The Billionaire's Favorite: A Homesburg Romance

by Elle Chance

  “Hey, I had girlfriends in high school and college.”

  Sofie smiled at me in real amusement. “So you’re out of practice? And trust me, you’ve never met someone like my father.”

  “Oh, yeah? What should I know about meeting Mark Barlow?” I asked her, leaning in.

  Sofie may not admit to wanting to spend time with me, but her drink and I were actually putting her in a better mood. Against all her efforts to remain annoyed at her brothers. The smile dulled a little when I asked for tips though.

  “He’s just probably not going to be impressed with you,” Sofie said, tracing the rim of her glass. “He’s a tough guy. He barely approves of my brothers and me, and we’re carrying on the family businesses.”

  “I didn’t think I’d have to do much impressing,” I admitted, finishing my drink.

  Sofie laughed. “Oh, you’re doomed.” But she didn’t seem concerned about the warning. “Another round?” she asked hopefully, lifting her glass towards me.

  I resigned myself to not impressing Billionaire Barlow as I refreshed our drinks. But I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “I have a bet for you,” I said as I set down her cocktail.

  Sofie looked at me with long-suffering patience in her eyes. “Do tell.”

  “I bet I can win your father over, just a little. And if I do, you give me an exclusive interview about your father, published posthumously.”

  Sofie laughed out loud at me. “Okay, Josh, and what do I get if you don’t?”

  “What do you want?” I asked her. I could write off money, love, and even friendship from our fighting and talking this weekend.

  “If you don’t win my father over, you don’t write about him at all,” Sofie said. “I’ll give you a quote on the Lodge, and that’s all you get out of me.”

  I solemnly clinked glasses with her. “Deal,” I said. “You’re massively underestimating how delightful I can be. And worst case, I get a cover article about the Homesburg Lodge in some Southeastern New York quarterly.”

  Sofie took a sip of her drink and shook her head at me. “You’re massively underestimating Mark Barlow.”

  And maybe that was true. But I’d just gotten her to agree to a story that would be worth money any time of the year. But especially immediately after Mark Barlow passed away. And best of all, either way, I’d be talking to her again after our charade was over.

  SOFIE

  IT WASN’T JOSH’S fault that his family wanted to meet his girlfriend. It was logical. It made sense. I understood why. And yet, it still felt like a personal unkindness to go over for dinner.

  “I have to work this week,” I said when Josh met me in the lobby. “I’ve been spending hours on video chats this week. I really don’t feel ready for this today.”

  “I know, but you love me so you’re going to,” Josh said.

  He leaned down to give me a hug. He’d insisted on it, and would probably start holding my hand soon. Every time he folded me into his arms, it reminded me of when my brothers showed up while we were making out. My body enjoyed how I fit against Josh far too much.

  “You must change,” Josh said. “You can’t look like this when you meet my parents.”

  “This is business attire,” I said, gesturing to my heels and dress.

  “Yeah, and this is personal business,” Josh said. “Emphasis on personal.”

  The new concierge was fresh out of a college degree. He was trying to eavesdrop on us without making it obvious like he always did.

  “Ugh, fine, what should I wear?” I asked.

  “Just jeans and a sweater.” Josh gestured to his own casual flannel and jeans.

  I started walking up the stairs and turned when I realized he wasn’t following me. “Come on, it’ll take forever if you don’t like my next choice.” I tried to not notice my ego smarting that my fake boyfriend had to be talked into coming upstairs with me.

  Josh stood on the other side of the room from the bed even though I was getting changed in the bathroom. When I came out in jeans and a blouse (who brought sweaters in August? Honestly), he looked me over.

  “You still look like you’re going to a fundraising brunch,” he said. “Lose the heels, we have a gravel driveway.”

  I sighed. “So I have to change everything about me to meet your parents?”

  “Exactly,” Josh said. “If you want to win my parents over, be more accessible than your normal business robot clothes. Do you have a scrunchie?”

  “Tell me you’re kidding,” I said, shaking back my white-blonde hair. “How do you think I packed for this trip?”

