The Billionaire's Gamble

by Ava Miles

  “It’s a good policy. You have to make a living too. You rent the rooms out to bring in extra income, right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, leading him down the stairs again and through a dining room decorated with a simple farm table and benches instead of chairs. “Even with Howie’s help, I had to take out a loan to renovate the house. Once I paid that off, I realized the rent money would pad my savings account so I could make my big dream come true. Hot Cross Buns is finally becoming a reality.”

  When he reached the edge of the kitchen, he turned and gave her his complete attention. He recognized the excitement in her voice—it was how he felt about his own new adventure.

  ***

  Margie nearly shivered when Evan looked at her that way. While it wasn’t surprising Rhett hadn’t thought to warn her that Evan was a hottie, she rather wished Jane had said something. When she’d opened the door to find him standing on her threshold, her insides had turned to liquid. It wasn’t how he was dressed. It wasn’t even the sexy rakish-looking beard, the curly blond hair, or the lakewater blue eyes.

  No, Evan Michaels was downright sexy in a way that had everything to do with his absolute focus on her as she talked. Add in the appealing awkwardness he’d exhibited about the whole celibacy and sharing-a-bathroom thing, and she was already feeling a strong pull toward him.

  His smile was going to get her into trouble.

  Good thing he was on a celibacy kick because she didn’t allow hooking up or dating amongst her renters—herself included.

  From the way his eyes were always on her—so intense it sent shivers down her spine—it wasn’t hard to see that he was attracted to her too. She fought a deep sigh and reached for a cinnamon roll. A good cinnamon roll was a perfect substitute for chocolate when lust came a calling.

  “How long have you wanted to open a bakery?” he asked, resting his hip against the kitchen island.

  “Since I started working at Don’t Soy With Me. We serve some baked goods there, including French pastries from Brasserie Dare. Everyone in town still goes to Kemstead’s for cinnamon rolls though. Jill finally started letting people bring them into our shop since we have better coffee. It’s how this community works. When I tasted their cinnamon rolls for the first time, something happened to me.”

  A snowstorm had blown through on a freeze-your-ass-off Wednesday. She’d just moved to Dare Valley and was on her way to Don’t Soy With Me for the late shift. Someone came out of Kemstead’s bakery, and she caught a whiff of cinnamon and baking bread. She decided to treat herself to a cinnamon roll for braving the horrible weather when all she wanted was to call in sick and snuggle up on the couch in her fleece PJs and watch chick flicks.

  Time stood still when she took that first bite. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her nose was saturated with the smells of cinnamon and caramel and a part of her soul cried out, Yes, this is what you’ve been looking for.

  Her mother had never cooked. They’d hired a string of high-priced private chefs, and while the food had always been excellent, something had been missing.… In that one cinnamon roll, she’d found it. The mingled flavors of comfort, love, and the sweetness of life were rolled up in the bread’s very layers. Her heart burst open. She got teary-eyed—not her usual—and she fell in love. With the taste as much as the sensation.

  From that moment onward, she’d been eager to share that wonderful feeling with others. As a barista and now manager at Don’t Soy With Me, she poured it into her coffee and everything she did at the shop. And she saved and saved and saved, knowing the time would come for her to have her own business in Dare Valley—one that would give people the same sensation as Kemstead’s cinnamon rolls.

  Then fate had delivered her dream to her. When word spread that the current owners were selling Kemstead’s, she pounced. Grandma Kemstead, nearing seventy, cried when she shared her story and promised to continue their legacy of feeding Dare Valley with love, one cinnamon roll at a time.

  “Sounds like quite a revelation,” Evan said, returning her to the present moment. “As an adopted Parisian, no one knows the power of food better than me. Trust me, you have a winner here.”

  She grinned. “Thanks. I think so too, but it never hurts to have other opinions.”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to wow the town with your baking,” he said, leaning a little bit more on the island like he was suddenly tired.

