Bad Boy vs Millionaire

  Bad Boy vs Millionaire

  by

  Candy J. Starr

  Copyright Candy J. Starr 2014

  All rights reserved

  I’d like to thank Anita O’Halloran for her feedback and editing.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1. Hannah

  This city was a mess. A swarming, chaotic mess. Even in the winter cold, the sun reflected off every surface. A cacophony of noise and a massive swirl of movement circled around me ― and none of it with any purpose other than driving me hell crazy.

  I had no freaken idea where I was and all I could see was a bunch of smokers with grey faces huddled around a smoking area. Behind them, a large screen showed girls dancing around in school uniforms and belting out some cheesy, auto tuned pop song. Women tottered around me on high heels with their faces caked in makeup and with handbags balanced on the crook of their arms. The guys mooched around with hair so gelled up that a hurricane wouldn't move it, wearing shiny suits and pointy-toed shoes. A homeless guy in baggie overalls grunted at me, and all around me crows cacked. Both the homeless man and the crows looked like they'd attack at any moment. And the station entrance spewed out swarm after swarm of people.

  “Welcome to Clean Shinjuku” a sign said. At least it was in English but it didn’t look too clean and I didn’t feel all that welcome. The streets branching from the station all looked the same and all the signs I could see were in squiggly foreign.

  So far, Tokyo was my least favourite city in the entire world. I mean, the people probably were quite nice on an individual basis but there were just too many of them. Way, way too many. And the one thing I hated, when I was tired and cranky and confused as hell, was having too many people around me.

  I pulled the map out of my bag. My carefully planned map where things made sense but the map looked nothing like anything around me. Another swarm of people spewed out of the station.

  “Bloody Dad,” I muttered. He should've given me better directions.

  “Get a cab from the airport.” That's what he'd said but, when I found out the price of a cab, I figured it'd make far more sense to catch the train. I could totally do it. I wasn’t that person who didn’t know how to catch a train any more. I’d totally coped. It was the getting from the train to the hotel I couldn’t deal with.

  “Excuse me,” I called. “Excuse me…”

  But people wouldn't even meet my eyes. They just kept swarming. Maybe it was the zombie apocalypse. Why did they walk so slow and drone-like?

  I sat on the larger of my suitcases and studied the map again

  Cack, cack, cack. More crows, and they moved in closer to me. I tried to out-stare the closest one, hoping he’d get scared and fly off but he stared back as if to say he belonged here and I didn’t.

  Before I could set the crow straight, a women bowled into me, almost sending me flying off my case.

  “Hey!” I shouted but the woman walked off. “Screw you. And your ugly suit.”

  I had always thought the Japanese were stylish. That's what fashion magazines led you to believe. But the zombies around me wore drab suits with plain white shirts. Their faces folded into grey lines and their eyes looked down, mostly at the phones in their hands.

  “Get a bit of individuality, why don't you?”

  I folded the map and put it back in my bag.

  I'd had enough trouble just getting out of the station because it was crowded with like a million people all zoinked out. Then I finally found the exit and there was no escalator, just a big flight of stairs. I had to drag my cases behind me. Bump, bump, bump up the stairs until I could feel the sweat running down the backs of my legs and stinking through my clothes. They could turn the heating down a bit. It wouldn't have surprised me to see a big, snail trail of sweat behind me as I walked.

  I didn't like sweating.

  I’d finally made it to the top and into the daylight without my fingers dropping off, although the circulation had stopped where I'd held the cases and my fingertips were a funny purple colour. The blast of cold wind hit my clammy skin, sending shivers right through me.

  I figured once I’d gotten out of the station, I'd know where I was.

  I was so wrong.

  I couldn’t spend the rest of my life sitting on a suitcase outside the station though, so I got out my phone and did the only thing I could think of doing. I took a selfie and sent it to Angie.

  I'm here but I've got no idea where I am.

  Then I decided to hell with my pride and I sent Dad a message too, asking him for directions to the hotel or to maybe send a cab to pick me up.

  Why did Dad even want me to meet him in Tokyo? It was only a few weeks before he had been at my house, desperate for cash to the point of almost robbing me for a few hundred dollars. Then he'd sent me that text message wanting me to meet him. Then… I wasn't going to think about that though. I was NOT going to think about Jack Colt. Not while I was lost and alone and had immediate and pressing shit to deal with. Maybe I would NOT think about Jack Colt ever. I could spend my entire life not thinking about Jack Colt. That would work fine for me.

  If only I could find a cabstand. Cars drove passed me but none of them were cabs. I didn’t even know what cabs looked like here. Were they the same as at home or was it some whole other cab system?

  I stamped my feet but that did no good. From a nearby shop, a jingle played on repeat so that that the tinny melody got stuck in my head even though I couldn't understand the words.

  I wanted a comfortable bed and a GODDAMN coffee. A hot coffee, not one that tasted like that shit I’d got at the airport. The wind blew around me, swirling up grime that got in my eyes and stuck to my skin.

  I pulled a cardigan out of my bag. It was an old cardigan of Angie’s that she’d pulled off and handed me just before I went through the customs door, reminding me it’d be freezing on the plane.

