The Billionaire Bargain 3

by Monroe, Lila

  “Well, congratulations,” I said, trying to give a reassuring smile. “I’m pleased to meet you, and I’m sure we’ll work well together, uh…”

  “Oh! Tina? I’m Tina, Ms. Newman. Tina Harper.” She thrust her hand out at me like she was surrendering herself into police custody, and trying to suppress my amusement, I shook it.

  “It’s lovely to meet you, Tina,” I said. She smiled hesitantly back at me, and I vowed that I would make this job a pleasure for her. I wouldn’t torture her the way I’d been tortured by Jacinda. If I did nothing else of import for the rest of my time at Devlin Media Corp, I’d do this—make sure the cycle of verbal abuse and bullying didn’t continue in my office.

  I led Tina over the pile of work I had been contemplating before her arrival.

  “Now why don’t we get you started on tracking down time commitments for the department heads…”

  • • •

  Tina was a dream, and between the two of us, we managed to clear out most of the backlog before noon. I had just sent her out for a well-deserved lunch break when my cell phone rang. My heart, as it had each time my cell phone had rung that morning, sped up until it could have been a competitor in the Indy 500.

  But when I checked the call display, it wasn’t Grant. It was my landlord.

  “Laney—” His nasally voice buzzed in my ear like a bee with dyspepsia.

  “Lacey,” I corrected automatically.

  “Whatever you want to call yourself,” the bee masquerading as a human landlord snarled. “Do you know what a deadline is? Did they teach you that at your fancy-pants school? Did you not get it when we went over your lease, how the due date for your rent is—”

  Oh, shit. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark, I forgot, I’ve been so—”

  “Busy, busy, yeah, I’m sure you got a hectic schedule sucking your boss’ cock until the bank runs dry, tell me another one, sweetheart. Better yet, just get the goddamn cash in the mail!”

  I gritted my teeth. “I’ll drop the check off this evening. I promise.”

  “You better,” he said. “And don’t forget the late fee. That comes to a total of—”

  “Yes, I know,” I interrupted. “It’ll be in full, I swear. I have to go now, I’m at work—”

  “Working hard or hardly working?” he cracked, and cackled as though he were the first to toss off that oh-so-original bon mot. “And hey, that check better not bounce, or—”

  “It won’t!” I snapped, and hung up.

  Damn. Damn damn damn. Alright, I could do this. I crossed my fingers and typed the website address for my online banking system into my laptop. I might have enough in my bank account. Just enough. As long as I didn’t mind not eating for the rest of the month. Oh well, there was always lurking in Whole Foods, eating food samples, pretending to really consider buying that olive oil as I took another cherry tomato from the sample tray…

  I typed in my password, and then a miracle happened.

  There should have been less than a thousand dollars in my account. Instead there was a quarter million.

  “What…the…hell…” I whispered, staring at the screen.

  This had to be a mistake. Some kind of programming bug or computer virus. My hand moving as though I were in a dream, I clicked on the tab for more information. A single transfer one day ago. A two, followed by a five, followed by four zeroes. And then a decimal point, and two more zeroes.

  A payment from Devlin Media Corp.

  From Grant.

  But I had told him not to—

  I didn’t do this for the money. And he couldn’t write off what I did, or what we had, by sending a check. I could feel my heart beating faster. I picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Mr. Devlin’s office,” his secretary’s brisk voice announced.

  “This is Lacey Newman,” I said, trying to match her professional tone even though in my mind, I was dangling Grant over a pit of hungry tigers. “I would like an appointment to speak to Mr. Devlin at the earliest opportunity.” We had to talk this out.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Devlin is rather busy at the moment, would two p.m. tomorrow afternoon do?”

  “That would do nicely, thank you.” Come to think of it, the extra time would be good. I needed preparation in order to adequately explain to Grant exactly how far he’d crossed the line here.

  Twenty-four hours might not be enough, but I’d have to make do.