  “You must be jet-lagged,” she realized. “Why don’t I help you carry your things inside?”

  He took out his keys. “I can get everything. I’ll be right back.”

  She found herself admiring his excellent tush before she realized she’d forgotten to ask him how he’d be spending his days in Dare Valley.

  “Evan,” she said, and the word felt as delicious on her tongue as the cinnamon roll’s caramel sauce. He turned around and gave her that same look—the one that told her he was really paying attention. “What are you going to be doing all month? I mean, will you be around the house most of the time?” Normally, she respected people’s privacy, but no one had ever worked from the house full-time, and she rather liked coming home to find it empty sometimes.

  “I need to get a job,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Otherwise I’ll go crazy. Got any ideas? I can work for free since I know most people wouldn’t want to hire someone just for a month.”

  Hmm…her mind started to spin with an idea.

  “You mentioned painting,” she said. “How would you feel about painting Kemstead’s for me? I know it’s not quite art, but I have quite a lot to paint, and it will go faster if I have help.” Maybe she could even delegate it to him completely if he was more than merely competent. “I can pay you fifteen dollars an hour,” she added, calculating her outlay costs in her mind.

  “You just found yourself a painter,” he said and gave a sexy shrug. “Just don’t expect Degas, okay?”

  Her laughter bubbled out of her. “What? No Degas? I’m crushed. I was so looking forward to a ballerina mural.”

  Chapter 3

  The next day Evan wasn’t painting willowy ballerinas all Impressionist-like. No, he was measuring out and laying blue paint tape in preparation for the painting, which was about as far from glamorous as a person could get. He’d watched a few how-to videos on YouTube, and it hadn’t looked too hard.

  No one had told him how much time it would take to do all the prep work. His eyes were starting to cross as he ripped off a measure of tape and tried to lay it exactly against the baseboards. The problem was that each time he laid down tape and stepped away, it looked crooked. At first he figured it was ineptitude on his part, but after repeating the process a few too many times, he finally grabbed one of the tape measurers in Margie’s toolbox—a girly pink number that made him cringe every time he needed something from it. After taking the measurements and then grabbing a level, he finally realized what was wrong. Nothing in the entire bakery was level due to the building’s age.

  This job was so going to suck. But he was going to grin and bear it. She was trusting him with her dream, and after seeing her eyes light up like stars as she walked him through her vision, he was determined not to let her down. He’d had a dream once, one he’d made into reality with his business partner and current chief financial officer, Chase Parker. He rather liked the idea of helping someone achieve her dream.

  The bakery hadn’t been remodeled in decades, and according to Margie, the décor had been old-school diner, with red leather booths and a long counter lined with red bar stools, before her contractor had ripped them out. The old coffee-and-donut crowd wasn’t going to like some of her changes, but she couldn’t cater to everyone.

  Margie was planning on bringing in a new kind of community focus while preserving some of the old-time favorites like peanut butter pie, jelly-filled donuts, and—of course—the famous cinnamon rolls. She also hoped to draw in a younger crowd since Dare Valley was well populated with students and young families. Based on the crowd passing by the front
windows, with people peeking in occasionally to see what he was doing, Evan knew she’d have plenty of foot traffic.

  She’d left him alone two hours ago to run over to Don’t Soy With Me, where she was training the new manager, Rebecca Merriweather. He hoped to be further along by the time she returned.

  When he heard a metal sound near the front door, he swiveled on his haunches to watch her unlock the front glass door. So much for that. The bell chimed as she opened the door, and she looked upward as she shut and locked the door behind her.

  “I am so going to have to get rid of that bell,” she said, briskly coming inside and setting her zebra-print purse on the plastic he’d lined the floor with in anticipation of painting. “Hot Cross Buns is going to play the kind of soulful music you’d hear at Don’t Soy With Me. Anything from Coltrane—one of my favorites—to John Legend. I might have to play some ABBA when Jill shows up. She’s a rabid fan.”