  Then my phone beeped.

  Find the cutest guy around and ask him for directions.

  Typical Angie advice. If only she'd realised there were no cute guys. Just old men in cheap suits who all looked like they didn't really want to be on this planet. I was about to reply when someone caught my eye.

  He towered above the people around him and the cut of his suit showed he had money and a sense of style. But, what really caught my eye was his cheekbones. That guy has really awesome bone structure, I thought. I'll ask him.

  “Excuse me,” I called but my voice got lost in the noise around me. “Excuse me.”

  He walked straight towards me. I gasped as I got a look at his face full on. He really was incredibly good looking, with full lips and the most perfect eyebrows I'd ever seen.

  I pulled out my map so I could show him the hotel. I stepped closer to him. He smelt like money, well not so much money but the kind of expensive yet subtle aftershave only money can buy.

  Before I could even ask if he spoke English, he grabbed the handle of my suitcase.

  “Hey, what are you doing? Let go of my case.”

  He didn't speak, just grabbed my wrist and pulled me with him. No one was going to steal my suitcase on the street in broad daylight. Not if I had anything to do with it. I twisted around and smashed him across the bridge of his nose with the side of my fist.

  “Owwwww!”

  He doubled over. Wow, I was really tou
gh and he totally deserved it. You can't just abduct someone from the train station.

  “I was trying to help you. And you broke my nose.” He spoke English. That was a really good sign, I guess. If someone's abducting you, you don't want to have a language barrier.

  “It's not broken and I didn't ask you to help me.”

  “You aren't at all like I was expecting, Hannah.”

  Whoa. Super creepy. He knew my name and he had been expecting me? I stopped walking and stared at him.

  “How do you know my name?”

  As he turned to me, the sun reflected in his eyes making them sparkle.

  “Your father sent me to get you. He said you were lost at the station. I didn't think I had a chance of finding you though amongst all those people. Luckily you found me first. It's a fated encounter.”

  “Balls. It's not really fated since I was the only blonde in that entire crowd of people.” Even though I tried to sound angry, inside I wanted to do a little dance of not being lost in a strange and foreign city. And, if my father had sent him to pick me up, he couldn’t be too dodgy.

  “Come on, I’ll lead you to the hotel. It’s not far.”

  “You don’t have a car?”

  He laughed. “In this traffic? It’s much faster to walk.”

  Then he smiled at me. It wasn't fair for him to smile at me like that. You know in toothpaste commercials when someone smiles and there is a ping and the sparkle of light coming from their shiny, white teeth? It was like that.

  Now, Jack Colt had the kind of smile that could make me crumble and fall to my knees but this guy was different. Jack never gave you a 100% smile. His smile was like 80% smile with maybe 5% sadness behind the smile and 5% sneer and 10% of something that he was holding back and you'd never get to see. That was like the pie chart of Jack Colt's smile.

  This guy though, his smile was full on 100%, like a laser beam that cut into your heart and wiped away any anger or annoyance you might be feeling about him snatching your bags away from you on the street. Hell, this guy could trample your life then smile at you and you'd have to smile back.

  If there had been clouds in the sky, they'd have parted to let the sun shine though when he smiled. Then the birds would sing and maybe fly around him and woodland creatures would romp at his feet, just like a Disney movie but in the middle of freaken Shinjuku. That's how epic his smile was.

  I shook myself to come back to my senses. I was there to sort out things with Dad, not to go nuts over some random guy's smile. Even some random guy who might possibly be a prince sent from heaven to rescue me.

  “Come on,” he said, putting away that deadly weapon smile.

  I followed him. Finally, up ahead, I thought I could see the sign for the hotel. It was just at the end of the street. I could make it. That sign meant coffee and shower and bed. In that exact order.

  I walked into reception, a big swanky reception area made of black marble. Water flowed down an enormous water feature in the middle of the reception area, gurgling and churning like a river leading into a freaken lake. Seriously, it was like a freaken lake in the middle of this hotel. In the middle of the marble lake, on a marble island, sat a grand piano. Why would someone make a lake with a piano island in it? Especially in the reception area of a hotel.

  I was so busy processing that that I didn't see my father waiting for me.

  “Hannah, you made it. Get ready, we have to go shopping.”

  That was my father. No “hello”. No “how are you going”. Straight to the point. He looked so different from the last time I'd seen him. He had on a good suit and the life had come back into his face. The downtrodden look had disappeared so completely that I wondered if I'd just imagined it.

  “We are having dinner with Tamaki and his father tonight. You need some new clothes. Let's get out of here.”

  “I need a shower.”

  Dad looked me up and down.

  “You really do. And what's with that outfit, Hannah? You look like a hobo. It's a wonder Tamaki recognised you at the station. I really expect better from you.”

  Then he turned to Tamaki who still had my suitcase.

  “Thanks for your help, Tamaki. I'll see you tonight.”

  Who was this Tamaki character and why were we having dinner with him? I sighed and headed to my room. Not that I minded shopping but I really, really, really wanted to sleep.

