Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (81 page)

Here she had finally met the man of her
dreams, and her mother couldn’t celebrate and be happy for her.
 
She had to stir up doubt and anxiety and
make everything seem as though it were a nightmare.

Wouldn’t most mothers be happy if their
daughter ended up with a handsome billionaire who loved them to death?

Red was waiting for her in the lobby,
next to the door to the parking garage.
 
As she met him and they kissed briefly, she knew that all eyes were upon
them.

I need to get used to this, she
thought.
 
This is going to be my
life from now on.
 
A lot of my
privacy is going to be violated, and it comes with the territory.

And quickly on the heels of those
thoughts, were the words of her mother, still ringing in her ears.

“What
kind of life is that, Nicole?”

***

The ride to Connecticut was long.
 
Nicole was in her own world, quieter
than she normally tended to be.

Red didn’t seem to mind.
 
He alternated between listening to music
(mostly rock music) and talking on his Bluetooth.
 
The calls were innocuous stuff; him
making little decisions, telling someone how to best approach an important
pitch for a big campaign, talking company strategy.
 

She tuned most of it out, assuming that
this was just part of his typical routine.

But there was one call midway through the
drive that seemed different than the rest.
 
His voice took on a different tone.
 
At first, he seemed to be discussing something very dull…a company in
Germany.
 
She didn’t remember the
name of it.
 
And then suddenly his
manner changed and became very intense.

“Why would you say that?” Red asked, his
eyes staring at the road in front of him as he talked into his headset.
 
“No, no no.
 
That’s not the case at all.
 
We’re heavily leveraged in that market
and we absolutely need them to be on board.”
 
There was a long pause while he
listened.
 
His hands gripped the
steering wheel until his knuckles turned white and she could see his lips press
together.
 
“No, John.
 
No.
 
That’s not how it is at all and you can tell them.
 
Tell them they better not fuck with me
on this one or so help me God…”

For a moment, Nicole felt afraid of
him.
 
He was so intense, so full of
a dark rage and she thought that it could somehow be directed at her.
 

“We need this deal to go through,” he
said. “It’s not a little thing, John.
 
It’s a big thing.
 
We’re
talking millions and millions…the stock price will go into the fucking toilet
otherwise…and you know what that would mean.”

The conversation seemed to downshift from
there, and Red made some small talk before finally getting off the phone.

When he was done, Nicole looked over at
him.
 
“Everything all right?”

He smiled tightly.
 
“Just the usual business bullshit.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.
 
Well, some things are shittier than
others.
 
This thing is particularly
shitty.”

“You seemed angry at whoever you were
talking to.”

“That’s John Peterson, our CFO.
 
He’s involved in a pretty important deal
with a company we just acquired in Germany.
 
It’s a very complicated deal.
 
I can’t go into the details.”

“Oh, of course.
 
I wouldn’t expect you to.”

His shoulders were hunched and he seemed
distant.
 
“It’s just business,” he
said, as if trying to convince himself.

A short while later, they arrived at
Nicole’s new home.

She’d tried to prepare herself for a
shock, but really nothing could prepare her for what was in store when they
approached the gate of Red’s Connecticut property.
 
She couldn’t even see his home from the
gate.
 
All she saw were rolling
hills, a large lake (or maybe it was a pond, but it was a huge pond), and trees
fading into the distance.

The private road was well lit by street
lamps, but this time of night it was hard to tell just how big the property
really was.

At the gate there was a security booth
with a young, fiercely serious man inside, sporting a military crew cut.

Red put down his window and smiled at the
young man peered into the car and looked directly at Nicole with cold, green
eyes.
 
Then his eyes flicked back to
her fiancé.
 
“Good evening, Mister
Jameson.”

“Evening, Dan.”
 

“Is everything good, sir?”

“Better than good, Dan.
 
Thanks.”

The gate clicked and hummed as it opened
electronically.
 
The guard watched
them as they drove slowly past and now they were on the private road.

Red glanced at her.
 
“Overwhelmed?”

“Very.”
 
She took a deep breath and exhaled.
 
The pond was on their left now.
 
“It’s absolutely breathtaking.”
 
She saw a family of ducks swimming
leisurely in the still water.
 
A
quaint bridge, strewn with tiny glowing white bulbs extended over the narrower
portion of the pond.
 
In the
distance, a little house lay nestled close to the water’s edge.
 

“We’re on about seventeen and a half
acres of land,” Red said.
 
“It’s
quite a lot to maintain.
 
Over there
is the caretaker’s home, and he and a small crew keep up the grounds year
round.
 
They’re good people, you’ll
get to know all of them well.”

Over the crest of a tiny hill, she caught
sight of a full-sized basketball court on the left, and just next to that,
tennis courts.
 
They looked
beautiful, as if they’d only just been built a day or two before.
 
“Do you play on those?” she asked.

“I do,” Red told her.
 
“A few times a week a tennis pro comes
to the house and gives me lessons or we play a set together.”

