The Billionaire Series Collection

by Lila Monroe

  “Kaaaaaate—”

  Unbe-fucking-lievable.

  The worst part was, I should have seen this coming. The clues had all been there. But no—when we first started dating, I was actually charmed by Stevie’s persistence! I’d been like, wow, this guy is willing to keep asking me out after I’d shot him down five times? Well, I’d better give him a chance! Wow, this guy Facebook-stalked me and called all my friends when he didn’t know where I was for three hours? What compassion and concern! Wow, this guy read through my diary until he found all the red flags I’d written down about our relationship, and then confronted me with them and accused me of emotional dishonesty? Well, I guess he really cares about our love!!!

  What a fucking joke.

  And that had been the theme of our relationship, my rose-colored glasses making every fault into a virtue.

  I’d thought his interest in my designs and my business meant that he recognized my artistic talent and supported my dreams—until I realized that he would have told me the sky was a brilliant russet red if he thought it’d make me go to bed with him.

  I’d thought his love of Shakespeare meant he was intelligent and sensitive—until I realized that his true love was making other people feel less intelligent by quoting the Bard at them until they shut up.

  I’d thought his possessive jealousy of other guys was cute and meant he really loved me—until he stormed into my job at Devlin Media Corp. accusing me of flirting with guys at the receptionist desk, and caused a huge scene that probably would have gotten me fired if my best friend Lacey weren’t helping run the company these days.

  Of course, no matter what Jekyll and Whiny Baby Hyde act Stevie was pulling these days, I could be counted on to behave myself like a mature and responsible adult.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snapped, barely managing to unload the boxes of lace onto the table before they tumbled out of my arms. Damn, where the hell was my Thai silk? My client was begging for satin, but if I could show her how much better the texture was—dammit all to hell, how could so much stuff be hiding in such a tiny apartment? “Stevie, it was a gift! You do understand the concept of a gift, right? When two people love each other very much, or when one person loves the other and the other one is under the influence of a haze of possessive anger that he thinks vaguely resembles love—”

  “God, Kate, if you could stop being condescending for two whole seconds—”

  “You don’t even like detective stories!” I exploded.

  And there was the heart of the matter. This was the thing that was really getting to me, at the heart of the whole petty ordeal: the knowledge that Stevie was trying to take away something he knew I loved, out of spite, just to hurt me.

  “Whereas detective stories are completely my jam! They are jam that is in my locked cupboard, with duct tape on the lid, with a big fat sign pasted over the label saying PROPERTY OF KATE! That is the extent to which the property rights to that jam reside with my person!”

  Stevie sighed as though I had dumped the weight of a couple of the bigger planets onto his shoulders. “Kate, you know I can’t understand you when you go into this crazy talk.”

  “Crazy talk?!” I stabbed a sewing needle into my dress form’s bust with vengeful satisfaction. Is this a knife I see before me? Fuck, but I was going to be mentally quoting Macbeth for awhile. If that didn’t mean Stevie owed me, I didn’t know what did. “Crazy talk is claiming ownership of that original edition of Graham’s Magazine with The Murders in Rue Morgue when you don’t read anything published after men stopped wearing ruffs!”

  “Look, I invested a lot of money in this relationship,” Stevie whined. Hard to believe I had once thought his pouting was adorable. Even harder to stomach that thought. “I just think I should get to recoup some of my losses—”

  “I’m a person, not a fucking small business loan!” I snapped right back at him. “And don’t try to act like you know anything about ‘recouping losses’ when you failed right out of Business 101 in undergrad. Unlike some of us.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot, you’re a complete maven,” Stevie hissed, starting to lose his cool. I was suddenly glad of the miles between us; he had a nasty temper. Not that he’d ever actually hit me, but sometimes the look in his eyes… “I’m amazed you even deign to talk to the lower classes, since your little hobby is taking off so well. Let me guess—you got three whole orders this month. Have Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet called you yet?”

  “Actually, I have a client coming over right now,” I said, turning to rummage around in my fabric basket in further quest of the Thai silk.

