The Billionaire Game

by Lila Monroe

  In other words, the apartment had never looked so clean. I was half-expecting Martha Stewart to show up and have a seizure out of sheer joy.

  I picked a piece of non-existent lint off the couch and grabbed the furniture polish for the coffee table, which was already gleaming like King Midas had stopped by earlier. My treacherous eyes lingered on the cell phone I’d left lying on the table, and my even more treacherous mind thought: you could call Asher. You could ask for one more business meeting. He really did seem to get it towards the end of that discussion, and if this meeting just happens to end with you banging him on his desk, then…

  No, no, NO. Calling Asher was a terrible idea, even without following it up with the terrible idea chaser of actually having sex with him. Even if he really had been starting to get where I was coming from, and he wasn’t just in this for the booty, he wasn’t going to change his whole business model just for me. Asher took small companies and made them into big companies that made millions, and then billions. He didn’t throw out small change to people who wanted to make a little high-end boutique, no matter how good they were at making out.

  Not even if they made him moan when they slid their tongue into his mouth, their hands gripping his ass like I wanted to meld into him, like I couldn’t even wait to have him inside me—

  God-motherfucking-dammit, I was doing it again!

  Focus, Katie! This isn’t about your libido and your loneliness for once, this is about your life! Your dream!

  Somehow the phone was already in my hand, the contacts scrolled down to Asher’s number. I stopped my thumb before I could hit his name, and scrolled down further. Lacey. Lacey would know what to do.

  I hoped to God she did, or this apartment was going to be so clean that I was going to asphyxiate on Lysol fumes.

  #

  “…and now I just have no idea where to go from here.”

  Lacey’s assistant handed us a couple of coffees as I finished spilling the tale of my disastrous business meeting with Asher and the following half-naked make-out that was currently competing for the number one slot in both my list of hottest experiences and worst ever life choices.

  “Damn, girl,” Lacey said with a look that somehow managed to be both horrified, sympathetic, and impressed. “You do not do anything by halves, do you? Do you even know what halves are? Do you remember the concept of fractions? I remember that we were in seventh grade math together, but I also remember that your answers on all your worksheets tended to be the words ‘Aaron Davidson’ with a bunch of hearts doodled around them.”

  “What can I say?” I said, draining my mocha latte with an appreciative sigh. Ah, sweet caffeine. Almost as good as alcohol for making the world look like a surmountable challenge. “That boy was a thirteen-year-old Casanova, and I had this amazing friend who was always willing to help me—”

  “Let you copy my answers,” Lacey correct firmly.

  “Help me,” I agreed. I shot a pleading look at Lacey’s assistant, and she mercifully handed me another cup of java before leaving to attend to her duties at her desk just outside of Lacey’s palatial new office. “Seriously, though, thanks for listening to me rant about all this. Also, give your assistant a raise. She deserves it.”

  I drew in another deep gulp of hot strong chocolatey brew, letting my eyelids drift shut in satisfaction. Lacey’s assistant had discovered a little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop run by two Ethiopian immigrants who had made coffee their life study, and Lacey now bought from there exclusively and in bulk. The people who came to her office for meetings were starting to follow her lead too, and it was easy to taste why: not only was the flavor smooth and subtle, but their coffee had the highest amount of caffeine you were legally allowed to sell in the United States.

  Or, as I liked to call it, the perfect amount.

  Unfortunately, even the most delicious coffee couldn’t solve everything, or even put off the problems forever until they solved themselves. I groaned, knuckling my forehead. “I think I invested way too much emotional energy into this thing with Asher working out. I told myself it was my one shot, but I just meant that to motivate me to do good on my presentation. And now I’m halfway convinced it really was my one shot, and I fucked it up harder than a fucked up thing from Planet Complete Fucking Disaster.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Lacey said gently but firmly. “First of all, this fuck-up was on both of you—maybe you got unprofessional, but he started it by not listening to you. And you know that this wasn’t your one shot. Even if you keep insisting on not taking money from me and Grant—which, for the record, I think is prideful and unnecessary and shooting yourself in the foot—the world is full of people who would like to invest in your ideas.”

  “But where the hell am I going to find them?” I asked, slumping down in my seat like a sack of particularly depressed potatoes. “I’m banging my head against a brick wall here—ugh, a brick wall would probably be softer than this, this is some bullshit kind of futuristic carbon fiber wall. What am I going to do next?”

