The Billionaire Game 2

by Lila Monroe

  I tried to scowl at him, which, given my lifelong policy of not scowling at square-jawed men in white T-shirts so tight I could see every single abdominal muscle, was somewhat harder than expected. “Fine. No to the polar bear throw rug. Can I at least have the vintage sheepskin throw?”

  “Oh, certainly,” Asher said with enough sarcasm to drown an entire ark. “We should definitely, whatever we do, fill the shop with items made out of animal products. It’s not as if California is filled with angry vegans with too much red paint and not enough time on their hands. No one will protest us or boycott us or conduct a smear campaign over the internet or anything.”

  Our shopping assistant on loan from Dashner & Daughters, Henri, flinched slightly. Poor guy. He’d been caught in the middle of several fights by now, me proposing a dream item, Asher shooting it down, Henri trying to please us both until he could figure out who was really in charge. He was probably flashing back to the crystal and lapis lazuli chandelier incident right now, or maybe the velvet chaise longue debate. That one had been serious; I had not wanted to let go of that dream item. I figured Asher’s initial staunch ‘no’ was just a starting point for the negotiation we’d be having later.

  “Look,” I said, trying my best for a diplomatic tone, “people are going to be stripping off in my studio. If we make them do that in a harsh, unwelcoming space with budget furniture that looks like we bought it from Ikea, they’re going to be naked and vulnerable and feeling like all their little flaws and imperfections are under scrutiny.”

  Asher snorted. “So your solution is to throw money at the problem?”

  “No,” I said, struggling to keep my temper under control. “My solution is to control the environment with a few select stage pieces. It’s Stagecraft 101: they feel sexy and in control, like a movie star or royalty. We pamper them with luxury furniture and mysterious silk drapes, some exotic chocolates and sweet mimosas, and they forget their anxieties and let me get to work. I can’t believe you’re being such a penny pincher over this.”

  For a moment, his mouth gaped open. Yes, I actually just called him ‘cheap.’ “This is not about pennies,” Asher finally sputtered. “It’s about the cost-benefit ratio.”

  “The what?” He was clearly trying to distract me with a subterfuge of economic voodoo-speak, I just knew it.

  Asher just shook his head. “Think of it this way: how many hours will you need to work to break even? How many panties would you have to sell before you could afford even one of the items you’ve wanted to buy today?”

  He had a point, but I didn’t care. “You agreed to do this my way,” I pointed out, trying to keep my tone neutral and not let it slide into a seven-year-old’s whine of but you promised! “Luxury brands sell more than just the product: they sell a dream, an escape, an aspiration. People will be willing to pay real money for that dream if we can put it right in front of their faces. You agreed!”

  For a second I thought I saw that flash of guilt on Asher’s face again—what was that about? Was he wanting to back out after all? Did he regret getting carried away and agreeing to invest? I felt myself softening to him for a second, even as anxiety made my stomach and heart plummet down into my feet. I could understand it if he was acting like a jerk to cover up his own insecurities. Hell, what else did I do all day?

  Then he scoffed, and the moment was gone. “I agreed to that as a business plan, not a charity venture.”

  Oh no he didn’t. “Excuse me—”

  Henri demonstrated his wisdom and advanced self-preservation skills by choosing this moment to quickly mumble something about looking up items in the back catalogue, and fleeing.

  Asher crossed his arms, a move that was in danger of ripping the sleeves of his T-shirt across his powerful shoulders. “Kate, we don’t have time for one of your meltdowns.”

  “I’m not having a meltdown,” I said icily. “And I don’t appreciate you dismissing my concerns like that. When I first agreed to this partnership, it was because you convinced me that you understood my vision, and you believed that I had the skills to carry it out. But ever since then, you’ve done nothing but belittle me and talk down to me. Well, if I wanted someone to do that, I’d have asked my family for help. So, Asher, tell me: do you really think I can do this? Or have you completely lost all faith in my panties?”

