The Billionaire Game 2

by Lila Monroe

  Before I knew it, the music slowed to a stop, the dance over. I looked up at Asher. If you were literally any other super hot guy, I’d kiss you right now, I thought.

  But somehow that didn’t make me want any other super hot guy to be there instead.

  Asher opened his mouth, probably to say something to ruin the moment and demonstrate his trademark sense of timing, but I spotted a clock over his shoulder and beat him to the punch. “Shit!”

  “Kate, I need to tell you s—wait, what?”

  I pointed at the clock. “I never meant to stay this late. Oh shit, I have so much work to do tomorrow. I need to head back right now if I’m going to get even three hours of sleep tonight. Dammit!”

  Asher looked disappointed but nodded, accepting. He reached into his pocket. “I’ll call you a cab.”

  “Don’t even worry about it,” I said, swatting his hand away from his cell. “I asked Lacey specifically to make this one close to my place, it’s less than a mile. I could walk there blindfolded.”

  Asher frowned. “You’re tipsy and in heels. At least let me walk you home.”

  Maybe I’ve mentioned this before, but I do have a strict policy of always accepting favors from attractive men. “Well, if you insist.”

  “I do.”

  #

  I’ve never suffered the horrors of a truly crappy neighborhood, preferring to experience all those hilarious stories about dead bodies in communal laundry rooms from Lacey, at least before she moved into Grant’s place, which looks like what you’d get if you cryogenically froze Frank Lloyd Wright for three hundred years and then shoved a pencil in his hand and told him to get back to work.

  Still, it was definitely less upscale than Asher was probably used to, and I found myself suddenly seeing small defects as we walked through the crisp night air: the peeling paint on an old house, the smell of rotting fruit in the parking lot where the farmer’s market hadn’t quite swept up, the empty McDonald’s that hadn’t been open for years and was currently serving as a graffiti artist’s canvas.

  I was leaning on Asher for support as we walked, and I could feel myself tensing, slightly, even as part of me longed to sink further into his supporting arms. What if he was judging my neighborhood, and by extension, me? What if he made a snide comment? What if I committed justifiable homicide?

  “This reminds me of my old neighborhood,” Asher said softly.

  I glanced at him, surprised. “Seriously?”

  “Not all of Grant’s friends were born into money,” Asher said, looking upward as we strolled to watch the smoke rise from the chimney of the local Vietnamese bakery, getting an early start on the day. “I made my fortune in college, remember?”

  “Right, that imaging system thing with the nerd girl from your gaming club.”

  “That nerd girl gave me a flying leap right into Warren Buffet’s social circle,” he reminded me teasingly. “I made my first billion with her work. Plus, I happen to know that the latest Sherlock Holmes movie you love so much uses six of her patents in the special effects, so who’s the nerd now?”

  “You,” I said. “Always you.” I softened it by squeezing his hand slightly, and I was rewarded with one of his real smiles, the kind that almost seemed to hide at the corners of his mouth, that made my heart do a little flip like a pancake in a skillet.

  “I felt so isolated in college,” Asher continued to muse. “My parents worked so hard all their lives, and they always imagined that my siblings and I would pursue some sort of noble calling, but there I was, studying business down in the muck and grubbing after more money. They wanted me to go to seminary like my big brother, or at least politics like my sister.”

  He kicked at a rock on the sidewalk, sending it skipping along the concrete.

  “I wasn’t actually that much of a fanboy before college—I threw myself into stuff like the gaming club mostly just because I was desperate to have any kind of human contact that wasn’t telling me how all my life decisions were terrible ones.”

  “I know what that’s like,” I said softly.

  Asher squeezed my hand back. “And then along came the imaging systems opportunity,” he continued, his voice just audible over the sounds of our footsteps, “and suddenly I knew that this was exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. This was my ‘noble calling:’ finding businesses that couldn’t make it on their own and building them up to a point where they could. I spent a year scraping together enough capital, everyone—my family especially—laughing at me for thinking I could do it when I hadn’t even passed my finals the previous month. But within a month of launching that business, we made back all of our investment and started raking in the profits.”

