The Billionaire Series Collection

by Lila Monroe

  “That never went to court,” Annabelle said, her smile going down a notch. She turned to the side, trying to block out Kate. “So, how did you meet him?”

  “Oh, that is quite a story,” I said. “So there I was, crying in the office parking lot because some complete bitch had Facebook-stalked me just to message insults at me—” Annabelle’s face froze for a second here, and she blinked rapidly, presumably trying desperately to remember whether she was the one who had done that to me—“when Grant came along. I didn’t want to talk about it at first, but he insisted on treating me to dinner at this lovely local restaurant—Rama, have you heard of it?”

  “You got dinner at Rama?” Annabelle interrupted, the look on her face as though I had claimed to have grabbed some nectar and ambrosia at Mount Olympus.

  “Yeah, it was pretty decent,” I said offhandedly. “Anyway, before I knew it, he was asking me on a date, and then another date after that, and showering me with tickets to the opera and gold-dipped roses, and well, the rest is history! Such a sweet, generous man, and not a bit two-faced or opportunistic, like some people. My knight in shining armor.”

  “Wow, that’s such a great story,” Annabelle chirped. “I’m so happy for you; I’ve missed you so much since school. Remember how we used to kid around and tease each other? Are you all set for the maid of honor—”

  “Kate,” I interrupted.

  “Oh, well, of course, but maybe bridesmaids…”

  “Oh, I’ll think of some people,” I said. “People who have always stood by me and been my friend, not just when they thought they could get their greedy little paws on a piece of money and fame.” I smiled as sweetly as I could, showing all my teeth.

  And for the first time that I could recall, Annabelle Featherstonehaugh was completely speechless.

  “Oh, Lacey,” Kate said, “isn’t that your phone going off? We better get going if we’re going to make the party at that underground club Grant’s taking us to.”

  And we swept away, leaving Annabelle behind, as wilted as a year-old prom corsage.

  The numbers on the cash register climbed higher and higher until I thought they might take up mountaineering.

  “You know,” I started, reaching for one of the more expensive pairs of shoes, diamond-encrusted vermillion Louboutins with seven-inch heels, “I don’t really need this stuff. When would I wear it? This is Grant’s money, and I don’t really have the right—”

  Kate’s hand shot out to stop mine, faster than a striking rattlesnake.

  “Oh no you don’t, Lacey Newman. Did you even read those articles I brought you? Have you been paying attention in meetings at all this week? The share price of Devlin Media is going up like a freaking hot air balloon. Grant probably made, like, eight million bucks from the engagement while he was sleeping last night.”

  Well, when she put it like that, a few dozen thousand dollars on pretty clothes and gifts didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Guilt? What guilt? This was couch cushion change to Grant.

  “Excuse me?” I said to the cashier. “Do you mind holding all this for just one moment?” I grinned at Kate. “I do really love these shoes, and I think I’d like to get them in black, too.”

  18

  For the engagement party Grant opted out of the film noir car with its fancy chauffeur, picking me up instead in a cherry red convertible with fins so wide it would have been perfectly at home on the sets of a 1950s science fiction movie set on Mars.

  “Aren’t you a little young to be having a midlife crisis?” I asked him as I got in, my thin turquoise dress flapping around my thighs in the breeze.

  “Aren’t you a bit young to be a soul-sucking vampire?” he asked, sticking his tongue out at me as if he were seven years old. “I’ll inform you that ‘Betty’ here is a classic.”

  “You named your car,” I said with eyebrows raised.

  “I name all my cars,” he informed me. “The one with which you are most acquainted is Hepburn.”

  His eyes were dancing, and I couldn’t help but laugh as I slid into the seat. I’d been planning on tearing him a new one, but I’d had a few days to decompress.

  Today was sunny, Grant looked scrumptious in a tight red dress shirt and khaki slacks, and I couldn’t help but shiver a little inside at the ways his eyes tracked up my legs to the hem of my dress.