  “I love Coltrane,” he responded, standing up. He was slightly embarrassed to hear his knees crack like an older man. People who painted for a living deserved a heck of a lot more respect than he’d ever realized. “And Miles Davis.”

  “Oh, Miles.” Her green eyes sparkled as she patted a hand to her heart. “If anyone’s voice could be compared to a cinnamon roll, it’s his.”

  He felt his mouth twitch. “A cinnamon roll, huh? He’d be singing the goo instead of singing the blues.”

  She laughed. “Oh, that’s terrible. Don’t quit your day job. And my cinnamon rolls are not filled with goo, Mr. Murray. That’s a rich caramel sauce, thank you very much.” She stomped her foot indignantly.

  He held up his hand like a white flag. “Don’t shoot. I surrender. No goo.”

  “You definitely won’t be writing my menu,” she said, putting her hands on her curvy hips.

  For a moment, all he could imagine was covering her hands with his and pulling her to him. “I wouldn’t presume. Now, you might be wondering why I’ve only laid painter’s tape across this one wall. It might be a revelation to you, but nothing in this place is level.”

  Her head shook in confirmation, making her sable hair sway around her face. “Yes, I know. My contractor had to forbid his wife from bringing their young children to visit when he was over here since he was dropping the f-bomb so much.”

  He opened his mouth in feigned shock. “You mean I can actually drop the f-bomb around here? I thought people who did that were kicked out of Pleasantville.”

  She gave him a playful shove, one he found altogether too arousing. “That’s Paradise, you idiot. We have normal people in Dare Valley who swear and everything.”

  “Color me surprised,” he mocked, wishing she’d shove him again.

  For a Pocket Venus, she was stronger than she looked. Most of the models he dated barely ate anything, giving a whole new meaning to “couldn’t lift a finger to help.” He’d given up on trying to tell them that it was okay to eat.

  “I see you already poured the paint out,” she said, pointing to the flat tray on the floor.

  “I was feeling pretty positive when I started.” He’d covered the tray with plastic thirty minutes later, after his non-level tape-laying nightmare had turned that dream to ashes. “I’m glad you’re not upset.”

  She cocked her head and looked at him. “Why would I be?”

  Her trust in him moved something powerful in his chest. For a moment, it was hard to breathe. Most of the rich people he knew didn’t have patience for excuses when things weren’t done correctly. For years, he’d watched the people around him cuss out everyone from car valets to hotel maids for taking their sweet time or making a negligible error.

  This attitude of entitlement had always bothered Evan, even more so when he found himself acting the same way. One time, a supermodel he was seeing complained about a valet, saying he’d scratched the door of her Porsche. The young man was insistent the scratch had already been there, but Evan took his companion’s side. In the middle of dressing the guy down, he had realized what he was doing…and the fact that the valet seemed to be shrinking before his eyes. It was the way he had felt years and years ago when his dad would yell at him for some imagined offense.

  He immediately stopped, told the supermodel he’d pay for the scratch, and tipped the man a couple hundred euros as an apology. He’d never done it again.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said, not meeting Margie’s eyes. “I didn’t want you to think I was making this take longer because I needed the money. Or that I was incompetent.”

  “I would never think that.” A soft hand settled on his shoulder, making him jump. “And if you need me to pay you more than fifteen dollars an hour, Evan, tell me. I could probably make it eighteen if you made sure to clean the rollers and brushes really well so I don’t have to buy more.”

  His ears burned. She thought he needed the money? Even if his deal with Jane had required him to live in Dare Valley for two months on a single month’s salary, he still wouldn’t have accepted her generous raise. “I would never take money away from your dream. Fifteen dollars is fine. I want you to succeed, Margie.”

  For a moment, her mouth pursed like she was fighting strong emotion, and with her hand still resting on his shoulder, he felt a new connection grow between them. This one was beyond their undeniable attraction for each other. This one was about them becoming something like friends and supporting each other. He hadn’t experienced this strong of an instant connection with someone since meeting the man who now ran his company.