  He should have sounded triumphant as he said that last sentence, but instead he sounded only slightly wistful.

  “Bet that showed your family, huh?” I said.

  “Not really,” he said with a small, wry grin that made him look like a ten-year-old boy trying to be brave. “They’re still disappointed in me.”

  I had to look away at that, tears threatening to spill from my eyes. I watched the silhouettes of the trees instead, swaying in the light breeze as dawn crept over the edges of the apartment buildings, until I could trust my voice.

  “Thanks for trusting me enough to tell me that,” I said. “It’s not the same—it’s not like I’ve given my family reason to be proud—but. But I know how that feels. That sucks.”

  “You give your family a reason to be proud every day,” he said with a fierceness that startled me. “And your store will be just one of those many, many reasons.”

  It felt like no time at all had passed since we started walking, but already we were at my doorstep. I took my hand from his and opened my mouth to say goodbye, and then paused. Could I really leave it like this? He reached out to take my hand again, caressing my fingers gently as his eyes never left mine, the green of them so deep and hopeful and open and sweet. I didn’t want this conversation to end. I didn’t want to push him away. I didn’t want to say goodnight.

  “Do you want—” I began, and then his cell phone began blaring hard rock at top volume.

  Fucking TIMING.

  “Sorry, sorry sorry sorry,” Asher said, scrambling to mute it. “I set it at maximum because I didn’t want to miss any texts about the store—”

  “Wait, someone is texting about the store?” I leaned over his shoulder before he could stop me and read the message:

  HEY QT IT’S LONESOME IN THIS BED

  Ah.

  “Wow, sounds like someone needs your help,” I replied acerbically, trying not to feel like someone had just stomped on my heart in platform heels. “You’d better go save her, noble Sir Galahad style.”

  Asher looked like he was about to say something, so I got out a “goodnight” and slammed the door behind me before he could start bewitching me with his siren song. Could dudes be sirens? Maybe not, but Asher had an all too dangerous way of intoxicating me with his words, making me forget that even if he was sweet and kind and seemed to understand me, he was still a playboy and that was never going to change.

  I trudged up the stairs to my apartment, let myself in, and slumped against the door, trying to make myself feel like being saved from almost having sex with Asher Young was good thing.

  Unfortunately, I’m persuasive, but not that persuasive.

  “Time for the coldest of showers,” I muttered to myself, and trudged to the bathroom. I had a feeling that the Arctic Ocean would turn to steam right now if it touched my skin.

  SIX

  “Lacey, if you even consider that dress for another second, I am going to have to call off our entire friendship.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Girl, look at that bow. That bow could pull small planets into its orbit.”

  “Oh fine, I’ll try the sleeveless one next.” Lacey disappeared behind the changing screen.

  It had taken some appointment-juggling on a heroic scale, but I had finally car
ved some space out of my schedule for helping Lacey separate the wedding dress wheat from the chaff. We were at the third high-end wedding boutique of the day, though to me they were all starting to blur into each other: lots of ivory and gold wall décor, lots of soft soothing music and splashing fountains, lots of overly helpful assistants that I had to scare off before they pressured Lacey into buying the entire store.

  “Speaking of pulling things out of their orbit…” Lacey’s mischievous tones came floating out from behind the screen. “Did I spy with my little eye someone heading home with Asher the other night?”

  I sighed. “Girl, do not bring up the painful memory of me having to turn down sex with a man who looks like Michelangelo sculpted him. It’s a tender subject.”

  “You turned him down?” Lacey said disbelievingly. “But Katie, you guys were flirting all night! Sparks were flying like it was a welding class!”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a playboy and that’s not going to change anytime this century.” I filled her in about the booty call text. “And he’s my business partner. Way too messy. After Stevie, messy is the last thing I need.”