  ***

  Designer stores are designer stores the world over but I wasn’t used to Dad shopping with me. He’d never cared that much about my clothes before. Now it’d become a thing for him like he’d taken me on as some kind of project. I wondered if this in some way related to why he wanted me to come here. Maybe he’d got me work as a model. I always thought I’d be good at modeling on account of having awesome posture.

  Dad went through the racks and handed me outfits to try on. While I wasn't complaining, I did wonder where he got the money from. Maybe that talk of him having money hidden away when he was supposedly broke had been true. Which just made my months of scrimping and saving and having to go to desperate measures to live even worse.

  “I think the black dress will be best for dinner tonight.”

  “It's a bit severe,” I said. “I like the red.”

  “This is Japan. Red is not good here. You don't want to look too flashy.”

  I glanced at the other women shopping in the store. Most of them wore pale pink and beige. They wore lots of lace too and little flouncy ruffles. Were they women or little girls? And all of them carried handbags emblazoned with logos. Why was that not flashy? I loved my designer labels as much as the next person but there was no need to be a walking billboard.

  “Wow, is shopping with your dad a thing here? I've never seen so many girls out shopping with their fathers.”

  Dad rolled his eyes. “You are being a bit naive, Han.”

  It took me a minute to register. Sugar daddies? But some of those girls looked like they were just in high school. That was so wrong. Then I realised that — OMG, maybe that's what they were thinking of me. I wanted to rush around the store, telling people, “he really is my father.”

  “Hannah, are you trying these dresses on or not?”

  “Sure thing, DAD. It's so nice that my FATHER is taking time out of his day to go shopping with me. You are the best FATHER ever.”

  “Remember, we need to make a good impression for dinner tonight. Tamaki’s quite a guy, huh. Good looking, rich, cultured. It’s unbelievable that he’s still single. A guy like that must have women swooning over him.”

  “Do you have a man crush on him?” I’d often wondered why my father had never had a serious relationship after Mum died. Was he trying to tell me something?

  “That’s not funny, Hannah. I just meant you should cultivate a friendship with him.”

  “I punched him in the nose.”

  “What?”

  Dad looked like he was going to blow something in his insides from the way his face went lobster red and set into hardened lines.

  “I thought he was a bag snatcher. He grabbed my bag and tried to walk off with it. That seemed mighty fishy to me at the time. Who does that? Like a ‘hello, your father sent me to pick you up...’ would kill him.”

  “I sent you a text saying he was coming. Didn’t you read it?”

  I paused outside the fitting room.

  “My phone must’ve gone flat or I couldn’t hear it over that noise. Still, he was quite nice after that. It didn’t seem to worry him too much.”

  “Thankfully. You could’ve ruined everything.”

  I went into the fitting room and tried the dresses on. What could I have ruined? Some business deal, obviously.

  As I'd thought, the black dress looked too severe ― unless I wanted to give off some dominatrix vibe or something. I stepped out of the change room to show Dad.

  “It doesn't work. Told you. And I'm not wearing some beige horror either.”

  The shop assistant hovering nearby pursed her lip
s and appraised me then found an eggshell blue shift dress. Very simple. Very elegant.

  “It's perfect,” Dad said. “We'll take it.”

  ***

  Hours later, I returned to the hotel with my arms laden with shopping bags. It should have filled me with the long forgotten delight of spending obscene amounts of money on pretty things but strangely it didn't. Instead, all I could think about was the weeks of rent that I could pay with that money or the number of band t-shirts I'd have to sell. That made me kind of sad.

  I did my hair and got ready for dinner. I put on a touch of lipstick and checked myself in the mirror. Then I picked up my phone and started to type a message. But the words didn't fit together and anyway, I had promised Angie I wouldn't contact him. I had to get my head together and work out what I wanted. That's what Angie had told me to do and it made sense but I also wanted to talk to him. To make sure he hadn't forgotten me already. He could be out with some skank whore groupie right now and… This was exactly why I shouldn't text him.

  But I could still feel the touch of his fingers on my skin and the thrill that ran through me when his lips met mine. I had Jack Colt brain fever and I needed a cure. A cure that would help me think rationally and get me away from his hot-cold attitude. I put my phone in the drawer and slammed it shut.

  “Tokyo will be awesome,” Angie had said. “Get your head straight and see how you really feel. Work out whether this thing is in your heart or in your pants. You don't want to be messing with this shit. Have a fling with some hot foreign man. Then tell me all about it. I'm so jealous anyway, I always wanted to go to Japan.”

  She’d given me a list of stores to visit, none of which had been on the agenda for today. Angie's list was about what was cute and hot and on the edge. You don't get that at designer boutiques where people tried to avoid being flashy. I sighed.

  Chapter 2. Angie

  Love sucks. Especially other people's love. You know how it goes. You have a perfectly good friendship with someone and do all kinds of fun shit and then they go and get themselves all loved up with a dude and suddenly they are all like “sorry, I'm seeing my boyfriend tonight.” And, even if they do bother to come out with you, they drag their boyfriend out with them and spend the night wrapped up so tight in their own little circle of love that they may as well not be there anyway. If you are going to be like that, you may as well stay at home instead of wasting perfectly good space.