Billionaire Brothers 01-04 The Complete Serial Box Set

by Meg Watson

  Jennifer/Amber touched my shoulder gently at some point later and asked if I would like to have the grilled tenderloin and fruit they had prepared for dinner. I shook my head lazily and drifted back to my nap. Some part of me remembered I was naked under the blanket but her eyes showed no sign of judgement at all. She stood and smiled shyly over her shoulder, presumably at Declan across the aisle, and I nestled happily into the crook of Jackson’s arm.

  I finally woke fully when I felt the initial descent and sat up to look out of the small oval window. The North Sea was inky black below us with the horizon just barely catching fire. Bands of red and ochre pushed up into the purple-black sky as we flew swiftly toward the rapidly growing coastline.

  Jackson still slept with his arm flung over my waist. I rearranged the blanket back over his shoulder and couldn’t help but smile at his musky, totally relaxed slumber. There was something so sweet about his vulnerability, his easy charm, though I suspected there was an ineffable strength at the center of it. Of course he was affable to the core. What on earth could a billionaire ever really worry about?

  Plucking my dress from the back of the sofa where someone - Jennifer/Amber? - had neatly laid it out, I pulled it over my head and secured the tie under my breasts. Looking around, I found where I had flung my purse and dug inside it until I came across the spare panties I had thought to pack. The pointelles, I assumed, were beyond hope.

  The landscape came into view: a strangely arranged map of roads and houses in crooked rays and imperfect circles, lit up by street and house lights. Somehow I could tell this wasn’t an American city, and then remembered Amsterdam was hundreds of years older than the first American settlements. It was such a simple revelation: the organic growth of a very old city looks different than the planned grids of a new one. This city was sinuous, undulating, gathered around the waterways like it was begging for a sip.

  The sky lightened to grey all over while the horizon brightened and caught fire. As the jet banked smoothly to the left, Jackson shifted and stirred.

  “Sleep OK?” he asked through a smile, his forearm flung over his eyes.

  “Like I was born in a jet,” I grinned.

  He nodded sleepily, arching his back in a luxurious stretch. Across the aisle, Declan sat up in his reclined captain’s chair and snapped the footrest back, then ran his fingers through the magically still magazine-quality tousle on top of his head.

  “Hey,” he said, grinning.

  “Hey yourself,” I muttered, squinting as the first rays of sunlight cut through the cabin.

  Jennifer/Amber sat up with a start in the chair across from Declan, dropping a blanket under the table. She lunged after it, grabbing her shoes from the floor and clutching them to her chest. I scowled at the lace camisole that spilled out from her unbuttoned uniform top as she darted out of the cabin and through the curtain.

  “I guess I missed dinner,” I said with a scowl, noting the dishes still on the tablecloth, the bottle of Elijah Craig bourbon and the toppled glasses that rolled in the tray.

  “What?” Declan called out over the cabin noise.

  I shook my head. Nothing.

  No, I corrected myself. That was definitely something. But what? And would he tell me if I asked?

  No.

  Don’t ask.

  Definitely do not ask.

  “We’re landing,” Jackson said to no one, looking out the window at the now-rosy sky striped with smears of lavender clouds. “Hey, you OK?”

  “What?” I said, catching my sour expression and replacing it with something more appropriate to the kickass adventure I was surely about to be having. “I am totally OK,” I said, basking in the European dawn that poured through the windows and the sky-blue stare of my billionaire lover.

  “Outstanding,” he grinned, pulling his t-shirt and jeans off the sofa.

  “You bet,” I agreed, and sounded very convincing.

  I watched the city swoop below us, closer and closer as the jet approached the airfield. The dawn seemed to accelerate as we neared landing, and the sun was full-force when our wheels touched gently on the foreign airstrip. I glanced at Jackson, excitement percolating so intensely in my chest that I had to bite my lips closed to keep anything from spilling out. He winked at me and nodded as though he understood.

  When the jet braked to a stop in front of the hanger, we stood, stretching, and grabbed our respective bags and belongings. A sleepy silence still hung over us all as we shuffled toward the open stairway.

