Bound To Him: Three Dates with a Billionaire Read Online Free PDF

elevator. When we went into the lobby people held up their phones. Even in this place Troy Cooper turned heads.
    In the elevator, he passed a card in front of the sensor. Of course he’d have a penthouse. Wait — were we going to his room? What was I doing here? I gasped and clutched the rail.
    “Hey. Whatever freaked you out with Witley, you don’t have to worry with me. I won’t maul you. I saw him, so don’t deny it. I’m not even going to ask what you were doing there with him. I just want your promise that you’ll never date him again.” His flat mouth told me he wasn’t happy.
    I winced at the word. I wouldn’t have called it a “Date.” I nodded. “I promise.”
    “See? That was easy.”
    He took me out of the elevator and into a suite that made my apartment look like a closet. Two seating areas, one with TV, a fully equipped desk area and a kitchen, separated from the rest of the space by a counter. Not a kitchenette, either. “I could live here,” I sighed, turning around. A door at the end presumably led to the bedroom, but I wasn’t about to try my theory.
    A table was set with several covered dishes. Troy lifted the lid on the first one. “We have sandwiches and a few snacks. There’s ice cream in the freezer, and wine in the refrigerator.”
    “Oh, water is fine for me,” I said hastily. The last thing I wanted was more alcohol. Old man Witley had tried to ply me with wine and then something he called a snifter, but I called half a tumbler of Scotch. Which I hadn’t drunk.
    “Fine.” He went behind the counter and grabbed two bottles of water. “I was drinking too much anyway.” He shrugged out of his tux jacket and tossed it carelessly over a chair.
    Was that his problem? Was he a drinker? But he hadn’t drunk too much with dinner. Not that I’d noticed, of course. Not that my attention hadn’t kept going to him, whatever I tried to tell myself. “Were you?”
    “No, but I hate to drink alone.” He opened the bottles, and placed one in front of me. “Besides, don’t you know you shouldn’t accept a bottle you haven’t opened yourself from a stranger?” He motioned to one of the sofas. I sat gingerly at one corner and he took the other. It was a big sofa and I shouldn’t have felt claustrophobic. But I did. “Are you hungry?” he said.
    I shook my head no. “I had enough to eat.”
    “I noticed.” Unlike me, he didn’t mind saying he’d been watching me. Why would he do that? “I like a woman with a good appetite. Where I come from, that’s so rare it’s abnormal.”
    “Sometimes abnormal is good.” Especially when it concerned eating. Maybe I should have tried to lose weight, eaten like a bird, but I shared an apartment with a curvaceous African-American woman who wasn’t afraid of her food. “Gotta keep the booty in shape,” she’d tell me with a wink. So I did, too.
    “I was hungry. I didn’t have time to eat after work.”
    He took a swig from his bottle and put it on the shiny black coffee table. The furniture in here was perfectly arranged, and beautifully coordinated in shades of gray and black, with pops of red. The windows showed a view over Central Park, with the lights of the city that never sleeps farther off. I couldn’t see the stars, the lights were too bright. I hadn’t spent much time looking at them since I got to New York. “You intrigue me. I don’t meet genuine people very often, and hell, you’re all of that, aren’t you?”
    “I—” What could I say to that? I tried again. “I don’t have any reason to be anything else.” Except for tonight, I recalled guiltily. And twice more, unless I could persuade Madame X to tear up the contract I’d signed.
    He laughed, and the sound was utterly bewitching, totally seductive. “How wonderful. If only I had that outlook on life! People have secrets, and half my life is spent working them out. That’s how I get into my characters, you know.”
    That small insight fascinated me.