Chapter 4 #2
“I have a proposition for you.” He had planned to ask her at the end of the meal, but he couldn’t wait.
He’d been thinking about it all week. “I’d like you to be the ambassador for Bellissima, the person and face everyone thinks of when they hear the name.
I’d like you to go to big events, openings, premieres.
I’ll pay for the clothes, of course. I want you to make a big splash in L.A.
, Michaela, and go to important social events with me.
You’re perfect for it. You could meet and greet people who come to Bellissima, men as well as women, and get to know my patients.
” It was a new concept in medicine, and he wasn’t curing illnesses, he was dealing in beauty.
It was an entirely different feeling. He told her the yearly salary he had in mind, and she nearly fell off her chair as she stared at him.
“Are you serious?” she asked him, and set her glass down.
“Very much so,” he said in his deep sexy voice. He hoped he had quoted her enough. She looked so shocked he wasn’t sure, as she put her long graceful arms around him and hugged him.
“I would love it! Yes, I accept!” He smiled broadly.
He ordered caviar for them then, which she had never tasted.
She knew she was supposed to love it, but she wasn’t sure.
But the rest of the meal was delicious. They had soufflés for dessert, and he ordered Cristal champagne, explaining to her it was the best one.
He was going to teach her about all the finer things in life.
Mickie felt as though she had been waiting all her life for Alex to come along.
She was excited at the prospect of going to major Hollywood events with him.
He was intending to explore the celebrity side of L.A.
and bring them in as clients. Once he had a few, he could hook them all.
Alex Addison had big dreams too, and Michaela fit right into them.
She was exactly what he needed as a welcoming committee to Bellissima, and the perfect woman to have on his arm.
She would be the most beautiful woman in every room and he would get the credit for it. It was perfect.
“Oh, and one thing,” he added as he signed the check for their dinner.
Mickie glanced quickly and saw that it was three thousand dollars with tax and gratuity.
It was by far the most expensive dinner she’d ever eaten, and maybe ever would.
“I thought of it the other day. I’d like you to tell our patients and the people you meet in your new role that you’re thirty-three years old.
Kind of our little private joke. It’ll unsettle them if they know how young you are.
I think thirty-three is much more reassuring, and you can attribute your youthful beauty to our treatments.
” It was no different than the before and after photos, and it didn’t bother her at all.
“For what you’re paying me to be your ambassador, Alex, I’ll tell them I’m a hundred if you like. It makes me feel suddenly very grown-up to be thirty-three. I like it. People will respect me more.” She looked happy.
“They’ll respect you because you’ll be with me,” he said, and they left the restaurant together.
He put his arm around her as they walked to the valet and asked for the Ferrari.
He had rented it for the evening to impress her and it had.
He usually drove an SUV, which wasn’t the sexy image he wanted to portray to her.
Whatever the reason, money, prestige, sex appeal, she had accepted his offer to be his ambassador.
He was creating a world and an ambiance around it that no one would be able to resist. And Michaela was now part of that package.
It was just a little touch of marketing and good business.
And given the positive nature of his practice, he saw no harm in blending business and medicine.
He wasn’t hurting anyone. He was giving them greater beauty and improving their confidence and their lives.
It was all for the greater good. He saw himself as the benefactor of all the women he would be treating.
It was a holy mission for him, and he had found the perfect woman to represent him, the ideal partner for his new venture.
The valet brought the car around, and Alex took Mickie in his arms and kissed her.
The passion that had been bubbling just below the surface all week suddenly surged through them as he pressed against her and she could feel him come alive as they kissed.
They finally moved apart, breathless, and got into the car.
“Would you like to come over for a drink?” he asked her in a voice hoarse with passion, as he leaned over and kissed her again, and she nodded.
There was no hesitation. She was nineteen years old, but she was no innocent, even if she came from a much simpler background than he did.
He had finally met his match, and she had met hers.
She had been waiting for him all her life, and now that she had found him, nothing was going to stop her from hanging on, and following him to wherever he wanted her to go.
He gunned the car and drove back to Bel Air as quickly as he dared, before she could change her mind. They left the car in his driveway and walked past the security guard on duty, who nodded respectfully at them both.
Alex unlocked the front door and kissed her as soon as they closed the door.
She left her handbag and shoes downstairs, and they raced up the stairs to his apartment, and were already half undressed when they got to his bedroom, with an enormous king-size bed.
She stood for a moment as he peeled the dress away from her exquisite body, and she undid his trousers as he dropped his shirt and the rest of his clothes on the floor and they fell into his bed.
She was an experienced woman who knew exactly how to please him, far beyond what her tender age would have suggested.
Mickie had made a point of learning what men wanted and how to drive them mad, starving for what they wanted from her.
It was a dance of experts in his bed, of lust and desire, taunting, teasing, tormenting, begging.
They were equal partners and came together in a searing white hot fire and then lay completely spent.
Mickie had never met anyone like him before among the men she slept with, and Alex owned her from that moment.
He had never met a woman who could drive him into a frenzy of desire the way she could.
She was made up in equal parts of torture and pleasure, and he wasn’t sure which he liked most. The whole package was one he had always longed to find, and now he had.
They were trapped somewhere between heaven and hell.
She was part devil and part angel, and he was smiling as he made love to her again, several times before the night was over.
Their coupling was pure desire and had nothing to do with love, and neither of them had to pretend otherwise.
It was the best night of their lives and a promising beginning to their new adventure.
Billie didn’t wait up for Mickie to come home.
She wanted to do some reading in one of her old textbooks.
She read three chapters and made some notes of things that might apply to the testing she was doing.
She went to bed early, figuring that Mickie might come in late.
She had no desire to babysit her little sister.
They were two grown women sharing an apartment, with different tastes and jobs and lifestyles.
She wasn’t there to pass judgment on her sister.
And she doubted that Mickie’s interest in dining with the doctor was romantic.
She had done a job for him that week and he’d paid her well, and Billie suspected she probably accepted the invitation more for the free meal than anything else.
He was twice her age, and Billie was still skeptical about the “beauty center” for special techniques and nonsurgical treatments.
It sounded a little shady to her, or certainly more commercial than medical.
The mention Mickie had made of before and after pictures sounded flat-out dishonest, if Mickie had understood the doctor correctly.
Hopefully she was confused about how he intended to use them.
What Mickie had said couldn’t have been right.