Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (4 page)

“Yeah, something like that,” Dylan said, shaking his head.

“Are you going to tell her about the money?” Mike’s voice was more
defiant than usual, as if challenging Dylan to some sort of battle he didn’t
even know was on the horizon. Dylan knew, though, that the tone in Mike’s voice
was as much about his own demons; neither had ever expected this kind of
surprise from Jill’s death. They would both gladly give it all up to have her
back. Barring that, though, the money was certainly a welcome, if perplexing,
change in their lives.

It meant nothing and it meant everything. Neither had said a word to
anyone they had dated. Not a word to their friends or coworkers. Mike had
quietly purchased the ski resort where he worked; it had been up for sale for a
long time and was on the brink of financial collapse due, largely, to inept
management and an owner who viewed it as a losing business. Mike would change
that, Dylan knew. Having the money to buy the ski resort and one of the nicest
cabins on the mountain had blown some life back into his partner. Too bad they
didn’t have the third who would complete them, taking a dull dyad and turning
it into a robust triad.

Maybe Laura would…ah, who knew?

“No, of course I’m not going to tell her about the money.” Dylan turned
away from Mike and finished pulling on his sweater. “Can you imagine that
scene? ‘Oh, hi, I’m Dylan and I am a billionaire.’” He choked on the word, his
face flushing and going cold at once, the syllables so fake. So
poseur
.
Like a little kid dressing up in Dad’s dress shoes, or a teen trying on
personalities to find the right fit. Except he had no choice here. Jill had
left them this fortune and it was theirs. No trying anything on for size. This
was serious money and Dylan and Mike had been catapulted from working class
stiffs to billionaire bachelors.

“Billionaire.” Mike lifted his chin, as if sniffing something. “It does
roll off the tongue nicely.”

“Mike Pine, billionaire,” Dylan announced grandly, jumping on the bed
and bouncing like a mad monkey. His hair flopped in his eyes and he watched
Mike plant his hands on his hips, shaking his head, as if faced with a
recalcitrant, hyperactive eight year old.

“You are such a child.”

“Yes, but I am a wealthy child!”
Bounce bounce bounce – boom!
Dylan jumped off the bed and bounded onto the floor next to Mike, like a
superhero landing. Mike’s eyes went from amused to pained, then his shoulders
slumped forward. Dylan rubbed the soft spot between his shoulder blades and
they both stared at a spot on the wall that seemed to contain everything they
yearned for.

“She left us all this money, Dyl. We had no idea.” Dylan shifted
uncomfortably and said nothing. Mike picked up on his change, though, and
turned to him with an accusing look. “You knew?”

Dylan dropped his hand from Mike’s back and sighed. “No. I didn’t know
she was a billionaire! But I figured out pretty early on that she had money. We
were in college, Mike. The dot com boom hadn’t happened, and she claimed to
make money off ‘websites.’ How do you think she could afford to spot us on all
those trips we took?”

“We camped and kept it cheap, Dylan,” Mike sputtered. “She didn’t live
like a crazy-rich person.” Blinking hard, Mike started to say more but turned
toward the dresser where Dylan kept a picture of Jill. The three of them on
Cape Cod, at First Encounter Beach, the green marsh grasses so thick that
hundreds of thousands of minnows lived in the shallow waters there, almost
giving the water a viscosity of live, teeming fish. The ocean had been so
perfect, the water warm though thrashing for the bay that day, and the three of
them peered into the sun, some random stranger stopped and asked to take a pic.

A pic taken a month before they knew Jill had lymphoma. For the month
after that trip she’d been fatigued. Not herself. Quiet. Waving away their
concerns, she had trudged on, working on her “websites” and going for long runs
that turned into long walks and that, finally, turned into a leisurely stroll
during which she’d collapsed. Mike had been with her and carried her three city
blocks to the emergency room of a hospital. The next few days were a blur Dylan
couldn’t let himself resurrect.

Not now. Not as he prepared to go out with someone new. Someone
vibrant.

Someone alive.

“Yeah, Jill kept a lot of secrets from us, Mike.” His partner bristled;
the wound was still too fresh.

“So let’s continue her legacy, then, and keep the money a secret.”

“For now, sure. When the time’s right, we can talk about it.”

