Alpha Billionaire Series
Hot Mess Chapter 25

KAYLA

Two weeks later...

I sat curled up on my couch, watching TV, eating a bowl of cheap instant ramen. I hadn't felt like cooking. It didn't seem worth it when it was just for me. I hadn't seen Nick for almost two weeks. I couldn't say the show he was filming was taking longer than usual, because this was the first time I had been around him while he was filming. I had no point of reference.

Maybe leaving him behind in Oregon and coming back to LA hadn't been my smartest move. Maybe I should have sucked it up and stayed. It wasn't as if I hadn't been around jerks before who made underhanded comments about me before.

I'd heard it all. Wise cracks from having been homeschooled after my father died, to comments about how long my hair was, to my size and shape. Only for some reason, they seemed to hurt more. Now it was like the comments weren't about me being the person of shape and size, but instead it felt like the comments and insults were secretly for Nick. How could he be interested in a person like me?

I didn't have an answer for that. I thought Nick was a smart man. So why was I also wondering why he was with someone like me?

I hated that I was doubting him. I hated that the voices in my head really weren't my own but coming in from the outside world.

I could hear Claire so clearly telling everyone she would bang Nick. And so, when I questioned what Nick could possibly see in me, it was with her voice. Hers, Gabe's, Jessie's, my mom's, all those voices that I could identify and the one's I couldn't were too loud. And the one voice that mattered, Nick's, was too quiet.

My phone rang with Isaac's ringtone.

"Yeah?" I answered, leaving it on speaker phone, so I could continue to drown my inadequacies in instant noodle soup.

"You have a fitting in the morning. Grace will be here. You'll like her, she's not a bitch. Be here at ten."

I put down my spoon and stared at the phone. "We have an event tomorrow? But Nick is still at the shoot."

"No, he's not."

My heart sank at Isaac's words. Nick was back in LA, and he hadn't told me?

I put the bowl down on the coffee table. I wasn't hungry anymore.

"Oh, okay. So Grace isn't going to act all shocked when I show up with excessive boobs and a big b**t?"

Isaac laughed. "No honey, Grace is not. She knows exactly what to do with your figure. See you in the morning."

I hit the end button for the call. I stared at my bowl of soup. I had been hungry and feeling sorry for myself. Now I just felt sorry for myself.

The phone rang again, this time I stared at the caller ID. I really did not want to talk to Jessie. I had done a pretty good job of avoiding her since that disastrous lunch a month or so earlier. I let the phone ring. Jessie could leave a voicemail if she really wanted me to call her back.

The ringing ended. With a sigh, I picked up my bowl and slurped in a few noodles. They were still warm, but they didn't offer any comfort. I settled back into the show I was watching.

Fifteen minutes later, at minimum, my phone rang again.

"Geez, what is it tonight?" I looked at the ID. I had to answer this one.

"Hi, Mom." I said I held the phone to my ear. She wasn't a speakerphone kind of person. If I really thought about it, conversations with Mom were safe for anyone to overhear. Not that I had eavesdroppers in my little house. While Isaac was rarely fit for public consumption, yet I always put him on speaker phone.

"Your cousin called me."

"Great, what did Jessie want?" I asked.

"How did you know I meant Jessie?"

I closed my eyes, crap. "Well," I started. "Educated guess. Gabe never calls."

She made a harumph noise. "I guess you have a point. Don't you want to know why your cousin called me?"

Not really. I grimaced and winced. I did not want to be having this conversation. I couldn't believe that Jessie, wait, no. I could believe that Jessie would call my mother on the other side of the country to tattle on me because I wasn't talking to her on the phone. Jessie was my age, and she was acting like she was five.

"What did Jessie need, Mom? She hasn't left me any messages."

It didn't matter that I knew Jessie never left messages, she expected a call back. But I was old fashioned, Mom raised me to be so. And that included leaving a message if she really needed something. Jessie never really wanted anything other than to be a pain in my backside.

"Apparently, you aren't calling her back. But" Mom sighed. "If she isn't leaving you a message, I guess how would you know? Who is this Nick person?"

"What?" I coughed. "Nick? He's my boss...s's client. I've been doing some projects for him. How did you know about him?"

"Your cousin mentioned that you seem to be spending a fair bit of time with him and wanted to know if she needed to be aware if there was anything going on between the two of you."

I hated that Jessie knew about Nick. There was nothing I could do about that; I was here to be seen with him at events. I couldn't help but laugh. "Jessie called you to gossip on me. You know what she's doing? She's putting ideas into your head, trying to freak you out that something is going on when there's nothing."

"Freak me out? What kind of talk is that? You know better than to use slang. I hope you don't speak around your clients that way."

"Mom. Mom, sorry. I'm picking up how people talk out here. So other than to talk about me, and get you worrying, what did Jessie need?"

Mom hesitated.

"I think she just missed having her cousin to talk to. You should give her a call."

"I will, Mom."

"Call her soon, she sounded so lonely."

Was Jessie feeling lonely? I doubt it. She was acting, had to be. She had plenty of friends. I met them. She could keep them.

"I'll call her after dinner. I should go. I have a meeting in the morning to get ready for."

I ended the call. Sooner or later all of the lies I was telling Mom would catch up with me. I was bound to forget what I had told her. Who I was working for, who Nick really was.

I wasn't lying about calling Jessie after dinner. I just hadn't specified what dinner or what night.

When the doorbell rang a few minutes later I swore and glared at my phone, not realizing that the noise hadn't been someone's ringtone. While I was still staring at the phone, I heard a knock and my name.

"Nick!"

I ran to the front door and threw it open. I was in his arms, and he spun me in a circle.

I peppered his face with kisses, happy to see him.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I wanted to surprise you."

"Isaac said you were in LA, but not where you were. I thought..."

Nick shook his head. "Isaac almost gave me away then. I'm in LA and I'm right here." He kicked the door closed behind him.

"Why didn't you tell me? I could have met you at the house?"

"Kayla, I came home to see you a day early. This was supposed to be a surprise."

He loosened his grip on me, and I slid down his body. I missed being crushed up against him like this.

"Oh, hey"- he held out a big envelope- "this was on your porch. It's not marked. Were you expecting a delivery?"

My heart plummeted. My stomach turned sour. I was going to throw up. I snatched the envelope from him and swallowed down bile. I panicked. He couldn't know what was in that envelope. I stared at it. How had they found me? What more did they want? I had been making payments. Nick shifted from side to side trying to catch my attention. "Kayla, babe, what is it?"

I groaned. I didn't know what to tell him. I hated the thought of lying to him, but I had been lying to everyone else. So why not the man I was desperately in love with?

And I was in love with him, that wasn't a lie.

A bit of reality in the mix always made lies seem real. Jessie had called, she lived locally, sort of. I was going to use her as my scapegoat.

"Oh, my cousin was going to run something by. She tried to call earlier. It must have been to tell me she was here. I missed her call." If I added a 'gee,' and a 'shucks,' I think it would have been too much.

"You, okay?"

I shook my head. "Just upset that I missed her. It had to have taken her a while to get here. I was really sucked into my show." I had been sucked into my own personal pity party, and if I wasn't careful, I'd start believing my own lies.

It was okay if Nick knew how I really felt about Jessie, and Gabe, and their friends. I sighed. "If I don't see her every other week or so, she calls my mom, and then I have some cross-country family ordeal because Jessie acts like I'm ignoring her." "Are you?"

"Ignoring her? Absolutely. She's my cousin, that doesn't make her my friend."

Nick pulled me back against his chest and began walking me backward toward the bedroom. "So we can stop talking about her and do something vastly more interesting."

I couldn't have agreed more.