Betting the Billionaire (2 page)

Number one, it went fast. Really. Really. Fast.

Number two, it was his favorite shade of red.

A car guy, he was not. A fact that became all too apparent as he stared at the AM11 engine, which was about as familiar and understandable to him as a ski lodge that didn’t come with a live-in maid. He had grown up with money, but making a million before graduating high school tended to change a man’s perspective—and his expectations.

Right about now, though, he’d happily give up the jet black Bentley parked in his garage back home in Harbor City for a second chance at the auto mechanic lessons his Uncle Julio had tried to give him as a teenager. But Gabe had assumed that with as much bank as he had, he didn’t need to know how to change his oil. His uncle would get a good laugh out of this.

That was if—and it seemed like a big if—Gabe found shelter before the fast moving snow storm turned him into Frosty the Snowman. He rubbed his palms together hard enough to chafe them despite his leather driving gloves. The pain was worth it for the little bit of heat the move garnered—just like his plan.

Revenge didn’t come without a little heartburn. Sure, a few people may lose their jobs, but Gabe had sworn a vow that Dell Jacobs would lose a lot more. No matter the weather, it was time to see his promise through.

He slammed the car’s hood down and shoved his hands into his pockets. The interstate was closer than Salvation, but the solitary, two-pump gas station he’d passed coming off the exit ramp had already closed down for the night. The town ahead had to have something open despite the worsening weather. He hesitated and looked up at the gray sky.

Conventional wisdom said to wait out a storm in your car until help arrived, but he hadn’t seen any sign of life for more than an hour. The town of Salvation lay a few miles down the road. Ten tops. After completing three Ironman competitions, he should be able to do that distance in his sleep. Even with the snow.

Gabe glanced back one last time at the car before grinning and pulling out a wool hat from his pocket. He’d never followed conventional wisdom before. Why in the hell would he start now?

It only took half an hour of slugging through snow before he’d called himself every word for idiot, moron, and douchebag he could think of in the eight languages he spoke fluently. In an effort to keep his mind off of the wind, the sleet, the misery, and the sheet of ice forming on his mustache, he started in on the languages he only knew a little.

“
Idiota
.” That took care of Portuguese.

He trudged forward, his Italian dress shoes sliding whenever he hit an icy patch, which seemed to be every other breath.

“
Mjinga
.” And Swahili.

A frigid blast stole the Swedish translation out of his mouth. Since he’d left his car along the side of the road and begun this half-baked trek, enough snow had fallen that his ankles were soaked. He’d kept to the center of the road, the snowdrifts making it hard to figure out where the highway ended and the shoulder began. The last thing he needed was to fall ass-first into a mound of snow because he’d misjudged. Again.

Wasn’t that just typical of his life lately?

If he hadn’t been so overly confident in his ability to steal Jacobs Fine Furnishings from under Dell Jacobs’ nose, he wouldn’t have made the drive from Harbor City to Salvation in three hours less time than his GPS had predicted. Right in time to be stranded on the side of the road in a blizzard. Because the boy genius, as the Harbor City Times had called him a few years ago, didn’t take advice from anyone. Not even electronic direction givers.

Who the hell was he kidding? Sixty percent of the reason he was trudging through the icy muck was so he could finally see Keisha Jacobs in the flesh after battling her via phone for months. The low resolution photos he’d found of her online hadn’t sated his curiosity. They were small and fuzzy, not to mention she was always hiding in the background. Still, he wasn’t the kind of man to let a question go unanswered, even if that meant driving to small town America when he could have issued his ultimatum via certified letter.

Up ahead, a neon sign flickered, and he stumbled toward it.

The Fix ‘Er Up Auto Shop sign glowed yellow one hundred yards ahead, the light acting as a beacon as the snow swirled fast and furious around him. The cold air burned the inside of his nose, but he’d stopped shivering as violently. Not a good sign.

Snow mixed with icy sleet soaked his socks. He wriggled his toes, noting he could only feel six of the ten. Refusing to give up, he dug deep for the survival instincts he normally only used in the boardroom and shuffled forward.