  I saw the blue flash of Jennifer/Amber’s uniform behind another curtain in the utility area behind the cockpit and was both irritated that I couldn’t scour her expression for clues and glad I didn’t have to meet her eyes. Declan appeared to have no visible signs of guilt or shame, but that didn’t really comfort me any. I couldn’t imagine him ever feeling guilty about anything.

  A uniformed customs agent stood in front of the violet-black sedan that idled at the foot of the stairs as we deplaned. He greeted us with a friendly nod and held out his hand officiously.

  “Your passport,” Jackson murmured behind me.

  “Oh right,” I said as I carefully negotiated the stairs, thanking myself for not tumbling to the asphalt at my first act on foreign soil.

  When I reached the ground level, I dug in the front pocket of my bag and presented the agent with my passport. He held it up beside my face to check my identity and then smiled broadly, displaying great white slabs of horsey teeth.

  “Welcome to the Kingdom of the Netherlands,” he said in a suave, clipped accent as I suppressed the urge to curtsy or something.

  The driver rolled up a large cart of our luggage and transferred it all to the trunk as a narrow, black container van pulled up behind us.

  “Everything looks so familiar, but just a little strange,” I mused, looking at the van. The driver got out and met a workman with a cart full of crates that had come from the plane’s cargo.

  “This is a purple car,” I observed.

  “This is a purple Bentley,” Jackson chuckled, handing his bag to the driver.

  “And what’s that there?” I asked, pointing at the cargo van.

  “All the goodies for your party,” Declan replied, his eyebrows wagging.

  “What, really? My party?”

  “Oh, yes, your coming out party. Now into the back seat!” he insisted teasingly.

  “Wait,” I protested as I headed for the door the chauffeur held open. “I get a party? When?”

  He didn’t say anything, just opened the front passenger door and slid into the seat directly in front of mine. I scootched forward on the supple, blue-black leather and tried to catch his eye again.

  “What do you think of the car?” he asked distractedly, flipping some buttons on the gleaming ebony dash panel in front of him.

  “It’s pretty great, but--”

  “It’s an eight-cylinder, 6.75 litre engine,” he said. “Feel that rumble? That’s power.”

  “Um… OK. I guess I don’t really speak Car,” I admitted.

  “That means it has a lot of horsepower.”

  “I like the round gauge thingies on the dash,” I offered gamely. “It looks like an airplane.”

  “It means it gets about eight miles to the gallon,” Jackson added wryly.

  Declan waved his fingers in the air. Shoo. “Not the point.”

  “I’m getting a Tesla,” Jackson murmured conspiratorially, leaning toward me.

  “The electric car?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his eyes lighting up with an inexplicable zeal. Cars. OK.

  “Everybody has a Tesla here,” Declan said dismissively as the driver shifted the Bentley into drive and began rolling us toward traffic. I had to admit, the animal rumble of the motor did feel quite primal under my thighs. We pulled onto a busy, winding thoroughfare. “Look there. Every single taxi in Amsterdam is a Tesla now.”

  “Well, it’s totally cutting edge technology,” Jackson shot back irritably. “In five years
, Tesla’s market capitalization is going to be through the roof.”

  “It’s already through the roof, if you ask me. There’s a lot of optimism quilted into their current valuation.”

  Jackson rolled his eyes and knuckled his chin then diverted his gaze to the window. I could tell this argument had been played out many times before, probably word for word. But once Jackson fell silent it seemed to be over like a bubble had popped and disappeared.

  “V-8 huh?” I said into the silence as we drove through decidedly European-looking streets. There were more bicycles than cars, I was sure. And canal after canal, spanned by flower-bedecked bridges.

  “Well it sure is nice. I mean these seats… And there’s a tray here like in an airplane… and what is in this compartment… Hey! More champagne!”

  I yanked the bottle out of the small, built-in cooler and held it up triumphantly.

  Jackson heaved a sigh and turned back to me, his expression warming as he met my eyes.

