The Billionaire's Largesse, Part One
Aurora Rhodes
The Billionaire's Largesse, Part One
Copyright 2015 Aurora Rhodes
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to the actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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About this Book
Mary Chilvers has a comfortable home and runs her own business. The only thing missing from her life is someone to share it with. But when the enigmatic Spencer Matthews walks into her bookshop one morning, Mary realises he has a lot to share. Spencer has become a billionaire overnight with a revolutionary piece of financial software. He's also looking someone to share his success, and to Mary's surprise, the curvy beauty might be exactly the woman he's looking for. But Spencer is used to moving in a world where he can trust no one, and has become good at keeping secrets. Can Mary trust this handsome, charming but unpredictable billionaire? She can certainly tell that not all is as it seems...
This is the first in a three-part serial that should be read in order. There is no hot sex in the first installment, but be assured the slow burn will end with a raging inferno. (In other words, things will get naughty in future installments, and only adults should read this serial.)
Chapter 1
Mary sat behind the counter of her bookshop, and looked around contentedly. She had a fresh cup of tea at her elbow, next to a stack of new paperbacks that she was either going to shelve or read, depending on how she felt later. In front of her, shelves laden with gorgeous books, painstakingly arranged, marched away into the distance.
With comfortable armchairs deployed in strategic nooks, and a limitless supply of strong coffee available from the machine behind her at the counter, she knew it was a bibliophile’s paradise.
It was just a shame it was quarter past eleven and she’d not yet had a customer that morning.
“Oh well,” said Mary, taking a sip of tea, “they know where I am.”
She brushed imaginary biscuit crumbs from her plain white blouse and navy blue skirt, and grabbed the new Paul Magrs YA novel from the top of the stack.
Growing up, studying at university, and yawning her way through lowly admin jobs, Mary had always dreamed that running her own bookshop would be amazing. And after five years of managing “Between The Covers” in leafy Richmond on the outskirts of London, she had to acknowledge that it absolutely was the best job she could ever have found for herself.
So maybe she wasn’t overrun with customers, but there were always a few dedicated readers who knew the value of a decent bookshop, and when they came in for one of their fortnightly shelf sweeps, they just about covered the bills. And as she owned the building outright, that was pretty much all she needed.
Mary had always wanted to have her own business, her own home and a stable love life by the time she was 30. Now she had two of the three, but at the age of 28, Mary thought she had a reasonable chance of getting the full set in the next 18 months… if only she could find a guy that wasn’t a self-obsessed illiterate jerk.
She remembered her last date. She’d made every effort and turned up at the restaurant in a full-length ocean blue dress with a comfortably low-cut neckline to display her assets to full advantage, and a generous slathering of lipstick to bring out her full lips and contrast with her long raven-black hair. She knew her ass looked big in the dress, and she also knew from the open stares of appreciation that she drew as she walked to the restaurant that none of the guys she passed had any problem with that at all.
And so she’d sat down with Joe, and he seemed quite charming in an endearingly inept sort of way. It was as though he’d read about hipsters and, remembering that he’d been cool at school, had decided to try and be one. So he was wearing a half-hearted beard and a checked shirt, and when she arrived, was already nursing a craft beer which he clearly couldn’t stand from the face he pulled at each sip.
By the time they’d ordered and the starters had arrived, though, Mary had heard all about his design agency start-up, wealthy parents and views on immigration, while for her part she’d only been able to nod and confirm that she was indeed on the sunny side of 30.
While he paused long enough to take another dainty sip of his vile craft lager, giving the openly amused waiter room to set down the starter dishes in front of them, Mary popped the crucial question. “I know, what’s your favourite book?”
Joe had frowned at the abruptness of the question, and sat thinking for a moment while Mary demolished the breaded calamari in front of her while she had the chance, filled with complete certainty about how the next two minutes were going to play out.
Eventually Joe cleared his throat. “Well, I guess, Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand, you know? Or maybe The Fountainhead. How about you?”
Mary had smiled sweetly. “Excuse me, I just need to make a quick phone call.” With that, she’d stuffed a bread roll in her handbag, drained her glass of wine, walked straight out of the restaurant, and got a taxi home, without even bothering to pretend to take her phone from her bag.
Well, it was a cliché, but if that was the best that real guys had to offer, Mary would happily stick to Heathcliff and Mr Darcy.
The bell on her door jangled, and Mary looked up as a man stepped into the shop.
“Hello,” she greeted him, though her heart was sinking. Judging by the sharp suit, painstakingly coiffed rich brown hair, fashionably sculpted sideburns and clear, piercing brown eyes, this was a businessman asking directions to his next meeting rather than to the poetry section. Pity. He was slightly built, but the precise way he moved suggested a compact muscular frame under that expensive suit and designer shirt. A few more regular customers like this guy and her days would fly by.
