The Billionaire Game (9 page)

“Oh, they’ll still be
hand-made if you want,” Asher said, as if he were throwing me a
bone. “That’s good for the brand, and that saves us the
cost of sewing machines for the factories. Every little bit adds up.”

I imagined nine-year-old little Chinese
girls carefully hand-stitching lingerie until their fingers bled, and
I felt sick.

“You’re not listening!”
I said, biting my tongue and trying to keep my voice even. If I could
just make him understand… “I put thought and
consideration into every design for every client—”

“That could be our slogan!”
Asher said enthusiastically. “‘Thought and consideration
in every design’—I can see it on a billboard, just above
a mall. It sounds just high-class enough to tempt people into making
an unbudgeted purchase.”

“A mall?!” I said, aghast.

If I’d have been a ship sending
out a distress signal, Asher would have interpreted it as ‘full
steam ahead.’ He seemed to read my horror as mere surprise,
because he took my hand and looked soulfully into my eyes. “I
believe in you, Kate. With your designs and my business connections,
we can have your lingerie in every department store in the country.”

This was a nightmare. This was the
worst nightmare I had ever had. Worse than the one with the clowns!

“I can’t believe you,”
I whispered venomously, yanking my hand back.

Asher looked confused. “Of course
you can. If you look at the projections—”

I could see only one solution to this
communications divide.

I picked up a glass of that
so-French-it-could-sneer-at-you wine and threw it in his face.

The thing about a dramatic exit is, it
super helps if you have somewhere to dramatically exit
to
.

My rage powered me all the way to the
lane before I realized that I didn’t have a car, couldn’t
exactly call a taxi, and didn’t know how to drive Asher’s
helicopter even if I could steal the keys (and oh, how tempting that
sounded right now).

So I sucked it up and trudged back to
the hotel in my heels, muttering curses under my breath, and made my
way to the front desk. A room here would probably cost me an entire
month’s rent, but maybe they would take pity on me and let me
take a pallet in the kitchen or something.

“Excuse me,” I said to the
receptionist.

She looked up and smiled as brightly as
if she had just been told that she had won a trip to Disneyland. “Ah,
there you are, ma’am. Here’s your key. Would you like a
wake-up call, or a complimentary continental breakfast with our
freshly squeezed orange juice, made from local oranges?”

I stared at the key in my hand like it
was an alien artifact. “Wait. What?”

“Your cabin,” she chirped
cheerfully. “Mr. Young reserved it for you.”

“Oh, I bet he did.” I could
just picture Asher smugly setting the seduction scheme, thinking I’d
buy his patter hook, line, and sinker. Too bad he hadn’t done
his research on my company, or I just might have fallen for it too.
“Just the one cabin, huh?”

“Yup!”

This girl was so fresh-faced and
innocent, I almost felt bad about what I was about to do.

Almost.

“Gosh,” I said, leaning on
the counter and lowering my voice confidentially. “I’m so
sorry about this, miss, but it seems you’ve been caught up in a
little misunderstanding between me and my brother.”

The girl paled slightly, visions of
Appalachian family dynamics no doubt dancing in her head. “…brother?”

“Yeah, we get that all the time,”
I said with a sigh, “because he’s adopted, and people
think we’re a couple. We’re actually expecting two more
people—his girlfriend, and my fiancé. I know Asher
hasn’t seen Maybelline in ages, and I’d love to be able
to give him a little privacy—you don’t think you could
just add another cabin to the account…?”

Her hands scrambled on the keys,
flustered. “I, I, I’m not sure—it’s just, Mr.
Young is the name on the account, and since he didn’t authorize
it—”

“It’s those memory
problems,” I said gravely, with a concerned shake of my head.
“Ever since the orphanage—oh, they used to beat them so
terribly there, sometimes when we were kids Asher would still wake up
screaming and wetting the bed— thank goodness the U.N. shut it
down and found all those children nice homes. But some damage can
never be undone.”

The girl’s eyes were so wide I
was worried they might pop out of her head. “That’s so
terrible!”

