Queen: BBW Billionaire Menage Romance (Billionaire Brothers, II Book 3)

by Meg Watson

  Copyright: Meg Watson

  Published: May, 2015

  Publisher: Meg Watson

  The right of Meg Watson to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  Please note that this is a work of adult fiction and contains graphic descriptions of sexual activity, graphic language. It is intended for mature readers aged 18 and over only.

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  QUEEN

  Billionaire Brothers, Book 3

  Meg Watson

  Also in this serial:

  Jacks (Book 1)

  Jokers (Book 2)

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 1

  Melita was as cold as ice. I tried to just stay in the small, enclosed parlor at the back of the bungalow and keep out of her way as she (hopefully) defrosted. But she seemed to just carry on fine without me. I could hear her and Tomas chatting over dinner, Tomas getting ready for daycare in the mornings, and their normal daily life, but I sure as hell wasn't invited into it.

  I figured it would all blow over in a day or so, but then it didn't. It was like I didn't even exist to her. I hadn’t heard from the Jacks in a couple days, and I didn't exist to Carl anymore. I was completely unaffiliated.

  Pretty much hated it.

  I was busy planning, strategizing, and studying, so I was glad the Jacks were giving me a couple days to hunker down and get things done. How did they know I needed time? It was just one of their mysteries, but I assumed Owen was keeping tabs on me through his superpower and knew I needed a little space to make everything work out. In the back of my mind, I kept thanking him for that.

  But Melita was going to come back to me — she had to. Running through more than a day without her voice in my ear was strange and awful. I didn’t know how much a part of my headspace she occupied until she shut me out. It was a lot, and the loneliness was unbearable. But she had to know I couldn’t live without her. She had to miss me too. So I just snuck around the house like a bashful poltergeist, keeping out of sight and out of her way until she changed her mind.

  During the daytime while Tomas was at school, she stayed in her room. I could hear the floorboards creaking above my head every once in a while and sometimes I heard her creep into the kitchen for a snack. I would wait, my skin tingling and my ears pricked up, thinking that she was just about to tap on my closed door. But then her footsteps padded away and I could hear on the stairs going up.

  Well, if she's not gonna talk to me then I shouldn't feel bad about not confessing that I un-grounded myself.

  In the dim light of the curtained, tiny room, I stared at the screen of the shiny new Android notebook that I had bought refurbished from a small electronics store. It was small and lightweight, and I could even stow it in my purse if I had to. I figured it was a business expense, so when I whipped out my recently defrosted credit card to pay for it, I only felt the smallest twinge of guilt.

  It was a smaller twinge of guilt then I had felt at that first auction, the one right after the phony Gucci handbag that I prevented her from buying. I had dragged Melita's laptop onto the afghan and just poked around looking for a bag that I could buy her to apologize. I knew I could find an authentic one. They’re out there and often pretty affordable if you get the right seller.

  But within a few minutes I was back looking at collectibles and antiques, and then I was right back down the auction rabbit hole. Before we had even left for that sports bar in Evanston, I had already run up to half the credit limit on my card.

  But it was all really, really good stuff. I swear it.

  My cellphone buzzed at the bottom of my handbag and I glanced at it suspiciously. I had no idea how many missed calls and text messages were on there now, but it was a lot.

  The new Bree doesn’t have to answer the phone just because it’s making a noise. Suck it.

  I could have bought a cell phone, I knew, but I sort of liked being passive aggressively incognito for a while. I even toyed with the idea that I was really the kind of person who eschewed certain technological advances for obscure hipster reasons.

  It didn't take long to realize that in fact I was definitely a cell phone person, even if I had to wait a little while more to get one of my own. Every time I heard a buzz, chirp, or tweet my palms got itchy. Eventually, I knew, I was going to give in.

  But my mission was almost complete. Signing the lease agreement with the property manager had felt like an emotional root canal, but I did it. Getting my head around all the details and plans was a couple days of intense study, but I did that too. Often I imagined how I was going to explain it to Melita. She was going to be so proud of me.

  I liked to picture all of the delivery trucks, all of the jetliners, and all of the customs agents involved in what I was putting together. They didn't even know that I had a plan. Actually, no one knew I had a plan, and it was not lost on me that that was a little bit of a safety net. If my plan failed, I could simply slink back into the darkness and nobody would know.

  Well, nobody but the credit card company who was certainly going to come looking for their money at some point.

  I scrolled through the listings under medieval tapestries yet again with a bored flick of my wrist. There was the usual list of imposters as well as acknowledged reproductions. I liked to chuckle at the ones that claimed to be originals even while using the same photograph from Wikipedia that every other fraudster was using.

