The Billionaire's Weekend Bride by Kimmy Love Page A

still managed to make some kind of a deal. That's just typical. You come out of this smelling of roses and Sonia is back to square one. In fact, it's worse than that. How is anyone going to give her a serious acting job with all that crap on the news?”
     
    “It happened on Tuesday, Bibi,” Damian said. “It's old news. No one would have seen it.”
     
    “The Merrimans did.”
     
    “I don't have an answer for that. I just need to see Sonia. I can't get the look on her face out of my mind.”
     
    “Really? She ran out of there but you didn't run straight after her. You stayed to make sure you got that contract and let her come home alone after being humiliated by a room full of snobby suits.”
     
    “They don't know her,” he said. “She'll never have to see them again. What does it matter?”
     
    “If you can't understand what she's going through, mister, then you really don't have a right to see her at all.”
     
    “I think I do,” he protested. “I care about how she's feeling right now and I need to talk to her. Why can't you see that? I can't leave it like this.”
     
    Bibi pursed her lips together and looked Damian up and down as if he was diseased. “Well, you just missed her.”
     
    “What?” he spluttered. “When?”
     
    “Just seconds before you came banging on my door, she left. Now the five seconds I gave you are up. I'm calling the cops.”
     
    “Don't bother.” He looked down and shook his head from side to side. Backing away with his hands in submission, he breathed the words: “I give up.”
     
    Bibi closed the door with a bang just to punctuate his departure.
     
    Bibi walked to the kitchen. “Don't worry,” she said to Sonia. “I got rid of him – finally.”
     
    Sonia who had been sitting at the kitchen table, was clutching a damp tissue. She dabbed at her eyes again. She had been shaking and she'd had to force herself to stop sobbing loudly when she knew Damian was at the door.
    “Thank you for getting rid of him,” she said as Bibi sat down beside her. “I don't want to ever see that man again.”
     
    When Sonia ran from the boardroom, she had rushed out onto the street, not even able to see properly through the tears. Very quickly, she was able to jump into a taxi that had stopped in front of both her and another woman who had called it at the same time as she did. Sonia, in a panic to get away, practically dragged the poor woman out of the way to get into it. She had blurted out the word, “sorry”, but she just had to get away.
     
    She realized how rude she'd been. There was no need to rush away from Damian, anyway, was there? As her heels clicked with speed along the marble corridor away from the boardroom, there had been no sign of him following her. Down in the hotel foyer there were still no sign of him chasing after her to see how she was either.
     
    As far as she was concerned, after seeing the newsreel, his face told her what she wanted know – that he thought she really was a prostitute after all.
     
    She was ashamed. She had caught the look on Mrs. Merriman's face, too. She'd looked smug, pleased with herself because she'd obviously remembered why it was she'd seen Sonia's face before.
     
    Sonia had fooled herself that Mrs. Merriman had actually liked her. Okay, so she had been the fake Mrs. Hedley, the adoring new wife, but she was sure there had been some kind of connection. But she was wrong to believe that was true. Mrs. Merriman looked down her nose at her, too.
     
    “I feel so cheap,” she said to Bibi.
     
    “Don’t. You have nothing to prove to those people. They don't know you and they have no right to judge you, either.”
     
    “I know that. I know I shouldn't care what they think but I can't help it.” She dried another stream of tears away.
     
    “But that's not all you're crying about, is it?” Bibi put an elbow on the table.
     
    “What do you mean?”
     
    “You know what I mean. You're feeling this twice as bad because