Bossing the Billionaire: Billionaire Brothers Kent - Ryder's Story (The BAD BOY BILLIONAIRES Series) Read Free Page B

toward the Dodge Ram. He pulled the
door open and glanced at the driver’s seat then the passenger’s seat. He didn’t
see anything so he checked if it had fallen between the seats or onto the
floor. It was nowhere in sight.
    As he pulled back and straightened up Ted grinned at him. “You
really were pulling a fast one. You think you’re slick, don’t you?”
    Ryder felt like punching the jeering smile off his lips. “I’m not
pulling anything. I must have dropped my wallet somewhere. It’s okay. I’ll
call…” As the last word left his lips he realized something. He’d gone through
his pocket and his truck and he hadn’t run into his cell phone at all. That was
missing, too.
    “Oh, shoot.” The words left his lips in a groan of realization.
“That guy at the gas station. How could I have been so stupid? I should have
known he was too darned friendly to be real.”
    Ted gave a snort of derision. “Don’t tell me you’re going to draw
for some story about getting robbed.”
    “But it’s true. My wallet and my cell phone are gone.”
    Ryder’s words were like the signal for Ted to get rough. The man
clamped a massive hand around his upper arm, his lips curling in a sneer. “Come
on, bud,” he snarled. “You ain’t going to cheat the little lady out of her
dough. You’re coming with me.”
    Ryder didn’t even bother to resist. Talk about embarrassing.
    He was not looking forward to explaining himself to Miss Blake
Beaumont.

 
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    “May I borrow your phone?”
    “He ain’t got no money.”
    Both Ryder and Ted were speaking at the same time, which made Blake
glance from one to the other. “What?”
    “He ain’t got no money.” Ryder had opened his mouth to speak again
but Ted beat him to the draw the second time around. “He was there pretending
to search around for his wallet.” Then he gave a snort of disgust. “Like he had
any money in the first place.”
    Blake felt the anger settle in the pit of her stomach. She should
have known his friendliness and generosity were too good to be true. She fixed
a caustic glare on the man in question. “So what do you have to say for
yourself?” She didn’t even know why she bothered to ask. Sneaky snakes like
this one always had a ready answer. She wasn’t about to swallow anything he was
planning to dish out.
    “I got robbed,” he said, “at my last stop. I had my money and my
cell phone up to that point. If you’ll just lend me your phone I’ll have your
money to you in no time.”
    Doug, the small man who’d sat watching the whole time, burst out
laughing, his crooked teeth giving him a comical look. “Lend me your phone, he
says. Don’t he know we ain’t got no phone in these parts?”
    Ryder gave him a look of disbelief. “No cell phone service, maybe,
but you’ve got to have a landline phone.” He looked at Blake. “You do, right?”
    “Nope. Never did and it looks like we never will.”
    “What? But how is that even possible? This is the United States, for
Pete’s sake, and it’s the twenty-first century.”
    “Tell that to the phone companies,” Blake said, her tone dry as
toast. “All the phone companies we contacted said they weren’t wasting money to
come all the way out here. Too expensive and not worth it for a couple of
hundred people.
    “I see.” That seemed to stump Ryder. Then he looked hopeful. “What
about cell phone service? Do you guys have that?”
    “They’ve been promising that for years. This town's still waiting.”
She shoved her hands inside her pockets. “Anyway, let’s cut to the chase. You
owe me over a hundred bucks and it looks like I’m not going to get any cash out
of you. You know what that means, don’t you?”
    Ryder gave her a suspicious frown. “No. What?”
    “If you can’t pay in cash you’ve got to pay in kind. You’ve got a
lot of cleaning to do tonight, buddy.”
    His brows fell. “Excuse me?”
    Just in case the thought crossed his mind to try arguing