The Billionaire's Favorite: A Homesburg Romance

by Elle Chance

  “Cheers,” Sofie said as she set a glass in front of me. She took a long, fortifying sip of what turned out to be double whiskey ginger ales. “My father is stable but they’re not sure for how long. It’s a few weeks out before we find out how the treatment is working. Apparently, he pays the orderlies a grand for trying and two grand if they don’t get caught.”

  I laughed happily at the image of Mark smoking a Stogie outside the nursing home. “How many people have gotten the two grand?”

  Sofie sighed. “He’s sworn them to secrecy, so we may never know.”

  Her sour expression just made me laugh more. “Well, he’s definitely getting to most out of his money.”

  Sofie nodded. “He said that this has been the best money he’s ever spent. He has a roll of hundreds he keeps somewhere in the room. Like it’s the end of the world and gold is the only currency.”

  “So he’s becoming Scrooge McDuck.”

  Sofie gave me a puzzled look.

  Incredible. “Did you guys not have cartoons? He was the cartoon duck who was swimming in gold.” I helpfully mimed a doggy paddle that made Sofie crack a grin.

  “Yeah, I think I’ve seen that before.” She rolled her eyes. “You don’t exactly want your dad to be a cartoon character when he’s sick though.”

  I thought back to a couple memorable stories I knew from Mark Barlow. There were a couple years when he’d raised sunken ships for treasure, never bothered when there was none on board the ships. Mark Barlow had long ago leaned into eccentricity. I figured she was paying me enough to keep that to myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just sounds like it’s a fun diversion.”

  “Well, I don’t really want him to put on a show. He can get up to shenanigans with the staff all he wants, but I just want him to not do things that are worse for his health,” Sofie grumbled as she took another swig of her drink. The optimism was sweet. “But he looks tired.” Her grey eyes lit onto me, going from an unfocused cloudy look to the sharp steel I was used to. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling.”

  I shook my head. “It’s all good. The least I can be is your confidant.”

  “How do you I know you’re a good confidant?” Sofie asked.

  My heart flip-flopped more than it should have. I told myself it was because of the Mark Barlow cancer story that would launch me to stardom or something. But really, I wanted to bridge this distance between Sofie and me that I’d caused.

  “Well, you didn’t realize I knew you the first week we knew each other,” I pointed out. Sofie’s eyes sparked dangerously at that — still too soon. “And you said you don’t care about sports games so I haven’t been telling you about all my last freelance gigs.”

  Sofie hummed as she considered that. “I think you know far too much about me already,” she said, but lightly.

  “I know that you’re afraid of cows from last week,” I pointed out. Sofie had kept mentioning them as we headed to my parents’ house, and finally, she admitted she’d never seen one up close. Which is absurd because cows are friendly. So we’d pulled over, and she’d fed them some clovers from the roadside. “You said they had the sweetest eyes you’d ever seen.”

  “Yes, and they’re still enormous,” Sofie said, gesturing with a hand. “It’s okay when they’re on the other side of a fence.”

  I knew I shouldn’t laugh at my boss, but it was a weak argument. And I’m not a perfect man. “Well, I’m sure it could bring the Barlow Foundation to their knees if your weakness got out.”

  Sofie shook her head. “Nah, people like when you give them money. Like, more than you already think they do. Besides, I and the foundation exist to bring honor to the Barlow name. My brothers can do whatever they want and my father just wants me to redeem the family name.”

  “I guess there are worse things you could do,” I said thoughtfully. I’d never heard her speak ill of her job or her father in the slightest. And with her brothers, it was usually an absence of warmth instead of outright annoyance.

  Sofie’s smile was brittle. “It’d be fine if my brothers weren’t forever making things worse. The company just isn’t what my father built.”

  Sofie was still holding so much back all I could offer were fortune cookie niceties. It felt like I was having a conversation in the dark. I fished for something noncommital to say. “Times have changed, right?”

  “Right,” Sofie said. She brought her attention back to me. “We should bond, right?”

  “That sounds great to me.” We were fine at my parents’ house with the chaos of my cousins and Cory there to cover for me. I wasn’t as confident we’d be able to convince her brothers or her father of our relationship. “I think there’s a deck of cards floating around.”

  It only took a minute to find them, and then Sofie showed off a couple impressive shuffles. “I was into magic tricks when I was a kid.”

  “Oh yeah? Have anything to show me?”

  I was hoping for a terrible kid trick, but Sofie shook her head. “I only got as far as the shuffles,” she admitted with a shy laugh. “So what games do we both know? Poker? I feel bad because I’ll have an advantage.”

  “What advantage?” I asked, miffed as she started dealing cards to us both.

  “I’m good at hiding my thoughts. You aren’t,” Sofie said, making a wide smile and looking around the room in amazement. “I’m Josh and the entire world wants to be my friend.”

  “Good to know what you really think of me,” I told her sourly. It wasn’t a terrible impression, truth be told. But it was annoying to think I walked around like a hopeful idiot. “Let’s play something else then. Rummy?”

  Sofie shook her head. “The table’s too small, right? War?”