  “Maybe not yet… I could go for an espresso though.”

  “Oh, man, yes,” I agreed passionately, my mouth watering at the thought. “Coffee, for sure… Wait, what is that?”

  Jackson grinned, his eyes crinkling.

  “Jackson…” I breathed, not really sure I could be seeing what I thought I was seeing. “That’s the Rijksmuseum!”

  “Sure is,” Declan drawled from the front seat.

  I pressed my fingers to the cool car window as the huge, dramatic building loomed larger ahead of us. I had studied its collections so thoroughly, I felt like this was some kind of homecoming. Images of masterpiece after masterpiece flipped through my mind as though they were on a turning wheel.

  “Oh my gosh,” I breathed, virtually clawing at the window. My heart clanged in my chest. “Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh…. Everything… I mean so much of western civilization was shaped by the pieces that are just in there… Just behind that plaza, those walls.”

  “Well, you can’t see them from here,” Declan said sarcastically.

  “No, she can’t,” Jackson shot back. He sighed through his nose, a sound I had rarely heard from him. “Driver, can you let us out?”

  “What? It’s too early, though...”

  I turned in my seat to face him, startled momentarily by the keen look of determination on his features.

  “I can at least get you closer,” he said simply.

  The driver angled the car smoothly to the edge of the bike lane and then exited his door, jogging around the rear end to reach mine. When he opened my door, I inhaled gulps of early morning Amsterdam, trying to quell the swelling emotions in my chest.

  On shaky legs I stepped out of the car and stood as solidly as possible on the street as bicyclists sped by, one after another. The driver touched his forehead in a sort of salute.

  “Jetlag,” I muttered as some kind of explanation for my weepy, burning eyes.

  “Thank you, Peter,” Jackson said into his phone as he walked up to me, thumbing it to disconnect. He held out his arm gallantly and I slid my hand into the sturdy crook of his elbow.

  “Yeah, OK, have a great time!” Declan called sarcastically from the front seat.

  “We will,” Jackson retorted, then closed the door smartly and returned to my side. “You look a little shaky,” he said, a smile turning up one corner of his mouth.

  “I must be just beyond tired still… or something, I’m sorry,” I apologized, waving my hand in front of my nose as I begged my weepy sinuses to get a grip.

  “Or something,” he said with a knowing wink.

  As the Bentley pulled away he guided me carefully across the bike lane to the plaza. I held tightly to Jackson’s bicep as we climbed the steps, the huge building looming ever larger and my knees growing ever weaker.

  “Wait right here,” he said suddenly and dashed off, leaving me with my arms out like a unicycle rider.

  I watched him zigzag between the few small clusters of tourists and disappear toward a small cluster of temporary-looking kiosks while I waited. In moments he reappeared, grinning as he jogged back, a covered white paper cup in each hand.

  “Coffee!” I exclaimed. I took the cup gratefully from him, holding it under my nose and inhaling deeply. He kissed the top of my head and threw his arm around my shoulder, redirecting me toward the museum at a slower pace.

  “Ah, you’re a genius,” I sighed, sipping carefully at the hot, strong liquid. “You guys know all the best stuff.”

  “You guys?” he repeated in exaggerated disbelief. “No way, my dear. This is a Jackson Burke special. I don’t think Declan’s ever even been here.”

  “He hasn’t? I thought he loved art too.”

  “Of course not. There’s nothing for sale,” he shrugged, squinting ahead at the stone arches. “Now, step lively… I see our host.”

  Jackson charged forward and I struggled to keep up, taking daring sips of the burning coffee as we strode ahead. A very tall man walked out from under the stone arch, lighting a cigarette in the shade.

  “We can’t… Jackson, it’s like seven am!”

  “Not a problem,” he answered with a grin.

  The figure waved a hand at us as we approached, then crossed his arms over his chest and continued smoking. From far away, he looked like a reasonable facsimile of Rutger Hauer with flowing silver hair that shimmered in the half-light. From closer, he looked exactly like Rutger Hauer, only Viking tall and as robust as a demi-god.

