The Billionaire Bargain

by Lila Monroe

  Unfortunately, my caller was actually Grant’s driver, once again wearing an expression that suggested that he was not sure how his life had come to this, but that there were probably worse fates. Maybe.

  His arms were laden with bags, and those bags had designer names on them that I had only ever seen only while window shopping. Window shopping in the kind of stores where they don’t put price tags on things because if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. The kind of stores I had only actually stepped a foot into once, before a snooty fitting assistant sidled up to me, looked me up and down like I was a rotting watermelon, and informed me that maybe I would have better luck finding sizes in my price range at the local strip mall.

  There were so many of these bags I could barely see the driver’s face.

  “What the—”

  “Mr. Devlin sent these over. For you. And he apologizes for inconveniencing you with the last-minute invitation, but hopes this will help ease the strain.”

  He set the bags down and as I watched them pile up, my mouth fell open so wide I’m surprised no one claimed it a parking spot. Before I could think of something to actually say as opposed to standing there catching flies, the driver tipped his hat, said,“I’ll be waiting in the car, ma’am. Take your time,” and left.

  I think he looked vaguely relieved to be temporarily escaping the surreal version of reality in which Grant Devlin did nice things for other people without being prompted.

  I carried the bags into my room, and laid their contents out on my bed. I didn’t think it was possibly for my jaw to drop any lower without cracking the mantle of the earth and causing a small volcanic explosion, but it did.

  Grant had sent over the most beautiful dress I had ever seen. It was black and sleek, with just a hint of gold around the bodice, and I could tell just looking at it that it would cling in all the right places and drape in the all the others. There was a pair of matching shoes, and a purse, and a necklace with—oh my God.

  Diamonds. Those were real diamonds. Real actual not even a little bit fake glass or cubic zirconia diamonds. I picked up the necklace with shaking hands, and what I’d thought was a tag fluttered loose onto the floor, where I saw that it was a note bearing Grant’s distinctive slanting handwriting.

  The message was short:

  Dear Lacey,

  Thanks for playing along.

  Remember, though, I do love a competitive spirit.

  Grant

  Well, what the hell was that supposed to mean?

  • • •

  Entering the gala was like stepping into an explosion of wealth, or maybe a tornado.

  Cameras flashed, glamorous people swept by in a whirlwind of perfect hair and cheekbones that could cut granite—oh my God, was that Pierce Brosnan?! Shrieks of recognition and delight echoed across the polished wooden floor.

  Everywhere I looked there were sparkling lights, silver and gold bunting, striking paintings and sculptures that scholars would have given their eyeteeth to study, trays of chocolate amuse-bouches arranged into towering pyramids that would have made the pharaohs jealous.

  “I am so entirely out of my lea—mmmph!” That last word of the sentence was brought to you by Grant, sweeping me up in his arms like Prince Fucking Charming and kissing me, deep.

  For a second, I surrendered to the warmth of the kiss, the roughness of his stubble igniting my desire, making me think of other rough things we could do together—

  And then I remembered it wasn’t real.

  I shoved him away.“Give a girl some goddamn warning, you—”

  “Play along,” he murmured, and oh, the things his voice did to my body, especially when he leaned close, his arm brushing mine, his lips almost on my ear… “Jennings and his wife have arrived.”

  My head snapped up and I scanned the room, finally seeing them waving to us by the coat check. Jennings wore a much better suit than he had the last time we’d seen him; it brought out the blue in his eyes and deemphasized his paunch. There was a surprisingly age-appropriate woman at his side, her posture dignified and her teak skin just beginning to show wrinkles, a touch of silver adorning her hair as if it were the proper accessory and not a sign of advancing age. Her smile was wide and warm.

  I waved back, and then turned halfway, giving Grant a smile that I hoped looked less pained than it felt.

  “Whatever you say, dear,” and then I stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on his cheek with a loud, wet smack.