He was practically at the auto shop’s glass double doors before he realized he’d arrived. If his blood wasn’t half frozen in his veins, he would have fist pumped the air in celebration. As it was, he didn’t push the door so much as collapse against it.

The door didn’t budge.

God, he was an arrogant asshole. He should have stayed in the damn car and waited out the storm.

“Too little, too late numb nuts,” he said, the words escaping from between his chattering teeth.

In an act of impotent frustration, he wrapped his stiff fingers around the metal bar used to open the door and banged it back and forth, hoping the lock would give.

It didn’t.

But a light snapped on.

A person emerged from a back room and strode toward the door. Man? Woman? Alien? He couldn’t tell by the outline since he, she, or it was backlit, but he didn’t care as long as they opened the damn door. Relief thawed out some of the ice in his veins. The person flipped on the light in the shop’s lobby.

A woman.

Tall.

Curvy.

Black.

Giant afro.

Crowbar in hand.

She stopped three feet from the door and eyed him warily.

“Please,” he shouted against the glass. “Let me in.”

Ten very long seconds later, the door opened, and he stumbled inside, warmly welcomed by the auto shop’s heater, if not the woman wearing grease-covered coveralls.

Keeping a tight grip on the crowbar, Keisha gave the man a once over. Wet, a wool cap pulled low, a beard covering the bottom half of his face, and covered in snow, he looked more like Jack Frost than the kind of moron who went for a walk in a blizzard. So much for spending the evening elbow deep in grease while she brought her baby, a 1955 Ford Thunderbird, back to life.

There would be hell to pay if the abominable snowman dripping all over the lobby floor turned out to be a burglar. The guy was tall, at least half a foot bigger than her five-feet six-inches—not counting her hair—broad shouldered, and shivering as much as a Southern Belle in a bikini at the North Pole.

If he was up to no good, he picked a shitty night to try to rob the auto shop. The owner, Hud, had taken the cash and receipts to the bank hours ago.

“Th-th-thank you for letting me in.” Even through his cold stutter, there was no missing that he was an out-of-towner.

Big city accent. Perfectly groomed beard and mustache, both of which matched his chocolate-brown wool cap. Ruined shoes that had probably cost more than her monthly rent. The brightest aquamarine eyes she’d ever seen, so brilliant that they almost glowed against his dark olive complexion. Even with his skin tinted blue, he presented a package that would have girls sighing all over the county.

Yeah, if he was local, she would have found an excuse to meet him a long time before he showed up half frozen in the middle of what passed for a blizzard in Virginia. Still, who went for a walk during a snow storm? “What were you doing out there on a night like this?”

“My c-c-car broke down.” He crossed his arms and rubbed his palms up and down his biceps.

The man tried to cover it, but she could see his teeth chattering, and if the tip of his nose got any more red, she’d have to call him Rudolph. Her gut hitched, but her granny would smack her with a wooden spoon if Keisha failed to offer some Southern hospitality to someone so obviously in need.

“Come on, let’s get you out of your clothes.”

He quirked an eyebrow.

Heat steamed up from her toes. My, her foot sure was tasty tonight.

“I’ll grab some mechanic’s coveralls for you before you make more of a mess on the floor. Hud’s gonna kill me as it is for even letting you in to his shop.” She took a few steps down the hall toward the garage, spurred on by the embarrassment burning her cheeks. “You can change in the—“

The lights flickered.

Keisha’s pulse skyrocketed.

The florescent bulbs in the ceiling buzzed and came back on in full force.

Thank God. Being stuck in the dark in the middle of a snow storm with a stranger while she hyperventilated was not her idea of a good time.

“You can change in the break room, and I can take you up to my apartment above the shop afterward for something warm to eat. The break room is right over—“

Darkness engulfed the auto shop.

It wasn’t so black she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, but the man was a blob of an outline lit only by the red haze of the emergency lighting. Sucking in a deep breath, she swallowed past the panic that dark or confined spaces always ignited. She tightened her grip on the crowbar until the metal bit into her palm. “Please tell me you’re not a serial killer.”

“If I did, would you believe me?” His voice sounded closer in the dim light.

Keisha yanked the crowbar up, holding it like a baseball bat. She may have been a soft touch for the little match boy and let him inside, but she was not going down like that.

