Girl Meets Billionaire

by Brenna Aubrey et al.

  When I get back, she widens her eyes. Yeah, that’s right; it’s Henry Locke, hot Henry Locke, here in our space recognizing the awesomeness of her furniture. It makes me feel ten feet tall.

  He wants to hire her to do the furnishings and they talk about that. And I know he’s not hiring her to appease me. She really is one of the best, and Henry would see that.

  Henry gets this world. It makes my heart swell.

  We head out to the truck, the three of us, and pick through the wood chunks and start matching parts together. We haul a few things out onto the broken sidewalk. Latrisha’s thinking tables and a lobby desk. Henry has measurements on his iPad.

  I get the idea of having Bron, one of our smithy pals, heat and reshape small bits of the rebar to make design elements. Latrisha is talking about an entire lobby desk of chopped and polished construction timbers, fit back together like a puzzle with mostly triangular pieces. It’s an awesome idea, and soon enough, Bron, another smithy friend, and Henry are unloading the truck.

  People don’t recognize Henry right off, though I have no doubt word will spread once somebody figures it out.

  But right now, to everyone but Latrisha, he’s one of us, full of energy and ideas.

  Maybe his work clothes cost more than a month’s rent, but he makes up for it with his passion, not to mention his construction expertise. He and Latrisha and Bron and I take to the collaboration of making a grand lobby desk from the reclaimed materials like we’ve been working together forever.

  A few people drift over and throw out suggestions. He draws the appreciative gaze of most every woman who comes by, but he just keeps rolling with the group, gazing over at me, all sparkly, when things are popping.

  Henry is so full of contradictions. He’s a powerbroker into controlling everything, but he can do brainstorming and teamwork like a pro.

  More smithy guys come over a few hours later and, not coincidentally, beers come out. The smithy guys clink bottles so hard, I think the glass might break. I wince and catch Henry’s eye and he’s just laughing, like he knows what I’m thinking.

  And then he goes off with them, the three of them with armfuls of rebar.

  “Oh, how far we’ve come from the dog throne,” Latrisha says to me, watching them disappear.

  “What?”

  “You’ve done a one-eighty. From wanting to mess with him to quite the opposite.”

  I can’t keep the smile off my face.

  “What happened to the asshole?”

  “His company is his family and, yeah, he’s a complete asshole to anyone who threatens it. Which he saw as me, I suppose—”

  “If he really knew you, he would know you’re the most trustworthy person on the planet.”

  I smile without meeting her eyes. Latrisha doesn’t know I’m Vonda O’Neil, either. I’m lying about my entire identity. But that’s not what she’d hate me for. She’s my age, around twenty-four. She would remember Vonda’s supposedly destructive lies. She could’ve forwarded the news stories and liked the Facebook memes.

  Somebody made a video of strung-together clips of me on the Deerville courthouse steps that made it look like I was dancing up and down the courthouse steps. They spliced in a lot of imagery of pigs rolling in mud and set it to music with violent, misogynist lyrics.

  It got millions of likes. Latrisha could have been one of them. I could still go type Vonda pigs in the Facebook search bar and find the seven-year-old video online, and I could search the likes for her name.

  I’ve done it before with people, like teachers of Carly’s, but I had to make myself stop that.

  Would Latrisha be in there if I hovered over those likes? Would Henry? God, he’d hate me. They both would.

  “We’ve come to a good place. It’s complicated.”

  “Record scratch!” she says. “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Weeeeeell…”

  “Oh-em-eff-gee,” she says.

  “No, we didn’t do it...” I pause, awash in memory of us on the rooftop. And the way his lips felt against my skin, his hands.

  “But you’ve been doing each other.”

  “We have.” I toss a bottle cap into the trash. “And it’s amazing. He’s amazing.”

  “I thought he didn’t trust you. Like you’re this weasely scammer who stole his company,” she says. “What happened to that?”

