Despite the Gentleman's Riches: Sweet Billionaire Romance (For Richer or Poorer Book 1) (16 page)

"We'll work something out," my ex-employer said simply, and it didn't escape any of our notice that he'd promised nothing. "Don't keep Dad waiting," he continued, the words a warning, and Lena dropped Florabelle's basket and scurried out the door as if fleeing from her own tears.

For my part, I wanted to be brave enough to stay and speak to Jack without his father present. Perhaps my lover would be able to reassure me that he'd only been attempting to do what was best for his sister, that he'd been lying through his teeth about using me to win Clean Power's battle. That he really
did
care for me, loved me even.

But why should I believe Mr. Fish Stick's upcoming explanation any more than I should believe the one he'd just given to his father, the younger businessman's glibness making either alternative equally likely to be true?

Damned oxytocin.
The chemical didn't just make women fall in love; it tricked us into believing in men who didn't deserve our trust. I remembered reading that warning on the internet, could almost see how my guard toward Jack had dropped entirely once he'd gotten me into his bed.

So I was stupid
, I berated myself.
Accept that and move on
. I had responsibilities, as the heavy cage in my hand attested, and now that Lena was gone, I
needed
my Cuadic gig if I wanted to keep paying the bills. Why hadn't I notice that, even at his most charming, Jack never once told me that he was going to stop fighting against Cuadic? I'd been naive to assume that sleeping with the enemy would make any difference in my companion's plans.

So it wasn't cowardice that made me follow Lena out the door without a backwards glance at my lover. It wasn't cowardice that had me carefully strapping Florabelle's cage into the back seat of the rust bucket, waving farewell to Jack's sister but not to him.

No, it was simply survival. I needed to get to the Cuadic meeting before I lost that job as well, so tears would just have to wait until later.

I knew I was late, but I wasn't expecting the pained silence that greeted my arrival to the community center where the Cuadic meeting was being held. Instead, I'd hoped that a few cheerful greetings from members calling out to their "Virginia Beauty" would be enough to make me forget everything that I'd recently walked away from. Perhaps Ms. Cooper's approval and Kimberly's chatty gossip would make my gut feel less like I'd just lost the most important part of my current life. Perhaps a few hours of strategizing would even make me forget about Jack.

But the faces that turned toward me and Florabelle as we stepped into the room were grim, not welcoming, and I paused where I was rather than joining the organization's members around the table. "I'm sorry I'm late?" I said into the empty air, my words a question. What calamitous event had occurred during the last six days to put that pinched expression on my teacher's face? Ms. Cooper hadn't appeared so grim even after I'd told her I was attending community college instead of going off to Harvard, dashing her grandiose dreams for my future. So I shivered, unable guess what could make her look so bleak now.

"Too busy consorting with the enemy to even show up for work?" Tom demanded, waving a printout through the air. I was too far away to read the headline or to make out the photo, but I suspected this was the same article that had lost Lena the right to spend time with her brother, and I instantly started to cringe. Leave it to our resident conspiracy theorist to track down any incriminating evidence within hours of the news hitting the national media.

"Is this why you wouldn't tell us who sent the flowers?" Kimberly asked from the other end of the table. I could tell she was struggling to offer up the benefit of the doubt, but even I could admit that the testimony against me was damning. All of the Cuadic members who cared to notice were aware that I was barely scraping by, and it must have seemed like a no-brainer for a girl in my position to hunt down a sugar daddy, even if doing so compromised my ethics. Who would believe that betraying Cuadic hadn't been part of Jack's and my courtship? Even
I
only half trusted that supposition to be true.

"Is Lena really Jack Reynolds' sister?" Ms. Cooper asked, adding her voice to the verbal deluge. My mentor didn't sound angry, just disappointed and confused. The teacher had taken a shine to my young charge, had wanted to involve Lena in stream monitoring in order to get her interested in science. Now Ms. Cooper was having to rethink both Lena's intentions and my own.

As I looked from face to face, it became clear that the mood of the room had turned against me, and I honestly didn't know whether its inhabitants were even wrong to feel betrayed. Everyone here had been extremely good to me ever since my parents died. The organization's members had acted like honorary grandparents, sending me home with cookies if I looked sad and checking up on me when I didn't make it to Cuadic events. Ms. Cooper had encouraged me to expand my horizons and Kimberly had offered friendship time and time again, even when I repeatedly rejected her gestures. Each person in this room had been kind and nurturing...and I'd repaid their trust by getting photographed at a fancy event in New York City on the arm of the organization's worst enemy. How could I explain that away?