“It is, isn’t it.” I
laid my hand over hers. “Thanks for being so sympathetic. Not
everyone understands what a trial it is, you know?” I sighed
deeply, and tried to look melancholy. I thought about Asher’s
betrayal of my hopes, and that seemed to help. “I wish he would
open up more about it to me, but at least he has Maybelline. He can
talk to her about anything. The last few years they’ve been
together…he’s been so much more open, so much more able
to enjoy life. A true American success story.”

The girl’s eyes were filled with
tears. “That’s so beautiful. I’ll add that extra
cabin right away.”

“Thank you—” I
checked her name tag—“Ava. This means so much to both of
us.”

I salved my guilty conscience with a
hefty tip, and then set out for my new cabin, courtesy—though
he didn’t know it yet—of Asher Young’s apparently
tragic childhood.

#

My room was gorgeous, with polished
wooden beams and furniture so plush you could sink into it and never
come back out, but I couldn’t calm down. The high I’d
gotten from outwitting Asher’s trite little seduction scheme
had deflated like a punctured hot air balloon as I faced the fact
that it had all been a seduction scheme in the first place. He didn’t
think my business could succeed the way I wanted it to. He hadn’t
even been interested in listening to my strategy—he’d
just leapt in and steamrollered all over it.

I opened up my briefcase and spread my
samples over the bed. The pale violet brassiere with the velvet
lining, the cobalt blue teddy with lace fringe, the sheer babydoll
sewn from silk so fine you could have pulled it through a wedding
ring—they still seemed beautiful to my eyes. They still seemed
like a worthwhile dream.

So why couldn’t I convince anyone
else?

Maybe I was never going to succeed.
Maybe I didn’t really have what it took. Maybe all my designs
were uninspired trash and my clients were gullible fools and I was
just deluding myself with thinking that I’d ever made a
difference in the confidence and self-esteem of the women who came to
me. Maybe it
was
just underwear.

I looked out the window into the
sculpted hedges as a tear rolled down my cheek. I’d wanted to
believe so much that I wasn’t just doing what I loved, but that
I was doing good, too. Inspiring self-confidence wasn’t exactly
world peace, but it had been something.

And now it was nothing.

Another tear rolled down my cheek, and
I felt a sob catch in my throat as I hugged myself against the sudden
chill of self-doubt and despair.

And then Asher, with some truly
impeccable sense of timing, knocked on the door.

He didn’t actually wait for me to
open the door—probably that would have violated the bylaws of
Overreaching Douchebags International—but barged right on in.
“Are you calmed down now? I thought we could discuss—”

“There is nothing to discuss!”
I interrupted, my voice harsh as my sadness flared into rage. “You’re
not even interested in discussing; you didn’t listen to a
single thing I said. You just want to talk at me and talk at me until
I’m buried under a huge pile of logic and cost-benefit ratios
and I give up my integrity and do things your way!”

“Because my way makes sense,”
he said, starting to get hot around the collar. He took a step back,
pulling his phone from his pocket and waving it in the air like a
light saber. “Look at these projections!”

I crossed my arms and gave him the
stink eye.

Asher took a deep breath, visibly
reining himself in, and then held out the phone tentatively, like
peace offering. “We’re talking a 150% return rate on
investment here,” in a voice so carefully neutral it could have
come from Switzerland. “I don’t see what the issue is.
You could be sipping martinis on a beach this time next year, not a
care in a world.”

“But I want to have cares in this
world!” I protested, pushing the phone back at him. How did he
not get this? Had he already forgotten what it was like for the part
of the world that didn’t have their own private helicopters?
“Cares in the world get me out of bed in the morning. Having
cares in this world is what makes life actually interesting! “

“That’s something that
people say to cheer themselves up when they’re stressed out
because they’re stuck running in circles in their little lives,
never accomplishing anything!” Asher snapped in frustration.
“Why would you choose to struggle when you don’t have to?
There are so many interesting things in life that aren’t a
struggle! Helicopter rides over canyons, movie premieres where you
meet the stars you’ve idolized since childhood, exotic beaches
where you can go swimming with dolphins and manta rays!” He ran
a hand through his hair in bewilderment and aggravation. “I
could shortcut you to success and I don’t understand why you
won’t let me!