“I’m kidding.” He stepped back, and it looked like he raised his hands, palms forward. “Shit, sorry, I have the weirdest sense of humor. I’m an asshole.”

She eyeballed him as best she could. Her dad might tease her about being too trusting, but nothing about the stranger set off her I’m-about-to-die-and-have-my-murder-made-into-a-Lifetime-movie alarm bells. “What’s your name?”

“Gabe. Gabe Campos.”

Shock loosened her grip, and she almost dropped the crowbar. “What is this, some kind of setup? What the fuck are you doing here?”

He took a step back, keeping his hands up like she was about to mug him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh really?” Even though she couldn’t see him, she could practically taste the lie in the darkness. He’d probably just rolled around in the snow after stepping out of a stretch limo to make it look good when he banged on the door. “You just happened to get stuck in the storm. You just happened to decide to take your chances walking on the road when anyone with half a lick of sense knows to shelter in place? You just happened to seek refuge from the storm at Fix ‘Er Up?”

He stopped under an emergency light on the wall. The red glow was enough to see the soft, cautious smile he wore like a shield. It was the kind of smile people used with territorial dogs and overly tired children so they wouldn’t go totally berserk. “Um…yeah.”

“I should throw you back out on your ass.” The nerves pulled taut throughout her body screamed for her to do just that. This time, he’d crossed the line.

“Look, I don’t know who you think I am, but—“

“I know exactly who you are. You’re the asshole trying to put my father out of business.”

The defensive smile slid from his face, replaced by wide eyes and a slack jaw. “Keisha Jacobs? You look different than the crappy picture on the company website.”

So did he. The tabloid picture hadn’t done him justice—even in the dim lighting and his new beard.

“If it’s not a setup, what are you doing in Salvation?”

“Right now?” He grinned. “Freezing my ass off.”

Damn it, no matter her threats to do so, there was no way she’d make him go back out there. She’d been raised with better home training than that. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“There’s a break room over there.” She pointed to a closed door on the other side of the lobby. “I’ll get you dry coveralls to change into.”

“Hey, Keisha, thanks for letting me in.”

“Don’t get too comfortable. I still might change my mind. Let me give you a flashlight.” As familiar with Fix ‘Er Up as she was with her own interior design business or her father’s manufacturing facility, she strode over to the counter and opened the bottom drawer. She pulled out two large flashlights and handed one to Gabe.

The flashlights didn’t banish all of the shop’s gloom, but the narrow beam of light sure slowed her heartbeat down to a steady beat. “I’ll meet you in the break room.”

He gave her a small salute and walked in the opposite direction from the main garage where she was headed.

It took a couple of minutes to find a clean pair of gray coveralls that looked like they’d fit, but she’d finally located some in the supply room. Just in case, she grabbed the First Aid Kit and one of the towels Hud used to protect a car’s interior if he was working inside the vehicle. Better to be safe than sorry.

Taking a quick glance at her reflection in the Thunderbird’s shiny bumper, she pinched her cheeks and puffed her ‘fro. Not that she cared what she looked like. It was habit. Really. Ignoring the twinge in her conscience, she hurried back into the lobby and strode to the closed break room door. She tapped her knuckles three quick times against the wood and turned the doorknob.

“I think this will—“ The rest of the sentence died on her lips.

Gabe stood in the middle of the break room with his shirt off and his jeans unbuttoned. With his fly halfway down, the denim clung for dear life to his hips. The flashlight threw shadows across his bare, muscular chest, but there was no missing his well-defined abs or the brown happy trail drawing her gaze farther down than she had a right to look. But look she did, because he was damn fine, and it had been a long, long time since she’d seen something so yummy. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she gave up any pretense of being a normal human being who’d had sex in the past six months.

“Thanks.” He held out his hand. When she didn’t move, he grinned. “Or I can stay like this. I’m feeling a lot warmer now.”

Chapter Three

Dressed in scratchy gray coveralls, Gabe tried to get the lay of the land from what his flashlight’s weak beam illuminated. All he could see were flashes of off-white wall, laminate flooring, and old hunting magazines on a worn coffee table. “So, you live here?”