  As the screen scrolled upward, I sucked my breath between my teeth. My heart did a little flop toward the front of my chest.

  Hold on… No way.

  There is no way that's real.

  I held my breath and waited with my finger hovering over the trackpad. You know that feeling where you want something to be true so much that you don't even want to click on the link? You'd rather just wait in suspense? Because once you know, you can't ever stop knowing, and maybe it's better to feel like that wish is actually possible?

  Yeah. It was like that.

  CHAPTER 2

  The first thing I did when I woke up was roll over and scribble my finger on the touchpad of my Android notebook to wake it up. The screen flickered to life and I clicked to open the email client. My eyes seemed to absorb the information all at once: three messages from the property manager and two from Jack, Owen in boldface.


  Five email messages. Two from Owen. That made me blink a few times. I stared at the screen and debated which one to click on first. Why did seeing his name clench my stomach like that?

  I heard Melita's footsteps on the stairs and then the sound of faster, lighter ones right behind her. It was Friday, and that meant the weekend was coming up. Tomorrow. That meant two whole days of Tomas being home, and me with nothing to do but hide in my stifling little room. I needed to handle this now, and really, I was just too fucking lonely to stand it anymore.

  I opened the door slowly and crept out, perking up my ears. I listened hard to the activity at the front of the house. She was telling him to put on his shoes on two, three times in a row. Her voice stayed sweet though, the way it always did with him. She was a good mom and knowing that made my heart ache just a little. I had a whole list of things that I loved about her and it killed me that she would not let me tell her any of them.

  I heard the front door open and Tomas hopping as he jumped over the threshold. Then I heard the scraping sound of her dragging her handbag off the small table. I took the opportunity and jogged down the short hallway toward her.

  “Wait, Melita? Hold on please,” I said in a rush.

  She glared at me as though she'd been waiting for me to come toward her. Just shot me a look like a lightning bolt, bang. I flinched and threw my hands up to surrender.

  “Okay, okay, I know you’re so mad at me,” I started again. “But, honey, if you'll just talk to me, please.”

  “You know what,” she said in a tight growl, "I don't think I need to talk to you at all right now. I need to get Tomas to daycare.”

  “But it's been days,” I whined. “I need to talk to you about the gallery, right? Don’t you want to talk about your new job?”

  She fisted her hand on her hip and cocked her head at me sarcastically.

  “You know what, I think I will be seeking other opportunities.”

  “Oh, come on, Melita —”

  “Yeah,” she continued, “I think you and I could use a little time apart.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself. This is not going at all the way that I imagined it the thousand times that I played it through my head.

  “Melita, I am so sorry. You have to believe me… I just had to say something.”

  “But why?” she sneered with her eyes narrowed. “Do you ever stop to ask yourself why you needed to say something? Was it because I finally had something that you didn't have? Was that it?”

  I winced like she had slapped me. “No way! How can you even think that – Melita, he's married. Of course I had to say something!”

  “Uh huh, yeah sure,” she spat. “Well for your information, he's not. He's decent and sweet and I am like all kinds of crazy for this guy.”

  “Melita, no –”

  “Yeah, I know you think you're so smart all the time, but this time you're just wrong. Accept it.”

  But I saw the ring. I saw it, right? It was just for a second but I'm positive that I saw it…

  “Sometimes you're not the brainiac that you think you are, Bree. I know this must come as a shock to you, since you were so perceptive about Carl and all… Since you are so unfallible…”

  Infallible, I corrected her silently, casting my eyes down.

  I looked at the floor while she swayed her weight from hip to hip.

  “I'm not kidding, Bree,” she continued. “I think some time apart would do you and me a lot of good. So why don’t you use that credit card that you’ve been sitting on all these years and find yourself an apartment? It seems like you got all your shit together now, so why don’t you just take it on the road?”

  “Mel, there's so much I want to talk to you about, though…”

  “Yeah,” she continued as though I hadn't said anything, “that sounds like the right thing to do. You've got all day, because I'm not going to be here. Tomas is going to Mama's house after daycare, and I am going out. Yes… with Jay. He makes me happy and you would think my best friend would care about that. Want to share that with me. But you don’t. So you could probably have all your crap packed back into your two stupid suitcases and be gone by the time I'm back.”

  I looked up at her wordlessly. It felt like a barrier had slammed down between us and even though she was looking in my direction it was like she couldn't even see me at all. Finally she looped her handbag strap over her shoulder and just whirled around and left, slamming the door behind her.