“Because you and I have different
definitions of success,” I said, striding forward to snarl into
his face. He disgusted me, with his get-rich-quick attitude and his
oblivious condescension and his gorgeous lips—whoa, back up
there, subconscious. Get back to the yelling. “The only part of
success you care about is the money, but I actually want to make
people’s lives better.”

Asher flapped his hands dismissively.
“And you will, by making them feel they’re buying a
high-end product—”

“No, I won’t!” He
still wasn’t listening to me, so through the burning red haze
of anger I decided that I would get his attention by speaking in a
language I knew he understood.

I ripped off my blouse, buttons
bouncing to the corners of the cabin. My skirt followed, landing on a
lamp.

Asher’s eyes grew wide, and then
a grin started to work its way onto his face. “Not the turn I
was expecting this conversation to take, but who am I to—”

“Shut the hell up.”

I shoved him backwards towards the
wall—his annoying grin still pasted on his face like it had
been attached with superglue—and planted my hands on my hips.
Thank God it was laundry day, or I’d have been wearing my own
designs and this little lesson wouldn’t have been nearly as
instructive.

“Do you see this bullshit?”
I snapped, spinning to present my back. “I got these on sale at
a department store, and they’re supposed to be high quality.
But they use a low thread count fabric that scratches like a hobo
with bedbugs, and their cheap-ass clasps dig into your skin like a
scalpel if you do anything more physically active than breathing.”

I ran my finger underneath the fabric
and lifted the band a little to show him the hook and eye marks that
I knew would be imprinted in my back.

Asher let out a sympathetic breath.
“Damn, that looks like it hurts.”

“Of course it fucking hurts,”
I snapped. “But that’s what you have to deal with when
you get something mass-produced, when no one takes the time to
understand your unique wants and needs.” I cupped my breasts.
“Look at this sorry ass one-size-fits-all foam cup! It’s
going to tear the second I put it through the washer. Thanks to that
eh-good-enough mentality, I have to use an extender to even get this
lingerie on in the first place! And what about these cheap straps
that are already fraying?” I snapped the bra straps angrily,
and he actually flinched. “And don’t get me started on
this sorry excuse for panties, and the shoddy stitching on this
elastic.”

As I caught my breath and took in the
perplexed expression on Asher’s face, hope rose in my chest: he
was finally listening. Maybe I should have been ashamed that I was
standing there in my underwear, but instead all I felt was triumph.
It seemed like I was actually getting through to him.

“And yours aren’t like
this,” he said slowly, nodding as he looked over the samples I
had spread on the bed. He ran his fingers down a triangle of
embroidered silk, his brows knitting together thoughtfully.

“Hell no,” I shot back. “I
take my time. I get accurate measurements, and I use materials that
feel good against your skin. So my stuff costs more? Well, it damn
well should, because it’s special. It’s not some trick I
play on women—it’s a real luxury, that makes a real
impact, and the price reflects that.” I grabbed at a metaphor.
“A minivan would be more practical than that spaceship you’ve
grafted onto a Porsche. So why you do drive it?”

“Because it’s better,”
he said, understanding dawning in his eyes as slowly and beautifully
as the rising sun. “It handles better, it’s faster, it’s
more beautiful. It makes me feel better to have it. It costs more…but
it feels worth it.”

“Exactly!” I said.

“Your product is high-end,
designer,” Asher went on, the words coming more rapidly now,
his eyes lighting up as the ideas began to pour in. He leapt up and
grabbed for my hands, a grin splitting his face: “You want a
smaller market, a higher price, to be exclusive!”

Ding ding ding we have a winner,
give the boy a medal and a microwave oven and an all-expenses paid
trip to Hawaii,
were the words that I had been planning to have
come out of my mouth.

But then I felt the warmth of his hands
on mine.

And then I felt the warmth of his
breath, panting with excitement, against my skin.

And then I looked deep into those
brilliant green eyes, lit up with passion and intensity…