  Lacey sighed. “I guess. But you know, Grant used to be a playboy too, and he was my freaking boss. Sometimes there’s a decent guy underneath and love finds a way.”

  I thought about Asher’s soft confessions about his past that night, about his protestations of belief in me that evening on his yacht. Maybe…no. “And sometimes love finds a way, realizes it was the wrong way, tries to retrace its steps, gets lost, gets mugged, and has to cancel all its credit cards.”

  “If you say so.” Lacey emerged from behind the screen. “So, what do you think?”

  I frowned thoughtfully, surveying her. “Do a spin. Yeah…the sleeveless look is definitely a good one for you, and this one is keeping the embellishments classic and not overwhelming. But it might be too sheer…”

  “Want me to test it with the red lace set you brought?” I’d brought a pair of the brightest lingerie I’d ever manufactured along for just this circumstance; if a wedding dress could keep those from showing through, it could cover up anything.

  “You read my mind.”

  Lacey grabbed the underwear and retreated behind the changing screen again. “Yup, I’m telepathic. Hey, what are all these naked pictures of Asher doing in your brain?”

  “Don’t make me strangle you with the bridal veil.”

  #

  After another hour of assisting my occasionally fashion-impaired friend, I was running late for my business lunch—“yes, Lacey, a business lunch, not a date”—with Asher. I called a cab; it wasn’t an extravagance that I could really afford at the moment, but no way was I going to rely on public transit to get me there. Besides, Asher always insisted on footing the food bill.

  On the ride over, Lacey’s words ran through my head again and again. I had no doubt there was a good man inside Asher; I’d seen too much evidence to believe otherwise. But was it a good man who’d be any kind of good fit for me? Did he even really have feelings for me in the first place?

  I thought about how he’d opened up to me, shown me his geeky side, shared the pain of his family’s rejection. Was that just more evidence of the extensive repertoire he could pull to get some from the nearest female, or was he actually interested in me, Kate Jameson? I thought about his eyes as we stood on my doorstep, when I’d been thinking about vetoing my common sense and inviting him up—those sea-glass green eyes, focused on me as if I were the only thing worth looking at.

  Maybe he was interested.

  My ruminations were interrupted by our arrival at Fey, one of the hot new clubs that got written up in celebrity magazines, the kind of place I’d usually only get to attend if Grant and Lacey had decided to hold a charity function there. The hour meant it wasn’t too busy, and the doorman quickly found my name on the list of reservations and summoned a waiter to escort me to one of the private rooms, where Asher was waiting.

  He wasn’t alone.

  He was so far from alone, his company was almost in his lap.

  Seated across from him was a tall, thin woman with a face whose age plastic surgery had made impossible to guess, with a helmet of blond hair that could have taken missile fire, and enough eye makeup to repaint Starry Night. She wore artistically ripped and tattered clothes that if not for their expensive materials and hand-stitching could have belonged to a homeless person. As it was, they were just a daring fashion statement.

  If it wasn’t obvious, I hated her instantly.

  “Naughty boy,” she was murmuring at Asher. “You know I don’t have all day.”

  “And I’m supposed to let you go so soon?” he answered, his long lashes making his eyes look all the more alluring. “You couldn’t possibly be so cruel.”

  Handy as this new invisibility superpower could undoubtedly be, I’d had enough of it, and coughed loudly.

  Asher started. “Oh, hello, Kate. I didn’t see you there.”

  “Clearly,” I bit off.

  “Evangeline, this is my business partner, Kate Jameson. Kate, this is Evangeline. These days she’s making waves in fashion journalism over at Blossom magazine. She’s going to write about our launch.”

  The finer points of that information sailed right over my head as I bared my teeth in the closest approximation of a smile I could come to. It probably looked like that of a baboon going into threat mode. “Sounds great!”

  “Now, Ash,” Evangeline said warningly, “I haven’t promised to write a thing yet.”

  “Oh, like you could ever say no to me, Evie,” Asher teased, reaching out to stroke her hand.