I didn't even try. "I assume I'm fired," I said by way of reply to their accusations. Then, picking up Florabelle's cage once again, I went out the way I'd come in.

***

June evenings are long, and it wasn't quite dark when I started down the street where I lived. All I could think about was getting home, holing up in my trailer and keeping the world at bay, blocking out the image of Ms. Cooper's disappointment and the sound of Jack's cold words. I wasn't able to focus on either the past or the future at the moment, but perhaps I could manage to survive in the present if I was able to pull the covers up over my head and fall asleep. My trailer might be tiny and bedraggled, but as long as I turned off the phone, no one could reach me once I was safely inside.

Or so I thought. The scene that greeted me as I came around the bend and within sight of my home was so absurd that I couldn't even understand what was happening at first. A tremendous bulldozer had smashed its way through my carefully-tended vegetable garden, and two muscular guys were busy dismantling the skirting around the base of my mobile home. Another appeared to be unhooking my plumbing, and a fourth man sat on the huge piece of machinery, apparently waiting to yank my trailer right off its moorings. Perhaps I should have chosen a
less
mobile home.

A tap on the driver's-side window jerked me out of my disbelieving daze, and I looked up into Mr. Reed's gloating face. Just the person I
didn't
want to talk to right now. But, seeing no alternative, I rolled down the glass, allowing my neighbor's garlic-and-body-odor aroma to drift into the car.

"Glad you got here in time," my landlord crowed, obviously relishing my distress and not bothering with the usual pleasantries. "Here's your rent money back." My ex-neighbor handed over the same envelope that I'd thrust into his hands before I left on my trip, and I didn't even bother to count the bills to see if they were all there. It was clear that I had bigger problems than figuring out whether Mr. Reed had swindled me out of three hundred bucks.

"I decided to go ahead and upgrade to a bigger mobile home on this lot after all," my landlord continued when it became evident that I was too shell-shocked to speak. "I'll have the guys put your tin can over there against the curb for now, but you really do need to get it out of here tomorrow or I'll send the whole thing to the dump. It's not worth saving, don't you think?"

Since I definitely didn't have the funds to transport my trailer to a new lot, nor did I have a spot lined up to set it into, Mr. Reed was probably right. But still.... "My apple tree," I protested, the words trailing off as I realized both the stupidity of appealing to a bully and the fact that there was no hope for Pippin even if I'd enjoyed a more thoughtful landlord. As I'd told Mr. Fish Sticks so many days before, you can't move a tree.

"Yep, gonna push that diseased thing down," Mr. Reed confirmed, wrinkling up his nose in distaste. "Prob'ly not tonight since these boys have been working hard all day and will want to go home. But tomorrow for sure. If you want to pick that apple off, now's your chance to do it."

And, despite everything, I
did
want to harvest Pippin's first and only apple. I wanted to take the fruit away with me and savor every bite, even if the flesh was so sour that it made my mouth pucker up at the taste. I wanted to thank my tree for trying so hard to weave her roots through my dreams, even if she didn't have time to get any older than Lena (in tree years of course).

But I knew I wouldn't be able to handle emerging from my rust bucket and taking the walk of shame over to where Pippin's roots would grow for one more night. I could imagine the inevitable catcalls from the guys Mr. Reed had hired to dismantle my trailer, and I shivered at the thought of spending another moment under my landlord's lascivious eye. So I just shook my head, and prepared to put my vehicle back into gear.

Unfortunately, Mr. Reed had rested his folded arms in the window opening and seemed to have settled in to visit for a spell. "Of course, it doesn't
have
to be this way," my landlord said, his voice dropping down into what he probably thought was a seductive whisper but which instead came out sounding like a prank caller on the other end of a phone line, heavy breathing and all. "If you want to come over to my place and talk sensible-like, I can send all of these boys home right now. I'm sure we can come up with a
mutually
beneficial agreement." As if the innuendo weren't obvious enough, the slimeball concluded by pulling up his lips into a leer.

Well, at least this experience proved that there were some depths to which I was not willing to stoop. "Drop dead," I said pleasantly, hitting the gas, and Mr. Reed barely jumped out of the way before my rear tires ran over his foot.