  My heart was hammering by the time I came to the end of my speech, despite the joke I’d tried to throw in at the end. It was true that I didn’t want to keep going if Asher wasn’t prepared to support me and my business the way I envisioned it. But I could never abandon my dream, either.

  And to be completely honest, I also didn’t want to let go of the idea that finally someone had understood my passion, my commitment…that Asher understood.

  Chagrin was written deep in the lines of his face; his green eyes were wide and regretful. “Of course I think you can do this,” he said softly. “I’m sorry I ever let you think for a second otherwise.”

  He stepped towards me, and I stepped back automatically, bringing the backs of my knees against the soft silken sheets of a Victorian-inspired canopy bed. I could feel a slight breeze, as though a door had been opened, rippling the gauzy curtains against my back as Asher took another step towards me. He reached out and cupped my cheek so gently, looking deep into my eyes.

  “Then why have you been acting so…” my voice trailed off into a whisper, my thoughts scrambling for focus as I leaned unconsciously into the warmth of his touch, the intensity of his gaze.

  We were alone, and so close to a bed…I could just reach out for him, and he would reach out for me, and we could fall backwards onto the soft mattress, those curtains undulating all around us like in a music video for some uber-romantic 1980’s rock ballad, his hard body covering mine as I claimed his lips with my own, writhing in desire as his hands slid under my clothing…

  “I’m sorry,” he said huskily, his other hand coming up to my waist as if he could read my mind. “I wish I could explain…”

  “Don’t bother,” I said, and tilted my head back for a kiss, my own arms coming up to grip his firm shoulders, when—

  “Ahem.” A nervous cough broke the sexual tension like a winter boot stomping down on a thin pane of ice.

  Asher and I broke apart quickly and guiltily, whirling to face the intruder.

  “Excuse me,” said a man who looked awfully familiar, though I couldn’t place him right away.

  He had thinning sandy hair, blue eyes, and the build of somebody who used to play football but who had lately taken to not throwing back anything besides beers and chips, a noticeable paunch rounding out his frame as he leaned in the doorway of the showroom, smirking slightly. How long had he been there?

  “Ah, yes, this is Brody Dalton. Brody, this is Kate. Kate, Brody.”

  Asher barely looked at me while he was introducing us, instead pacing about and brushing himself off as if we really had been just rolling around on a dusty mattress. Was that a light blush suffusing his bronze cheeks?

  Asher stalked to the door and made a ‘before you’ gesture to the other man. “I’m sure Brody’s very busy, just like we are, so—”

  “We’ve actually met before,” Brody said, ignoring Asher’s so-blatant-it-couldn’t-really-be-called-a-hint and sauntering towards me instead. “At the Devlin function…?”

  It clicked then. That night out with Lacey at Grant’s last charity event, when Grant had introduced Asher and Brody as his two college buddies. I vaguely remembered something about him being on the polo team, but most of my memories that night had been confiscated by the subsequent hangover.

  “Right,” I said. “You three go way back. Maybe you’ve got some inside tips on how to persuade this guy to let go of his wallet?”

  Brody laughed easily and shook his head. “Can’t help you there, I’m afraid. But I’m sure it’ll work out fine—Asher’s projects always do, don’t they?” He shot Asher a smile with only slightly fewer teeth than a great white shark. “I just hea
rd about this one, so I thought I’d pop on by and see how it was going.”

  The words sounded innocent enough, but something about both his and Asher’s body language was pinging all of my alarms.

  Asher clearly shared my suspicions. A smile was pasted on his face, but his arms were folded. “You heard we were going to be here, right now? Jumping the boat on the industrial spying angle, aren’t you, Brody?”

  Brody chuckled. “It’s cute how you’re still upset over that.” He turned to me. “I bet him five bucks in college that I couldn’t get a spy into his little gaming club. It only took me a week to find a blonde that would short-circuit his brain.”

  “Joke’s on you,” Asher retorted, a more genuine smile, adorable dimple included, playing reluctantly around his lips. “Gaming club met in my room, and it only took another week for her to leave you for Grant.”