“Hi,” he said in a warm drawl. Irish. Lovely. “Mary Chilvers? It’s Spencer Matthews, Marketing Executive for Networthing. I got in touch last week about the venue hire?”
Mary stood up smartly. He had indeed. An email had popped up via her website asking about using the shop as the venue for some tech product launch. She’d replied but not taken it seriously. She did make the place available for events, but they was mostly, well, book launches. This had sounded a bit more… techy, and probably not something that was going to involve a middle-aged woman in a chunky cardigan reading a book about a duck to enthralled pre-schoolers. And she didn’t even have broadband in the shop, so it was hard to imagine any software company being particularly interested.
She’d replied, inviting the marketer to come and take a look at the place, so they could discuss timing. And she’d literally never expected to hear another word about it.
“I was wondering, and I do appreciate it’s short notice, if you were available tomorrow afternoon? Just for an hour between 3 and 4?”
Mary frowned, and sat down with a sigh. “Gosh, that is short notice. I usually like to give a bit more warning to my regular customers, if an event’s happening during opening hours.”
Spencer’s eyes flashed around the empty shop, before settling back on Mary, with a faintly amused raised eyebrow.
Then he nodded. “I understand. But you
wouldn’t need to close the shop for us, it’s just a product demo. We’ll bring a laptop, projector, and screen. We really just need a quiet corner, and some refreshments. We don’t even need chairs, really, people like to network at these things, so it’s better if they’re standing.”
Mary raised her eyebrow now. “Refreshments? I’ve got some plastic cups out the back somewhere so I suppose I could organise some orange squash and digestive biscuits?”
“Perfect!” Spencer’s amusement was palpable now. “If you could raise an invoice, I’ll pay the five thousand in cash tomorrow.”
Mary stood up so fast she spilt her tea across her book. “Five thousand!” she squeaked. “I usually only charge fifty quid, and I waive that for authors!”
Spencer already had one hand on the door. “Indeed? Networthing usually pay five thousand when they do these things in hotel conference rooms.”
“I’m sure you do, but they have staff, facilities, so much space…”
“Quite so. You run a much more efficient operation, but I’m sure you’ll provide the same level of service. Until tomorrow.”
With that, Spencer stepped out of the shop smartly. The door closed with a soft click, and Mary sank back into her chair. Five thousand pounds for an hour of inconvenience on a Tuesday afternoon? What huge company did this handsome man work for that he could even consider paying her that much money? No, he had to be joking.
Didn’t he?
Chapter 2
Mary arrived at Between the Covers early on Tuesday morning, subjecting the frayed carpets between the shelves to their most rigorous hoovering in years.
She refreshed the window displays, removing a few of the older books whose pages had become yellowed by sunlight, and stuck a “local author” label on a few horror novels, more or less at random (as long as you didn’t do it on a novel by Stephen King or any of his pseudonyms, it’s not as though anyone was ever going to notice). She’d convinced herself that Spencer hadn’t been serious about the five thousand, but she wanted the shop to look its best for the event. His employer was still paying something for the hire, after all, and some of his guests might decide to pick up a few books afterwards.
After she’d finished sprucing the place up, Mary looked at her watch. There were still fifteen minutes before the shop opened for the day… without making a conscious decision, she found herself drifting towards the faded curtain that divided the shop floor from the crowded storeroom. She waded through the shoulder-high piles of books and into the slightly less cluttered small back office.
She kept a lot of her personal stuff in the shop, so she could go straight out on the town after closing in the evening without needing to pop home to change. She’d already decided to wear heels today to present a more professional image to the businesspeople that would be coming in the afternoon. But as she studied her full figure in the full-length mirror on the back wall, she realised the sparkling shoes were a bit wasted against her comfortable but dowdy calf-length skirt and wool sweater.
She reached to a hook on the wall and lifted down her date dress, the ocean blue number that Joe seemed to have been enjoying before his Rand bomb. She held it to her body and smiled into the mirror. Well, they matched the hell out of the shoes, but it would be overdoing it for running a bookshop, even for an event!
But there were still a good ten minutes to go, so why not see how it looked on her at least?
Marvelling at the naughty smile on her face in the mirror, Mary pulled the skirt down over her round hips, then hoisted the heavy sweater over her head. She stood in front of the mirror in a sturdy bra and her black lace knickers and was taken aback. Her legs seemed to go on forever thanks to the heels, and as she half-turned to check out the rear view she couldn’t resist giving her reflection a cheeky wink.
“Not bad,” Mary told herself with a low whistle. She picked up the dress, but frowned. Its thin straps really weren’t going to work with the bra she was wearing today.
“Well, I’m just playing,” she thought, and pushed her bra straps over her shoulders and down her arms. She unclasped the bra and felt that blessed moment of release she only usually got to experience when she got home and changed into pyjamas for an evening in front of the TV with a glass of wine. She sighed as she watched her full breasts spring free in the mirror with a pleasing little bounce. For once, she’d not even been wearing the bra for long enough to get any angry red lines across her chest. The gentle drafts of the air conditioning stirred across her skin, raising all over Mary’s body, and coaxing her nipples to bud and swell.