“Jesus.” Mike ran a shaking hand through his hair and stared out the window
at the city below. “What a fucking curse.”

“And a blessing.”

Angry eyes met Dylan’s as Mike spun around. “Call it whatever you
want.”

“It’s both,” Dylan conceded.

“It just is – you’re right. It’s both.”

“You get to save the resort. You know Jill would have been happy.”

“So then why didn’t she save it? Why, Dylan, didn’t she tell us she had
all this money? I mean, damn! It’s not something you casually forget to
mention. ‘Oh! That’s right! I’m part of the richest point-whatever-oh-one
percent in the world. While you were complaining about your ski mountain going
under, did that slip my mind? Oops!’” The sneer in Mike’s voice was utterly
uncharacteristic and made Dylan recoil. Dude was pissed.

The anger, Dylan knew, was really a form of mourning.

“Tell it to Jill, Mike.” The words took the winds out of the larger
man’s sails, his body literally shrinking before Dylan’s eyes. Jill’s ashes
were on that very mountain Mike had just bought – a big reason for his
purchase. Now he could have her forever, safe and sound and secure.

But still dead.

Mike bit his upper lip and nodded. “Yeah. I will.” Dylan was running
late for his date and slipped out the door quietly. He was ready to move
forward, to move on, to continue past the past. Someday – soon – he
hoped Mike could join him.

He looked at his smart phone. Shit, he was already running late. No way
he was going to blow this by making her think he was standing her up. A quick
look in the mirror again, a little bit more cologne. A final check of his smile
in the mirror and he walked out of the apartment and into what he hoped would
be a part of his future.

Mike could stew in the past.

***

Laura wasn’t quite sure what to make of this as she paced a safe
distance from the restaurant, trying to leave herself an out if she needed to
save face and just disappear. A sink hole might have been better, but she
couldn’t conjure one at will. Running away in shame, though, she was familiar
with – so she skulked three storefronts from the entrance. He had said
6:00 and it was 6:07. Seven minutes normally meant nothing in terms of the
wheel of life. But right now each second felt like torture and 420 tortures
were adding up to to one big ball of fear. And it all rested right in her gut
where desire should be right now, where happiness should be right now, where
joy and, well – not quite love, but at least lust should be residing. Not
this pit of despair.

It’s only seven minutes Laura, it’s only seven minutes Laura,
she said to herself. The seconds ticked on until her smart phone clicked over
and now it was eight minutes.
It’s only eight minutes Laura, it’s only eight
minutes Laura, it’s only eight minutes.
A thin bead of sweat burst under
her lip, and on her cheeks, and in that valley between her breasts in a way
that only the cold irrational anxiety of dating could bring out in her.

Oh, fuck this,
she said to herself. I don’t think I can do this
anymore, even Mr. Hotty Hot Hot Firefighter isn’t worth this. I’m just gonna go
home and have a date with Ben and Jerry, that’s my comfort zone, right there
baby. Maybe the most dependable men on Earth because this, this is bullsh
–

Zzzz
, the phone buzzed suddenly. She had it on vibrate and she
startled and it fell out of her hands, clattering to the ground.

“Shit,” she shouted, reaching down, scrambling after it and hoping that
the screen hadn’t broken. Luckily, she had a protective case on it, and grabbed
it and slid her finger across the screen to answer the call.

“Hello? Hello?” she said, trying desperately to keep her eagerness out
of her voice.

“Hello,” a deep man’s baritone greeted her, with a friendliness that he
had no right to offer her right now – yet she was so glad he did. “Uh,”
he hesitated, “is this Laura?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” she answered brightly, her voice a little too
high-pitched, her anxiety a little too intense right now, but she trudged on.

“Oh, yeah, really?” The voice stammered. “Yeah, this is Dylan. I am so
sorry,” he said, and she hoped that the sincerity was true. Hoped it was true,
needed it to be true with a part of her that knew…that knew that there was no
way of knowing.

“I’m so sorry. I’m running late. I am walking down Twelfth Avenue right
now, and, in fact, I can see the entrance to the restaurant and, wait a minute,
ooh, I don’t know.” A low wolf whistle. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able
to make it.”

“What? What? What did you say?”