  “I can always have another word with HR about that wrongful firing…”

  I sighed. “Lacey, I appreciate it, but I already told you—”

  “Or a loan, investing!” Lacey added brightly, speeding right past her torpedoed first suggestion. “A loan wouldn’t really be taking money from us, since you’d be giving it back eventually!” She aimed her puppy dog eyes at me, pleading. “Seriously, there are only so many dresses I can buy, and it’s not like I want to crack open caviar for every lunch. Let me put my tacky new money towards an actually worthwhile cause. Please, Katie. Assuage my newly rich guilt by taking this cash off my hands. You’ll be doing me a favor!”

  “Lacey, girl,” I said, taking her hand, “you are sweeter than all the combined contents of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but I can’t. You are my best friend, and I wouldn’t risk that friendship for a million dollars, a massage from Jude Law, and a box set of books signed by Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve seen too many good friendships ruined by money.”

  “That wouldn’t happen with us—” Lacey started to protest.

  “And even if that doesn’t happen,” I overrode her, putting my foot down so hard I was surprised the floor didn’t crack, “I would be stressed about it happening all the time, and I would be miserable. It’s off the table. It’s not even on the floor next to the table. It’s in another room, on a different floor, in a separate building, in a country halfway around the world where they don’t even use tables, that is how far off the table it is.”

  Lacey pouted, but she nodded in reluctant agreement. “Fine. Well, all right. But I’m still going to think of something to help you. Best friends!”

  “Best friends!” I agreed, and we clinked our paper coffee cups together.

  There was a knock on the door, and Lacey’s assistant entered timidly. “Excuse me, Miss Newman, Miss Jameson. I know you said not to be interrupted, but there’s a gentleman here who’s getting very insistent. Something about a not-to-be-missed opportunity for Miss Jameson…?”

  I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach. Or was that excitement? “This guy wouldn’t happen to be, I don’t know, about six one with curly dark hair, green eyes, smirk that could knock your panties off at twenty paces, and an entitlement complex the size of Manhattan?”

  “Wow, you know me so well,” a deep voice came from behind her. “It’s like looking in a mirror.”

  The floor completely failed to open up beneath me and swallow me forever as Asher Young strode into the room, hands in his pockets as if he didn’t have a care in the world, smirk on his face like it had been sculpted in marble.

  “You really need to work on your timing,” I told him, trying to still the traitorous butterflies in my stomach. “Unless you’re actually actively trying to enter conversations at the worst possible moment, in which case, congratulations, you have this timing thing down pat.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Oh, that should not be doing the th
ings it was doing to my southern regions. And there went that dimple—winking in and out of existence like a star as he smiled, those deep emerald eyes almost hypnotic as he lounged against Lacey’s desk at just the right angle for his jeans to hug his crotch and legs like a dream come true.

  “I want to show you something,” he said simply.

  Well son, I want to see something, so stop talking, step out of those pants pronto, and give me a little shimmy, I valiantly restrained myself from saying.

  “I don’t know what you could have to show me that I could be interested in seeing,” I said coldly instead. I didn’t have time for flirting today. I was trying to get my life back on track, and Asher would get me so far off-track I’d be in a country with no railroads.

  Lacey kicked me under the table. I looked at her, confused, and she cut her eyes at Asher, then back at me. When the message still didn’t come through, she gave Asher her most blinding smile and said. “One moment, please.”

  Then grabbed my arm and pulled me to the window at the other side of the room.

  “The hell, Lacey?” I said, not bothering to lower my voice. I’d just finished explaining that this guy was the worst news for my health since microwave pizza was invented, so why wasn’t she immediately kicking him out of her office?

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “Go with him,” she whispered. “He obviously has something to show you.”

  “Yeah, and he wants to show it to me in a discreet hotel bedroom—”

  “Katie.” Lacey put her hand on my shoulder. “You are hot. I am not denying this, because it is true: you are super-duper ridiculously hot, to the extent that I am near-constantly jealous of you. But not every dude you meet is planning to trick you into sex, and it is possible for a guy to have the hots for you and still admire your brain and your business sense. I know you’ve been hurt, but you’re using it as an excuse to avoid going after your dream, and I can’t stand by and watch you do that. Not when I know what you could do if you started believing in yourself.”

  Her words stung worse than ripping a Band-Aid off a sunburn, and it was probably because deep down, I knew they were true.

  I was using my suspicions about Asher’s intentions to shield me from the possibility of finding out that yet another man only wanted me for one thing.

  “You really think he’s figured out a way to make this work?” I said sarcastically, but it was a token protest and I knew it.

  “You’ll never find out if you don’t go,” Lacey pointed out.