***

"It's really not so bad, Florabelle," I tried to convince myself an hour later, wishing I'd at least entered my trailer to snag a flashlight and sleeping bag before making my escape. We were parked at the far edge of Emerald Lake's lot, hoping that the sheriff wouldn't drop by and roust us in the middle of the night, and the accommodations weren't very comfortable. I definitely wasn't likely to get much sleep, trying to curl up in the little bit of space between the flattened back seat and the trunk. But—"At least we have your birdseed and my toothbrush," I continued. "We aren't actually destitute."

The words didn't ring true. While I
could
go back and load up a few more valuables into my car, I was afraid of running into Mr. Reed again, and the more possessions I added to the vehicle's load, the less room I'd have to stretch out in. It was better to just let the past go, the same way I'd been forced to release memories of my parents and dreams of higher education. That sort of baggage just weighed a girl down.

"Maybe we should start again somewhere new," I told my bird, whose contented beak-grinding noises filled the cooling air. How I wished that my life could be so simple that a few seeds and a drink of water would make me relax into a cheerful doze. Well, food and water and the sound of a beloved person's voice. Unbidden, Jack's face rose up in front of my eyes, and I forced the vision away along with the resultant lump in my throat. If the last few hours had proven anything, it was that no person of my acquaintance loved me unconditionally. So it was a good thing I owned a cockatiel who was willing to fill that niche.

"What do you think, Florabelle? North, south, east, west?" I'd always wanted to travel, but this wasn't the way I'd envisioned my journeys beginning. And, unfortunately, my first solo adventure wouldn't take me very far due to my limited savings—rather than heading out into the unknown, I'd probably just be relocating to the town down the road. I could barely scrape together first and last month's rent for an apartment that allowed pets, so I couldn't waste my funds simply burning gas. But, while I was willing to put my dreams on hold in other arenas, the idea of finding my cockatiel another home made my stomach ache so badly that I refused to consider it, even if that was the most sensible solution to my current dilemma.

Finding a place to live and another job should have taken precedence over everything else, but instead I found myself dwelling on the people I'd lost today. There was Lena, who I had no way to get in touch with even though she surely needed me. And Ms. Cooper and Kimberly, who I'd forfeited through my own inability to admit them into my confidence.

And Jack. Always, it came back to Mr. Fish Sticks, the handsome man who had walked into my checkout line and turned my whole life upside down. I so badly wanted to believe in him, and that fact alone made me distrust my own emotions.

So I just closed my eyes against the darkness and tried to sleep, ignoring the tears that silently tickled their way across my cheeks.

Perhaps I
should
have quietly packed up and left town as I'd originally planned, but when I woke the next morning, neck sore from my awkward sleeping position and throat scratchy from lack of water, running away didn't seem like the best option. I was no longer employed by Cuadic (or by anyone else for that matter), but lack of a job didn't mean I couldn't find a way to continue fighting the good fight. If my final gesture as a resident was to make sure that Clean Power wasn't allowed to elevate the cancer rates in my hometown, then I could leave happy.

Or, if not precisely happy, then perhaps content.

So I was waiting outside the library doors when the establishment opened, and, leaving Florabelle in a shady car with the windows rolled all the way down, I made a beeline toward the public computers. I needed more data if I was going to find a way to take the Reynolds' plant down, and the obvious first stop was the Cuadic listserv.

At first, though, that option seemed to be unavailable. With Tom as the sysadmin, I wasn't surprised to realize that I'd been locked out of the organization's email list the instant I left the meeting last night, but it
was
unexpected to learn that Ms. Cooper had filled that gap by forwarding me all of the intervening messages as they came in. I nearly started to cry as I read through the missives, the earliest emails stating everyone's surprise and horror over last night's revelations, but then later messages shifting in an entirely unanticipated direction.

"Maybe our Ginny just fell in love, is all," emailed one of the older ladies who seldom spoke up at meetings. I was pretty sure I'd never seen a message from her in my inbox before, and if anyone had asked, I probably would have said that the elderly member didn't even know how to use a computer. Apparently, I'd been wrong about a lot of things lately.

"If anyone deserves to find a good husband, it's that girl of ours," another member had replied. "Poor little Ginny is always working so hard to make everybody else happy. How can we blame her for thinking of herself just this one time?"

