AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With a deep breath, she puts her hand in mine and says, “Alright boss, show me to my new mansion. I hope you remembered to cage the tigers and sent the strippers home.”
“Absolutely. The tigers were sent home and the strippers are in their cages.”
She chuckles, and in the middle of walking out of the room, I stop. She gives me a confused look, and I run my fingers over her cheek. “It’s going to be fine, Addison. I promise.”
There’s a brief pause, but then she nods. I have some idea of what she’s going through. The fear of a new place, of not knowing anything about a new life. Not that long ago, I went through these same emotions in reverse.
But I didn’t have Addison with me when I left my life behind. I’d blindly jumped, and luckily, she’d appeared to catch me. The image in my head of that metaphor is more than a little comical, but the reality wasn’t funny at all.
She has me, though. She doesn’t have to worry about walking into a new world all alone.
I give her hand a squeeze, and she smiles. “Jeez, get a room. I’d feel more comfortable if you were slapping her ass and pulling her hair.”
We both whirl around to see Trish leaning against a cubicle wall with a grin on her face. “Shut up,” Addison says with a laugh. “You can’t talk to your boss like that.”
It’s Sera’s turn to pipe up. “It’s okay. We’re safe since I have blackmail material. I have his entire performance ofLike a Virginrecorded, and I’m not afraid to send it to Andrew.”
“You’d better not,” I say. “He wouldn’t ever let me live that down.”
They both just start laughing. I should be pissed. But truthfully, I don’t know if there’s anything that could piss me off right now.
I shake my head and take Addison’s hand, pulling her to the front of Loughton House, where the limo’s waiting for me. Addison seems less nervous, but as soon as I open the door to the car for her, she tenses.
“I love you, Addison. Let’s go home.”
And she smiles. “Yes. Let’s go home.”
Forty-One
ADDISON
“You have so many freaking cabinets!”I’ve never seen anything like this before. Sure, I’d known that he lived in a big house, but this is madness. Four thousand square feet in the middle of Manhattan is bonkers. “And they’re all empty. What did you even do with a kitchen, anyway?”
He just grins as he leans against the counter while I explore his house. “You can’t buy a big house without a kitchen, Addison. They don’t come that way. Plus, I occasionally have a chef come cook for me when I’m spending a lot of time working from home.”
I gawk at him. A chef comes to his house to cook? “Okay, we are not the same. Wait. Could you get one to come and give me lessons on bread-making? I’ve always wanted to learn… You know what, don’t answer that. I’m just going to assume that you can do anything you want. Well, I don’t have to worry about having enough space to keep my coffee mugs, right?”
I walk away from the pristine kitchen into the living room. It’s enormous. Three story tall ceiling with the rest of the house built around it. A massive crystal chandelier hangs from the roof, and there’s a fireplace that you could probably cook a whole cow in. I feel far too much like we’re on a movie set right now.
Maybe that’s the problem. It’s so pretty, but almost like it’s a pretend house. Like no one’s lazed on the double-length couch—which is a very confusing piece of furniture for my brain.
“Do you have parties? Or just live here? Why would you want a house this big if you aren’t going to use any of the space?”
Phillip steps behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. “I don’t know,” he says into my ear. “Maybe it’s all so that you’d have four thousand square feet to fill with kinky mugs and mismatched furniture when you moved in? Maybe I was compelled because deep down I already knew that a crazy lady was going to need all this space.”
I huff. “I’m not crazy. You’re the crazy one to buy all of this without any reason. I just…” I turn around in his arms. “When I was in third grade, my shoes wore out to where the bottoms came off. Like all the way off. I got grass stains on my feet when I played at a park. My feet were freaking green. I didn’t get another pair of shoes for three weeks, Phillip. And that’s because one of my teachers bought them for me.”
I expect him to stop me, to tell me I don’t have to worry about that anymore or something. But he doesn’t. He just listens. “I’ve spent my entire life chained down by being poor. Literally, every problem in life could have been fixed with just a little more money. And you… You have so much. More than I could ever even imagine. Rich is wrecking a car and then buying a new one the next day. This is… something different. I didn’t understand…”
He smiles at me. “It’s definitely different, Addison. But you don’t have to spend money if you don’t want to. You can, of course, but if you want to keep riding the subway to work and buying clothes at thrift stores, then that’s fine with me. The money won’t go away if we don’t use it.”
I have to take a step back as I shake my head. “No Phillip, you don’t understand at all. Why would I want to buy clothes at a thrift store? I mean, I’m probably never going to understand buying thousand dollar dresses, but I don’t even knowhowto spend money like this. How do you get a chef to come cook for you? Is that just something you google?
“We’re supposed to be dating or something. I mean, I’m living with you as your partner, right? In my world, I’d make dinners, and you’d wash the dishes, and we’d watch movies or bad TV. In yours? I have no freaking idea. Do you order takeout from Paris, and they teleport it here? Then the house elves come and clean it for you? If the internet is out, do you get the cast of Bridgerton to come re-enact the entire show for you in full costume? Who do I call to schedule that? Or do you just push a button and it all happens through billionaire magic?”
Phillip is nearly falling over from laughing so hard. He puts his hand on the couch to steady himself, and I pull out my phone. “Like this. You touched the couch, so you obviously need a new one. Who do I call for that?”
“You make me sound like the most wasteful person on the planet,” he gets out through the laughter.