“When you say, tennis pro, do you mean
like one of those club pros that they have?
 
The ones that give lessons to little
kids and beginners or…”

Red laughed.
 
“I mean, one of the guys ranked in the
top hundred in the world.
 
I’ve had
Roger Federer our here to play, John Isner, Andre Agassi.
 
Andre’s back isn’t so good these
days.
 
Oh, Pete Sampras…”

“They give you lessons.”
 
She shook her head in disbelief.

“A lot of them are friends.
 
I’ve done campaigns with most of these
guys.
 
But yeah, they give me
lessons and play with me.
 
I don’t
exactly provide much of a challenge, but the pay is good and afterwards they
might stay and have a lovely meal.”

The private way stretched on and on.
 
They came over another rise and the
house appeared in the distance, sprawling and magnificent.
 
With the lights on both inside and
around the house, it looked like something from a dream Walt Disney might have
had.
 
It literally took her breath
away.
 
The entire house and property
was glowing magically, as if enchanted.

“It’s a bit on the large side,” Red
admitted, glancing at her reaction.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It’s got twenty-five bathrooms and
twenty-three bedrooms.
 
Fifty
thousand square feet.”

“Why…why would you need any of that?
 
You could provide room and board to a
small village with that much space.”

He chuckled at her astonishment.
 
“I suppose I don’t technically need the
space.
 
But one day I do hope to
have a family, and I like the idea of having plenty of room for guests; mothers
and fathers, uncles, grandparents, little kids.
 
And everyone has their own privacy,
nobody’s on top of each other.”

“Nobody can even find each other,” she
said.

His expression became serious.
 
“Maybe it’s because of how I grew up,”
he told her.
 
“We had no space at
all.
 
Me and my brother and mother,
in a little apartment together, always on top of each other.
 
I didn’t have any privacy, I had to
share a room with Bryan until I was seventeen and finally went to college.
 
I know it could have been worse, but
something about it just ate at me.”
 
His eyes were hard and she could feel the tension radiating off of
him.
 
She sensed that Red hadn’t
exactly had a happy childhood.

Nicole put a hand on his leg and felt him
instantly relax.
 
“I think it’s wonderful
that you’ve been able to build a home that is exactly what you want.
 
Sorry if I poked fun.”

“I know it’s a bit much,” he said.
 
It was the first time she’d ever seen
him embarrassed of his wealth and opulence.
 

“I think it’s amazing.”

“Wait until you get inside,” he said.

But even before they got inside the
house, there was a fork in the road, and Red turned right, taking them past an
incredible Olympic sized pool, the blue waters lit from lights beneath the
surface.
 
As Nicole craned her head
to look at the crystal clear water, imagining herself taking a dip on a warm
summer day, Red parked the car next to the house and turned to her.
 
“Last stop, my beautiful bride-to-be.”

“This is like some kind of fairy tale.”

“Come on, Princess Masters, your castle
awaits.”

Out of the car, she took a deep breath of
fresh air and smiled.
 
She could
walk for hours and hours out there, over the bridge of the beautiful pond.
 
She imagined herself stopping and
watching the wind ripple across the surface of the water.
 

Everything here is partly mine, now, she
told herself.
 
It still didn’t feel
real to her.

Red took her by the hand and pulled her
toward one of the entrances.
 
He
flipped open a little box and punched a very long sequence of numbers into a
keypad.
 
There was a series of
little beeps and then a clicking sound.
 
“Come on inside,” he said, opening the door and letting them into the
foyer.

It was too big and grand for words, she
thought.
 
No description would do it
justice, and nobody she knew would believe her if she told them.

There were light marble floors as far as
the eye could see, and a grand staircase that stretched above their heads.
 
The foyer was so open that you could
actually see across into the other rooms that continued on and on, like reflecting
mirrors.
 

“Is that an elevator?” she asked,
pointing to the right, where a large cylindrical tube with darkly tinted
windows ran from floor to ceiling.
 

“We can’t be expected to take the
stairs,” Red joked.
 
“That would be
criminal.
 
You want to get in and
see the second floor?”

“I’d like to stay on this floor and see
some of the other rooms first,” she told him.

“Absolutely.
 
Right this way, I’ll give you the grand
tour.”
 

He showed her the dining room, with the
enormous candelabra hanging over the giant, ornate dining table.
 
And then onto the living room, which
somehow felt presidential to Nicole, with its immaculate white walls, blue
furniture and gold curtains.
 
There
was a beautiful fireplace and hearth, above which a very expensive looking
plasma TV screen had been mounted.
 

“I think you’ll enjoy this kitchen,” Red
told her, as they made their way into the wide-open space with rich hardwood
floors, beautiful granite countertops, two giant islands and breakfast
nook.
 
There were double stainless
steal ranges, built for professional cooking and entertaining large
groups.
 
The refrigerator was big
enough to fit a couple of full-sized cows if they’d wanted to do so.