Queen for a Day (BBW Billionaire Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

what makeup from my face the shower hadn't removed. As I rubbed furiously, I swore at Parisi then at myself over the thoughts stampeding through my head.
    I thought I had accepted my body years ago, had learned to smile at the parts I could appreciate and ignore the ones I couldn't. Gazing into the mirror, all I saw was another reason why I had to stay inside the room and give up on making my dreams a reality any time soon.
    Naked, my face scrubbed clean, I continued staring at the mirror. I could feel my father lightly tapping against the center of my forehead, his response to my insecurities always the same.
    "This...this marvelous brain, that's the important thing," he had always said. "It will endure after everything else fades away."
    My lips pushed together in an angry, ugly moue. I loved my father, but he was an academic who had fucked a fashion model then had to watch her walk out of his life and return to a world that had nothing to do with the mind. As temporal as my mother's world was, it lasted long after their relationship fell apart.
    I stomped into the bedroom a raging, copper-skinned, overweight, growling woman, and grabbed all the cosmetics I had brought with me. Back in the bathroom, I slapped on primer and illuminators, liquid foundation and powders. I drew angry but symmetrically perfect lines around my eyes, my mouth, then contoured my cheeks.
    With color and shading, I could fix the face, reduce its roundness, add more definition. Not so with my body.
    I damned Silvio Parisi for making me look at myself like this! Not white, not black, not exotic enough, not thin, not even close, not beautiful but not ugly.
    Was I worried what people would think if they found out about Parisi's deal, or was I really concerned what the men would think while they fucked me?
    And just how many men was he proposing? He had mentioned Cleopatra -- or as the Greeks had so derisively called her, Meriochane, she who gapes wide for ten thousand men.
    "Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Not doing it, no fucking way."
    I leaned over the sink, my forearms flat against the counter, and tried to breathe. My legs were locked, unbending and shaky. Spreading them wider, I felt the upward flow of air against my most sensitive area.
    She who gapes wide...
    Ten thousand men...
    I wouldn't have to worry about midnight's approach. I would pass out before then, be unconscious through it, conveniently robbing myself of the responsibility of deciding. Whatever direction my thoughts swung on some future day, I would be able to lie to myself and say I would have done X if only I hadn't cracked my skull on the marble floor beneath my feet.
    Head down, my brain trying to shut off all thought, I heard a sound in the distance. A bell, probably the same bell I had first heard when I was in Parisi's office then again on the hour every hour since I returned to the guest room.
    It was midnight and I didn't know if the bell was on its ringing peal or its last. I raced back to the suitcases. In pulling out the cosmetic cases, I had also removed the outfit Parisi had draped over the bag before leaving me alone for the night to make my decision.
    I wrapped the skirt around my waist and secured its clasp. My brain wasn't done warring with my emotions. The preoccupation made my fingers stupid as I secured the bustier.
    The bell sounded again. Was that just three or had I drowned out more?
    I rushed to the door of the suite, gripped the handle and froze.
    Opening the door isn't a commitment, Nadine.
    I nodded at myself. I could slam it shut if whatever awaited me in the hall seemed too freaky.
    Everything I was perched on the sharp edge of indecision, waiting for a sign.
    No sign came, nothing at all. No sign, no sound, no assistance.
    No sound -- the bells had stopped.
    Midnight had come and gone.
    Too late, too late! My mind screamed at me as I yanked the door open and found my future waiting in front of me, its as yet explored contours framed by