  There was a cheer of approval from Jennings, his wife, and several other couples around them; they beckoned us over and soon we were swamped with businessmen and businesswoman who I’d mostly only ever seen in the business pages of the paper, kicking ass and taking names: forming mergers, performing hostile takeovers, founding entire new enterprises.

  And the few who I had met in person before? Yeah, that had consisted of me handing them a coffee—for which they did not thank me, since I was the admin assistant and therefore invisible—before they rushed over to their meetings with people who were actually important.

  They sure were being friendly now, though.

  “Grant, you sorry bastard, where’s this young lady’s drink?” cried Lily Chang, who just last week had been dubbed‘The Tiger of Wall Street’ by Forbes.“Do you want her to die of thirst?”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” Grant said. He squeezed my waist affectionately.“Punch or champagne, my dear?”

  “Champagne, please,” I said.

  And then I changed my mind. If Grant wanted me to play this game, I was going to play it to the goddamn hilt.

  “No, make it punch—I don’t want to lose my head as quickly as I did the night we met. Remember?”

  There was a round of“oooooohs” throughout the circle, followed by people chuckling and nudging each other their elbows.

  “How could I forget?” Grant said with a raised eyebrow. He lowered his voice, though not low enough to keep our audience from hearing:“It’s one of my fondest memories.”

  “Well, then you go on and get it, sugarplum,” I said, and smiled sweetly.

  And then I slapped his butt.

  Grant had just started raising an eyebrow at the‘sugarplum,’ and when I slapped his ass he almost jumped a foot before he recovered. The whole group whooped in delight.

  “Ah, I remember that honeymoon phase,” Jennings roared at an even higher volume than usual, maybe trying to compensate for the background chatter of the party. I saw several champagne glasses vibrate off a table and smash to the floor.“Treasure it, my boy, and you as well, Lacey. Treasure it!”

  “Oh, I will,” I breathed, making goo-goo eyes at Grant.“I’ll always treasure him.”

  “And you as well,” Grant murmured, stroking a strand of hair over my ear.

  “So how did you two lovebirds meet?” Jennings’s wife Patricia asked.“You work together, isn’t that right?”

  “We do indeed,” Grant said.

  He continued to absentmindedly stroke my hair as he talked, his arm slung casually around my shoulders.

  “I was—if you’ll pardon my French—being a real shit-heel, and Lacey called me out on it. Well, I’ve always liked a woman with a temper.”

  “And I’ve always liked a man who isn’t afraid to admit his mistakes and learn from them,” I added, leaning into Grant.

  His arm tightened around me. How long had it been since I had really been held like this—tenderly, sweetly, yet without a second thought, as if it were perfectly natural?

  Too damn long, if I was reacting to Grant like this when I’d already told him we could never have sex.

  “We got to talking,” Grant continued.“And we had so much in common. Our philosophies about work, our tastes in art—we even liked the same silly show from the sixties!”

  “It was love at first argument,” I cut in cheekily, and Grant gave me an adoring look that would have been the envy of any golden retriever, before kissing me on the cheek again.

  “She�
��s a firecracker for sure!” Jennings boomed.“Oh, she’ll keep you on your toes!”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Grant murmured.

  If he kept looking at me like that with those deep blue puppy dog eyes, I was going to fall right into them and drown forever.

  “Neither would I, sweetheart,” I breathed.

  Grant plucked a chocolate-covered strawberry from a passing tray.“If I’m not mistaken, I do recall that you like these…”

  He placed it between my lips, and I flicked my tongue out over the chocolate, just brushing his fingers. His pupils dilated, and his other hand on my hip tightened.

  I bit down on the berry, the sweetness and tartness of it making me close my eyes and almost swoon into his arms.

  It was definitely the taste that was making me close my eyes and almost swoon into his arms.

  “You’ve got a little something there,” Grant said, and his fingers gently wiped away a bit of juice from the corner of my mouth. Then, for good measure, he kissed away the rest.