  “War it is,” I said, impressed as she quickly split the deck in two between the two of us. “Do you have any special rules you play with?”

  “No, are there special rules for War?” Sofie asked with a laugh.

  “There are house rules for everything,” I told her. We collected our cards. “But before we start, what are we playing for?”

  Sofie tapped her chin thoughtfully, looking around the bar. “Next round of drinks?”

  “Boring,” I said with a shake of my head. “If I win, you let my dad teach you how to shoot a shotgun.”

  Sofie laughed. “Why are you both so into that?” She’d refused the last couple of dinners when my father had offered.

  “It’s fun the first time. And you’re just shooting bottles, trust me. What if you win?”

  Sofie squinted as she thought about what she’d like to have. “I wanna say you have to come with me this weekend, but that’s too heavy for a card game. If I win, you never mention that shotgun ever again. And you buy the next round.”

  I reached out to shake her hand, ignoring the spark that went through me at the feeling of her soft palm against mine. “The stakes are high, but I accept.”

  Sofie laughed, and our conversation quickly turned to yelps from her and objections from me. It took way longer than we wanted, and folks weren’t eager to sit next to us, but Sofie proved a worthy opponent. She eventually reigned supreme, viciously taking my last ace with a grin.

  “I win!” Sofie said, tossing our last challenge into her deck victoriously. “I never have to learn how to shoot a shotgun.”

  “Well, that wasn’t the deal. My dad will definitely keep asking,” I said, leaning back into my chair. As annoying as her victory was, it was almost worth it to see the happy flush on her cheeks. “He can be very persuasive. He’ll use puppy dog eyes on you.”

  “I’d wondered where you got that from,” Sofie said with a sly smile to me. “Now what should my victory drink be?”

  “If you say triple jack and ginger, I’m officially not speaking with you,” I told her. “And so you know, I would go with you to visit your father anytime, card game or not.” I was still smiling because apparently, that’s all I did, but I wanted her to know I meant it.

  Sofie didn’t immediately ask
me to join her that weekend. But from what little I could read, she’d at least think about it. And that was as close to a victory as I thought I’d get.

  SOFIE

  IT FELT WEIRD to have Josh go with me to see my dad. I was still ready to ask him not to come that Saturday, even though we’d planned on it. Lou and Tom had gotten a helicopter straight from the city to the hospital.

  The press would have a field day if I flaunted my wealth like that. When my brothers did, it was just something business magnates had to do.

  I was sure Tom and Lou would spend as much of the trip there interrogating him as they could. My father would be over the moon to find out that Josh was a thirty-something who still worked for a gossip magazine. If he found out that Josh wrote tweets for a living, I doubted my dad would leave me in charge of the Foundation. It was a foolish idea to bring him. An oversight.

  And yet, my time with Josh was my favorite. And I was still doing charity work, which I’d told myself was my one true love after my last relationship. But I was still happy in Homesburg. Happy where my father had come for the end of my life. Happy in a little town seeing the same people buying groceries often enough that I was learning their names. Happy playing a card game down in a bar at night.

  And I couldn’t trust it. Because I’d gotten angry when Josh had gone along with calling me, Cleo. And because now I was paying him to be with me.

  And worse, I saw that Josh would do anything for anyone. He was forever running errands for people at the Lodge, helping at the bar, and getting pulled into repairs with Cory. Josh probably would have been willing to pretend to be my boyfriend for free. And judging by how he looked at me when he told me he’d come with me to see my father, he hadn’t been lying.

  He might do all this just to write the story of my father being sick, but I couldn’t believe that was true when I thought about it.

  Josh wanted to come with me because he was a good guy. And I wanted him to come for reasons that changed by the minute: for the money only, to screw me over, to get to screw me… Each option brought on a fury of emotion from me. And I couldn’t tell which one would be the most troublesome, cause the most trouble and end me up with my name smeared to the press.

  I was half hoping he’d ignore that I told him to come in a suit jacket and good pants. But as I headed downstairs in a grey dress and my tallest heels, I saw Josh in the Lobby looking fit to be on my arm. A tight-fitting suit that showed off his muscular body, his hair precisely brushed, and the beard he’d been growing shaved off. He could be any of my exes waiting to accompany me to a banquet in a suit like that.

  But Josh’s eyes lit up more than my exes ever had. Even when they were thrilled to have bagged the Barlow girl. And I figured it wasn’t because of my boring grey dress or even the makeup I carefully applied every day. He wasn’t smiling today, maybe out of respect for the situation.

  And like this was a teen movie, I walked down the stairs like I was floating on a cloud, and I knew what the warmth in my chest meant. I was, dangerously, starting really trust Josh. And I figured even my dad wouldn’t be able to scare him away from me.

  “Hey, you look lovely. Very serious,” Josh said as I walked to him in the lobby. He wrapped me in one of those hugs that were slowly wearing down all my walls and prickliness. He’d even put on a little cologne for the day, which made me happy and sad at once. “Thanks for asking me to come,” he murmured into my hair.

  “Thanks for being willing to,” I said, reluctantly pulling away from his arms. “Shall we?”

  I was grateful to just sit in the back of the car while Patty and Rocco chatted together in the front seats.