  I didn’t find it, but I did find some lovely Gros Pointe de Venice lace in a terre d’egypt color, and three boxes of gorgeous aquamarine dye that I’d lost sometime last year. But now, I saw, the dye was as expired as my love life had recently become. I chucked the boxes across the room with a huff.

  “So as intellectually stimulating as chatting with you always is, goodbye.”

  “I’m coming over—” he started firmly, and I jammed my hand down on the End Call button with enough satisfaction that if it had been money, I could have bought all the silk in Thailand with millions to spare.

  On second thought, I might have some plans for that blue dye.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Coming!”

  I did one last check in the mirror to make sure I’d erased all signs of my earlier rage and frustration from my face. My reflection looked back at me, unconvinced, long red curls framing a heart-shaped face and blue-green eyes. I forced a smile—there, that was better. No one wanted to buy things from a girl who looked like she might go on a homicidal spree with her sewing scissors.

  “Come on, girl,” I told myself. “Chin up. Tomorrow is another day.”

  At least my reflection couldn’t disagree with that.

  The doorbell trilled again, and once more immediately after that, impatient. That’s the downside of working with models: they think time travel’s already been invented. They totally do not comprehend a world that doesn’t respond to their whims, like, yesterday.

  I took one more nervous look around my apartment, suddenly worried, like I always was before my clients came in, that it all looked completely unprofessional. The silks, satins, and laces lay in wicker baskets arranged by country of origin, thickness, texture, and color. The curtains were drawn, hiding a view of my parking lot that was less than scenic—unless minor drug deals were your thing, in which case, yes, totally scenic, you would not believe how scenic this parking lot was. I had lit a pair of cheap lavender candles to try to cover up the burnt popcorn smell from upstairs, and I thought it was working. Well, mostly it seemed to be making it smell like burned lavender, but it was the thought that counted, right?

  I kicked a pair of dirty socks under the couch, peered through the peephole to make sure it wasn’t Stevie setting the record for Fastest Douchebag On Land, and let Dove Steele and her boyfriend in.

  I say ‘Dove Steele and her boyfriend,’ but it would probably be more accurate to say ‘whatever strange symbiotic organism Dove Steele and her new boyfriend had melded into, which interestingly enough didn’t seem to need to breathe.’

  “Hello, Kate,” Dove gasped around his lips, her hands sliding into the man’s very packed back pockets—not that I was looking—while his hands roamed her back, pushing up her long bleached blonde tresses as well as the translucent gauzy fabric of what could liberally be called a tank top, until I started to worry that all of us were going to be arrested for public indecency. “This is Asher. Asher Young.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” I said.

  Neither of them even looked at me as I held the door open. Someday I ought to figure out how to bottle and sell the invisibility field that models give off, obscuring all other women around them; now there would be a successful business venture. I bet the Department of Homeland Security would give me a mint.

  I mean, I might not be a supermodel, but I do have my high points. I�
��m not exactly the Wicked Witch of the West. Show me a guy who doesn’t like a tall redhead, and I’ll show you a guy who hasn’t met me yet. Lack of self-confidence in the looks department isn’t my thing: I save all my insecurities for my business.

  They’d barely made it through the door before they started groping each other again. These two were taking it beyond public displays of affection. This was a public display of…I don’t even know what. Probably something illegal.

  Not that I could entirely blame them. I mean, Dove was a supermodel, with all the slender limbs, blinding Colgate-white smile, and camera-ready hair that word implied. And this new man of hers…

  Well, hot damn.

  Jet black curls spilled across his forehead over cat-green eyes with lashes that a million girls would have killed for, and an honest-to-God chiseled jawline complemented the slope of his powerful shoulders. He was muscled but lithe, the sleeves of his T-shirt stretched tight, the hem of it lifting to reveal sculpted abs that were made for running your fingers down. His bronze skin dimpled in his right cheek when he smiled.

  And I believe I mentioned the state of his back pockets, hellooooo, yes I would like a side of that meat, ring it up and wrap it for delivery, please.