  Josh shrugged. “You could bring a Macy’s rack of business dresses, but it’s ridiculous to ask about a scrunchie.”

  “Yeah, remember that I packed this year and not in 1997.” I turned to the closet to will one of my pairs of heels into flats. I reluctantly pulled out sneakers instead, to a rave review from Josh.

  “That’s much better,” Josh said when I laced them up.

  “What if I run into your parents when I’m dressing ‘inaccessibly’?” I asked him. “I don’t know if I even want to impress your parents if they’re this shallow.”

  Josh laughed at that. “Oh sure, they’re shallow because they’d think a thousand dollar dress is a weird choice for Thursday dinner. And I think they’d just appreciate the effort.”

  I felt like I was cosplaying as a college student in this outfit, but Josh was a fan. It occurred to me he just might prefer casual women, like him. Ugh. Another good reason to wish I didn’t have to meet Josh’s parents.

  “You’ll love my parents,” Josh said as he walked me out the door. “They’re nice people. My mom’s friendly.”

  “What do your parents do for work?” I asked.

  We headed to the car that Rocco had insisted on driving. Josh’s parents had insisted that my bodyguard join us for the meal, which was a first. Usually, he wouldn’t need to be in the room with me throughout dinner.

  “My mom’s a nurse over in Pennsylvania,” Josh said as he opened the back door for me. He was a gentleman at least. “And my father’s done a bunch of stuff. He’s been in construction, but now he’s a beekeeper and helps my brother out once in a while.”

  “That’s nice for him,” I said thoughtfully. I should have asked about his parents sooner, to know this stuff. “And is it just you and Cory?”

  “There are three of us. I have a sister you haven’t met, Anita. She lives in Delaware but she’s up at least once a month. She has a couple hilarious kids.”

  I got suddenly a little nervous as Josh leaned up to give Rocco directions that took us up the hill above town and back down a few side roads. It was already getting dark as we made our way up the hill. We passed by more cows than I’d seen before heading to Straubing every couple of days. Everything out here was rolling green hills and huge lakes that dirt roads were skating around the edge of pretty ponds. It was excruciatingly nice.

  “It’s pretty out here,” I said to Josh as we finally rounded to his family home. It was two stories, robin’s egg blue. Like everything in Homesburg, it wouldn’t have been out of place on a postcard. “You’re lucky to have grown up around here.”

  “It’s easy to forget,” Josh said, before directing Rocco to park under a tree near some other vehicles. “It’s always nice to come back to after being in New York for a while.”

  I smiled at him thinly.

  “You nervous?” Josh asked, amused when I hadn’t yet moved after Rocco had parked the car. “My parents are great. You could say nothing and my mom could just chatter to you all night and be perfectly happy.” He put a large hand on my shoulder comfortingly.

  I took a deep breath and nodded to Rocco where he was watching me through the rearview mirror. “All right, let’s go.”

  Before we even got to the front porch, we could hear music playing loudly and loud giggles. Josh rang the doorbell and smiled when the door opened almost immediately after.

  “Why hello!�
� The woman in the doorway had the same dark hair as Cory and Josh. She had friendly smile lines around her eyes and the clean, focused look of the nurses who took care of my father. “We thought you’d never make it.”

  She pulled Josh into a huge hug as though she hadn’t seen him in months.

  “I was running a little late,” Josh told her. He waved Rocco and me into the house. “Mom, this is my girlfriend Sofie and our friend, Rocco.”

  My clumsy smile warmed when Josh’s mom came to give me a big hug. I raised my eyebrows at him over her shoulder. He smiled back at me.

  “You can call me Grace. Sofie’s such a lovely name. Are you liking Homesburg so far?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I told her, feeling overwhelmed by the warmth in her question and her patience listening to my answer. “Josh gave me a historical tour.”

  “Huh, well who knew he was that interested in his old hometown, huh?” Grace asked. Then she turned and gave Rocco an equally warm hug. “I think you’re the tallest person I’ve ever seen. You remind me of that man on the show with the dragons. Do you watch it?”

  And with that, Grace walked Rocco back toward the kitchen chatting happily.

