Beautiful Bitch by Christina Lauren Read Free Book Online Page B

familiar with—filled the air again. Work. The emergency ringtone. And not the regular emergency one—the emergency -emergency one. Bennett swore, resting his forehead against my chest. My heart pounded beneath my ribs and my breaths felt too quick, too loud.
    “Fuck, I’m sorry,” he said when it continued to ring. “I have to—”
    “I know.” I stood, using the back of the chair to support my shaky legs.
    Bennett scrubbed his hands over his face before he stood and crossed the room, finding his phone where he’d slung his jacket over the back of the couch. “Yeah,” he said, and then listened.
    I bent for my sweater and slipped it over my shoulders, found my skirt and pulled it up my hips. I carried the dishes into the kitchen while he talked. I was trying to give him some sense of privacy but grew concerned as his voice continued to rise.
    “What do you mean they can’t find it ?” he shouted. I leaned against the doorway and watched as he paced back and forth in front of the wide wall of windows. “This is happening tomorrow and someone’s misplaced the fucking master file ? Can’t someone else handle this?” A pause ensued in which I swear I actuallywatched Bennett’s blood pressure rise. “Are you kidding?” Another pause. Bennett closed his eyes tight and took a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty.”
    When he ended the call, it took a moment for him to look at me.
    “It’s okay,” I said.
    “It’s not.”
    He was right. It wasn’t okay. It sucked. “Can’t someone else handle it?”
    “Who? I can’t trust something this important to those incompetent assholes. The Timbk2 account launches tomorrow and the marketing team can’t find the file with the financial specs—” He stopped and shook his head, reached for his jacket. “God, we need someone in New York who knows what the fuck they’re doing. I’m so sorry, Chlo.”
    Bennett knew how much we needed tonight, but he also had a job to do. I knew this better than anyone.
    “Go,” I said, closing the distance between us. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.” I handed him his keys and stood up on my toes to kiss him.
    “In my bed?”
    I nodded.
    “Wear my shirt.”
    “Only your shirt.”
    “I love you.”
    I grinned. “I know. Now go save the world.”

F OUR
    You have got to be fucking kidding me.
    I turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine hard enough for the RPMs to hit red. I wanted to peel out and tear down the street, leaving the sign of my frustration as black tire marks on the road.
    I was tired. Fuck was I tired, and I hated to have to clean up other people’s messes at work. I’d been working twelve-, fifteen-, hell, even eighteen-hour days for months, and the one night I was able to put aside time with Chloe at home, I was called in.
    I paused as the word seemed to bounce around inside of my skull: home .
    Whether we were at my place or hers, out with friends, or in that tiny little shithole Chinese restaurant she liked so much, it felt like home to me. The strangest part was that the house that had cost me a fortune had never felt like home until she spent time there. Was her home also with me ?
    We hadn’t even had time to pick where we would live in New York. We had identified the new location for RMG, madea map of where each of our offices would be, drawn up blueprints of the renovations and hired a designer . . . but Chloe and I didn’t have an apartment to go to.
    Which was the greatest sign that old habits die hard, because in reality my relationship with her had completely altered my relationship to my job. Only a year ago I’d been committed to one thing: my career. Now, the thing that mattered most to me was Chloe, and every time my career got in the way of being with her it burned me up inside. I don’t even know specifically when that had happened, but I suspect the change had been effected long before I would have ever admitted it. Maybe it was the night Joel