The Billionaire's Holiday Engagement (Invested in Love)

by Bayley-Burke, Jenna

  He possessed her body in a way he hadn’t before, taking and giving at the same time. More alive than she’d ever felt, she wanted to touch every part of him. His lips on hers, their joining below, and her hands traveling every inch of his skin within reach. Slick with sweat, her fingers slid over his back, down to his buttocks, thrusting satisfaction into her body with fury.

  Her body tightened around him and she gave into the climax she knew was building deep inside. Wrapping her legs around his back she pulled him closer and surrendered to the pleasure he delivered.

  She purred and panted as she quaked around him, her head rolling from side to side. Her entire body shook, her inner muscles gripping him with each crest. She rode the waves of orgasm, her body slamming against his until he found his release.

  The weight of his body was a comfort as he nuzzled against her neck. He slipped to the side, his breathing slowing until it kept pace with hers. Lauren smiled, enjoying every ripples of ecstasy still coursing through her body.

  She turned, looking at his peaceful face, lost in obvious slumber. With a smile she leaned in and kissed the tip of his nose. When that got no response she stretched next to him, knowing sleep would come easy since the fire warmed the room. She tucked her body around his and dared to say what she’d wanted to all night, for a week really.

  “I love you,” she whispered, repeating the phrase over and over until she drifted off to sleep.

  …

  She loved him. Had said so every night this week when she thought he slept. But she hadn’t mentioned a thing about it any other time. Not that they had much time together for a serious conversation. She was busy planning to expand her business and he was trying like hell to do the same.

  With half of his investments in place, he needed to begin heavy fund raising. Before, Anders handled most of the recruiting of investors. But for Cameron to prove he could run the firm on his own, he couldn’t ask for help. He had the limited partners lined up who would help mentor the companies through the start up phase, but he needed more capital to grow the fund the way he’d outlined in the prospectus.

  He had calls in to all of his targets, needing to nail down their interest. He was on track for the fund, but he wanted more time with Lauren before she opened her new store. Right now his workload would slow just as hers doubled.

  His email dinged, catching his attention. The name of the sender sent his pulse racing. Clive Braden was one of the richest men in the country, an impulsive investor known for seeking out longshots and making millions on them. He hated to be solicited, and so wasn’t even on Cameron’s wish list of possible investors. Until he opened the email.

  With a six-hour layover between a flight from Tokyo and a flight to Chicago tomorrow night, Braden wanted to discuss the alternative energy fund. He’d heard the buzz from an investment banker who passed along the prospectus. He gave the times of his flights and the email of his assistant to arrange a meeting.

  Cameron leaned back in his chair. Just having Braden interested in his fund spoke volumes about its promise. If he convinced Braden to invest, he could close the fund to investors a month early at least.

  His mind spun as he attacked his computer, polishing the prospectus with the latest details of the investments. He’d present the information casually, Lauren would work her magic making Braden feel comfortable, and his fund would be off and running at record speed. He might even be able to find a week to break away before she opened her new store.

  “You need to blink more.” Lauren sauntered into his office, a vision in her plush velvet equestrian jacket so long it covered half of her jean covered thighs and a white buttoned shirt she’d forgotten to button half way up. The flouncy sleeves added to the English air. She had the best clothes he’d ever seen.

  “You look good.”

  “Why, thank you.” She fluffed her gorgeous hair and gifted him with a spectacular smile. “Don’t freak out.”

  Nothing good ever came after someone said those words. “What?”

  “I was busy with the contractors, and didn’t load my truck. So, I didn’t bring turkey.”

  He eyed the white box that usually held his lunch. “What is it?”

  “A chicken and spinach salad wrap. It’s good, with bacon and apple and goat cheese.’

  “Goat cheese?” She had him until she wanted him to eat something that came from a goat.

  “You’ll like it. It’s like cream cheese with flavor. A cantaloupe strawberry salad and a new potato and pea salad. Apple cake, too.”

  He warily unpacked, looking at the salads through the clear plastic containers. “Why are there onions in the fruit salad?”

  “Don’t be difficult today. You’ll like it, I promise. The cucumber and the melon are light and fresh, the strawberries sweet, the onion adds depth and the dressing tartness. It’s a flavor explosion, I swear.” She collapsed into the chair on the other side of his desk.

  She looked so tired he decided the least he could do was try to eat his lunch without getting it all over his clothes. Maybe his good news would cheer her up.

  “Have you heard of Clive Braden?”

  “The name sounds familiar. Why?”

  “He’s interested in the renewable energy fund.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Nice? Baby, he’s one of the richest men in the country. It’s not nice, it’s career making.”

  “Congratulations.” She leaned forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees.

  “Don’t congratulate me yet. We have to convince him over dinner tomorrow.”

  “I can’t do a dinner tomorrow. I have the vegan wedding to cater.”

  “Diego can handle that. How many people should we have? I’m thinking small so he doesn’t feel pressured.”

