BREAK - A Bad Boy Romance Read Free

seemingly forgotten to breathe during the entire exchange and did it all at once the second the screen went dark. I was sitting there like a complete idiot, done up with three different kinds of foundation on my face and shoes that should have been banned for human’s rights violations… and I had been stood up by a jerk, an asshole who had the cheek to haul me all this way to give him an apology and then …and then …was he playing a game with me? I sat stewing for a few moments more.
    The other, weirder thought came bubbling up in my mind. He was definitely having sex. Right now. I was busy being mad as hell for being messed around and he was…
    I looked down at my phone again, ears burning. It was too outrageous to be true and yet it was: I had just had my first celebrity interview, and it was with Tom Hood, the Tom Hood, and he was on the phone, breathing heavy, dick in some giggling girl most likely.
    ‘Tied up’ indeed.
    “Ew,” I said under my breath and immediately wondered whom I thought I was trying to convince. I got up to leave.
    It wasn’t ew. In fact, it was all I thought about for the rest of the day.

Chapter Four
     
    “Oh my God, Katie, there you are! Get in here and open this stupid letter, I’m dying to see what it says and they won’t let me open it!”
    Clara, the new intern, was hovering excitedly over my desk, eyeballing a giant basket of blood red flowers with a small white card skewered on a plastic fork in the center.
    When did my life become a sappy rom com?
    “Didn’t you break up with what’s-his-name? Is it from him? What a douche,” she said, bouncing from foot to foot like a kid at Christmas.
    The arrangement was overwhelming the entire surface of my small desk; the whole thing was unreal, the giant roses and lilies completely out of place in our minimalist chrome office. I felt worryingly conspicuous. I opened the card, gingerly; not quite believing this was really for me.
     
    Miss Mack,
    Please forgive my disgusting phone manners
    67 Baltic Terrace, 9:00pm
    You’ll have my full attention, promise
    T
     
    My eyes whipped over the lines again and again, trying to make sense of the letters.
    It was an actual house address. An invitation. At night .
    Clara looked at me with big eyes. “Oh God, it IS from what’s-his-name, isn’t it?”
    I stuffed the card back in the envelope and buried it into the mound of stems.
    “Uh, yeah, it’s from my ex. What a douche.”
    I looked at my watch – it had just gone 3pm. Thinking twice, I grabbed the card again and slid it into my pocket.
    “Hey, Clara, could you just let Penelope know I went out for a sec?”
    “Sure. But she’s at the other office for a few days anyway. She’s been asking about your interview with what’s-his-name though – how’d that go?”
    “Uh, yeah, the interview …if you see her just let her know I’ll have it ready for Friday, OK?”
    I dashed out, not giving Clara the chance to pry any further. I only had a few hours. I would need time to think.
    And I would definitely need a sexier dress. And shoes. Maybe.

Chapter Five
     
    If you had asked 5-year-old me to imagine what the home of one of the country’s wealthiest personalities looked like – she would have accurately described 67 Baltic Terrace.
    It looked like it was the scene of a movie. Flush with vaulted marble ceilings, dense green lawns folding into infinity pools, and a swooping grand staircase at the main entrance.
    Tom Hood had made his fortune speculating on hot tech start ups, “angel” funding those two bit operations that turned into outrageous money-machines in a span of just a few years. He had a knack for spotting business diamonds so rough that it was almost as if his investment in them alone was the very thing to transform them, to make emperors out of the long sighted nerds in garages, and empires out of their impossible dreams. Tom Hood had made many people’s dreams come true, and he was living his own,