The Billionaire's Girlfriend by Ava Claire Read Free Book Online Page B

was possible for that word to come out of his mouth and make me feel anyth ing but warmth and safety. Instead, I felt an icy slash of fear, only magnified when I saw the white of Jacob’s knuckles as he gripped the gear shift.
    "Jacob, I have no idea what you're talking about. We talked for ten damn minutes, we weren't planning some super-secret getaway!"
    When all I got was silence, I'd had it. If he wanted to be angry, fine. I wasn't going to die in a mangled sports car to prove I was a good girlfriend. "If you don't want to talk, fine. Pull to the curb and let me out." When he didn't even flinch, I put all of my frustration behind the order. "LET ME OUT!"
    He slowed down, but gave no indication that he planned on pulling over, so I decided to wait for the next stoplight. Too bad the paps weren't hot on our tail, or they'd get a hell of a shot of me sprinting from Jacob's Porsche.
    "He tweeted something yesterday that stuck with me, even though I planned to have him delete it. It had a romantic feel to it and completely contradicts the bad ass image we're trying to portray for the film."
    I clicked my seatbelt back on, abandoning my plans for escaping. "What does his Twitter feed have to do with-"
    "Let me finish," Jacob interrupted forcefully, but without the anger he'd been holding onto since dinner. It was like he'd been clutching this burden and was just exhausted and eager to let it all go.
    He glanced at me, his eyes softened. "Please."
    I gave him a long look and nodded. "Alright."
    "The tweet said something like, 'met someone and felt like cade for the first time in a long time' and when I read it, I saw your face." He inhaled deep and released it. "Before I met you, there was always this hole, this missing piece. And then there was you."
    Warmth rushed all over me, the ache in my chest whenever he was near expanding.
    "That's sweet, Jacob." I cautioned a smile and the side of his mouth twitched with his own as we moved closer to uptown. "But why would that piss you off? Because of damage control? I still don't get what any of that has to do with me."
    "Because he tweeted it almost immediately after he left the Whitmore and Creighton building." Jacob's voice changed, something in it exposed and raw. "I think he was talking about you."

****
    The first tip off that something fishy was going on should have been that fact that Natasha was all smiles when in the past the very sight of me was enough to make her physically ill. Regardless, I'd taken a deep breath and rapped on Jacob's door, running over the speech I'd been practicing all weekend.
    After the bucketful of awkward with Cade's tweet and my mother's overshare at dinner, we both agreed to take a few days apart to get our heads right. Truth was even after taking the weekend, my head was anything but. Even though I thought my exchange with Cade was totally innocent, Jacob's reaction and Cade's tweet had me replaying the conversation, wondering if anything I said could have been misconstrued. At any rate, I'd come up with a list of reasons why Jacob had nothing to worry about.
    1.) He was, well, Jacob. No one else could rob me of the ability to function with just a look. No one could make everything else fade except for the drum of my heart and the ache between my legs. And no one else could make me want to simultaneously do them physical harm and kiss their lips off.
    I smiled when the door was pulled open with number two on the tip of my tongue and when Missy, one of the staff publicists and ringleader of Operation Leila Sucks, was the one glaring back at me instead of Jacob, I forgot what number two was.
    "Missy? What are you-"
    "Jacob wanted to see me bright and early so we could go over Wallace's plan of action." She made sure she said every word like they'd been up to a lot more than business. But when I spied Jacob over her shoulder, he gave me a smile that dashed right through her transparent efforts. As soon as his eyes glittered deliciously, I knew that