At first, Tom had retaliated vehemently, spinning a conspiracy theory that accused the Reynolds of hiring me way back when I was in high school in order to undermine Cuadic's cause in preparation for overthrowing the world as we knew it. But this hypothesis was so kooky that it made even
me
laugh, and clearly none of the other members were taking Tom seriously any longer. Instead, they began planning an in-person meeting to convene this very morning in hopes of "hunting our girl down and getting us back on the right track."

"Do you think we'll be invited to the wedding?" finished the last email that I read before shutting down the computer and heading for the rust bucket to carry me to my next engagement. It seemed that Cuadic's members possessed more faith in my honor than I'd had in their friendship.

It was high time to prove them right.

***

"Virginia Beauty! She's here!" The words I'd so longed to hear just fifteen hours earlier were less reassuring now, but only because they meant I was going to have to gather my courage and spit out the words that should have been said months before. Because, even though the members of Cuadic had largely come around to view me in a positive light once again, I knew that I needed to be more honest with them if I hoped for our relationship to continue.

"There are some things I need to say to all of you," I began, leaping right into an apology in hopes that the lack of a preface would make the words easier for me to bear. But I was quickly cut off by Kimberly.

"No, me first!" she exclaimed, jumping out of her seat and rushing over to offer up a hug. "I'm so sorry I didn't give you a chance to explain last night." Her words were muffled against my hair, but I could easily make them out, and I responded with a reassuring squeeze before I let my friend go.

"That's where you're wrong," I said firmly, speaking to the whole group now. "You all
would
have heard me out, but I ran away before you could give me that chance. How could that
not
make you suspicious?"

"But we've changed our minds," one of the older ladies called.

"I know," I answered. "Ms. Cooper sent me the emails. Or rather," and now I smiled at my mentor, finally accepting the truth of our relationship, "
Claudia
did." It would take me a while to think of my teacher by her first name, but the way she leaned toward me at the words proved that the effort would be worthwhile.

"You've all been like the family that I no longer possess genetically," I told them, meeting each member's eyes in turn and hoping that my words would sink in. "I made a huge mistake with Jack. Not because of anything Cuadic-related—I swear to you that I never told him anything he could use against us. But because I should have known that a billionaire-in-training wouldn't be honestly interested in a girl like me. And, maybe, if I hadn't hidden what was going on, all of you would have warned me not to be stupid and I wouldn't have let myself get hurt." I looked away for a minute, fighting the tears that threatened to stem the flow of my honesty.

"Now, sweetie, he might not be so bad," one of the more romantic old ladies soothed. If I recalled correctly, she was the one who had hoped to be invited to our wedding, and her optimistic words brought a tremulous smile to my lips.

"Well, that's water over the dam now," I said, firmly moving on. "What I'm trying to say is that each of you has offered to be my friend, and I didn't let you in only because I was afraid. I'm
still
afraid, but I'm also hoping the position is still open anyway. Not being Cuadic's employee, but being each of your comrade at arms."

"Oh, Ginny, of course it is," Ms. Cooper—no, Claudia—told me. "You should realize that any one of us would move mountains for you. You're like the daughter I never had." Around the table, heads nodded, and even Tom didn't look quite so dour as when I'd first set foot in the room.

"Well, about that," I continued, trying not to get choked up once again at my mentor's words. "There
is
something I could use help with. My landlord kicked me out last night, and I need a safe spot for Florabelle to stay while I figure out my next move." Even though it was barely ten o'clock in the morning, I was already worried about leaving my pet out in the car, and I definitely couldn't keep her there once the day got much warmer. I wouldn't beg housing for myself, but my cockatiel expected her accommodations to be just so.

"I drove past your place looking for you this morning," Kimberly interjected. "That bastard moved your whole house out onto the street! Scared me to death. Of course, you can both stay with me until this mistake is sorted out. Where are you going to put your trailer now?"

"I'll let him haul it to the dump, I guess," I sighed, accepting the inevitable. Buying my own mobile home had been a bad idea from the start, and it was time to grow up and accept that there were some things I couldn't have, at least not right now. "I can't really afford to move it," I explained, wanting to gloss over my poverty and keep this conversation on track.

"We can take up a collection!" one of the old ladies exclaimed. But...

"I don't think that will be necessary," said the deep voice rumbling into the room from behind my back.

***

"You!" For a moment, I thought Kimberly was going to punch Mr. Fish Sticks, who had snuck into the room unnoticed. But my friend satisfied herself by poking the businessman in the chest with one skinny finger instead. "What are
you
doing here?"