  • • •

  I was putting the final touches on my presentation for the upcoming interdepartmental meeting, when a knock came at my door before it swung open. I looked up with an indulgent smile: “Tina, you don’t have to knock every single time—”

  It wasn’t Tina.

  Grant sauntered into my office looking like the cat who ate the proverbial canary. He grinned. “Miss me?”

  THREE

  Damn, but that man looked good enough to eat. My dreams hadn’t lied to me—he was ripped, almost bursting the buttons of his white starched pressed shirt, black slacks complementing the powerful lines of his legs. A lock of golden-brown hair dangled above those mocking blue eyes, his full lips twisted in a sardonic smirk.

  “I—I—I—” I stammered. “I wasn’t expecting you—”

  “Yes?” he said, distantly amused. “Presumably you did have something to say, however, so why don’t you get on with it.” He yawned, strolling to the window and examining his cuff link in the light there. “Could you hurry it up a little? I’ve things to do.”

  His voice was ice cold, his humor nothing more than a knife. He spoke to me as if I were insignificant.

  He spoke to me as if I were a stranger.

  I took a deep breath and tried to tamp down my feelings. Professional, I was going to be professional. “What’s with the money in my bank account?”

  “Surely you’re familiar with the concept of payment for services rendered,” Grant said cuttingly. I could feel my cheeks burning, but a worthy comeback eluded me.

  He turned to me, and looked my body up and down with a distant sort of distaste, as if I were a poorly planned purchase he was glad to have returned to the store. “You performed…a service. You’ve been compensated. End of story.”

  “I told you that I didn’t want money—” I choked out.

  “It will hardly fit the PR profile if I don’t pay you off with something,” Grant said, cutting me off with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Certainly no one could argue that you didn’t deserve it. Yours was a flawless performance of affection and loyalty—no one could have doubted it.” He smiled, and there was no joy in it, but for a moment I caught a flicker in his gaze, almost caught sight of the old Grant hiding there before he turned his back on me and stared out the window. “Your artifice helped buy time to turn this company around.”

  “That’s not the point,” I said, stung without really understanding why. I hadn’t really been performing, I really had loved him—but he wanted the performance, so why was he upset? Why was I insulted? “I can’t accept—”

  “It’s not like you don’t need it,” he interjected. I felt my cheeks flame again, hating that he was right. Grant turned and edged toward the door, making to leave. “I’ve seen the state of your apartment, remember. Of course, there are some things this won’t be able to fix, like your propensity for John Steed posters. It really is a pity that money can’t buy taste.”

  Fresh anger rose in my veins like magma in a volcano. “Dammit, Grant, we still have to work together. Can’t you at least be civil!?”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  Grant’s entire body locked tight, and he wheeled around, stalking slowly towards me while the rage built like blue flames in his eyes. “Oh, I doubt you’ll be working here much longer, Lacey. A talented girl like you, I’m sure you’ll find somewhere else much more suited to your ambitions.”

  His words were like a slap in the face. “Oh, are you firing me now?” I snapped, refusing to back down. “That’s your modus operandi, isn’t it, as soon as some
one disagrees with you or doesn’t give you exactly what you want—”

  “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” Grant snarled. The ice was completely gone now, replaced by fire. “You never understood me, and you never understood the company. You just needed us as stepping stones on your way to bigger and better things, so I suggest that while we have to ‘work together’—” he was right across the desk from me now, his hands gripping the wooden edge—“you stay the hell out of my way, and don’t try for one second to pretend you ever cared about…about this company.”

  He stood on the other side of the desk, seething down at me, and my own anger allowed me to meet his gaze with a matching fury.

  As I shot to my feet, my legs and my voice both shaking with rage, I grabbed his lapel and yanked him even closer toward me. “How dare you say I don’t care about the company when—”

  My hand was on his lapel.

  “When…” I repeated.

  My mouth forgot what it was saying.