  Chase Parker had been raised on a ranch outside of Laramie, Wyoming, before attending Harvard on a scholarship. After wrapping up his M.B.A., he’d started a venture capital firm, the one Evan had approached with his first invention. After securing the financing, Evan had managed to lure Chase away so he could spend all his time in research and development. Besides being excellent at his job, Chase was everything Evan had always wanted to be—handsome, dashing, a ladies’ man without trying too hard, and comfortable in his own skin.

  Thank God, he’d taken Evan under his wing and helped him throw aside his cloak of nerdiness. It had been embarrassing to ask for that kind of help from a man who was a decade his elder, but Chase hadn’t so much as blinked. The makeover program Chase had created for him had involved copious amounts of gym workouts, which had given him muscles and the six-pack the paparazzi loved to photograph when he dove off The Spell Caster, his yacht, into the Mediterranean. And of course, an excellent team of stylists, tailors, and makeover artists had tamed his wild hair and cleared up his skin.

  Still, money couldn’t buy an inside fix. Sometimes he still felt like the geeky kid who could name the full value of pi to 10,000 digits.

  Right now, he felt like a fraud for a completely different reason. A sable-haired woman with a heart of pure gold was willing to put a dent in her bank account because she thought he needed the money.

  “Margie,” he said, and the simple act of saying her name made the octaves of his voice deeper, slower.

  Their eyes met, and he could see her pupils dilate from the shared awareness between them.

  She shivered and snatched her hand away. “I need to get back to the coffee shop. Text me if you need anything. What’s your number, by the way?”

  The distance she was putting between them was probably for the best, but he found he missed the warmth of her hand. “Ah…I still have a Paris number. Since I’m only planning to stay for a month, I figured I could get by. I don’t want you to have to incur extra charges to text me. Don’t Soy With Me is only a block away. I’ll find you if I need anything.”

  One side of her mouth lifted first, and then the other, like smiling took effort. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

  He watched her walk away, desperate to call her back to him, to tell her how much her trust and generosity meant to him.

  Instead all he was able to say was, “Margie. You’re doing something special here.”

  After she finished unlocking the door, she turn
ed and leaned against it, her green eyes all soft. “Thanks, Evan. I’ll see you around.”

  ***

  Margie was off balance for the rest of the day. The connection she felt with Evan was more powerful than the spark she’d felt with Howie, the only man she’d ever loved. Her former boyfriend had been finishing up his Masters in Creative Writing at Emmits Merriam when they met at Polar Fest. His creativity was instantly compelling to a woman who’d been raised around corporate business types like her father.

  Howie could write heart-stopping poetry and work with his hands. His capacity for knowledge was as great as hers even though she’d dropped out of Dartmouth—which had been one of the final straws for her parents after years of her rebellious behavior. Unlike them, he’d listened to her dreams—really listened. And when she told him about the Victorian house and how she wished she could buy it and restore it to its former glory, he’d promised they would do it together.

  They’d done that and everything else together, and only in retrospect did she realize the extent to which she’d isolated herself. At the time, she hadn’t seen the need to make friends other than the ones she worked with at Don’t Soy With Me. My, how wrong she’d been.

  Howie had been passionate, but sometimes wildly moody. She’d figured it was part of being artistic until she discovered the oxycodone in his dresser drawer. Since he didn’t have any reason that she knew of to take a prescription pain killer, she asked him about it. He got defensive and told her it enhanced his creativity. When he wouldn’t tell her how long he’d been using it, they had a huge fight.

  In the end, his refusal to address the drug problem was what had broken them apart. She’d grieved him and promised herself to never ever again date a man with secrets or let one man become her everything again. But while she’d dated off and on over the last couple of years, none of the men she’d met had tugged at her heart and soul in the same way. Even though she’d only known him for a couple of days, she could tell that Evan was different.