"Looking for Ginny, of course," the romantic older lady offered with a smile. I wished I had her sunny disposition...and such a firm belief in Jack's good intentions. "The real question," the lady continued, "Is: how did he know where to find her?"

"I read the emails, of course," Jack explained. Then, as the Cuadic members looked at each other in confusion, my ex-employer expanded on his statement. "Clean Power hacked into the server months ago. You didn't really think your messages would stay private when so much money was at stake, did you?"

Despite myself, I gazed at Tom, who had always warned us to turn off our cellphones when strategizing. We'd thought our sole male member was a crazy conspiracy theorist, and yet, here was proof positive that our kookiest associate had been on the right track all along. Too bad Tom hadn't thought to warn against sharing information over the internet while he was at it.

Or perhaps that oversight was lucky? Jack's mere presence seemed to fill a hole in my stomach that I'd almost gotten used to having empty, and I couldn't honestly wish him gone.

On the other hand, I also wasn't so sure that I could really trust Jack to have my best interests at heart. He hadn't swooped me into a kiss and begged my forgiveness the way men do in the movies. Instead, the businessman seemed inclined to parlay with the non-profit members arrayed about the room, completely ignoring my presence. Still, this time around, I resolved to give my ex-employer the benefit of the doubt—he
had
earned that accommodation just by showing up.

"That issue aside," Jack was saying, "I've considered all of your literature, and I think that Cuadic has a very valid point. A second coal-fired power plant in your region would exacerbate the current trend toward driving high-wage employment out of the area, and I now appear to have a vested interest in keeping smart young people in this town happy." My ex-employer shot a quick glance in my direction, and I felt his regard warming me down to my toes.

"So I came up with a compromise." Now Jack pulled out his laptop, and set it on the end of one table. The computer opened to a PowerPoint presentation, in which a photograph of a huge, white wind-tunnel currently filled the screen. "I'm afraid you'll all have to gather around," he continued. "I don't have a projector handy."

I could just imagine Jack speaking to his investors in this same firm, businesslike manner, and the fact that he hadn't met my eyes except that one time continued to feed my insecurities. Still, if Jack's current speech was anything like his pre-sex proposal, perhaps presenting his facts as unemotionally as possible was my lover's way of dealing with stress, just like I obsessed over statistics when I was feeling unsure of myself. So I moved closer to the computer screen along with the wave of other bodies, although I didn't let myself hope for more just yet.

"As you can see, there are dozens of experimental methods of creating electricity using sustainable resources," Jack was saying, quickly clicking through a stream of intriguing images. "Opponents would argue that current types of green power are too expensive compared to electricity created using fossil fuels, but others say that if we pumped the same kind of money into research and development for alternative energy, we'd be able to make the switch easily. So, rather than building a coal-fired power plant outside your town, I instead propose that Clean Power create an experimental energy center to start developing the energy source of the future right here."

"And, let me guess, you want our permission to attach Cuadic's name to the project," Tom said, and I could tell that our most hard-nosed member wasn't won over by Jack's fancy graphics. "It'll just be greenwashing, though, like that 'clean coal' you're always talking about. Nope, we don't want to have any part of it." Since Tom had proven himself right on the electronic spying issue, his increased credibility now set half a dozen heads nodding in agreement.

"A very valid point," Jack replied, not fazed at all by the initial rejection. "But what I
actually
wanted to propose is to have Cuadic serve as the board of directors for the new center, while Clean Power is simply the funder. We give you money and you decide what to do with it. What do you think?"

"We could involve students, hire local people?" Claudia asked, her interest piqued by the outside-the-box proposal.

"Definitely," Jack agreed. "That would all be up to you. Clean Power could even throw some money at your organization right from the start so you could afford to hire someone to get the ball rolling." Every eye in the room turned to me and I felt my cheeks heating up.

"It still doesn't make sense," Tom interjected, unwilling to let his suspicions drop so easily, even though the romantic lady was now fanning herself with one hand in delight. "I don't see what you get out of this."

"You really don't?" Jack asked, as if he couldn't comprehend Tom's lack of imagination. "Clean Power gets good press, Cuadic gets all of the benefits to the region that you've been working toward for years...and I get an excuse to settle down in an area where a very important person lives.

"Speaking of which," he continued, his blue eyes focusing on mine at last, "You'll all excuse me while I go make sure that Ginny's home doesn't get hauled to the dump."