The Bashful Billionaire

by Elana Johnson

  Didn’t matter. She paid for her drink and sucked at the sugary, sweet-and-sour liquid, the burn of the carbonation down her throat the one indulgence she allowed herself every day. A couple of the other women had followed her to the beachside drink stand, and she waited in the shade while they got their refreshments.

  Stacey sat beside her, nothing to drink in her hand. Of course not. Stacey preferred water above all else, and she could get that for free pretty much anywhere. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Last night, the fake engagement had seemed fine. Tyler hadn’t expressed a whole lot of concern about it. She’d promised to put out her feelers and as soon as she learned Omar had left the island, they’d “break up.”

  The memory of how his jaw had tightened when she’d said that crawled through his mind. But she couldn’t help her blunder. Couldn’t go back in time and un-say it. So she’d kept her smile in place and done her best to make sure he didn’t get painted with the wrong brush yet again.

  And he’d been grateful she’d gone with her. As of one-thirty-three last night, he’d said thank you.

  “I just need to talk to him.” She took another long drink.

  “Yep.”

  “I texted him this morning, before my class. Nothing.”

  “Maybe he’s actually working today.”

  Tawny shook her head but didn’t say anything. A dog barked, and she searched the beach for it. A black lab ran through the sand, skidding to a stop before picking up an object she was too far away to see.

  Not Tyler. Not Lazy Bones. She’d seen them approach from the east dip in the bay, and she wondered where he lived. Probably some big mansion like Marshall’s, high up in the hills, with Hank bringing him and Bones down to the beach every day to swim, surf, and waste countless hours under the sun.

  “Oh.” Stacey sounded surprised, and Tawny turned toward her to see her scrambling to her feet. “Tawny.”

  Tawny automatically stood too, though she couldn’t quite see why Stacey had snapped to attention. Peering toward Sweet Breeze and then to the roadside parking lot, Tawny finally spotted the reason.

  Tyler walked toward them, almost like he was in slow motion, with a wind machine blowing his hair back. It was a scene out of a movie really, at least until he arrived. Then time sped forward as she noticed he didn’t smile, or touch her hand, or sweep her into one of those blissful embraces that left her jumbled for hours.

  “I thought I’d find you on the beach,” he finally said. He wasn’t dressed for the beach, though, and his dog was nowhere in sight. Besides the tux, Tawny had never seen him in anything but board shorts and a T-shirt, so the slacks and short-sleeved blue button-up felt completely out of place, though he’d kept more buttons than necessary undone at his collar. A healthy amount of his tan chest showed through, and Tawny yanked her eyes back to his.

  “I just finished a class,” she said, though the workout had ended forty-five minutes ago. Thankfully, her Beach Club girls had had enough sense to scatter, leaving only Stacey and Tawny sitting together under the palm frond umbrella.

  He flicked a glance at Stacey. “Can I steal her from you for a few minutes?” He was smooth, polite, casual, but Tawny sensed something teeming just beneath the surface.

  “Of course, of course.” Stacey practically tripped over herself to make room for Tawny to slip between her and the table where they’d been sitting. “Call me later,” she hissed as Tawny passed.

  With everything in her, she wanted to slip her hand into his, steal some of that seeming calmness from him, make her face as impassive as his.

  She made it ten steps before she couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “I’m assuming you saw the weblines this morning.”

  “Well, I didn’t, no.”

  He hadn’t seen them? Why hadn’t he answered her text then? Why was he dressed like he’d be spending the day in an office instead of on the beach?

  “But my mother called.”

  Tawny’s heart dropped to the soles of her feet and rebounded back to its rightful place in her chest. And that hurt.

  “I’m so—”

  “If you say sorry one more time….” He let his words hang there as he slowed to a stop. His blue eyes stormed one moment and danced the next. She couldn’t tell if he was angry, frustrated, or something else. “I don’t need your apology. We just need a plan.”

  “A plan,” she repeated, her grip tightening on her soda cup as they started walking again. “Right.” The mid-day sun beat down on them, even in October, and he turned to take the walking path through the forestation along the bay.

  “I told my mother we hadn’t set a date yet.” He strolled along, his hands in his pockets.

  “Good.” The truth was good. They should try to stick to that as much as possible.

  “But she wants to come meet you at Christmas.”

  Tawny froze. “Meet me?” squeaked through her lips.

  Tyler’s hand found hers and latched onto it. “It’s two months away,” he said. “So we might have to prolong the ruse a little bit. I’m….” He stepped in front of her and gazed down at her. “We can do that, right?”

  Do what? She wasn’t sure because of how he watched her with those ocean-blue eyes. She nodded, trying to get her thoughts to make sense.

  “Great.” He gave her an easy smile. “So I think you’re right. We need to get some facts in line. I’ll get you a diamond ring. And we’ll make sure that everything is in place for when my family comes for the holidays.”

  Get some facts in line.

  Make sure everything is in place for when my family comes for the holidays.

  So he didn’t genuinely like her. The old Tawny would’ve been secretly plotting how she could get him to fall madly in love with her. But the Tawny walking down the breezeway with Tyler’s hand in hers needed to ask a few questions. She tugged him over to a driftwood bench, where they sat down. “Okay, so let me just get a few things straight.”