  If I was going to be a part of this farce, I might as well have fun. That was what farces were for, weren’t they?

  The mood stayed light and teasing as he drove out to the gently rolling hills of Napa Valley, the scenery growing ever more green as we descended into the heart of wine country.

  Rows and rows of staked vines stretched out to the horizon, plump grapes peeking like polished sapphires and amethysts between the wide leaves as we raced by, kicking up dust on the country roads.

  “The Devlin family vineyard concentrates primarily on a variety of fruit-forward New World wines,” Grant was saying. “Though in recent years we have been experimenting with a more Old World, mineral Chardonnay. We do a very plush, concentrated Merlot, and White Zinfandel continues to be our most popular vintage. We use the same grape varieties passed down from the Korbel brothers—”

  He chattered on and on about methodé champenoise and acidity levels and all sorts of technical things that went flying over my head like hummingbirds, gesturing enthusiastically, his eyes sparkling more than any dessert wine ever could. Who cared that I didn’t understand a word he was saying, when he was so passionate about it?

  I definitely didn’t notice the way he rolled his sleeves up his muscular forearms when he got really into some fine technical detail, or the way he popped open the top three buttons of his shirt, as if it were constraining him.

  “This really means a lot to you, huh?” I said. “This place we’re going to.”

  “Some of my first memories are of this place.” He went quiet, and for a second I worried that I’d said the wrong thing, derailed him from his happy thoughts and doomed us to an awkward silence. “I can just barely recall my parents, you know. But I remember the flight here from Australia, looking out the window. And I remember this place. My father would hold my hand as we walked through the rows of grapes, the sun coming through their leaves like the stained glass ceiling of a church, and my mother would sit at the edge of our property making sketches for her watercolors, a glass of lemonade ready for us when we looped our way back to her.”

  His eyes glinted slightly, but before I could look closer to see if he were tearing up, he pulled a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment.

  “You miss them?” I asked instead.

  “I barely remember them,” he repeated. “I suppose…I miss the sense of purpose they had. That they might have given me. I might have been a better person if…well, my grandfather tried his best. But there was only so much he could do.”

  His shoulders were so tight and tense, his tone was filled with such self-loathing that it pierced me to my heart.

  I touched his arm. “You’re not such a bad person, you know.”

  “‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,’” he quoted, his eyes still on the road. “Sometimes it feels as though I’ve spent my entire life doing nothing.”

  It was hard to contradict that. But… “It’s not too late. To do something. To do lots of things.”

  “I feel…so responsible.” His voice nearly caught in his throat. “For the company. For you. For—for making sure that everything turns out all right. Sometimes it feels like the easiest way to get rid of that anxiety is to avoid the issue altogether.”

  “But that only makes it worse,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”

  “You, irresponsible? Pull the other one.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “Senior year, I was supposed to be planning Kate’s birthday party. But it was right around the time of exams, and I kept putting it off and putting it off the more anxious I got, and eventually, well… let’s just say it’s a
good thing Kate’s got a forgiving personality, and a weakness for cheap wine you can buy at the gas station.” I shrugged, suddenly self-conscious that I’d turned the conversation back around to me like a total attention-whore. “Sorry, I know that’s not even remotely on the same scale—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Grant said, and he briefly covered my hand where it rested on his arm before putting it back on the steering wheel. “You’re right, about putting things off, avoiding things. I think I always knew that, deep down. When I inherited everything, I figured I would only mess it up. I had offers to sell, and I very nearly did it.”

  His jaw tensed, and I rested a hand on his thigh. To be comforting, of course.

  “All that responsibility, and people would pay me money to take it off my shoulders--but the buyers planned to break up the company, move jobs overseas, lower the quality of our products. I just couldn’t do it. Something—” He shook his head, almost in disbelief at his own past actions. “Something in me knew that no matter how afraid I was, I couldn’t let myself walk away.”