  My hand was on his lapel, and his mouth was so close to mine, and we were both breathing so hard, and his pupils were dilated and he just smelled so good and I wanted to grab him and kiss him and say that I never wanted to leave him and that I never would again, never—

  Grant’s eyes went cold again. “No need to get hysterical, Miss Newman.” He plucked my hand from his lapel gingerly, as if it were a fly he had found in his soup. “It was only business. I don’t see what you’re getting so emotional about. You wanted it over.” He smiled, and I shivered at how empty and dead an expression it was. “So it’s over.”

  He stalked to the door and pulled it open, revealing a cluster of employees who had been eavesdropping just outside. They froze mid ear-strain before scattering back to their cubicles and copy machines. Great. Just what I needed: more fuel for the gossip inferno. More fires to put out.

  Grant turned back, silhouetted in the doorway, and my pathetic, traitorous heart leapt into my throat, but all he said was, “Best to move on, Miss Newman.”

  He shut the door carefully behind him as he left, as if nothing at all had just passed between us, but some part of me wished he would have slammed it instead. At least then I’d know he had some feelings left, that maybe he still cared about me. But clearly he didn’t. What he’d said was true: it was over.

  FOUR

  Kate had taken one look at the expression on my face and dragged me out of the cafeteria. Now we were in a smoky little dive bar where the cigarette fumes were stronger than a tobacco plantation on fire, hiding at the corner booth with ripped red plastic seats and a nicotine-stained plastic palm tree strategically hiding our faces.

  Above us, a blinking white light made me feel like I’d been dragged into a police interrogation as Kate pushed a ginger ale across the table at me—it was the middle of the work day, after all—and demanded that I first drown my sorrows (for whatever value of ‘drown your sorrows’ you can get with a ginger ale) and then spill my guts.

  “—and then he was like, ‘so it’s over,’” I finished. “Like I’m being completely unreasonable to just want a cordial work relationship!”

  I wasn’t being unreasonable, right? We’d had some good times, but I wanted more and he didn’t, so the best thing for everybody had been for me to pull back, hadn’t it? Why did I have to keep second-guessing myself?

  I took a swig from my bottle, trying to pretend the bite of the Jamaican ginger was the bite of alcohol.

  “I can’t believe he’s acting like this,” I went on, stoking my rage to avoid thinking about my pain. “Okay, I threw him for a loop, but obviously he’s fine, the company’s going to bounce back fine, why the fuck can’t he get over it? Why does he have to shut me out? What’s with the fucking Ice-Man act?”

  Kate stirred her own non-alcoholic drink and tried to suppress a small smile.

  “What’s with the Mona Lisa face, Katie? And which part of this is amusing to you?”

  “Sorry.” She shook her head. “It’s just…don’t you get it? He’s never been dumped before. Ever. He obviously doesn’t enjoy having his pride get kicked in the balls. Especially not in public.”

  Kate smirked again but I didn’t have the heart to join in. There was no way I could tell her about the money. Or the fact that I was sending it back in full.

  “But the engagement wasn’t even real,” I reminded her. “So why can’t we just go back to having a nice, boring, professional work relationship?”

  “Oh, girl,” Kate said sympathetically. “The thing is, you gotta remember that Grant Devlin? The one constant thing about him, besides his hotness? It’s the fact that he’s a huge fucking asshole. He always was a huge fucking asshole. He always will be a huge fucking asshole. Somewhere there’s probably some mystical prophecy about him being the once and future huge. Fucking. Asshole.”

  “I know,” I said, shaking my head. “But I really thought I saw another side to him…”

  “You saw excitement,” Kate said, placing her hand over mine. “You saw adventure, and money, and hot sex, and you let yourself think that was another side, because you’re a good person and you assume everyone else is as good as you. And you let yourself fall a little in love. But I bet that, before you know it, you’ll realize that you miss the adventure and excitement more than you miss him.”

  “Maybe,” I said with a sigh. “But right now, I just miss him.”