  I nipped his finger in reproof, trying to get my heart rate under control at the same time.“Grant, you’re the sweetest, but you can’t just feed me strawberries all night like we did on our anniversary. You’re neglecting your friends, talk to them!”

  “Oh, don’t you mind us,” Patricia said, laughing.“It does my heart good to see you young people so in love. Gives me some hope for the rest of the world.”

  “In that case,” Grant said,“I’ll go get Lacey some punch. And then just for you, dearest,” he added, squeezing me tight—he felt so good against me, so strong and reliable, and he smelled fresh and clean— “I’ll do my best to remember that there are other people in this room. Though you do make it hard when you outshine everyone around you.”

  He dipped me into another kiss, and pulled me away to a chorus of“aaaaaaaawws” from the men and women around us.

  “You’re not half-bad at this couple thing,” I said as we made our way across the room.“And here I was thinking you’d be completely remedial.”

  “You wound me,” he said.

  I smacked his arm lightly.“Big baby.”

  “I’ll take the praise regardless,” he said.“You and I make a good team, you know.”

  “Yeah, we definitely pulled the wool over the Rich Dude Brigade’s eyes, didn’t we?” I said.“They’re practically wearing wool sunglasses right now, we pulled that wool over their eyes so hard.”

  “Such a way with words,” he teased, and stopped walking, reaching out instead to trace my lips.

  I nearly forgot to breathe. I cast about desperately for something to say to distract him. Stock market tips? Wardrobe compliment? Speaking in tongues and prophesying the end times?

  “You should do this for real, you know,” I blurted out to him.“Find some hot chick who can keep up with you and settle down. Or at least pretend to, for the company’s sake. People really seem to eat it up.”

  He put on a puzzled expression.“Why would I look anywhere else?” he said.“You’re right here.”

  Damn, he was much too good at pretending.

  “I’ve—uh, I’ve got a busy schedule,” I said. I tried to laugh past the lump in my throat. Tried to tell myself I didn’t care where he looked, or at whom.“I can’t be holding your hand while I’m charging up the hill to take over the business world, can I?”

  Grant’s mouth twisted upwards in a smile, but the light seemed to go out of his eyes. What had I said wrong?

  “No,” he said softly, looking away so I could no longer see his face.“I suppose you can’t.”

  TWELVE

  Grant’s moodiness passed within minutes, though, and soon he was laughing again, fetching me drinks and whirling me about on the dance floor, introducing me to so many important people—who knew there were even this many important people in the world?—that their faces started to blur together, feeding me bonbons with his fingers when he knew Jennings was looking…well, I assume only when he knew Jennings was looking. After all, why else would he do it?

  I tried desperately not to think about other reasons why Grant Devlin might like feeding me bonbons.

  Or other places he might like feeding me bonbons. Like his bed. With red silk sheets. With both of us lying naked and spent on those silk sheets, and him feeding me one sweet at a time, his eyes darkening with lust as I licked my lips, his hands tracing my lips, sliding downwards to trace my curves, his hands—

  Er, never mind all that. Carry on. Nothing to see here.

  Despite my overactive libido and colorful imagination, I managed to have a good time. It had been nerve-wracking at first, trying to play it cool in front of all the movers and shakers of San Francisco, but Grant was right about one thing—we made a hell of a team. We teased, we schmoozed, we networked—sweet Lord, did we network—and I felt confident that before the night was through, we’d have converted quite a few of these folks into bringing their business to Devlin Media Corp.

  Also, the bonbons were really ridiculously delicious.

  A little before midnight, I excused myself to powder my nose. It took me awhile to find the bathroom—mostly because I kept assuming it was another ballroom, as that much polished marble and gently piped waltz music is wont to make you assume. I was so busy gawping at the sinks that I didn’t notice the woman behind me until she spoke:

  “Well, well, well. So you’re the girl making an honest man of Grant Devlin.”

  I jumped, saw her face in the mirror as she suddenly stepped out from behind me, and jumped again. Holy mother of horror movies, Batman! She was lucky she hadn’t sent me into the stratosphere.