  “Also, you still didn’t answer the question,” I pointed out to Brody, not liking the way he had redirected Asher’s query. “How did you know we were going to be here?”

  Brody shrugged. “Oh, I pick up pieces of gossip here and there. The buzz is really quite promising.” He raised an eyebrow at Asher, a gesture that seemed oddly pointed to me. “Let’s just hope that promise isn’t empty, for your sake.”

  Asher ignored the look of confusion I directed at him as if I wasn’t even in the room. His smile was beginning to look pained. “Don’t you have things to do, Brody? I hear that wheat enzyme business of yours is struggling to find its niche.”

  “Oh, I solved that problem weeks ago,” Brody said breezily. “Turned out I just needed the endorsement of a local podcast, and the internet grassroots movement picked it up and ran with it. We’ve already gotten pre-orders for fifty percent of the stock, and we’re forecasting a 500% return. What’s your advertising budget for this new venture looking like by the way?”

  Asher was looking an unhealthy shade of green, and I began to regret my insistence on buying a product placement spot in an upcoming art film. It had seemed like a good investment at the time…

  “Oh, what’s this?” Brody had spotted my lingerie samples, which I had spread out on the velvet chaise longue earlier in an attempt to show Asher how the varying textures set each other off perfectly. He grabbed a bra and pulled at it as if he was testing the strength of the stitching; I flinched as if he’d yanked at my own arm.

  “Those are my property—” I started.

  “Not bad,” Brody said, looking straight over my head at Asher. What the hell was it with these two? It was like even as they discussed my business, they were having a separate conversation on another subject entirely. “A little flimsy, maybe, but I can definitely see why you’d want to get your hands on her—” he actually looked at me then, and flashed that shark-circling-a-dolphin grin—“assets. You two closed any deals lately?”

  I opened my mouth to let him know exactly how I felt about his implications, but Asher jumped in first, imposing himself between the two of us as if he was afraid I might actually physically assault his old college ‘buddy.’

  “Well, good to see you, man, but we’ve got to run. We’ve got places to be.” He turned to me, eyebrow raised in a clear signal of this is the polite excuse train, all aboard the polite excuse train, seriously, get your ass on the polite excuse train so we can leave now. “We have to get to the fabric wholesaler’s, right, Kate?”

  “Actually—” I started. Maybe it was a little mean when Asher was so clearly desperate to be anywhere that was at least a hundred yards away from Brody and his probing questions, but I couldn’t help wanting to find out what exactly was going on, especially since it seemed like something that might impact my business.

  Why was this guy showing up just to try and push Asher’s buttons like he was a faulty cell phone? When I’d run into them together at the charity function they’d seemed pretty buddy-buddy, if not at the finishing-each-other-sentences level of old-married that Asher and Grant had been.

  With a look of betrayal that could have broken even Iago’s heart—dammit, another Shakespeare reference, was Stevie’s mental infection ever going to loosen its grip on me?—Asher latched onto my arm, shot Brody a faux-apologetic grin, and hustled me through the door.

  I opened my mouth to protest again, but then I saw the carefully casual way that Brody was examining a teak rolltop desk, trying not to let on that he was also watching us through the window making our way to the Starship Ashermobile. Creepy.

  I let Asher vent his feelings by slamming his car door, hitting the gas pedal with enough force to jump-start a small nuclear reaction, and screeching out of the parking lot at speeds Einstein had said were physically impossible.

  “So what the hell was that about?” I asked, abandoning my previous attempts at diplomacy in favor of that old tried and true tactic of just barging the hell into a conversation like it was already in progress. I’d found it surprisingly effective in the past.

  “What was what about?” Asher said casually, trying to disguise the start his hands had given on the wheel. Which, since the drivers around us were venting their feelings about that by leaning on their horns, was a pretty difficult thing to disguise, but points for trying.

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice you two talking in half-finished sentences and veiled insults? ‘Cause I have to be honest, those insults? Barely veiled. Those insults would not be able to walk down a wedding aisle, that’s how little veil they had.”

