Free How to Seduce a Billionaire by Portia Da Costa Page B

tonight, either. Even if we
do
sleep together.
    While she was grappling with her slippery, freshly washed hair, and trying to get it to stay up when it when it wanted to stay down, her mobile beeped.
    A text. Swinging between relief and despair, she hardly dare look.
    If he’d changed his mind, she’d be free of all this stress and internal debate, what a relief!
    If he’d changed his mind and she’d never see him again, oh no!
    Change of plan, Jess. I’m running late. Sending car to collect you. See you at restaurant. Hope to be there to meet you, but if not, table booked in my name. I’ve ordered champagne for you while you wait. E
    Now! Now was the chance to back out. Say thanks, but perhaps not a good idea after all.
    You birdbrained wimp, Jess! Don’t be stupid.
    Shoving her phone right to the bottom of her bag, out of reach, she returned her attention to her hair. Best to leave it down really. Wasn’t that how virgins always wore it?
    La Girandole was a glorious place: glamorous, but quietly discreet, and surprisingly welcoming to those of a nervous disposition. Jess had never dined there – it was well out of her normal price range – and on arrival, she was treated like a princess. Ellis’s instructions, no doubt, as just the same thing had happened with the luxury hire car that had collected her, and then glided through the night like her very own personal fairy-tale carriage.
    The
maître d’hôtel
guided her to a table by the window, overlooking a pretty ornamental garden, complete with pond. Billionaire businessmen could obviously score the best spot in the room at next to no notice, and Jess was glad of the table’s combination of secluded intimacy and a prime view of the rest of the room and the other diners.
    After the ritual of tasting and approving, she took a long, grateful sip of her champagne. As glorious as the venue, it was spectacularly delicious. Crisp and buttery and complex. It danced on the tongue, heady and potent, yet slipping down with dangerous ease.
    Don’t get legless. Just let it take the edge off the jitters.
    To keep from devoting herself to nervous drinking, Jess people watched. The diners were almost exclusively couples. Some of them were upscale, wearing clothes that were obviously expensive, but others were surprisingly informally dressed. Jess relaxed a bit. Her pink silk, medium heels and casual hairstyle fitted nicely somewhere in the middle.
    A lot of the couples were gazing into each other’s eyes and smiling ‘those’ smiles at each other. If she hadn’t been so distracted by the way her own evening might go, Jess would have played a game of ‘who’s going to end up in bed together tonight and how soon’, to pass the time.
    Her attention was drawn to a sophisticated young woman, seated at another premier table. She had startling black hair and wore a beautiful vintage dress. Her companion at the table was an older man, and they were totally into each other, it was clear from across the room. He put his hand over hers, the touch light yet meaningful, and they laughed together, blissfully easy and comfortable in each other’s company.
    I wish I was at that stage with Ellis McKenna.
    But that was pie in the sky, she reminded herself. Odds were that they’d never get there and it was madness to think beyond tonight or, at best, a couple of discreet assignations in luxurious hotel rooms.
    Nothing wrong with that. Accept things for what they are … and make the most of it!
    She had a shrewd idea that she was the only virgin in the room though.
    Five minutes passed. Then ten. It wasn’t easy to pace herself with the sublime champagne, but she tried. What if he didn’t come? What if she’d been stood up, and the
maître d’
came gliding up to the table any minute now, with whispered apologies?
    Well, sod it. I’ll have a meal here anyway. Even if I have to pay for myself!
    Just as she thought that, a rustle of interested voices shattered her fears. Her