The Billionaire's Intern

She also felt as if her insides were imploding, but she didn’t want to tell anyone that. Because there was no place for that. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t what people wanted to hear.

If there was one thing she’d been trained in, it was the fine art of talking about what people wanted to talk about.

Pain was not one of those things.

A message pinged back a couple of seconds later.

Great news! Hey, have you heard from Harlow at all lately? She’s not answering texts.

No. But I haven’t tried in a while.

K. If you hear from her let me know?

Sure.

Addison put her phone down and frowned before pulling up a new email message. She typed in Harlow’s name.

Hey, sorry to bug you. I know you’ve been working hard. And I really hope things haven’t been shaken up too much, given…recent events. But Nora and I are getting concerned, so please touch base?

—A

She closed her computer and let the silence in the room settle over her. It felt thick. Oppressive. She was used to a large house full of staff and movement. A sorority house full of talking and laughter.

For a hotel, the Black Book was strangely quiet. At least on this floor.

She felt like throwing herself on the bed and crying. Wailing. Filling the silence. But some voice, her mother’s, her father’s maybe, whispered in her ear and said ladies in Chanel skirts didn’t thrown themselves around.

Not that she felt much like a lady. She felt like a wraith. And she imagined they were genderless. Or, at the very least, that they didn’t have to care about what anyone thought about the way they lay down.

Still, she sat in the chair, her posture so rigid her neck ached. Her eyes ached too.

She was arid. Her eyes were dry. Her brain was dry. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t feel. Not anything other than this stale, crackling burning that pervaded her entire body and left her feel like that patchwork dirt you saw in desert climates.

She just felt fuzzy and disconnected.

She suddenly noticed a little white card, folded like a tent on the edge of the table. She reached out and picked it up, reading the embossed lettering on the front.

Welcome to Black Book. Download the Black Book app to create your unique pass code.

She pulled up the app store on her phone and searched for Black Book, finding the app with an insignia matching the little white card and loading it.

Then she opened it. It pulled up a white screen with black script and four blank boxes that were, she imagined, for numbers.

She entered in the digits for her mother’s birthday, and it accepted them. Then she closed the app and set her phone on the table, trying to decide if she should leave it on. She decided to switch it off. To give herself some time to be alone. To be inaccessible. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that. It wasn’t good hostess behavior, that was for sure.

But she wasn’t hosting anything. And no one was inviting her.

And Jason was dead. So why not break a few of his rules? At least one.

She just needed a couple of hours. And she then had to at least go pretend she was living. For Austin. For her mother.

She stood from the chair and walked over to the bed, sitting on the edge, fingers curled around the edge of the mattress.

Maybe if she faked it long enough, she would start to feel as if it was for her.

Chapter Three

Her hotel phone ringing woke her up from her nap, which had been about as effective as knocking herself out with blunt trauma. Her head hurt, and she was still tired.

She reached across her pillow and picked up the receiver, drawing it up to her ear.

“Addison?”

She grimaced internally and realized that was probably not the response you wanted to have when you heard your boyfriend’s voice on the other end of the line.

But then, something had changed since she last spoke with him. Or a lot of somethings. And he’d just left her to deal on her own. And even weirder than that, she hadn’t been upset at him, because she’d never expected him to stand with her. She’d expected to stand on her own. To stand strong. The way her father had taught her.

“Eddie,” she said, “how’s Bermuda?”

“I’m back at Columbia. Why was your phone off? Do you know how hard I had to work to track you down?” An apology hovered on the tip of her tongue, and she held it back. Which was the second good socialite rule she’d broken in only a few hours.

But there was no one here to see.

She took a breath. “Oh, well, that’s…I’m not. I moved out of the sorority house.”

“I heard. I wasn’t overly pleased with how you were treated.”

She couldn’t tell by the completely unaffected monotone of his voice. But didn’t say so. “I’m fine. Austin made arrangements for me.”

She was not fine. But she couldn’t say that. Not even to the man she’d been dating for nearly two years. The man whose lips had touched hers, and whose hands had been….well, frankly, on parts of her body no other man had touched. He hadn’t taken her to bed, but they’d explored certain…things. All over her clothes, of course. All that considered, she would have thought they’d reached a certain level of intimacy.

His actions right now seemed to indicate she was wrong about that.

“Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” he said, his voice stilted.

They sounded like strangers talking to each other. Or an old married couple who’d reached a certain level of indifference. And since they were neither, it was a bit of a disturbing revelation.

“Yes,” she said.

Why was this hard? What was she supposed to say?

“Listen, Addison.” Oh well, he appeared to have something to say. “I know the timing is poor. For both my vacation and for this, but it can’t be helped.”

She knew what was coming then. Before he even said the rest. But she didn’t interrupt; she just let him keep talking.

“I don’t think this is working between us.”

“Right,” she said, unable to say much else, not because she was hurt—but because there was no diplomatic response.