  “I told you my mom was great,” Josh said, fully smug when he smiled at me. “She and I are the most talkative, so if you ever need a break from answering questions, just find us.”

  “Okay,” I said, steeling myself to head back and meet even more Chases.

  Josh gave me a final encouraging smile before taking my hand to lead me to his family. His hand was just as warm as the rest of his body. I wished I didn’t feel immediately warmer and safer and better just at his touch. I was losing it from nerves.

  The house itself was cozy and lived in. It looked like one of those places where the same family had lived for a century. The furniture was warm and looked handmade, and I wondered if Cory or their dad knew how to make furniture.

  The kitchen was hopping with people. Cory raised a beer when he saw us in the corner, standing next to an older man who had to be their father. Josh introduced me to cousins, an uncle, and aunt from opposites sides of the family, and his dad, who gave me a very Cory-like nod. I recognized someone from the farmer’s market who smiled cheerfully when she saw us holding hands.

  “I thought you might be together, but I didn’t want to pry,” Jess told me when she saw me. “Do you guys want drinks?”

  “Definitely,” I said. My relief lessened when I saw we were getting the same light beers that Cory always had in the bar at the Lodge. I’d be drinking water for this trip, apparently.

  Grace was finishing up a roast, and an aunt was finishing up side dishes when Grace waved me over to the oven to chat. “I thought you and Josh might need a warning that I’ve officially taken this Thanksgiving off,” Grace told me. “Now this is just bad luck for you. I do a great job with dinner, but I figure I deserve a break after thirty years straight.”

  “You were serious with that, huh?” Josh asked over my shoulder as he watched his mother work. “So how does Anita feel about making the meal?”

  Grace shook a spoon at him at that. “You watch out, I’m trying to convince her to join me. It’s sexist, you all expecting the girls to always be cooking.”

  But she was smiling and so was Josh. It was a foreign concept to me that the two of them could so amiably argue about it.

  “Well, I think Cory and Dad will do a great job grilling the turkey,” Josh said.

  He was right if I wanted to just sit back and watch all I had to do was get between the two of them and listen in.

  “Yeah, Josh is a wonderful man, but he can’t cook a lick. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that, though,” Grace said conspiratorially.

  “We live in the city, Mom. Neither of us cooks,” Josh said from over my shoulder. “Groceries are expensive.”

  “Well, I guess you’re not alone in that there. But someone has to learn all my recipes someday,” Grace said with a focused seriousness. She wasn’t pinning that on me, which I was grateful for.

  I raised my eyebrows at Josh. He shook his head, and I laughed, still hanging onto my beer but not too invested in drinking it.

  Dinner was a rush of conversation hopping and getting to know people briefly. They sat me between Cory and Josh and whenever there was a lull in the conversation one or the other of them would start telling a funny story from when they were kids. Rocco was in deep conversation with some relatives about an upcoming movie series that involved amazing animals. We had big meals at my house growing up, with shareholders and board members and my father’s rich friends all the time. But it had been nothing like this cheery chaos.

  After dinner, Josh pulled me aside. “Wanna check out my childhood bedroom?” he asked casually. “I have some very cool posters. I’m sure you’ll be impressed, finally.”

  “Well, how can I turn that down?” I asked as I waved to Rocco, so he saw where we headed off to.

  I followed Josh up some claustrophobic stairs up to his old bedroom. There was an “Abandon Hope, Ye Who Enter Here” sign above the door.

  “You don’t strike me as a Dante’s Inferno type of guy,” I told him.

  Josh shrugged, amused at his younger self. “Oh, I thought I was very hardcore for a while.”

  He opened the bedroom to a perfect room, mainly blue. The bedspread was a rich, velvety blue, and the walls were a crisp periwinkle.

  “Our bedrooms are now guest rooms so I have to dig for the posters,” Josh said. He opened a closet and rummaging around for a long, thin box on the shelf. “I made these myself.”

  They were a series of posters of famous writers. The more masculine, the better. Hemingway, Bukowski, and even a glowering King. The drawings were decent.