  “Peter!” Jackson called out as we crossed into the shade.

  “Jackson!” the man boomed, gathering my billionaire in his arms like Jackson was a little boy. I tried not to gape, but he really was quite remarkable. Taller than Jackson by four inches and barrel-chested, he had a magnificent, practically resplendent presence. The phrase “larger than life” had probably been invented just for him.

  I grinned stupidly as Jackson took a half step back, his fingertips finding mine and clasping my hand firmly. “Peter, this is Margot Trask. Margot… Baron Peter Baarst.”

  The Baron cough-laughed, a plume of smoke shooting above our heads.

  “Baron!” he repeated in a beautiful, silky accent. “That is so antiquated! Please, my dear, call me Peter.”

  “It’s wonderful to meet you, Peter,” I said sincerely. I held out my hand and he plucked it out of the air, bringing it to his lips and kissing my knuckles. My hand looked like a doll’s, pressed against his lips.

  Rutger Hauer is kissing my hand!

  My heart ballooned in my chest, swelling so quickly with glee and excitement that I expected to be able to hear it when it popped. Jackson began to ask something about a house and my ears filled with white noise. As Peter nodded, listening, he crossed his arms over his chest and dragged thoughtfully on a gold-tipped cigarette.

  Just wait til Bridget hears about this.

  “All right!” Peter said smoothly, stubbing the cigarette on a gold case he produced from the pocket of his trousers and then sliding the butt into the case. “We have a little time, not too much. You want to start in the Night Watch Gallery I presume?”

  I nodded numbly, my eyes as wide as saucers. He leaned toward me confidentially.

  “Everyone feels this way the first time,” he said with a reassuring wink. “Even the thousandth time, for some. It gives me great pleasure to show this to you, someone who truly understands what they are seeing.”

  “Thank you,” I choked, just above hearing.

  Peter led us through the tunnel and down stairs, then around a corner and back. Suddenly we were in a huge atrium filled with silence and a powdery silver light. As Peter led Jackson across the courtyard I lagged behind, gazing up at the enormous cages suspended from the skylights.

  Peter glanced back to be sure I was following as he and Jackson chatted in low voices, and I suppressed an intense urge to do cartwheels across the white marble floors.

  Concentrating on not lagging behind, I followed the men around a corner and then stopped gracelessly in my track
s like a cartoon character. It was right there, in front of me, as though it had come out of nowhere. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.

  My hand fluttered to my lips and I walked across the expanse of wood floor, right up to the short fence in front of the painting, as close as I could go without risking some kind of James-Bond-worthy alarm going off. I walked slowly from one end of the giant painting to the other, staring into every face, noting the life and specificity of each one. Not a generic collection of people: each figure had a personality, a history woven into their posture and expression.

  Tilting my head, I stared at the paint’s texture in the raking light: every dollop was a single brush stroke and represented a gesture of a man’s sure and thoughtful hand, placed hundreds of years ago. It felt like a secret code, like seeing the individual notes in a symphony, strung on a wire and connected to every other note in a great chandelier. The whole picture meant something for everyone, but here was the master’s hand, practically showing me in person all the magic behind the scenes.

  “Oh, man,” I whispered into my palm.

  “You always know the artists,” Peter said, suddenly at my side. I sheepishly realized I’d been staring for quite a while. “They come right up and cock their heads to the ceiling, to see the glare. To see the paint, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes,” he continued. “Artists want to see the bones, to see the maker himself. Tourists want to see just a picture, maybe the whole museum. Maybe post photographs to say they were here. But artists always want to know. Just to understand, not to possess. How was it made? Where was the hand that held this brush?”

  I inhaled deeply and then let my shoulders fall. What else could I say? He had explained it perfectly.

  “Thank you so much, Peter… For showing this to me. I’m just… Oh I don’t know what to say.”

  He shrugged charmingly, his huge shoulders going up and down like some kind of seismic shift.

  “Maybe you will give me a tour personally? That would be nice indeed. On Friday?”

  I shook my head, my mouth open in a dumb smile.