  Not that I was susceptible to such mind-numbing hotness.

  The model somehow managed to detach her mouth from Asher in a process only slightly less complicated than a NASA liftoff. “Kate, I’m so delighted we could finally make this work with your schedule!”

  “Yeah, the day job keeps me jumping,” I said, fetching the changing screen for her. “Thanks for being so understanding.”

  Asher reached out to help me with the heavy changing screen, holding it steady while I guided it into place.

  “Thanks.”

  “Not at all,” he said, flashing me a dazzling smile. He was looking at me as if I were the only woman in the world. That is, if I were the type to fall for that kind of thing. Which I wasn’t.

  I tore my gaze away from that searingly hot mouth as Dove squealed from the other side of the screen. “You liking so far?” I asked.

  And then I heard another gasp- this one from Asher.

  “Is that an original copy of Graham’s Magazine? With The Murders in Rue Morgue?” he whispered.

  There was awe in his voice as he lifted the magazine from my shelf, reverently handling it in its plastic archival sleeve. Holy shit. His cool demeanor had most definitely left the building, and I felt myself flush with pride as I started to answer him, but then Dove peeked over the top of the changing screen, light dancing in her eyes.

  “Oh my gosh. Her stuff is sooooo amazing, honeybun,” she gushed. “Most of the time you have to sacrifice comfort for sexiness, but Kate knows just what materials and cuts to use to keep that from happening. I can actually breathe when I wear her designs!”

  “As long as I can’t,” Asher said drolly, setting the magazine back on the shelf, and Dove giggled as she ducked her head back down. I felt my back rankle, and tried to tell myself I was being irrational. Of course he was going to flirt with his girlfriend. That was what his girlfriend was for. The way he had looked at me before was just…chivalry, or something. And of course he’d been impressed by the original copy of Graham’s; who wouldn’t be?

  I glanced over just in time to see his tongue steal out for a second to lick his lips—and then our eyes met and I momentarily forgot how to breathe.

  Wow, Katie. Calm your rockets. You’re reading way too much into this. You’re reading so much into this it could be a Russian novel.

  I cleared my throat. “So you’re still going with just two teddies and a brassiere?” I asked Dove, only partly to clarify the order, mostly to clear my head. “Can I persuade you to kick it old school with a peignoir?”

  “I don’t know…” Dove dithered. She peeped over the top of the changing screen again. “Honey, what do you think?”

  “What’s the difference?” he said dismissively, shrugging. “As long as they’re sheer and short, they’re basically the same thing.” Ah, there it was. The typical too-hot-for-his-own-good male personality in its natural state.

  I felt a twinge of disappoint. Damn, but it had been too much to think a guy existed who was hot and also not an asshole.

  Adding insult to injury, my body apparently didn’t care that this guy was a jerk, or that he had a girlfriend. It was too busy noticing how the muscles in his shoulders rippled when he shrugged, and sending memos to all the blood in my body to hop the fast lane to my pussy.

  I sternly reminded myself that it shouldn’t matter to me whether his manners were straight off the Jersey Shore or if he was a perfect gentleman—he was Dove’s problem, not mine. I snapped the measuring tape with a little more vehemence than was strictly necessary—other than for my mental health, for which it was crucial—and retreated behind the screen, starting in on the important work of making sure that Dove hadn’t shed too many pounds since her last photoshoot to fit into her previous measurements. You can’t be too careful with models.

  I had barely finished wrapping the tape around her hips when on the other side of the screen, Asher let out an anguished sigh, as if he had been exiled from his home country for his entire life. “Surely this whole screen thing isn’t necessary?” he purred smoothly. He had a voice like molten chocolate. “I assure you, I have seen Dove naked before.”

  Dove giggled like this was the wittiest thing she had ever heard, and I ground my teeth and told myself I was annoyed because he was disrupting the fitting.

  It definitely wasn’t because I was jealous or anything.