  Lauren cleared her throat. “Diego isn’t ready to do a wedding on his own. And not this wedding, anyway. Let’s schedule it for another time.”

  Cameron shook his head. “He’ll only be in town for six hours, assuming his flight is on time. I have maybe two hours here, Lauren. What time is the wedding?”

  “Six thirty. But I can’t cater a plated dinner for two hundred and still make dinner for you.”

  “I need you there.”

  “I can’t be there tomorrow night.” She stood, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Fine. We’ll hire another company to handle the wedding. I need you there. This is very important to me. To us.”

  Her mouth hung open, her eyes narrowing into slits. “Keeping my commitments is important to me. This is someone’s wedding, Cameron. It’s stressful enough without having your caterer flake because her boyfriend wants her to play hooky.”

  “I need this, Lauren. We need this.”

  “No, we don’t. Take them to a restaurant.”

  “You’re not understanding how crucial this is. If I can bring in an investor like this, Anders will feel comfortable stepping down. I’ll have control of the entire firm.”

  “From New York?”

  “Yes.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. Obviously not the right answer. “New York would mean less travel. You could move your business there.”

  “No, I couldn’t cater parties in Seattle from Manhattan.”

  “Don’t be so stubborn. Diego handles events every time we have a party that overlaps. He can handle this so that you can help me.”

  “What part of no aren’t you comprehending?” She spoke slowly, anger evident on each word. “I can not have dinner with your client tomorrow. I have a wedding to cater. I need to make sure everything goes right for my clients. Clients who will still be with me after you go back to New York.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m not going back to New York without you.”

  “Maybe you should, Cameron. Because I could never be with a man who doesn’t respect my ambitions and expects me to morph into the prefect professional’s wife when it suits him, but be too busy to notice how little I matter in his life the rest of the time.”
/>
  She turned on her heel and marched from his office. He thought about chasing her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking some sense into her. She had a wedding to cater, which would be over and her menu forgotten in a few hours. His meeting could make their lives considerably more comfortable.

  Damn her. Couldn’t she see what they could accomplish together?

  With a groan he took matters into his own hands. He typed Seattle catering into his web browser and called the first company that came on screen. He’d handle the party himself, and deal with her after he landed the biggest transaction of his career.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What is wrong with you?” Diego asked, stepping around Lauren in the corner of the hotel kitchen they were allowed to prep the food in.

  “Nothing is wrong with me.” She continued to angrily jam guacamole into the cherry tomatoes. Damn weddings; always put her in a bad temper.

  “Did you and Cameron have a fight?” Diego pulled the egg-substitute mini frittatas from the Salamander where they were browning and arranged them on a platter.

  “Cameron is a jerk.” Finished with her tomato platter, she started abusing mushroom caps, whacking them with artichoke and spinach filling. The wait staff came and went from the kitchen as quickly as possible, probably sensing her foul mood.

  “What happened?” Diego stood next to her, his voice lowered below the buzz of the kitchen.

  “He tells me yesterday afternoon that he needs me to cater a dinner for him tonight. And when I told him we were committed to a wedding, he expected me to change my plans. Actually suggested hiring another company to cater the wedding. This wedding, with the vegan everything. Can you imagine the nerve?”

  “I told you I could handle this wedding on my own.”

  “That is not the point.” She turned, whacking him square in the lapels of his chef’s jacket with a hunk of spinach from her spoon.

  “And the point is?”

  “If he expects me to drop everything with no notice, just bail on my clients because he needs me, then he doesn’t respect my career. That’s not love, that’s making life easier for him. And I work too damn hard to have someone treat what I do like a hobby.”

  “He said he needed you?”

  “Like a broken record. But I can’t live like that. I don’t want to settle for someone who doesn’t love me as much as I love him.” If at all.

  “How much does it weigh?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re putting it on a scale. So tell me, is it lighter than a feather, or heavier than a brick?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m being serious. Men don’t like to admit they need anyone, Lauren. He doesn’t understand about poetic words and the right phrases you expect to hear. If a man tells you he needs you, that’s his definition of love. That’s all we’re hardwired for. If a man says more, it’s because a woman taught him to.”

  Lauren’s heart sunk to the floor at how true Diego’s words seemed. She dug in her heels because she thought if she gave in once, he’d always expect her to. Cameron refused to bend in his insistence he needed her, but she saw it as him trying to break her desire to be successful.

  She was being as petulant as him, refusing to give an inch. When really, she could compromise. Diego was more than capable of handling everything without her. And Nyla was here, micromanaging every detail of the wedding to precision.

  “If he needs you, you should go.”

  “You’re right.” Lauren untied her apron.

  Diego shuffled backward, his hand over his heart. “Did the world just end? Did you actually admit I’m right?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.” On a new mission, Lauren gave one last set of instructions and hit the road. She knew they both needed to learn to give a little or things would never get better.

  After a quick stop at her apartment to change, she rehearsed her speech to him the whole drive to his house. But arriving, she was surprised to not see a single car outside. Maybe he’d taken her advice and had the dinner at a restaurant.