  I gazed at his profile as he turned another corner, feeling new insight and admiration awakening in my heart. He’d felt the temptation for the easy life, but he hadn’t given in. He had faced—was still facing—his fears. Maybe he wasn’t just an immature playboy after all.

  The car pulled into the vineyard parking lot, and the setting sun cast the low hills above in flames, while brightly colored lanterns threw rainbow shadows about the pines and vines, a thousand different shades of green, with orange clay beneath, lit by sparkling bits of light like stars. It took my breath away.

  “As I said, it’s a place that means a great deal to me.” Grant turned off the car and covered my hand with his own. “I’m glad you’ll get to see it.

  And then he took my hand and pulled me into the fray.

  If I’d thought the scenery was breath-taking from far away, it became even more so close up. A lively salsa beat was playing as young couples whirled around the patio, drinks clinked as patrician older couples sipped wines whose subtle perfumes drifted over the night, silk rustled and diamonds rattled. I looked around for Jennings and his wife Patricia, but I couldn’t see them anywhere.

  “Grant, I don’t know any of these people!” I whispered. “I don’t think I can pull this off!”

  “I’ll get you out if you really need it,” he promised, his arm sliding comfortingly around my shoulder. “Diplomatically, though—can’t afford to burn any bridges. Shall we decide on a code word?”

  “What, a conversational safe word? Like what, I say ‘apple’ and we hightail it out of here?”

  Grant made a face. “Pssh, ‘apple’ is so boring. Not a challenge at all to work into a sentence. I vote for ‘fecund.’”

  “How the hell am I supposed to think of—” I started, but Grant had spied a circle of girls my own age, and swooped towards them to deposit me in their midst.

  “Shall I get you a sample of that famous Merlot?” Grant asked, and without waiting for an answer: “Look after her, ladies, I’ll be right back!”

  Still slightly disoriented from the transition between the intimate car conversation and the loud party crowd, I blinked at the dazzling girls in front of me, trying not to be blinded by the gleam off their glossy hair and perfectly white teeth.

  “So, how’d you land him?” asked a busty blonde who could have been a model if her nose-job had been just a little less obvious.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “How. Did. You. Land. Him?” She blew an exasperated breath through her nose as if I were too stupid for words.

  “I didn’t ‘land’ him,” I said, my temper flaring slightly. “He’s not a fish. We just met.”

  Another girl, this one a strawberry blonde with piercing blue eyes, looked me up and down with a skepticism usually reserved for atheists in church. “How?”

  “At work,” I said shortly. Somehow, the fun story Kate and I had come up with didn’t seem so fun here. It just seemed silly. Like Grant would ever care about rescuing me from snooty bitches when he’d just plopped me into their laps and left?

  “That dress is…nice,” the first girl said, not quite hiding her giggle. “Was it on sale?”

  “It was a gift from Grant—” I started to say through clenched teeth.

  “It would be, wouldn’t it?” she interrupted.

  A third girl, her hair the kind of glossy black that only goes with skin that pale when the black comes out of a bottle, drawled: “I bet he’s bought you a lot of ‘dresses,’ huh? Did he give you a credit card or does he just leave cash on the bedside table?”

  “Excuse me, I don’t like what you’re insinuating!”

  “God, don’t be so defensive,” said the first girl with a vicious smile. “We were just making conversation.”

  “So, tell me about yourselves,” I said desperately. For a moment that seemed to perk their interest, but then I made the mistake of adding: “How do you know Grant?”

  They looked at me like I was scum.

  Great, a whole room full of people who hated me for something that wasn’t even true. And the lie was just getting bigger all the time, creating vast new vistas of people to hate me for no reason. I felt misery welling like a black lake in the pit of my stomach.

  “And I return!” Grant swooped back in with drinks, handing mine to me as he kissed my cheek, and then pecked the check of the girl with the nose-job. “I see you’ve met Starla; her family’s not far from here. We used to play together as kids, didn't we?”

