The Billionaire's Gamble (12 page)

“Me too!” Jill said, pulling Violet back when she lurched for the plate of cinnamon rolls like a pirate swinging onto a ship to capture its booty. “Don’t Soy With Me is going to love selling your croissants. Brian can have the baguettes. It’s not our thing. But you know we’ll use your bread for our sandwiches.”

What a coup it was for her to have supply arrangements with two successful Dare Valley businesses before she even opened. Evan was so happy for her, and he hoped Chef T would consider buying her bread for his restaurant at the hotel.

A sheen of tears appeared in Margie’s eyes. “Thanks, Jill. Brian. Just…thanks.”

Jill sniffed. “No, don’t look at me like that. I’m going to start bawling. I am so freaking proud of you, girl. I mean…crap. Bri, can you take Violet for a sec? I really need to hug Margie.”

She jogged over to Margie, who rose to her feet. The two women embraced, and because Margie was facing him, he watched a tear slide down her cheek before Jill started jumping up and down like the DJ in a club had just changed the music to a party classic.

“You’re living your dream,” Jill cried, and her exuberance made Evan smile.

After they separated, Margie left to prepare the warm cinnamon rolls on a plate.

“I realize this isn’t the perfect control group,” she said when she returned and laid the plate in the center of the table, “but I couldn’t ask Grandma Kemstead to make a second batch of rolls that would be hot out of the oven right before you arrived. She’s already done so much for me. These rolls are mine. I’ll be serving hot ones in the morning to the early birds.”

Jill grabbed a whole roll and stuffed a good portion in her mouth, chewing and moaning in a way that could only be described as endearing. After spending so much time around models who watched every ounce they ate, it was refreshing to see someone go to town on bread.

“Oh. My. Gosh.” Jill swallowed and let her eyes roll back in her head.

“They’re good, right?” Margie asked, and it gave Evan a pinch in his chest to see that vulnerability again.

“They’re ridiculous!” Jill cried. “Bri, take a bite of these and tell Margie.”

The poor guy barely had time to blink before Jill shoved the roll into his mouth. “Oh, yes,” he said after taking a bite. “Margie, Jill’s right. They’re incredible. I might have to become one of your early birds.”

Everyone else ate the rolls and gave her the praise she so needed to hear.

Margie finally pressed her hands to her cheeks. “It’s really going to be okay, isn’t it?”

Evan’s heart melted, and if Jill hadn’t pushed back from her chair again and pulled Margie into another bear hug, he would have. Everyone savored the remaining warm rolls with the twins demanding more bites from their mom and dad.

“Okay,” Arthur said when he finished his roll. “Now, tell me I’m right. That one on the right was Kemstead’s, wasn’t it?”

Evan knew the answer before Margie responded. Her soft smile had been clue enough.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hale, but that one was mine.” She clapped her hands in delight, and the little girls mirrored her.

“Fooled you, old man,” Jill said with a laugh. “And that so rarely happens, I feel the need to dance to ‘Dancing Queen.’ Elizabeth, let’s show these guys what we’ve got. Margie, get the music on.”

Chef T groaned suddenly. “I know what moves you have, Jill,” the chef said. “And I seriously don’t need to be reminded. Especially not at a cinnamon roll tasting.”

“You can’t stop the music.” Jill put her arm around Margie. “Let’s get this party started. Elizabeth. Grab your man.”

Chef T groaned again as the pretty blond pulled him out of his seat.

“I’m going to head home,” Arthur said, rising from his chair. “ABBA was too modern for me in the ‘70s, and I don’t expect that’s changed much. Evan, why don’t you walk me out?”

His heart stopped beating in his chest, but somehow he managed to rise from his chair. “Of course.”

Everyone clustered around Arthur to bid him farewell. It was clear how much everyone esteemed the older man. Even Elizabeth and Chef T seemed amused by his crusty charm. The little girls were the last to say goodbye, giving him sloppy kisses.

When Evan escorted him outside, he made sure to close the front door. They walked down the sidewalk. A sickle moon hung in a mostly clear sky. The quiet reminded him for a moment of Paris streets after midnight when most Parisians had gone home after enjoying a fine meal and a bottle of wine.

“Where is your car, sir?” Evan asked when they reached the curb.

“In good time, son,” Arthur said, facing him under the lamp light. “Or should I call you Evan Michaels?”

He wanted to curse. “You are way too canny, Mr. Hale.”

“Arthur, please,” he said. “Do you want to tell me why you’re renting out a room from Margie under an assumed name and painting her new store for peanuts?”

At least he could go with the truth. Elizabeth—and presumably—Chef T already knew who he was. Arthur Hale might as well know too. “I lost a side bet to Jane Wilcox in a poker game in Paris with Rhett Butler Blaylock.” He told him an abbreviated version of the events. “Our agreement was that no one was supposed to know.”

“Even our sweet Margie?” Arthur asked, rubbing his chin.

“Especially her,” Evan replied and felt the guilt twine tighter around his heart.

“I see the way she looks at you. You’re known as quite the playboy, if I recall.”

“As a journalist, it won’t surprise you to learn much of that is hyperbole.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “But if it makes you sleep better, Rhett stipulated that I have to be celibate the whole time I’m here.”

The man barked out a laugh, and then another, until he was actually wheezing from laughing. “Celibate! That’s a good one. Rhett has one devious mind.”

“He does indeed,” Evan agreed. “Now, are you pacified for the moment?”

Arthur tapped his cane on the sidewalk. “Evan, I’m a family man first, and a newspaper man second. If there’s an infamous billionaire secretly living in Dare Valley in some real-life adaption of
The Prince and the Pauper,
I sure as hell want to know more. At least tell me what you invented that earned you all these billions. No one has ever been able to find out anything more than that you make highly sensitive defense equipment for NATO governments.”