  “We’ve gotten to know each other—deep down, beneath all the bullshit of this situation. We click. It’s amazing. And I’m giving the company back.”

  “Hold on—what?!”

  “Don’t tell him. I didn’t actually tell him, but I implied it. Carly and I have that twenty-one-day waiting period thing and promising is the same…”

  “Bernadette gave it to Smuckers and you because you two were her only friends in the universe. She wanted you to have it. That is your security. You and Carly. You would give that up?”

  “It doesn’t feel right to keep it.”

  “What part of going from scrabbling along to super wealthy doesn’t feel right to you?”

  “All of it. Carly and I were getting on fine. We have a great life just how it is. And the company was never ours.”

  “So, let me get this timeline straight.” She sets a hand on my shoulder and her eyes bore into mine. “He’s an asshole to you. He plays dirty tricks. It doesn’t work. Then he decides to be charming. And we know the tales of him in the sack. I’m sorry. I know he’s hot. He’s smart and fun. But he’s not one of us. He just wants that company.”

  I’m shaking my head.

  “No, you listen.” She tightens her grip. “He’s spending time with you and he’s all that. And suddenly you’re handing over the company. You—who hate rich, entitled assholes until this one decides to wrap you around his worldwide cock.”

  Something twists deep my belly. “I know how it looks.”

  “Is that or is that not the timeline?”

  My pulse races. “I don’t care.”

  “You need to start caring. This rich boy is playing you,” she warns. “Your first instinct was not to trust him. You need to honor that.”

  “My instinct is to trust him now.”

  Warmth slides over me. I turn to see Henry coming toward me alongside Bron.

  Latrisha swears a blue streak, but I’m not listening.

  Henry’s all sweaty and wearing his big gloves. They’re carrying something they made out of the rebar. Henry smiles at me, and the smile hooks to something deep in my belly.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Latrisha warns, voice hard as steel. “This guy is leading you by the vajeen.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Henry

  Our eyes lock and she smiles, and hell if that smile doesn’t light up the raw, cavernous space. Her true habitat. Cool as shit.

  Her pink work shirt stretches tight over her tits in a way that reminds me of the roof and gets my cock stirring. Though that would suggest my thoughts have left that roof. The way she felt.

  They haven’t.

  Latrisha is so serious beside her.

  I glance down at my watch and back up at Vicky. She rolls her eyes. We’ve developed our own code, way beyond spray-painted scribbles on the ground. The way we click blows my mind.

  Her strange promise in the elevator has me hopeful for the first time in weeks. She asked me to trust her. I do.

  Screw it. I do.

  More than trust her—she’s making me feel things I haven’t felt in years.

  And I trust her on that strange promise. Things will be restored. Made right with the company.

  Was there a side letter from Bernadette? Something binding her to silence? More messing with me from the grave?

  I go right up to her and kiss her. Latrisha doesn’t seem to approve of the PDA, but I do.

  We get to work. I find myself watching Vicky when she’s not looking. Waiting for her to smile. I watch for her face to light up when she likes an idea. When she doesn’t like something, she tips her head and narrows her
eyes, like she’s not quite seeing it. Not getting the person’s vision. So diplomatic.

  My favorite is when our eyes meet and she straightens her glasses in that sexy, I’m-looking-at-you way that she uses to put an underline under our silent agreement.

  My phone pings. Brett.

  Can u talk?

  I can. I don’t want to. Being here is like a vacation from myself. The Henry Locke extravaganza. But I see that he’s called a bunch of times.

  I get up and wander to the lounge area, which is the one genuinely shabby part of the place, and call him.

  “I’ve been trying to call for the last hour,” Brett says. “Our PI got back.”

  The PI. “Right.”

  “Listen to this—it’s fake. Extremely professional, extremely expensive, extremely fake identities.”

  I stop and turn. “Does he have proof of this?”