“Yeah, there is this gorgeous woman just standing out there and, and I
don’t know, I mean, I think, let’s see, she’s wearing a fuzzy sweater and a
damn fine gray pencil skirt and heels that make her legs go on forever. And, I
don’t know, you know, Laura, I may have to date
her
tonight instead of
you.”

She nearly dropped her phone again.
Oh, my God
, her brain
burned, her internal voice screaming like a rat stuck in a cage with Napalm all
over it and lit on fire.

And then she got it, calming down instantly.
Oh, oh,
he was
complimenting her. He was joking. He liked her. Who
was
this guy?

Now she could see him.
Deep breaths, Laura,
she told herself. He
was joking around. Being playful. Not mean. He was a block and a half away,
walking toward her with a swagger, with a confidence she didn’t see in many
men. One hand in his pocket, just marching down the street like he had all the
time in the world. And boy, were his eyes eating her up. She could feel it from
a block and a half, a block and a quarter away.

And she was giving it right back.

Her heart was beating a million times a minute from the fear about his
joke, and the anxiety that the joke had triggered. But now – but now it
was like the electrons were playing between them. Molecules were flying
millions and millions of miles a second between the two of them. She wasn’t
sure what she was going to do when they actually stood two feet from each
other, because she was ready to take him right there, right then on the street,
public indecency be damned.

Pretty soon, just seconds later, he was down to a block, half a block,
and he took his hand out of his pocket, giving her a wave. Then she realized
that he had been talking to her the entire time and she had no idea what he was
saying.

***

“Laura? Laura? Hello, hello – are you there? I can see you
and you’re just standing there. I am waving at you right now… Laura, have I
mistaken you for a human being or are you a really hot store mannequin?” He
heard her laugh. Aha.
Keep going,
Dylan told himself. Recover from the
terrible joke.

“Or part of some performance art thing like that guys like me don’t
understand? Were you Andy Warhol’s protégé? Or is this some sort of flash mob
set-up and nineteen naked members of the Pirate Party are about to appear and
don Mickey Mouse masks in some geopolitical protest?” She suddenly folded and
bent over laughing. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Sweet!

That was it – she was forcing him to use every remaining brain
cell in his body to process basic bodily functions as every red blood cell
rushed to his groin. He couldn’t stop raking her body with his eyes. He
couldn’t stop eating her with his retinas. She was some kind of Dylan magnet.
Her entire appearance was luscious and her eyes – as he got closer he saw
the kindness, the sweetness in them and there was a beauty, a full body,
full-fledged gorgeousness about her that made him hard instantly.

“Stupid business casual,” he muttered to himself, mouth tilted away from
his phone. He was wearing the kind of pants where his arousal could become very
obvious.

Now that he stood in front of her, no more than a foot and a half
separating them, he felt like the biggest idiot on the planet for even joking
about not dating her. She was stunning, all curves and woman and he wanted to
smell her, bury his face in that sweet neck, feel her in his arms and listen to
her breath as he made her happy.

What did her cries of ecstasy sound like? Would she turn her face away?
Bite the pillow? Rake lines of ownership into his back with those glossy nails?

Later
. Later, he would find out. The same confidence that had
always been there for him told him so. Like a second person living in his head,
it just knew. She was his, and she didn’t know it yet. But she would, and he
had all the time in the world to teach her that.

With his tongue.

He just stood there and stared at her and didn’t know what to say; he
couldn’t recite what went through his head as his eyes roamed over the perfect
topography of her body. She stood there and stared back and didn’t seem to know
what to say, either. This silent dance needed a better beat.

One he could drive home with his –

Finally, she said, pointing to the door, “That is a great restaurant
you picked,” her voice as breathless as he felt. Except she was actually
talking and he was standing there looking like a fish out of water, his mouth
opening and closing as he tried desperately to get something like a linear
thought going. Where the hell was that confidence now? He wasn’t awkward or
worried or any of those namby-pamby feelings Mike always described having. It
was more that his brain had gone blank at the sight of her and everything but
his arousal went into hibernate mode. She smiled and seemed to expect something
intelligible to come out of his mouth, but first he had to dig his way out of
the enormous, gaping hole of lust he’d just tripped into.