  Evangeline giggled like a starstruck fourteen-year-old. “Ash, you shouldn’t! That was our—” she lowered her voice like she thought I was a hard-of-hearing grandma or something—“couple name, remember?”

  “How could I ever forget?” he murmured, meeting her eyes and seeming to lose himself there.

  Pull it together, Kate, pull it together. It’s weird seeing Asher in full-flirt mode, yeah, but you knew he was like this. You just finished telling Lacey how he was exactly like this. Pull it together.

  “Besides, looking at you takes me right back to those days,” Asher said, his thumb stroking over her wrist. “I’d swear you haven’t aged a minute since I bumped into you at Storkman’s Bar.”

  I wanted to barf. I settled for sitting down at the table, since neither of them seemed about to invite me to do so. Neither of them noticed.

  “Remember our first date there?” ‘Evie’ asked.

  Asher smoldered like a forest fire. “I remember that night like it was yesterday.”

  Gag me.

  Evie’s lashes flutter. “I remember that night, too. And that morning.” She gave an elegant, cultured laugh. I could hate her all I wanted, but I had to admit that for all her hobo chic, Evangline was a polished professional. I looked down at my chipped nail polish and half-off-at-Macy’s business suit, and felt positively plebian by comparison.

  A waiter came by to refresh their drinks, and asked me if I would like anything. I didn’t feel like I could order a Scotch in front of Evie at noon, even though I really needed one. I ordered a sparkling grapefruit juice instead, and contemplated the pros and cons of accidentally spilling it all over her dress.

  It was a plan that became only more appealing as Asher scooted his chair closer to hers and began to compliment her on her leggings—a blatant excuse to stroke her thighs.

  Just when I thought the top of my head would blow off like a volcano, he turned to me—though he didn’t stop touching Evie for a minute, and he was still talking to her: “I think Ms. Jameson’s designs will really tickle your fancy.”

  Evangeline gave a fully, throaty laugh. “Well, you certainly do know the kinds of things that tickle me.”

  Asher grinned. “Do I ever. Can you pass those over, Ms. Jameson?”

  I was in hell. I had died, and gone straight to hell. I pasted a smile on my face like bad clip art and handed over
my designs for her perusal.

  As soon as she opened the file, she sat up straighter, seeming to forget Asher’s tone. Her amused smirk was replaced by a look of intense concentration as she flipped back and forth between pictures, mouthing words to herself that I couldn’t quite hear. I forced myself not to stare at her too much, forced myself not to grip the arms of my chair too tightly.

  Why hadn’t Asher warned me that she’d be here? What if she didn’t like them? What if she told all the readers of her magazine that they were terrible? What if—

  “Do you have any samples?” Evangeline asked, interrupting my train of nervous thought.

  Shit, I didn’t. “Sorry, I don’t—”

  “I have some right here,” Asher said, pulling out his briefcase and opening it on the table. He must have just visited the storefront—I could see the hand-embroidered black teddy and the blood orange merry widow I’d been working on that morning.

  Despite everything I was feeling, I couldn’t help but feel a moment of pure appreciation for the fact that Asher had chosen the best of my current work, the ones I would have chosen myself to represent my business. He does understand you after all! a tiny traitorous part of my mind whispered.

  After what seemed like at least a millennium if not more, Evangeline looked up, giving me a tight smile and her verdict: “This work is…it’s exceptional. These are utterly brilliant, and my bosses will definitely be interested. I can give you three paragraphs in Blossom’s “Designers to Watch” blog, maybe four or five if the shoemaker guy doesn’t get pictures of his samples to me by Wednesday.”

  Wait, had I disliked this lovely, amazing, incredibly tasteful woman before? She was not only my new favorite person; I wanted to adopt her as a sister. “Oh wow! I can’t believe it! Thank you so much—”

  Asher held up a hand. “Not good enough. We want a full article too, in the magazine itself. On top of the blog placement.”

  I kicked him under the table. What the hell was he thinking? This was a miracle; we couldn’t risk asking for more!