowed her heart back into her chest and did not look at
him.
    “May. Look at me.” His voice was at the regular timbre
again.
    She shuddered. “I think it’s time the bear was fed. Eat
here or...”
    “Let’s get out of here.”
    ****
    She took him to Ben’s Chili Bowl, the alcohol-soppingist
food she could think of. Then they walked, and walked, and walked. He said very
little, but whenever she made a gesture toward leaving him, he grumbled and
rumbled, and she was afraid he would cry, and they’d all end up at the
hospital. So they walked. The mild night, gorgeous with moonlight, made the raw
pain on his face, so poorly hidden, look macabre.
    Finally, they reached the dusty edges of the Mall, and
May heard the nearby church bells toll.
    “Midnight, Mr. Kurck. We should get you home. Work in an
hour, you know.” Men liked to work their feelings out, right? And he surely
loved his work.
    “Fuck them,” he said. “If I go to work now, I’ll just
fire them all.”
    Out of options, footsore, and brain-sore, May stepped
off the path and dropped to a seat on the grass.
    “You’ll stain your slacks.”
    She stretched her legs out. If she’d known she was going
to be hiking the entire length of DC, she’d have worn the slingbacks, not these
open-toed monstrosities.
    Beau took a few steps, saw she wasn’t following, and
came back. He circled her. “You need your rest,” he said. “We should get a cab.”
He pulled her to her feet and back the half-block to
Independence Avenue
.
    She told the driver to drop her off first, and then take
the gentleman to his hotel. The driver looked his commiseration with Beau, as
if he was sorry the gentleman wasn’t getting to first base tonight. Looking out
the side window, May rolled her eyes.
    “Do you promise to go straight to the hotel and nowhere
else until I get there at eight? You have your leftovers, here, and plenty of
coffee in the room.”
    “Don’t treat me like a child,” he said, petulance
dripping from his voice.
    “I apologize. You’ll do it?”
    “Aye-aye.”
    Not five minutes later, the taxi slowed in front of her
row of brownstones behind
DuPont
Circle
. She took Beau’s cold hand in hers. “I wish
I could make it better,” she said, and was surprised to realize she really did.
“See you tomorrow.”
    She’d forgotten to leave the porch light on, so the taxi
waited until she got her keys out and door unlocked. It was at the corner
before she’d closed it again. She rested her forehead on the painted wood. What
a day.
    She kicked her shoes off and dragged herself to the
bathroom, undoing her belted dress as she walked. Dropping them and her
underthings in the hamper behind the bathroom door, she picked up her two-piece
pajamas and headed for the shower. Ten minutes of hot water running over her
head, her shoulders, her back, washed much of her tension away. It wasn’t even
her tension, she realized. It was for him.
    How she felt for him. She’d never changed her life so
totally to impress someone else. He’d made so much of himself. And for what? He
wasn’t doing it for the intrinsic joy of it. Or was he? Could a person truly be
as successful as he was solely to please another? An imaginary other, in this
case.
    It wasn’t until she had stepped out of the bathroom that
she heard the pounding at the door. She started for the door at a run. What if
something had happened to him?
    She didn’t even look out the peephole, but threw the
bolt and jerked the door open.
    Beau Kurck sat on her stoop, a box of tequila beside
him. And a crazy-wide smile rainbowing across his face.
    “Beautiful May in June,” he croaked, likely thinking he
was crooning. She looked past him, wondering how many of her neighbors were
witnessing this.
    “Nobody but the man with the golden-haired yappy dog,”