  “Straight is good.”

  “Yeah, so…you’re okay continuing the ruse, because….”

  He chuckled and ducked his head, that delicious beard calling to her. Why couldn’t he have shaved? Did he know she had a weakness for scruffy surfers?

  He glanced up, right into her eyes. “You really want to know?”

  “I find the truth refreshing, don’t you?” She tried to smile, but an earthquake was happening with her internal organs. She doubted she’d even be able to hear anything he said.

  “I may have told my mom that yes, we were in a good place and would definitely still be together at Christmas.” He looked sheepish and he ducked his head in true bashful form. “But if you don’t want to play along that long, I get it. We can do a few weeks, like we planned, and then I’ll call her and say it’s over.”

  Tawny didn’t like the sound of over, but she couldn’t say that. Of course Tyler would want this ruse to end as quickly as possible, but he was the one who’d told his mother to come for Christmas. Nothing made sense, so she shelved the confusing words to dwell on later.

  “Why are we holding hands right now?” she asked.

  “There’s a couple of reporters following me around.” He glanced down the path, and Tawny followed his gaze but couldn’t see anyone.

  “And I’m going to wear a fake diamond.”

  “Well, it’ll be a real diamond, but the engagement is still fake.” He searched her face. “Right?”

  “Of course.” She couldn’t get engaged to the guy a week after talking to him—really talking to him—for the first time. She wasn’t going to slip and tell him she’d been watching him for months. He didn’t need to know that.

  “What else did you tell your mom?”

  “Just that I’d met a sweet girl and things had happened fast, and I’d tell her more about it when I wasn’t so tired.” He looked across the breezeway and toward the bay. “Then I got her talking about the gala, and she didn’t come back to the engagement.”

>   “So all true things.”

  “Well, you are sweet.” He gave her a lopsided grin that made her heart flip. “And things did happen fast. So.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t technically lying, which is a good thing, because my New Yorker mother can smell a lie from thousands of miles away—through phone lines.” He laughed, the joy in his voice and on his face testifying of his love for his mother.

  Tawny sobered. Her own mother would’ve flipped out about an engagement, any engagement, and she was suddenly glad her mom wasn’t here so she wouldn’t have to lie to her. Or get her hopes up.

  “So, how about dinner tonight to get some facts straight?” He stood and headed back toward Two Coconuts. “I have a couple of things to do, but I can meet as early as four.”

  “Four o’clock for dinner? What are we? Sixty-five?”

  This time when he laughed, he could’ve painted the entire sky with happiness. He pulled her close and said, “First fact, I like to joke and laugh. So keep that coming.”

  She stepped into his arms, enjoying the easy way his hands slid along her waist, and the feel of his beard beneath her fingertips. He let her explore the planes of his face, and the moment between them went quickly from fake to real—at least for her.

  “How about a kiss for camera?”

  She startled toward the male voice to find three of them standing there, two pointing cameras in her direction and one holding out a recording device.

  “No comment,” Tyler said, his voice completely different than the husky murmur with which he’d just spoken. “And no pictures, guys. You got enough at the gala last night.”

  “Where’s your ring?” one of them asked anyway.

  “Getting sized,” Tawny said, a repeat from one of the interviews from the previous night.

  Tyler glared and brought Tawny past the reporters.

  “Really? No kiss from the Poker Prince?”

  Tyler whipped back to the man so fast, Tawny’s pulse increased and her adrenaline spiked. For one terrible moment, she thought he’d clock the man right in the mouth. “Don’t. Call me that,” he growled instead.

  The Poker Prince. She’d have to look up what that meant later. Or simply ask Tyler, but she wasn’t going to do it in front of reporters. It felt like an intimate piece of his past that his fiancée should know.

  “Plenty of pictures of you kissing women on the Internet,” the man said, utterly nonplussed. “Just give us one of you and your fiancée.”

  “Not today.” Tyler turned around and strode faster now. Tawny did her best to keep up, wondering how he could go from hot to cold so dang fast. And who all those other women were. A green seed of jealousy planted itself inside her heart, though it was ridiculous to think he’d never been in a relationship before.

  This isn’t a real relationship, she thought.

  “One kiss?” the guy called after them, and the thought of kissing Tyler had Tawny’s heart bouncing in anticipation.

  “We could just give them—” she started, but he glared her into silence. She saw a little bit of what he probably used to win poker hands in that ice-cold stare, and she almost shivered.

  “I’m not kissing you for the first time for a camera.” He pressed his lips into a tight line, shook his head, and said, “I’ll call you later to arrange dinner.”

  She’d lost the ability to move, apparently, because all she could do was stare after him.

  Kissing you for the first time….

  So there’d be a first kiss. And he wanted it to be private. Right?

  So much for no strings attached.

  She turned away from his retreating form, but she didn’t want to give another interview. She blinked at the reporters standing there and went back to get her bag which she’d left with Stacey at Two Coconuts, wishing she didn’t feel quite so tied to Tyler already.

