All That He Demands (The Billionaire's Seduction Part 3) by Olivia Thorne Page A

hounding me about investing or boring me to tears, I’m pointing over at you and saying, ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, but I have to get back to my date.’”
    Date.
    I was his date.
    I guess it was silly, but it made me to feel happy to hear him say it.
    “Okay, then. As long as I can be your escape pod.”
    “I’ll ask him if he knows anybody famous he can introduce you to.” Connor gave me a wink, then ambled off across the room.
    I stood there and watched as Connor went over, broke in suavely, and shook the guy’s hand.
    The skinny guy apparently introduced Connor by name, because all the lawyers’ mouths dropped open.
    Then the glad-handing started.
    Connor was dead-on about the feeding frenzy: they were the sharks, and he was the chum in the water.
    I got bored watching them scramble over each other to kiss his heinie, so I started looking around the room.
    There were half a dozen famous people in here, too, all surrounded by adoring circles. Either the famous people were talking and everybody else was hanging on their every word, or the famous person looked bored and annoyed as some pushy person tried to monopolize the conversation and impress them.
    My geeky mind went into overdrive, and I started thinking about all the little groups as solar systems, with a star at the center and a bunch of orbiters circling around, smiling and laughing. Or, in the case of the annoying blabbermouths, annoying little dwarf stars trying to compete against a supernova.
    And the room became the universe, with all these little solar systems going happily on their way…
    …and here I was, alone, out in the middle of space, a comet that didn’t belong anywhere.
    My entire life, I’ve never felt like I’ve belonged. Big whoop – everybody feels like that at one point or another, right? But it was true. I’d never had many friends growing up, just one or two close ones, and I somehow managed to lose them as elementary turned into junior high turned into high school turned into college. All except Anh… thank God for her.
    But I never really fit into any cliques in high school. I wasn’t an athlete, or a cheerleader, or a rich kid, or an artist, or a brain, or a stoner. I was just… Lily. I had a boyfriend in high school, which was nice, but it was something I kind of fell into. Not something I chose because I really wanted it, but because it was better than the alternative, which was weekends alone. He asked me out, it was an awkward first date, he asked me out again, it was slightly less awkward the second time, we kissed, it was okay, and I gradually got used to him. A nice guy, but…
    When college came and we went to different schools, I can’t say I was all that sad. Maybe a day or two, and then I got over it. I would have felt guilty about my lack of feelings for him, except he was probably even less sad than I was. His jackhole buddies talked all senior year about how easy girls were in college, and if you were in a frat, you got laid with a different chick every weekend. He ended up pledging his first semester, though I was secretly glad when a mutual acquaintance told me he could only make it into the nerd fraternity.
    Sorry. TMI.
    I guess I’m saying all this because, in that Hollywood Hills mansion, I’d never felt like more of an outsider. Here most of them were beautiful people – and if they weren’t, then they were at least rich and powerful. I suppose there are tens of thousands of people in Hollywood without a dollar in their pocket who talk a big game as they desperately try to claw their way up, but this wasn’t that kind of a party. To walk through that door, you had to have already arrived , at least at a certain level. The only reason I’d gotten in was because of Connor.
    I so didn’t belong here.
    “And who are you?” a woman’s voice asked.
    I whirled around to see a gorgeous blonde, probably about my age, with upswept hair and a shimmering red dress that showed off her rather large boobs. If