  She let herself in the kitchen door. The stench of old seafood wrinkled her nose. The counters were peppered with bits of vegetables, the floor splattered with yellow and brown sauces.

  Someone had been cooking in her kitchen, and they left an awful mess. Ignoring the puzzling dirtiness for now, she walked further into the house, noting the baskets of rolls still on the table and empty bottles of wine. There had been a party here, but according to her watch it wasn’t even nine.

  “Cameron?” she called out, climbing the stairs and looking for answers. She found them huddled in his bathroom. “Are you okay?”

  He shook his head slowly, then turned and threw up in the toilet.

  …

  Cameron stopped throwing up long enough to fall asleep around three in the morning. To work out her frustrations, Lauren changed into a pair of his sweats and a tee shirt and scrubbed the kitchen free of the vile stench.

  She didn’t know what made her angrier, that he’d replaced her as his caterer with so little thought, or that the company he used gave him food poisoning. A caterer was only as good as their last job, and this company would feel the repercussions if the other guests were as sick as Cameron. And if his investor got sick too, little chance of him signing on to the project remained.

  Lauren felt guilty at first, but after having to bleach the kitchen and mop the floors, her guilt had abated. Atonement by cleaning.

  Exhausted, she climbed the stairs and crawled in bed next to him and slept until her cell phone started chiming downstairs. Trying not to wake Cameron, she sprinted to her phone, out of breath when she answered.

  “Something funny is going on,” Ricky said. “I just got here to start the breads, and there were four messages on the phone. Four cancellations for this week. And then before I could even get flour in the mixer, today’s client called to cancel. Today’s client!”

  “Five cancellations already?” Her watch said it wasn’t even eight in the morning. Something must have happened at the wedding after she left. She kicked her foot against the wall, then regretted it as she hopped around, trying to stop the pain.

  “Actually six cancellations. One more after I tried to call Diego.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can to try and figure this out.” Try and throttle Diego is more like it. He should have called her last night if something went wrong. It would have saved her from the puke patrol, and started the trouble shooting process earlier.

  After hanging up the phone Lauren looked down at her outfit. Cameron’s clothes screamed walk of shame, but her dress would have yelled booty call even louder. And since she didn’t get any booty, she didn’t care to be branded. She’d simply tell everyone she was at the gym when Ricky called. Maybe they’d believe she had really baggy workout clothes.

  She went back upstairs to leave Cameron a note, but he was awake sitting on the side of the bed and hanging his head. She sat next to him and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Marginally.”

  “I’m sorry you got sick.”

  “Me too. Braden showed up for thirty minutes, had some wine, asked two questions, and signed on to the project.”

  “Congratulations.” He didn’t need her after all. She really shouldn’t have left the wedding.

  “The caterer was awful. Rubbery food, and they didn’t bring anything with them. No flowers, no music, no decorations. Nothing.”

  “I told you, that’s a special service. It’s not routine.”

  “I know. I just never realized all you put into a party. You make it look so easy.”

  “That’s my job. And speaking of my job, I need to get to work. There’s something weird happening. Six cancellations already, including today’s client. That never happens. Something must have gone wrong after I left the wedding last night.”

  “Something like what?”

  “People getting sick, or the food no
t being prepared right, or the staff being rude.”

  “Sick, like I was sick?”

  “Yeah, you can bet whomever catered last night won’t be getting any business from the guests here, and anyone they know.”

  Cameron fell back against the bed with a curse.

  Lauren reached for him. “Do you need to be sick again?”

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Last night everyone wanted to know where you were, so I said you had a big wedding to cater. And then one of the wives said something snarky about how you needed to be more dedicated to us and not your hobby and it pissed me off. So I said you made sure dinner was handled before you left because you wanted to make sure everything went perfectly.”

  Lauren hopped to her feet. “You told people Come For Dinner catered the poison party?”

  “I thought I was helping.”

  “Helping who, Cam? Yourself?”

  “No, helping you. You’re always trying to impress the other wives.”

  “Never at the expense of my business! I’ve told you how careful I am about my parties, how much having my own business means to me. And now, because you acted like a spoiled brat and insisted on having a party when I couldn’t be there and telling everyone I gave them food poisoning, my reputation is on the line. I can’t believe you would sabotage my career!”

  “I know you’re upset, but I didn’t do any of it to hurt you. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “But you did hurt me, Cameron. After all I did to make sure your career was rosy—playing along with your fake girlfriend scheme and creating parties where you felt comfortable—this is how you repay me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. Tell that to my wait staff who won’t get a check this week because I don’t have any work for them. Tell that to my bank when I don’t have enough money in my accounts to make payroll or pay the contractors.”

  “I’ll pay for it.”

  “You can’t throw money at this and make it go away. I don’t want anything from you at all.” She turned and marched down the stairs, grabbing her purse from the sparkling clean counter on her way out the door.