  Chapter Seven

  Tyler made it to the safety of his car without encountering anyone else. Thankfully. His whole head buzzed, and not in a good way. Or maybe in a good way. He wasn’t sure. He rubbed his fingers along his forehead, trying to get his brain to shut off.

  But ever since his mother had called that morning, his thoughts had been streaming, circling, swirling in his head.

  Tawny acted like she liked him, but that had to be because of his willingness to go along with her fake relationship. “Just until Omar leaves town,” he told himself for at least the twentieth time that day.

  He pulled onto the road, nowhere really to be for another hour, but he’d spent plenty of time driving the winding roads around the island. Sometimes the scent of the wind and the sound of the surf helped him work out problems.

  Prolonging their relationship was a big problem. So was establishing some facts between them. He didn’t want to tell her about his life in LA, Las Vegas, or New York City. He didn’t want her to see the pictures of him with various women. And he certainly didn’t want her to know his poker nickname or how quickly he’d risen to fame.

  The youngest professional poker player to make a million dollars….

  The best up and coming poker player in the world….

  The Poker Prince does it again! Another win, another million, another all-nighter….

  Tyler had the headlines memorized, unfortunately. He’d stopped reading the headlines and getting on the Internet after his second big win, but sometimes he heard things, saw something on a billboard, or someone had the TV on in the background.

  Short of moving to the middle of nowhere and shutting down the WiFi, it was pretty hard to get completely away from everything.

  He pulled over and parked before getting out and walking down the public beach on the opposite side of the bay from where Fisher’s hotel stood and where Tawny taught her yoga classes. He could hope the reporters would find another story, and he tossed a prayer heavenward that something big would happen and his fake engagement would fade into oblivion.

  He’d learned how to stay off the radar, and that included keeping himself to a small radius of space. His beach house. His private beach. His dog. A few restaurants. No one cared what he was doing with his billions in Hawaii until something like this happened.

  He pushed his breath out, thinking about Tawny in her stringy T-shirts and bright pink sports bras. She was cute, and he couldn’t believe he’d waited for this hospital gala to ask her out. What would’ve happened if she hadn’t made up the engagement?

  Would he have asked her out again?

  Tyler honestly didn’t know. He’d told her no strings attached, it wasn’t a date, and so many other things just to get her to say yes.

  “And you have to stick to that,” he told himself. She’d gone along with his hand-holding, his strange embraces, but probably because she was grateful for the dress or simply awe-struck with his money.

  After all, historically, women didn’t show interest in him before they knew about his bank account. So why would Tawny?

  She wouldn’t.

  Tyler got through the video conferencing with his accountants in LA, something he forced himself to do once a month. His guys were great, and allowed him to call in on Sunday afternoon. He dressed up and they dressed down, and they talked for a couple of hours about what Tyler’s money was doing, and what it could be doing, and what it should be doing.

  He didn’t hate that he had the money, and he didn’t want to squander it. He just didn’t want to talk about a four-year period of his life he’d rather forget. He wasn’t sure Tawny needed to know every detail of his life on the professional poker circuit, and he decided he’d give her surface stuff.

  He changed out of his button-up shirt and slacks and put on his board shorts. The hammock called to him, as he’d been out late the night before and gotten up way too early to the sound of his mother’s angry voice.

  After shoving his phone in his pocket, he relaxed in the hammock and closed his eyes. He couldn’t fall asleep though, despite his fatigue. Tawny dominated his thoughts, and he hated that they had to meet to get some facts
about each other.

  It sounded so clinical and nothing like what he wanted to spend his time doing. But with the bloodhound reporters still hanging around, if he didn’t spend a free evening with his supposed fiancée, their suspicions would be raised.

  His phone buzzed, but he ignored it. His brother had called during his meeting too, and Tyler had texted to say he’d call him later.

  Apparently, it was later.

  Tyler didn’t care. He only had a few more hours before he had to go meet a beautiful woman and pretend not to like her. Or was he pretending to be in love with her?

  Tyler wasn’t sure, and that drove him toward the edge of madness.

  When he woke, he wasn’t sure where he was or what time is was. The sky held hues of navy and gold, and the wind brushed against his loose hair. He’d cut it himself on Saturday morning, a skill he’d acquired while on the poker circuit so he could clean up whenever he wanted.

  He took a moment to enjoy the serenity of the scene before him. The sky, the water, the golden sand. It was everything he’d wanted when he’d come to the island, and he held onto the peace of it for as long as possible.

  Then he pulled out his phone and forced himself to check his many messages. A sigh passed through his whole body, driving frustration into his bloodstream. A tiny 32 sat on his messaging app, which meant Wayne had decided to text out his lecture instead of waiting for Tyler to return his calls.

  He’d also missed six phone calls. He wasn’t even sure six people had his phone number, so he started there.

  Three calls from Wayne, two from Tawny, and one from Jasper.

  Tyler decided to go with the easiest of the three, and that was Jasper. “You called?” He continued to swing in the hammock, as it was only five-thirty and surely still too early for dinner with Tawny.

  “Yeah, you said you’d send me the contact info for your mutual fund guy.”

  “Oh, right.” Tyler had said that, and he was actually glad this conversation had nothing to do with his personal life. “I’ll text it right now.”