She was aware that she had a body, of course, but Mary didn’t often make the time to take a good look at it, and the sheer novelty of wandering around her office virtually naked at quarter to nine in the morning was exhilarating.
Out in the shop, the radio was pootling through some light jazz, and Mary found herself raising her arms high above her head, and swaying her hips in a gentle dance, her eyes half-closed as she enjoyed the chill air on her statuesque curves.
“Ah, I’m so sorry,” The voice came from the curtain, and Mary turned sharply. Spencer was standing in the entrance to the storeroom, looking a little awkward if not actually embarrassed.
“What are you doing here?” Mary squealed, her hands on her hips.
Spencer hefted a case in his hand. “I thought I’d see if I could get the laptop and projector hooked up in advance. The door was open,” he concluded with a raised eyebrow.
The breeze that had aroused Mary so recently now reminded her that she was standing in front of this marketing executive wearing nothing but lacy black knickers and a sparkly pair of high-heeled shoes. And Spencer Matthews was definitely not looking at the shoes.
With a wordless shriek, Mary snatched up the dress to cover her breasts and round stomach, already feeling a hot blush creep over her chest and neck.
“I will be out to open the shop in a moment, Mr Matthews,” Mary snapped tartly. “I have your invoice ready.”
Spencer had torn his eyes away from her barely-covered body to the nearest pile of books. “I do like what you’re doing with this shop. You certainly seem to be doing well with hardbacks.” He raised his eyes with an attempt at an innocent grin. “I’ll, er, see you in a moment then.”
When he’d sauntered back through the curtain, Mary turned back to the mirror and nearly cried. Gone was the confident pin-up of a few moments ago. She looked like a scared frump freezing her tits off in a dusty storeroom.
With a heartfelt sigh, Mary hung her dress back from the hook, and shuffled back into her shapeless clothes. Her heels were going to have to do all the sparkling for her today.
But when she made her way back into the shop, invoice in hand, ready to flip the sign to “open”, Mary had another surprise.
She’d made out the invoice for £5,000, thinking she could always pretend she’d missed out the decimal point when Spencer queried it, and amend it to £50.00. She had been feeling a bit guilty about this, but now the man had barged in on her with her boobs out, she was happy to make him squirm a bit. But to her surprise he was already holding a wad of fifty pound notes by the time she reached the counter.
As she handed over the hastily-typed document, she pointed at the company box. “I’m sorry, you never gave me the full name and address of your firm, so I’ve just made it out to Spencer Matthews. You’ll need to fill in the details for your accounts department.”
He smirked. “No, I won’t. That’s fine, thank you. And here’s the five thousand.”
Mary took the cash with fingers that she just managed to keep from shaking. As Spencer folded the invoice and tucked it into the inside pocket of his exquisitely cut jacket, she shrugged, tugged a finger inside her sweater’s turtleneck, and tucked the roll of banknotes into her bra.
The marketing man turned away slightly in a gesture of long-overdue discretion as Mary adjusted her chest, and then he hefted his case. “So, yes, I’ll just set these up, and then I’ll be out of your hair un
til this afternoon.”
Mary flipped the sign on the door to ‘open’ and sat behind the counter, caught somewhere being anger, embarrassment and the sheer giddy joy of having five grand in notes acting as a chicken fillet.
She stuck her head into a Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, and refused to look up as Spencer fussed around the projector on a small folding table.
After a few minutes, all the rustling and fidgeting was getting on her nerves. Mary raised her head to make an acid comment about needing to get on with running her shop, but froze.
The laptop and its projector were sitting alone on the table, and the rustling noise was simply air from the projector’s cooling fan rifling the pages of a nearby shelf display of Ordnance Survey maps. Spencer had gone.
And in spite of her mortification and embarrassment over what had just happened, she found herself missing him.
Chapter 3
It was a beautiful Spring day, so Mary ate her lunch on the street outside Between The Covers, sitting on a little folding chair with a bottle of water and a huge sandwich. She never bothered taking her lunch until two in the afternoon, as between noon and two the rest of the working world had its own lunchbreak, so it was often quite a busy time for her.
As she watched the world drift past her little shop on its way from the offices to the sandwich shops, she enjoyed the feel of the sunlight on her face and arms where she’d rolled up the sleeves of her sweater. Damn Spencer! She really wished for a moment she’d changed into the dress after all, so much more of her would be soaking up the rays just then. Perhaps she should go on holiday? That five thousand could surely cover the cost of both some plane tickets and the shop being closed for a couple of weeks.
Her reverie was interrupted, as a balding, tubby little man in a suit stepped in front of her and cut off the sun’s rays. “Is this the Networthing launch?” he asked, brusquely.
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