  “He’s getting it. It’s involving bribes at a federal level. There are no photographs of the two of them online prior to seven years ago. He thinks she might be connected. The ID is mob-level good. This is a five-alarm fire.”

  “Mob? No. She’s not connected. She’s not a con. I’m telling you,” I say.

  “Has our guy ever been wrong on a case?” Brett asks. “Has he? No. Never. Pull your head out of your ass. She posed as a pet whisperer and bilked an old lady.”

  “She’s giving the company back.”

  “Oh, she told you that?”

  “In so many words.”

  “She’s giving back the company. But did she do it? Did she draw up papers?”

  “I think there’s more to the will. I don’t know. She’s not in it for the money.”

  “Are you kidding me? Wait. You’re sleeping with her.”

  “No, I’m telling you what is.”

  “Dude. You don’t even know her name!”

  “There could be lots of reasons an ID might be false,” I say. “She could be running from somebody.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Screw off,” I say. “It’s under control.”

  “Is this part of good cop? Is she there or something?”

  “Let him keep digging,” I say. I’m thinking about the way she talked about being hated. Bullied. Was that connected to the well? Did somebody put her in a well? Or worse? Is she so frightened of somebody that she had to change her name to get away from them? “Go for it. Find out everything about her.”

  There’s a silence on the line. My about-face feels off to him. More than that, he doesn’t like that I’m not telling him my thoughts. There was a time when I’d tell him everything.

  “Okay,” he says finally. “And I made ressies at El Capitan for six tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “Dude,” Brett says. “Scanlund fundraiser? The Jacabowskis?”

  I close my eyes.

  Real life had to intrude at some point.

  Mike Scanlund is a city council politician we’re backing for assorted reasons. Black tie fundraiser. We’re taking the Jacabowski sisters, who are high up in that campaign. The two of them and Brett and I frequently tag team on each other’s issues at fundraisers.

  “Can I sit there or are you going to hog the whole thing?”

  I look up, and there she is.

  “I’m going to hog the whole thing,” I say.

  She puts her hands on her hips, and before I can stop myself, I’m surging up and pulling her into my lap. She screams and laughs and loops her arm around my neck, and the way we fit, it’s like she’s been sitting on my lap forever, as if our bodies know just how to mold into each other.

  I close my eyes, enjoying her. Wishing I could stay here and forget about Brett and all his bullshit. There has to be some explanation. I should just tell her what I know and ask her.

  But what if…

  “That front desk,” she says. “Once the pieces are together? And with the burnishing? Right?”

  “We rocked it,” I say, trying to push out the shred of doubt burning at the back of my mind. I trust her. But trustworthy people get in bad situations. They get in over their heads.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. “But you know, this place would be so much better if it had better shared spaces.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is the only viable couch,” I say.

  “Yeah, well…” She frowns over at the junky couch across from us. The two ratty chairs.

  I tease her about it being so Road Warrior and she hits me and I catch her wrists. I want to never let her go.

  “Not just a nicer lounge area, but it needs larger and more functional collaboration spaces. The way we all had to crowd into Latrisha’s area? No. You could double the workspace if you expanded to the upper level. There could be cots, sleeping rental by the hour, Japanese-hotel style. Hire a manager to oversee the tools and double as a barista and referee, and the stuff you’d sell would pay their hourly and you’d have somebody quasi-managing.” I make suggestions about how they could get creative with events and partnerships, to figure out the right scale to make it sustain itself as a nonprofit. Anything to get my thoughts off the hell of that doubt.

  She seems more amazed with every ensuing idea. It makes me feel prouder than all the year’s groundbreakings combined. “That’s brilliant,” she says.

  “I know.”

  She snorts.

  I tuck a stray hair behind her ear. She’s not a threat.

  “Seriously,” she says, “I don’t know how you see it. It just comes together in your mind.”

  “It’s not magic.” I put my lips to her ear. “Have you seen the other couch?”

