Free Break by Vanessa Waltz Page A

It’s a pleasure.”
    I heard Luke’s voice down the hallway and jumped, feeling close to laughter. I rummaged through my drawer and seized a tiny tube, and then I walked towards them both, my heart hammering my ribs.
    I could tell that Natalie was taken aback. She replied back a few seconds later than she should have. “Nice to meet you.”
    He was looking hot, as usual. I had never seen him wear jeans, but he wore a fitted pair that showed off his long, muscled legs and a shirt that made me want to run my hands all over his body. He smiled at me over Natalie’s shoulder. “Ready to go?”
    Mute, Natalie turned around with her face frozen in impolite shock.
    He’s a dreamboat. I nodded at him.
    He smiled at both of us, bemused by our mute voices. “Um, I’ll just get your bags.” He stepped in and grabbed one of the suitcases. Lifting it easily, he turned around to reveal a perfectly carved ass.
    “God,” I moaned as I watched him load the suitcase in the car.
    “You weren’t kidding,” she commented in a breathless, dreamy sigh as she watched Luke.
    The driver took my suitcase from my hands and hurried down the steps to help Luke.
    “I guess this is it,” I said as Natalie’s eyes misted over, and a lump formed in my throat in response. “If you cry, I’ll cry.”
    She seized my neck painfully and pulled me into a fierce hug. “I’m not crying,” she said in a thick voice. “Call me when you get there, and be safe for God’s sake.”
    Luke climbed back up the steps with the same smile. “She’ll be safe with me. It was nice meeting you, Natalie.”
    I gently disengaged myself from Natalie’s death grip and shouldered my backpack. “I hope you have a good holiday. I’ll be back soon.”
    I took Luke’s outstretched hand and descended the steps, turning back to smile and wave at Natalie’s panicked face. Once inside, I moved over the smooth leather interior for Luke.
    Instead of the town car, Luke had arrived in a limousine. It looked wildly out of place in this shitty neighborhood. Across the street, a woman smoking in her plastic lawn chair stared at us, the cigarette burning in her fingertips. I shook my head and gazed at the interior. A dark glass partition separated the driver from us. There was a champagne bottle on ice in the limo, TV screens, and blinking yellow lights on the ceiling. This is so cool.
    The ugly streets of Concord rolled by the long window. I couldn’t believe I was leaving it all behind. I looked around at Luke, whose arm was stretched over the leather. He was studying me quietly, perhaps regretting the whole thing. I couldn’t imagine a more unlikely couple.
    “We should think of a backstory for ourselves. People are bound to ask.”
    He looked at me thoughtfully. “Before we do that, I want to make something clear.” Any hint of humor dropped from his face. “This will never be anything more than a business relationship.”
    “I know that.” I raised my eyebrow. Where was this coming from? Was my attraction to him that obvious? “What makes you think I would want to be with you?”
    Now he looked like he had been punched in the gut.
    Yeah, serves you right, you pompous jerk.
    He quickly recovered and a smug grin flashed on his face. “Don’t you?”
    Electricity shot up my spine; I was in dangerous territory.“Maybe I wouldn’t want to be talked down to all the time by your old boy network, boarding school buddies. Or your family.”
    He looked stung. I was joking, but perhaps there was a little bit too much truth to what I said.
    “No one would do that while you were with me.”
    “Of course not,” I shot back. “They’d do it when you weren’t around.” I turned away from his face and wished there was something to drink. It’s ten in the morning , I reminded myself.
    Silence stretched between us as I cringed, waiting for him to reprimand me or do whatever it was billionaires did to their inferiors. You shouldn’t talk to him like this. He’s not