  CHAPTER 3

  It turned out the property manager's name was Julie, and she was just naturally as hyperactive and fretful as she seemed when we first met her. When I went back to the space to sign the agreement, she'd been dressed in a similarly adolescent outfit and carried herself like an over-caffeinated meerkat. She was just so excited that I was signing the lease. And so excited to show me every crate and box that had arrived so far.

  She wasn't Melita, whom I missed desperately. And she wasn't supposed to be my assistant or anything, but she was my connection to the Jacks and their corporate purse strings.

  I got used to her pretty fast. I like a good, quirky personality to brighten up my day. I mean, who doesn't? Julie would've been just as much at home behind the counter of a biker bar as she was writing checks and ordering materials here in this posh Michigan Avenue retail space. I liked that. Versatility.

  I got dressed quickly in my nicest pair of jeans and a pair of forest green Frye boots. Even though I was going to be working in the “warehouse,” a warehouse on Michigan Avenue wasn't exactly the same as a warehouse in Plano. I still had to keep up appearances of dressing for the life I was pretending I was already living.

  So many phrases that I had read on motivational posters over the years popped into my head from time to time.

  Fake it til you make it.

  Dress for the job you want.

  It’s not who you are that holds you back; it’s who you think you’re not.

  That last one was on a cross-stitch sampler over Dave’s desk next to some posters of eagles and breaching whales and other things that I cringed to read. That one always stuck out somehow like it was meant for me.

  But the way that Julie and the workers seemed to treat me with deference and assumed that I knew what I was doing was starting to sink in. I was getting used to it. It didn't really strike me as strange anymore that workers would ask me where I wanted something positioned. Or how I wanted the lights pointed. Or if I felt that the color of the LEDs was appropriate. I got consulted on everything, because everyone thought it was my vision they were following. And I guessed that in fact, they were right.

  Which was sort of cool.

  I briefly considered touching my resurrected cellphone just to use the camera, but then remembered I didn’t have to. When I got to Melita's garage and yanked up the heavy old door, I used the WebCam from my notebook to take pictures of the Jeep instead.

  Behold the powers of my passive aggression. I will not cave into using that phone!

  I walked around it slowly like I was stalking it. Click. Click. Click. I opened the creaking driver-side door and inhaled that woolen, musty smell for one of the last times, as far as I knew. Click. Click click. Click.

  On the cab ride up to “the gallery” as I was cleverly calling it, I assembled a simple Craigslist ad: “1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited Edition. Has all its parts, well cared for and garage kept for the last 10 years. Top of the line when it was new: will only sell to vagabond songwriters and wayward girls from large families. OK. Will consider other offers. But they better be good offers from sincere people who will take care of this behemoth and promise to drive it up and down a riverbank once in a while.”

  My finger hovered over the Submit button for a few very long seconds. That Jeep represented the last shred of the childhood that I had known with my father. Though I had accepted the loss of my parents a long time ago, I had lost so much of my life in the last couple of weeks that it was difficult to let this ar
tifact go.

  Rationally, I knew I didn't need it: it wasn't economical for me, and it would be far more useful converted into a resource for my project. I was recycling it into my future, I figured. Still, clicking the submit button felt like throwing my last penny down the wishing well.

  The cab pulled to the curb in front of the gallery and I felt that sweet swell of affection and a little buzz of excitement when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. My gallery. Mine. There it was: my future.

  I pointed a little kiss toward the picture of the Jeep on the screen... and clicked Submit.

  Julie stumbled on the sidewalk as soon as she saw me climbing from the cab, her hands over her head to shield herself from the blaring midmorning sun. She was wearing a Pucci-inspired print sundress and stacks of clacking, melon-colored bangles on her wrists.

  “What's all this?” she bleated.

  “This is just about everything,” I said wryly as I hefted my two sad suitcases onto the sidewalk.

  “Okay, okay…” she said as though trying to talk herself into something drastic.

  “Julie, this is nothing,” I sighed with a dismissive wave of my hand. She appeared relieved. “Just tell me where we’re at.”

  She nodded avidly and fell into place at my side as we walked toward the double front doors. Two workmen paused in their tasks and flung the doors open for us.

  I kept my eyes down for just a little longer than I had to as we entered the cool, dark space. I liked to hold back as long as possible every time I came here, so that I could see it afresh and be dazzled and lovestruck all over again. When we were inside and it felt like my eyes had just about adjusted to the change in light from outside, I looked up all of a sudden. Julie was chattering next to me but I could barely hear her.

  Here it is.

  My eyes scanned the room. Miraculously, the workmen had completed just about everything according to the plan with just a few adjustments that I had made. They worked so quickly, I was stunned. It was truly amazing what a bottomless bank account could accomplish.