  “Oh dear, did I startle you?” she drawled coldly, her tone making it obvious that when it came to caring whether she had startled me, she fell somewhere on the continuum between ‘completely indifferent’ and ‘maliciously amused.’

  She wore a silver slip of a dress. Her grey hair marked her as being in her late fifties, but she was incredibly well-preserved—plastic surgery had tightened her pale, blue-veined skin and made her look even more like a literal ice queen, sharp-nosed, hatchet-chinned, eyebrows that could cut diamonds. Eyes like blue lasers cutting right into me.

  “Uh, uh, yeah,” I said. “Grant Devlin. Me. Making a—honest, yeah. We’re going out! We are. That’s what we’re doing. Him and me.”

  I was not exactly going to sweep the Oscars with this performance, but I feel like even Katherine Hepburn would’ve gotten thrown by the Snow Queen doing a Jack-in-the-box act over her shoulder.

  “‘Going out,’” she repeated, drawing out my words incredulously as though I’d said ‘snorting cocaine’ or ‘making a snuff film,’ or ‘selling my panties to Japanese business to finance my dream of opening my own fried chicken franchise.’ “How…interesting.”

  She managed to infuse the word ‘interesting’ with an entire epic saga’s worth of doubts, suspicions, and general disdain.

  “Lacey,” I said, belatedly remembering that humans introduced themselves to people they hadn’t meet. “My name. I’m Lacey Newman. Nice to meet you, Ms., uh…”

  “Dalton,” she said with a sniff. “Portia Dalton. Grant’s godmother.”

  “Oh wow,” I said. “I had no idea you were going to be here! I’m sure you must have some great stories about Grant growing up—”

  “Oh yes, where to begin!” she interrupted, the biggest fake smile ever cracking her face like an earthquake fault line. “Perhaps with that time he seduced the youngest daughter of a Swedish client his grandfather was desperately trying to land, or the time he brought a drunk supermodel to his high school graduation party, or the fifth college he flunked out of because they didn’t offer a major in his preferred field of fucking the highest class whores he could find—really, I don’t know where to begin, all the many and varied incidents with sluts in various states of undress do tend to blur together.”

  She looked me up and down and gave a short, cutting laugh.

  “I don’t think I�
�ll forget you, though, you are so incredibly…far outside of his normal type. I don’t know what he’s playing at with you.”

  My head was spinning under the verbal assault, filled with whirling pictures of a young and even more devil-may-care Grant going through women like tissue paper.

  She leaned closer and gave me a smile, all friendly, like she was actually on my side.

  “Darling, I’m sure all those self-help books and women’s magazines are telling you to be strong and confident and love your body because it’s yours and it’s beautiful, but you really must face facts: they’re only saying that because they’re selling something.”

  And with a dismissive sneer on her face, she swept past me before I could think of a single thing to say.

  • • •

  I don’t know how long I stumbled around the party, but I think I pulled myself together before any of the bigwigs we’d been networking with saw me.

  I hope I did, anyway.

  Once it hit me how bad I could screw everything up if people saw me getting all weepy and red-eyed when I was supposed to be vibrant and happy and over-the-moon in love, I beat a hasty retreat to the coat check, where I hid behind a rack of furs that could have clothed a thousand minks if they hadn’t been desperately needed by the upper crust to look as fabulous as possible.

  I took deep breaths until my heart was thudding along at something resembling a normal speed, and I pulled out my compact to wipe my eyes and fix my makeup. Thank Heaven for waterproof mascara.

  Most of all, I repeated this mantra to myself: It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.

  This was all an act. It didn’t matter what people thought, what Portia said, just as long as it got Jennings on our team and helped save the company.

  Eventually, I got myself to the point where I believed it. I started to step out from behind the coat rack—and then I saw Portia.

  I practically dove back into the safety of the sable and fox fur forest. Fingers trembling, I pulled my cell phone out of my clutch purse and hit the speed dial for the one person I could always count on to be in my corner.