  “Shut it.” She laughs.

  I let my lips hover there a split second too long.

  She gets a serious look in her darkly fringed eyes. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.” She slides her hand over my forearm, to where I was burned at the forge end of the space. “You should put something on this.”

  I put my hand over hers. I don’t care about the burn; it’s the spark of our chemistry that’s torching me. Everything is so fresh and real with her, with her glasses half down her nose and her devil-may-care hair and pink monkey-face T-shirt. She’s beautiful to me like this. So different than anyone I ever date. Unguarded. Natural.

  She gets a text. “Hold on.” She shifts in my lap and taps out an answer.

  My fingers press into her upper arm, her left hip. Memorizing the feel of her.

  Her chest rises and falls, nipples pressing through worn fabric. A T-shirt and jeans is practical for this place, but it feels more right for her than the librarian shit. So why the reserved outfits? She makes her money in an Etsy store, or she did up until last month. She can wear anything she wants.

  It’s not like she’s transformed completely, of course. She still wears her brown glasses. And the ponytail I so badly want to undo is still there.

  I slide my hand over the glossy hair.

  She tucks away her phone and gives me a fun, vixeny look and that little half-smile that I want to kiss right off her face. And I do.

  She sighs. “I don’t want to return to the real world.”

  Exactly. The current between us feels ancient, like a soul-deep déjà vu.

  “But Carly’ll be done with rehearsal soon.”

  A couple of guys I didn’t meet walk by and she nods at them. I find myself pressing my hands over her thighs, letting them know she’s mine.

  She twists and looks at me. “What did you just do?”

  “What?”

  “Did you go caveman just now with the glare at those guys and the handsy thing?”

  “Maybe.”

  She laughs. “You can’t do that!”

  “What can’t I do?”

  She narrows her eyes. “Behave.”

  I lean into her ear, whisper, “Or what?”

  She narrows her eyes. “I dunno. Maybe I’ll have all th
e Cock Worldwide cranes repainted with the face of Smuckers instead of that logo. How would you like that?”

  Something in me goes still. She could do that. One phone call and she could.

  Locke’s most valuable asset is stability. A change like that would literally threaten thousands of people who depend on me. And she could do it. She has all the power.

  One phone call.

  Thousands of people. My responsibility.

  The ID is mob-level good. This is a five-alarm fire.

  I feel queasy.

  She’s searching my eyes. We’ve been laughing at the exact same things all month. If I weren’t me, I’d think the crane thing was funny, too.

  She tries a smile. “A cartoon picture of Smuckers’s round little marshmallow head? Maybe not, huh?”

  Do I really know her? Really?

  I give her my breezy smile, the one that always fools the cameras, and I reach for my phone. I’m moving away from her.

  “Kidding,” she says. “Really.”

  I’m scrolling through my phone, like I might find a feel-less-screwed-up app there. They need to make an app like that.

  “Come on, you think I’d do that?”

  “I’m kind of a freak about that logo.”

  “Wait. You think I’d do that?”

  A silence. I’ve let her closer to me than any woman ever. The fake dog whisperer who inherited my birthright.

  Have I been reckless?

  In my gut I trust her. Automatic. But my head is ringing with what Brett said. Our own PI doubts her. I don’t know her real name.

  Thousands of people depend on my leadership.

  They deserve better from me.

  “Oh my god. You seriously think I’d do that?”

  “I don’t know, that’s all.”

  Her mouth falls open. Stunned. Hurt. “How can you not know? Like I’m an enemy of the company suddenly? Like I’m outside…” She goes pale. “Oh my god.” Her phone’s ringing, but her gaze is on me. “Because, of course, you still wonder if I’m a scammer.”

  “It’s not like I’m standing here wondering…”

  “I told you things would be right. I swore to you. I meant it. Oh my god—I’m so stupid.” She pulls out her phone and answers. I can tell it’s her sister from her tone. “I’m coming.”