  And I did, more than I ever thought possible, even after I had admitted to myself that I loved him. I missed the warm of his lips, the shelter of his arms. I missed that slight sly smirk, and that shy boyish grin. I missed the dark storminess of his eyes when he was consumed with passion, and that sunlit sea blue when he was unexpectedly tender. I missed the way he said my name, his voice lingering on the sound of it, long Australian vowels making me sound like a gift, like a treasure, like someone else entirely.

  Kate raised an eyebrow imbued with more skepticism than a room full of atheists. “And you don’t miss the whirlwind dashes through gala balls and the limo rides and the designer dresses, not one little bit.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine, I miss that a little, too. I’m only human!”

  But even my self-deprecating humor rang hollow to my ears. What was the point of all that stuff without Grant? He was the one who had made it exciting and fun. He was the one who had made it worthwhile.

  “So…any idea on how you’re going to go forward?” Kate breached the subject tentatively, but with a resolute cast to her chin that told me she wasn’t going to let me wriggle out of an answer with vagueness. “Knowing what it’s going to be like from now on, working with Grant.”

  I sighed heavily and swigged the last of my ginger ale. “Find another job, I guess,” I said, trying to speak casually and not like the bottom was dropping out of my stomach.

  I’d never been married to the idea of staying with Devlin Media Corp forever, but it was the first place I’d really been valued for my education and skills, and not my ability to maintain a smile while scooping fries in a bucket for a screaming customer. And it wouldn’t be easy to find another job in this economy, especially with the reputation I’d given myself to save Grant… A wave of despair threatened to wash over me, but I willed it back. I’d gone into the trenches of job interviews before; I’d do it again.

  “I can’t see him every day,” I admitted to Kate, and it felt as if something broke inside me, just a little, as I said that. “Even if he were being civil right now. It would still hurt too damn much. And since he’s not being civil—since he hates my guts and doesn’t feel like hiding it—well. I just can’t.”

  “He has no right to treat you like that,” Kate said quietly. “He can be angry, fine, but you don’t deserve how he’s treating you.”

  “I don’t blame him,” I said, and I was astonished to find that I was speaking the truth. For all my earlier anger towards him, the person I was really angry at was myself. I buried my head in my hands. “I made a fool of him in front of everyone.”<
br />
  “Lacey, have you met Grant?” Kate asked. “He has a high-profile romance fall apart once a week. Sure, he’s never been on the receiving end of the dumping, but you didn’t lock him outside your hotel room in his underwear like that Russian model, or dare him to moon the mayor like that Brazilian heiress. It’s not like the public hasn’t seen him totally humiliated a zillion times already. Okay? Grant is definitely overreacting here.” She hesitated. “Oh, God. Unless he’s…I mean, it’s almost like…”

  “Almost like what?” I said from the shelter of my hands. “Like I irrevocably fucked up and hurt him more than anyone else ever before?”

  Kate gave me a little shove. “Almost like maybe the jerk actually has some feelings for you too, dummy.”

  I peeked out at her from between my fingers. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “What’s to kid?” Kate asked. “You’re pretty, you’re smart, you’re fabulous as hell. I don’t want you to get your hopes up or anything…but damn, girl, usually when a guy pulls a bitchfest like this, it’s because somebody’s reminded them they have a heart, and they’re not liking the feeling of it getting stomped on.”

  I pondered her words. Could it be true? Could Grant really have had feelings for me? I felt regret begin to blossom in my chest, heavy and unrelenting. What if—if only—

  No. No. I clamped down on it, squeezing that thin sad wondering voice into nothing more than a whisper. It didn’t matter what Grant had felt for me then—he hated me now. And there was no use wondering where our relationship could have gone, because I’d chopped a tree down over that road and declared it closed.

  As Grant had said, it was all over.

  • • •

  Unfortunately the universe showed no signs of slowing down time to accommodate feelings breaks, so I had to ditch Kate and the ginger ale after only half an hour and get back to the office pronto. There was a big executive meeting, and I couldn’t afford to be a mess in front of Grant. I needed to show that I had caught up, that I was on the ball and un-intimidated.