  “I wanted inspiration for my great work,” Josh told me with a laugh.

  “Well, I am impressed,” I told him, sitting next to him to look over the posters. “But why did you draw them?”

  “I got in trouble for using too much ink on my dad’s printer. I could have all the paper I wanted though,” Josh said, eyeing a moody Poe.

  He was astoundingly unselfconscious about this collection of handmade posters. Which was a solid description of him. Josh walked around expecting the world to be his friend, for me to find these posters funny. And everything seemed to work out for him. I could hear his family chatting downstairs and in the warmth of this little house. I understood where he got it from.

  And like that, even though I was annoyed and a bit distrusting of him, some of that warmth returned for me. I could feel the line of his body through his jeans as it pressed against me. I was tracing his smile with my eyes when he caught me looking.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” he asked. One eyebrow cocked as though he could tell what I had been thinking about.

  “Way to steal my line,” I said, laughing and looking away. “I was thinking you’re missing a poster.”

  “Over one,” he said amiably. “But which are you thinking of?”

  I picked up one poster, holding it to the light in the room. “Well, you need a Joshua Chase poster.”

  Josh laughed at that. “I have to write something great first.”

  And if I was brave, I would have told him you will. Or you probably have. Or I would have leaned in and kissed him and let the world fade away again. But I’m not a brave person. So instead, I just basked in the warmth of his body heat and smiled while he told me all about his heroes and his dreams, and I tried to memorize this moment for later.

  JOSH

  “MY PARENTS WANT us to go to dinner with them this weekend,” I told Sofie in early September as we sat at the bar in the Lodge. As expected, my parents had loved Sofie. Which was definitely a problem that future Josh would have to deal with. Someday. But while I was still in a fake relationship with a billionaire, the relief that my family liking her was huge. At least I didn’t have to deal with a go-between on that.

  “I can’t believe they want to see us again so soon,” Sofie said. She bit
her lip. “I don’t know if I can this weekend, with my dad.” I had thought Sofie was paying me to be her boyfriend in front of her brothers. But so far, she had kept her distance when I didn’t force her into spending time with my parents. It was driving me a little batty to be making money and not really doing anything to earn it.

  If we were actually dating, or Sofie would admit we were friends even, this urge to cover her hand with mine would have made sense. As things stood, it was as strange an impulse as getting her name tattooed on my bicep would have been. I told myself I was experiencing normal empathy. “So are things getting better with Mark?” I asked. I’d settled on using his first name.

  Sofie glanced at me, weighing how much to say. Word still hadn’t gotten out that Mark Barlow, billionaire, was receiving cancer treatment. I was under a million NDAs and I should have been safe for her to tell. But she kept her cards close to her chest. “He’s been stable for a little while.”

  “You know, you can tell me about this. Actually, you should, because our contract depends on it,” I reminded her. That was most of my leverage in our relationship: her being mysterious and closed off and me trying to remind her intimacy wasn’t just standing near each other at family dinners.

  “I’ll get us drinks first,” Sofie said, standing gracefully and making her way to the bar.

  Cory had rustled up an honest to god bartender that he was paying. Joey was the cousin of the valedictorian my year in high school. He had polish, but he lacked my pizazz in the role, I thought.

  Other people were staying at the lodge with us now. I’d eked out drinks a couple times a week with Sofie. Not just because she was paying. But to build up camaraderie, and so I didn’t feel like I was such a fake when her brothers came back around over the weekends. I was jealous of the couples sitting around us who were staying for honeymoons and had their hands all over each other. I was equally jealous of the ones who sat side by side and had nothing to say after forty years. Everything with Sofie was secretive while trying to read her mind.

  Sofie came back with two drinks for the two of us. She made her way through the tables easily, and I spent too long admiring her making her way over to the table. I’d been regretting not telling her I knew her more and more each day. Even if I was sure that would have resulted in her never kissing me. I wanted to reach out and hold her small body against mine. But with her displeasure at my confession to her brothers, I was sure an article was the most I’d get. I knew I should just take what I could get, but I’ve never been very good at that.