“Exactly. That equipment falls under the category of ‘that which cannot be named.’”

The Lord Voldemort joke was an old one between him and Chase.

“Sorry, Arthur, you know I can’t give away top-secret information.”

The older man shrugged. “I had to try. In the meantime, you watch your Ps and Qs with Margie. She’s like family to Jill, which means she’s family to me.”

He wondered how a man nearing eighty would follow through on that threat, but he refrained from asking. “She’s a special woman who’s been…kind to me.” Yes, that was right, but it didn’t touch on all the other things she’d made him feel again. Self-worth. Trust. Fun.

“I’m glad you can see that about her,” Arthur said. “Makes me think your head isn’t as far up your butt as most people seem to think.”

“I like that you don’t pull any punches, Arthur.”

“When you get to be my age, son, you couldn’t pull a punch if you bothered. I’ll head out now. And I can find my car just fine. My request was only a ruse to get you out here.”

“I know,” Evan said, extending his hand to the man. “If we don’t meet again before I leave, it was good to meet you, sir.”

Arthur’s clasp was strong—ageless. “You too, son. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for…because my guess is that you must have been looking pretty hard to have accepted a side bet like this one.”

When Evan went inside after watching Arthur drive away, his eyes immediately found Margie. She was dancing with a grinning, drooling Violet in her arms. He distantly noticed that the others were dancing too, and that Jill was really shaking her stuff with Mia, but his focus was entirely on his Pocket Venus.

Seeing Evan, Margie handed the baby to Brian and bounded over to him in one long bounce, like her shoes had springs on the soles. She was glowing from all the praise that had stoked her inner fire.

His tongue grew thick in his mouth when she reached him. “You’re…” he said, unable to get out the words inside him.

She held out her hands. “Come dance with me.”

He clasped those strong hands he’d seen make a masterpiece earlier out of live organisms, flour, sugar, and cinnamon, and let her lead him into the center of the party.

Chapter 6

Margie followed the blurry taillights of Evan’s car through Denver’s rainy streets. Her heart was swollen with the knowledge that he was leaving for Paris in only a few hours. These last two weeks with him had been so precious to her. After he’d finished helping her with her main tasks at Hot Cross Buns, he’d spent his days painting for people in her circle. First with Rhett, and then with Jane, and finally with Arthur at the newspaper.

And they’d spent almost every night together, either enjoying a night in with dinner and a movie, or hiking in the waning light in the mountains surrounding Dare Valley.

But the last time they’d really touched was their dance the night of her cinnamon roll tasting.

Everything inside her wanted him. She was like a wave waiting to crest onto the beach.

Paris would be the beach. She already knew she would give herself to him. Even though their lives were in two faraway places. Even though she knew that if she was already feeling bereft, she would be inconsolable when she had to leave him for good.

Evan pulled into the car rental place, and she turned after him. After opening his car door, he jogged over to her, rain pelting his face. She rolled her window down, feeling the mist against her skin.

“I’ll turn the car in and be right back. Why don’t you park over there and wait for me?”

She was smiling as he dashed off through the rain to the front door. Pretty soon, he was jogging back, and when he opened the passenger door and slid in smelling of rain and pine and earth, she wanted to press herself against him and take his mouth in all the heated kisses she’d imagined these last weeks.

But she respected his celibacy thing, even though they hadn’t talked about it any more. Hopefully it would be over when she came to Paris. She
prayed
it would be over when she came to Paris.

He brushed the rain back from his hair. “Just so you know. I’m picking you up at Charles de Gaulle when you land in Paris. No arguments.”

Her lips curved. “So we
are
going to see each other in Paris.”

Her heart beat in rapid bursts of joy. They hadn’t talked about that either. For some reason, seeing each other again had been implied even though they hadn’t worked out any details. It was almost like he’d been letting her make up her mind about them. Sure, he’d told her about some of his favorite places to visit and how to order a carafe of water like the locals instead of paying for bottled natural or eau de gas—sparkling water—but little else.

He cleared his throat. “I can just pick you up at the airport if that’s what you want. It’s a haul from CDG, and I don’t want you to have to figure out how to take public transportation into the city when you’re jet-lagged.”

She smiled as the windshield wipers swished back and forth. “Is that the only reason you’re picking me up?”

“Do you really want to get into this now?” he asked with a sigh.

She turned onto I-70 and increased her speed, the rain pinging on the car’s roof more audibly now. “We’ve been letting it hover between us these last weeks. I want to see you again, Evan.”

He reached for her slowly. She could see his hand coming out of the corner of her eye. Then it rested on her thigh, close to her knee. His hand was warm and slightly damp, and it felt
right
. She wanted to take it and place it on her breast, but it wasn’t the time. Besides, she was driving.

“I want to see you too,” he said, but there was something in his voice, and she knew he was holding himself back when he removed his hand.

She decided to put it out there. Sometimes their connection had felt so strong it was like a tangible living force. But at those moments he would always step away and look off in the distance. She could sense him struggling with himself, though she wasn’t sure why.

“What’s the matter? All of a sudden you’re somewhere else.” Then a horrifying thought struck her. “Is there someone else in Paris?”

“No,” he immediately said and touched her thigh again, but briefly this time, like he still didn’t feel he had permission to touch her.

“Then why are you holding back?” she asked, and turned her head briefly away from the interstate to look at him.

There was a pinch between his brows and a tightness around his mouth.

“Evan,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”

***

Like the rain washing away all the grime outside, Evan felt like Margie’s words were stripping him bare. Every day of their time together since the cinnamon roll tasting had been magical. His ability to invent had returned to him, and even though he’d only come up with painting tools while living in Dare Valley, they were leading him to something more. He could feel it.