  Starla blushed and mumbled something unintelligible; I felt a twinge of sympathy. A childhood crush on Grant, ouch. She had to be hurting now more than ever.

  “You’re all looking lovely,” Grant said, sliding his arm around my waist. “Don’t you think so, Lacey?”

  “Yup,” I said, and took a large gulp of my drink. “Very lovely. Very, very…fecund.”

  “Oh?” Grant raised an eyebrow and surveyed the girls, who were displaying varying levels of confusion, incomprehension, and in a few cases, dawning anger. “Do you know, Lacey, I couldn’t agree more. These girls redefine the very word ‘fecund.’ Make it lose all meaning. It pales beside them.”

  Something about his charming smile seemed to make them all decide it was a compliment; there were now a few tentative smiles. He beamed another smile at them, and they all melted.

  “I hope I’ll make it back later tonight,” he went on, “but I do need to show Lacey something right now. Lacey, pudding-blossom, a moment, please?”

  I let him get us fifteen feet away from them before raising my eyebrows. “Pudding-blossom?”

  “Payback for sugarplum.”

  I shook my head. “Sugarplum is at least an actual word. But thanks for saving me from the mean girl squad.”

  “You looked as though you wanted to throw yourself off the veranda,” Grant said. “I can’t marry you if you’re a splattery mess. Want to get out of here?”

  For a second I thought he just meant over to the other side of the party with the drinks, but then I saw he was gesturing out into the night. “But…I thought the safe word was just for…what about all these people?”

  “It’s our party,” Grant said with that wicked grin that made my heart start playing percussion. “We can do whatever we want.” And then that arrogance melted for just a second, and that other grin surfaced, that soft, shy one that made him look like a timid kitten, eager for affection and approval. “I want to show you around.”

  How could I say no?

  19

  We hadn’t gotten more than ten feet when my heels started to sink into the lush dirt. “Damn, Grant, I’m sorry. I didn’t bring my practical shoes. You’ll have to show me another time.”

  “Nonsense,” he said with a glint in his eye. “We just need…alternate transportation.”

  He set down our drinks, grabbed my hand, and pulled me over to a golf cart that looked like it had been chained to its post since the Nixon administration. B
efore I could ask if he had the key, he was picking the lock. “Man of many talents, huh?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how many handcuffs I’ve had to pick myself out of.”

  Oh, I’d believe it, I thought. I’m just going to concertedly avoid thinking about it before my panties combust.

  The lock yielded in seconds—I was willing to bet this was not the first time Grant had gone joyriding in this golf cart with a young lady either—and my butt had barely touched the seat before he zoomed off, revving of the engine. Grant threw back his head with a hearty laugh, and I squealed. There was a stir on the patio nearby.

  “Shh,” Grant whispered, “they’ll catch us!”

  “You’re leaving tracks an inch deep in the mud!” I hissed back, giggling as we dove between pines and looped around the edge of a field. “It’s not going to take Tonto to find us

  “Better get mysterious, then!”

  And before I could ask a single question, he drove straight into the stream, splashing water all over us. I shrieked at the cold and then I couldn’t stop laughing at the way the wave had plastered Grant’s perfect hair back. He drove on down the stream, oblivious to the ridiculous swoop his hair was doing, and probably also oblivious to the way the water plastered his shirt to his chest, highlighting his muscles.

  “I used to do this all the time when I was a kid!” he said, not bothering to whisper anymore.

  “I hope you’ve brushed up on your skills at least once since then!” I said.

  “Nah, but I still think I can take that hill!” And he gunned the engine.

  “You’re crazy!”

  “Is that a dare?”

  I shrieked again as the golf cart went flying up and over the hill, catching several feet of air before thudding back to earth. Grant caught me just seconds before I would have tumbled out of the side, my heart going a mile a minute and not slowing down as he took me in his arms. I couldn’t stop laughing; I’d never felt so exhilarated.