  Asher gave his head a little shake. “It’s nothing. He just likes to snoop around and I’m tired of giving him the inside scoop. If he thrives on intel so much, let him work for it for a change, huh?”

  The words were plausible enough, and his voice was as casual as if he were lying back on a towel on a sunny beach—and ooooh, there was a mental visual to store for perusal later—but his knuckles were tight on the wheel, and his shoulders were hunched as if he were carrying the weight of the world.

  So he wanted to be mysterious, huh? Well, he could try.

  You can take the girl out of the Detective Fiction section of the library, but you can’t take the detailed knowledge of detection and deductive practices out of the girl.

  #

  Unfortunately, playing Nancy Drew had to take a backseat as Asher immediately drove us back to the studio to pick a fight about fabrics.

  “No, no, and no.” This time it was me who was saying it. “I backed down on all the furniture, Asher, but I will not have you acting like you know more about cloth than I do!”

  Asher raised his hands in a gesture that he probably meant to be placating; unfortunately, he missed ‘placating’ by a mile and landed squarely in the middle of ‘condescending.’ “I just think that the financial compensation outweighs any supposed loss of comfort associated with a lower thread count—”

  “Do not fucking talk to me about thread counts!” I snapped. “Did you do costuming for five years with the San Francisco Theatre Company? Did you scrape up your rent money before you got a job by working your fingers to the bone on hand-tailored suits and gowns? Did you save up money your entire adolescence just so you could go to Ireland and learn the oldest lace-making techniques in the world before the women who knew them died out? You know a lot about a lot of things, Asher, but fabric isn’t one of them!”

  Asher’s color rose. “Maybe I don’t know about fabric, but at least I know a thing or two about running a business!”

  “That doesn’t give you the right to treat me like I’m completely ignorant!” I shot back. “It doesn’t give you the right to act like I don’t know what I’m doing!”

  “You don’t.”

  His voice came hard and cold through gritted teeth; his green eyes flashed and my contrary body trembled with a heady cocktail of rage and lust. He stalked towards me, like a panther towards its prey.

  “This isn’t a hobby any more, Katie. I’m sticking my neck out and staking real money on this venture. And the way you’re going, I’ll never se
e that money again in this lifetime.” He stepped back, shaking his head. “Don’t you get it? If we kept going the way you always want to, we’d be bust within months.”

  Oh, but I wanted to wipe that sneer off his face, and I almost didn’t care if it was with a punch or with a kiss. I tried to keep fighting past my cloud of hormones and the sinking feeling that maybe he had the ghost of a point: “You said I had a vision—”

  My voice came out plaintive and distressingly breathless; somehow without my noticing it, he had taken another step closer to me. Our eyes met, and for a moment his softened, and I thought I saw something there in his gaze—something like guilt, and regret, and desire, and something even stranger, something like—

  Then, with that trademark Asher timing—Now With Bonus Dream-Crushing Action!—he ruined it.

  “The difference between a vision and a hallucination is the ability to make it come true,” he said. He sighed. “This isn’t achieving anything. This arguing—back and forth—” Then he stepped back, my body protesting even as my mind sighed in relief that he wasn’t pushing the point. He ran his fingers through his luscious dark locks distractedly, ruffling them in a way I longed to imitate, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen and one of his business cards, scribbling something onto the back. “Can you please meet me here this evening? We’ll finish this discussion then.”

  I took the card grudgingly. “What, you can’t budget any time into your schedule to be wrong?”

  He was already beating a retreat. “It’s not an issue that’s ever come up before!” he called over his shoulder as he departed. The momentary weariness that had passed over his features when he backed down from the fight was gone, and his usual cocky arrogance had taken its place.

  “Asshole,” I told the card.

  It didn’t disagree with me, so technically, that means I won, right?

  For what felt like the hundredth time that day, though, I wondered what the hell was going on with Asher. One moment dismissive, the next soothing. One minute raring for a verbal scrap, the next backing down and disappearing. What was he keeping from me? Did it have anything to do with the address he had written down? What about the change in location made him think I’d see his side of the argument better there?