  You know, I was probably just extra on edge because of that whole thing with Stevie. It had set my Asshole Detector on high alert, and was now pinging even trace amounts of douchebaggery in the atmosphere.

  But hey, look on the bright side! I reminded myself. Sure, your life is going to be hell until a Christmas miracle gives Stevie the ability to empathize with other humans and stop being a dickwad to you, but in the meantime, you can blame him for everything! Hair-trigger temper? Stevie! Inability to trust men? Stevie! Global warming? Probably Stevie! Especially since he’s always leaving the fridge open. Jerk.

  “Good lingerie is as much about strategic concealing as revealing,” I said, belatedly answering Asher’s query. “It shouldn’t matter if a team of scientists has had a woman under a microscope—a well-crafted piece should cultivate an aura of feminine mystique. She’ll feel empowered, like she knows things you don’t know, and empowered equals sensual. So no, you may not peek behind the curtain of Oz the Great and Sexy Designer.”

  I heard a deep, throaty laugh, and I started revising my opinion of him back upwards—I make it my policy to get along well with all hot, muscular men with nice hair who laugh at my jokes—but then his reply derailed that faster than a log on a railroad track: “Really, though, how many way can you string minuscule bits of lace and silk across a body?”

  I bit my tongue to keep from launching myself into a history of lingerie starting with Lady Duff-Gordon of Lucile, founder of the concept, and ending with Kate Jameson, revolutionary designer extraordinaire just waiting to be discovered, made famous, and showered with accolades. “You’d be surprised.”

  I could hear the grin in his reply. “I can’t wait for you to surprise me.”

  And oh, didn’t that set off a few dirty films in the theatre of my mind.

  As I continued my measurements, and answered Dove’s questions with slightly distracted answers, half my attention was still taken by the sounds of Asher moving around outside the changing screen.

  What was he doing? I really, really hoped I had cleaned up the room good enough. If another stray sock or pair of mass-market panties or dog-eared romance novel happened to fall out from behind the cushions when he prodded them, I might have to kill him and hide the body. And in addition to the crime against hotness that his death would be, I think we’ve already established that I’m potentially on the hook for one murder. Real-life detectives
may not all be Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes, but even they can usually spot a pattern.

  A rustling sound. “Ah, this looks familiar. Was it on sale at the local craft store?”

  The direction his voice came from made me realize what he was touching, and my blood boiled like a pot left on the stove by a harried executive.

  “Not unless Michaels has taken to selling spider-silk gossamer, and if you get any dirt on that, I will be charging,” I snapped, throwing the concept of diplomacy right out of the window. Diplomacy? What’s that? Never heard of it. “I had to buy that in bulk and it cost an arm and a leg, so if you could not grub around in things you don’t understand—”

  “I assure you, my hands are very clean,” Asher smirked. “If you’d like to inspect them…”

  Unbelievable. He was blatantly flirting with me now, even as I was fitting his girlfriend for lingerie. And what’s worse, it was making me blush. I never blush. I have a strict no-blushing policy that I instituted in seventh grade and never looked back. Oh damn, it was spreading down my chest, my skin flushing hot beneath my clothing as my nipples hardened.

  “Just keep them out of the materials,” I shot back, pleased to note that my voice was firm but no longer in danger of being mistaken for a harpy’s. The customer is always right, even when you could cheerfully contemplate kicking them out of a window. Or at least chaining them to a bed until they’ve learned a lesson. Thoroughly.

  Asher seemingly complied—at least, I couldn’t hear him moving around anymore—but kept talking, sounding interested. “Bulk, huh? You see enough demand for that particular material to make it worth the investment?”

  * * *

  “Long-term, yes,” I said around the pins I was holding in my mouth as adjusted the fit of the violet silk teddy. I felt my shoulders relax—I so rarely got the opportunity to talk shop, and it was nice for someone to be taking an interest. “It’s versatile, and laying in a good supply will keep me from having to run after manufacturers to meet client deadlines. If I’m not constantly extending deadlines, clients will be more satisfied and more likely to recommend me to their friends.”