Free The Billionaire's Hotline (Men of the Capital Series Book 1) by Cara Nelson

“Sleep well, mockingbird.” For once in her recalcitrant life, Hannah did just as she was told.
     
     

Chapter 7
    Hannah
     
    Hannah woke up alone on Jasper’s couch, hair across her eyes and a fairly strong conviction she’d been snoring. By her phone it was only seven, but he was long gone. She tried to shake the anxious feeling all the way home. The instinct that kept telling her he didn’t want her. He wanted her from a distance. In Dubai, he couldn’t get enough of her…but in person, he kept her at arm’s length.
    She knew she’d thrown him off his usual pattern, but he was obviously capable of resisting her. She knew she wasn’t the knockout her sister was, but she hadn’t been turned down a lot in the past and she found that she hated rejection.
    At home, she found a Zumba video online and did the whole thing, feeling like an uncoordinated jackass the entire time. Maybe, she thought, if she was in better shape. Maybe if she waxed her eyebrows, highlighted her hair. Maybe if she were polished and blonde and after his money instead of a mouthy brunette gunning for his heart. By noon, all she had to show for her day was a mountain of self-doubt and not a minute of work, but she had identified the truth and decided to confront it. She was only significant to Jasper Cates as a novelty, a challenge. Now she was a sure thing, his interest waned.
    She crept under the duvet and cried a little. When the phone rang, she seized it and then spent the entire call whining to Becca, who had the misfortune of not being the person her sister really wanted to talk to.
    “Even I decided not to get mixed up with him. Anyone who does that phone thing is inherently damaged, babe. Give it up,” Becca counseled. Through her tears, Hannah nodded. She hung up with her sister and texted Jasper.
     
    I’m done being your conquest, your sometime girl. Dial up someone who fits the mold. Goodbye.
     
    Hannah crawled out of bed, walked down the hall to the trash chute and dropped the disposable phone in it. That way she couldn’t dig it out if it rang, the way she knew she would have if she’d thrown it away in her apartment. She drank a glass of water and went straight to her studio to loop dialogue.
    Two hours later, her cell phone rang.
    “My sometime girl? Hannah, what the hell?” he demanded.
    “How did you get this number?”
    “Miss Hollingford got it. As soon as I got your stupid text, I set her to work on your contact information. You can’t cut me off like that.”
    “Don’t call me again. Don’t text me. Don’t send me shit or show up at my door. Leave me alone.”
    “I won’t do that. I don’t know what’s got into you. You were fine last night. I’ll take you out for noodles later. You can tell me exactly why I’m an ass this time, and everything will be fine,” he said patronizingly.
    “Leave me alone, Jasper. For good. No stalking. No Mrs. Hollingford antics. Goodbye.”
    She hung up and burst into tears. She had thought she was safe from him, wouldn’t see him or hear his voice. The way he talked, that arrogant roundness to his vowels, the clipped condescension that ended every sentence brought him back to her with force. Hannah didn’t want him tracking her down, having a secretary spy on her. She didn’t want him to plead for her return. She wanted to forget him, dammit. She shoved her phone in a drawer and went to bed at four in the afternoon.
    At nine, Becca dragged her out of bed and told her to shower and get dressed. She produced an alarmingly small scrap of cobalt blue fabric intended to cover enough of her sister’s form to appear in public. Scrubbed and made up, she looked like a puffier, blotchier, more scantily clad version of herself. She let Becca take her to a club, miserably tripping on her wedge heels, weaving from side to side in a lame approximation of dancing to trance music under flashing violet lights.
    She drank two flaming cocktails that tasted of vanilla and some kind of