  And she was right.

  I gave her a hug, and she hugged me back tightly.

  “Damn, I hate it when you’re the right one,” I said with a sigh. “That’s supposed to be my job.”

  #

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” I breathed.

  Asher looked crestfallen. “You don’t like it?”

  “Like it?” I demanded. “Like it? Like it? Like it?!”

  With every repetition, Asher’s face fell further, like a hiker tumbling down a rocky slope.

  “You don’t just like a place like this,” I declared. “You love it. You adore it. You promise eternal devotion to it and buy it chocolates on its birthday. You—” I looked around the space and was overwhelmed all over again. “Damn, Asher. This is actually, literally, one hundred percent perfect.”

  A smile lit his face like a small sun, but for once, I was looking at something more beautiful. Its pale blue awning had peeked hopefully out of the side of the tall building, and the moment I had stepped inside and seen the clean lines, the open space with plenty of natural light, and the extensive backrooms, I had fallen in love.

  “You could set up some displays here,” Asher said, walking to the focal point of the room. “Something to catch the customers’ eyes as soon as they come in. The back would be for storage of materials and your apprentices’ workspaces—” he caught himself just in time and made a rueful face. “If you like that plan, of course. It’s up to you.”

  I could see it now, and hear it—the hum and whir of a half dozen sewing machines, the excited chatter of customers, the rustle of satin and silk. My own studio—my heart soared at the thought, my skin tingling and my mind racing as the opportunity that Asher was offering me began to really sink in.

  My own studio. My own studio. My own studio.

  I don’t think I’d ever heard three more beautiful words in the English language.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. Not snappishly this time, just confused and awed and a little afraid to believe that this was really happening. “Isn’t my business small fry compared to your usual deals?”

  He scuffed his shoe along the floor, looking awkward for just a second before that charming smile bloomed on his face again. “Even Prada had to start somewhere. Maybe this won’t be an instant moneymaker for me, but you have talent. This year, we open one store, but next year, who knows? You’re going places, Kate. L.A., New York, Paris. I want to be able to say I discovered you first.”

  “You really think so?” I asked, surprising myself with the painful lump in my throat as I spoke the words.

  “Of course,” he said seriously. “I can have my lawyers draw up the contract this afternoon: I’ll front the cash in exchange for minority percentage of ownership. Are you in?”

  He looked especially kissable in that moment, all hopeful and earnest and excited, and a tiny bit vulnerable as he waited for my answer. It was hard to remember all the times he had made me so mad, hard to remember that there was anything about this man that anyone could find infuriating.

  There was a little whisper of worry in the back of my mind that said I still didn’t know who the real Asher was: was it the sweet man who reassured me that he believed in me, and joked about his own failings? Or the condescending, flirty asshole who had three girlfriends but still couldn’t keep his sly winks and hands to himself?

  I looked around the store and as the anticipation bubbled up inside me, I realized that it didn’t matter. This whole venture was a risk, especially with Asher, but there was no way I was going to say no. Not when this was what I had always wanted.

  “Okay,” I said out loud. “You’ve got a deal.”

  He held out his hand and I shook it firmly, forcing myself to let go afterward.

  Now, all I had to do was make it through this business partnership without killing him, kissing him, or both.

  To be continued with part 2 releasing May 11

  The Billionaire Game 2

  Also by Lila Monroe…

  THE BILLIONAIRE BARGAIN SERIES

  Sexy Australian billionaire Grant Devlin is ruining my life. He exercises shirtless in his office, is notorious for his lunchtime hook-ups, he even yawns sexily. If I didn't need this job so bad, I'd take his black Amex and tell him where to swipe it.

  He doesn't even know I exist, but why would he? He jets off to Paris with supermodels, I spend Friday nights with Netflix and a chunk of Pepperidge Farm frozen cake—waiting for his call. Because every time he crashes his yacht, or blows $500k on a single roulette spin in Monte Carlo, I’m the PR girl who has to clean up his mess.

  But this time, it’s going to take more than just a fat charity donation. This time, the whole company is on the line. He needs to show investors that he’s settling down, and Step #1 is pretending to date a nice, stable girl until people forget about what happened with the Playboy Bunnies backstage at the Oscars.

  My plan is perfect, except for one thing:

  He picks me.

  Available now!

  THE BILLIONAIRE BARGAIN 1

  THE BILLIONAIRE BARGAIN 2

  THE BILLIONAIRE BARGAIN 3

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To readers and writers and those bloggers. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the warm reception.

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