  “Anything special I should know?” Josh asked towards the end of the ride. “Etiquette or something?”

  I thought it over. “My father’s not able to walk right now. And he’s pretty pissed about it, so don’t give him fodder. Just don’t give him too much fodder,” I told Josh.

  He nodded, his brown eyes dark and serious as he took that in. “Maybe I should ask, but is it always so hard to see him? You go a few times throughout the week I know.”

  “When all the Barlows get together, it’s like a very long game of chess. And all the chess pieces are your insecurities.” I tried to smile, but I was sure it came out more like a grimace. “But they know little about you. You’re lucky and keep it that way.”

  “That’s the third time you’ve warned me that, you know,” Josh said as Rocco pulled us into the parking center. “This looks nice.”

  Straubing Medical Center was the same squat, brick type of building I was familiar with from the city. It was probably the cheapest place my father had lived in decades, even with his private suite. As cheery as it was and as kind as the workers were, it still had the cool sterility of a hospital.

  “Yeah, you can tell they thought about it,” I said.

  “All right, we ready?” Patty asked as she turned to look at us. There was usually a long pause for me to gather my energy to go inside.

  “Yes,” I said, steeling myself to head inside.

  Lou and Tom were already outside of our father’s suite. He was on a residential floor and wheeled to oncology for treatment.

  Josh took my hand when he saw Lou and Tom, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

  “Running late today?” Tom asked.

  Like he and Lou didn’t skip half the dates they agreed to come down to see our father.

  “Traffic,” Josh said mildly. “How was your trip?”

  Tom avoided talking to Josh, likely because Josh didn’t mind taking conversations on long detours. Like this one. Josh was still asking about details of the helicopter trip when we were waved in by Cheryl, my father’s cheerful nurse.

  “He’s having a good day, though we have him in a wheelchair,” Cheryl said, her round face warm and red even though it was cool outside and in the suite. She always made my father’s progressions sound expected, which I guess they were. “He got caught smoking again this week, and he could get kicked out so try to dissuade him from doing that. The latest round of treatment is taking it out of him, so he may be a little tired today.”

  Lou laughed at that. My father was donating bucket loads to Straubing now and after his death, so that wasn’t a threat they were likely to follow through on.

  Cheryl didn’t respond to Lou, as she usually didn’t to my brother. “I’m just going to go visit with other folks on the floor, but I’ll check in soon.”

  “Thank you, Cheryl. We’re so grateful for you,” I said. And it was true, without her I would feel far more at sea than I already did.

  Cheryl bustled off, leaving us to take off our coats and get ready to see our father.

  My father looked less like the square-jawed, wavy-haired man on business magazine covers. He looked like he’d shrank, and his hair had thinned. Instead of the impeccable suits he’d worn through my youth, he wore a lot of comfortable pajamas. He was still causing trouble sure. But if he was well, the hospital would have a lot more trouble than him smoking cigars on-premise.

  And it was weird to wish he was getting up to worse things, sure, but I was looking forward to when he was better and able to get himself kicked out of treatment on his own.

  “Hello, Father,” Lou said, crossing to where he sat by the window. “How are you feeling?”

  “The same as I felt on Thursday when your sister was here,” my father said coolly.

  Josh raised his eyebrows at me. He was in trouble if he thought that was noteworthy. I just shrugged.

  “Well, I know you wouldn’t want us to let the business falter,” Lou said, awkward as always. You’d think my brothers would have thicker skin to be running a business, and you’d be wrong.

  “Right,” my father said. “Heaven forbid. And who are you?” he asked Josh.

  “I’m here to support Sofie,” Josh said.

  “She can’t get through a visit on her own? She already has an assistant and a bodyguard. She needs more help now?” my father asked. />
  And I steeled myself. “Dad, this is Josh. We’ve been dating for a while now.”

  Josh put an arm around me at that, pulling himself in a little closer than me. And presenting a slightly smaller physical target to my father. Not that I foresaw that helping.

  “You didn’t mention you had a boyfriend,” my father said, looking delighted at this development.

  “Oh, they’re quite passionate about each other,” Tom said with a sneer.

  “Well, it’s a great sign she’s never mentioned you to me,” my father told Josh generously. “She’s been very shy with her partners since I scared off a real estate magnate a few years ago.”

  “I was twenty,” I said, rising to my own defense. “And he’s happily married, so maybe he wasn’t after my money.”

  “How about you, are you after my daughter’s money?” my father asked Josh.

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt,” Josh said, and I wanted to strangle him. “But she didn’t tell me about it at first.”

  “Another fantastic sign.” My father wheeled over to take another closer look at Josh.

  “Yeah, I thought it was a death knell myself. But love conquers all and stuff,” Josh said. He had the same mild tone as usual, but his arm was tightening around me.

  “So what do you do? Real estate, I hope?”

  Josh let out a chuckle. “I mostly write tweets. Freelance sir.”

  My father cheered up immensely at that.

  But before he could dig in, Josh cut him off.

  “Sir, I’ll cut right to the chase. I’m really more of a trophy wife type, so you can dig at me as much as you want. It just may not be worth it.”