THE BILLIONAIRE’S PLUS-SIZE BLIND DATE

Chapter 5

Elowen’s Pov

My heart was singing as I pushed open the heavy glass doors of the Grand Regent Hotel. This was it—the biggest moment of my life. The hotel management had invited me to pitch my ideas for redesigning their private luxury suites.

I held my black leather sketch folder tightly against my chest, smiling at the grand marble floors and the giant crystal chandeliers hanging high above my head. I felt proud. I felt confident. I felt like the luckiest woman on earth.

Since the manager was taking a few minutes to finish up a meeting, the receptionist politely asked me to wait in the cozy lobby lounge. I sat down on a plush velvet sofa, placing my folder on the small glass coffee table in front of me.

Right next to my folder lay a neat stack of glossy business magazines. I wasn't really paying attention, but as I reached for a glass of water, a sharp, handsome face on the cover of Global Business Weekly caught my eye.

My breath caught in my throat. My hand stopped in mid-air.

The man on the cover had sharp, piercing eyes, dark hair, and a jawline I knew better than my own reflection. He was wearing a dark, expensive suit, looking like a powerful king ruling over the world.

I picked up the magazine with trembling hands, my heart suddenly pounding like a heavy drum against my ribs.

Printed right below his face in bold, shiny gold letters were the words:

ADRIAN STERLING: THE $12 BILLION CEO OF STERLING CROWN GROUP REVEALS HIS NEXT BIG MOVE.

"No," I whispered out loud into the quiet room. "No, this is a mistake. It’s just someone who looks like him. It’s a twin. It has to be."

My hands shook so violently that the pages rattled as I turned them over. But there were more pictures inside. There he was, standing in front of a giant glass skyscraper—the exact skyscraper in the middle of downtown. There were paragraphs written about his massive fortune, his powerful family, his private jets, and how he was one of the richest men in the entire world.

The room around me began to spin. The air in my lungs turned to pure fire.

Adrian Cole wasn't a humble, hard-working businessman trying to build a normal life. He was Adrian Sterling. A billionaire. The ultimate definition of the exact kind of man I had swore I would never, ever date.

Suddenly, every memory of our time together hit my brain like a series of violent explosions.

I couldn't trust a really rich man, Adrian, I had told him at the street food market. And he had just sat there, looking into my eyes, promising me he wasn't like that. He had listened to me cry about my ex-boyfriend using me and hiding me, all while hiding the biggest secret in the universe from me!

A deep, sickening wave of humiliation washed over my body from head to toe. Was I just a fun little game to him? Was I a sweet little project for a bored billionaire who wanted to see if he could trick a curvy, normal girl into falling in love with him?

I didn't stay for the hotel meeting. I couldn't. I grabbed the magazine, shoved it into my tote bag, and practically ran out of the building into the cool, biting wind outside.

My phone started buzzing in my pocket. His name popped up on the screen: Adrian.

I stared at the glowing letters with hot tears stinging my eyes. He called once. He called twice. He called three times. I ignored every single one, pressing my lips together until they bled as I drove straight back to my interior design studio.

By seven o'clock that evening, I was sitting alone in my dark studio office. I didn't turn on the lamps. The only light came from the yellow streetlights outside the window. I laid the magazine wide open right in the middle of my wooden desk, his billionaire face staring right up at the ceiling.

A few minutes later, the front door bell chimed softly.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Adrian walked into my office, holding a bouquet of bright red roses in his hand and a soft, hopeful smile on his face. He looked so handsome, so gentle, so completely fake.

"Elowen!" he said, his voice full of warmth. "Why weren't you picking up your phone? I was so worried about—"

He stopped dead in his tracks.

His eyes had dropped down to the desk. He saw the open magazine. He saw his real name printed in giant gold letters.

The roses slipped from his fingers, crashing onto the wooden floorboards with a dull thud. Every bit of color drained right out of his face, leaving him looking ghost-white under the dim lights.

"Elowen..." he choked out, his voice barely a whisper.

I leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. I looked at him, feeling my heart breaking into a million sharp pieces inside my chest, but I kept my face as hard as stone.

"So, Mr. Sterling," I said, my voice dangerously quiet, slicing through the air like a sharp knife. "Were you planning on telling me the truth tonight, or were you going to wait until I saw your face on a giant billboard downtown?"

Adrian took a quick step toward the desk, holding his hands out in desperate pleading. "Please! Elowen, let me explain! It’s not what you think!"

"Not what I think?!" I screamed, standing up so fast my chair slammed backward into the wall behind me. "You lied to me! From the very first second you looked at me at table seven, you pretended to be someone else! You sat there and listened to me talk about my dreams, my fears, and my pain, and you lied to my face every single day!"

"I didn't lie about how I feel about you!" Adrian cried out, his eyes shining with real, desperate tears as he reached across the desk to try to grab my hands. "I swear to you, Elowen! I created that fake profile because every woman I ever met only wanted my money! They wanted the billionaire, not me! When I met you, you didn't care about fancy things. You liked me for who I was! I was scared that if I told you the truth, you would run away!"

"So you decided to steal my choice!" I shouted, hot tears finally spilling over my eyelashes and running down my hot cheeks. "You decided that you had the right to trick me! You let me fall in love with a ghost, Adrian! You let me open my broken heart to a man who doesn't even exist!"

"I am real!" Adrian pleaded, his voice cracking with emotion. "The man who held your hand in the park is real! The man who kissed you by your car is real! I love you, Elowen! I don't care about the money, I don't care about the company—I only care about you!"

"You don't respect me," I choked out, wiping the wet tears from my face with the back of my hand. "If you respected me, you would have trusted me with the truth. You treated me like a child who couldn't handle reality. You made me feel like I was finally worth loving for who I am... but it was all just a big, fat fairytale built on a lie."

I reached into my purse, pulled out the silver key to his private apartment that he had given me just three days ago, and slammed it down right on top of his magazine picture.

"Elowen, please don't do this," Adrian begged, looking at the key as if it were a bomb about to explode. He looked completely destroyed, his strong shoulders shaking with heavy breaths. "Please. I’ll give up everything. Just give me one more chance."

I looked at the man I loved—the billionaire who had everything in the world, except the one thing he wanted most.

"If you really want to prove your feelings are real, Adrian," I whispered softly, my chest aching so painfully I thought I might fall to the floor, "you need to leave. Because right now, I can't even stand to look at your face."