The Brazen Billionaire

by Elana Johnson

  Jasper moved, breaking the second tender moment between them, and ordered his Spam rolls and a side of sticky rice. “I think she wants the jumbo shrimp.” He looked at Sasha, who had concealed her softer side in a matter of seconds.

  “I do,” she confirmed. “And the angus sliders with the Chinese slaw.”

  “Drinks?”

  “Yeah.” They both ordered a drink, and Jasper paid and took the number with him as he maneuvered toward the side door.

  “Is outside okay?” he asked. “They have these big heaters.”

  “Sure.” Sasha kept her hand in his as he led the way, and he wondered if he should just let the family issue drop. But it gnawed at him in the few minutes it took to get their table, fill their drinks, and get settled.

  She looked down the street away from him, and he employed a bit of bravery. “So you don’t have to tell me about your family if you don’t want to,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was a sore subject.”

  Though now that he thought about it, why couldn't she call her mom or dad to help at The Straw in a pinch? Or with her unexpected finances? He really needed to give more thought to his questions before he asked them. But his family could’ve been a huge mess, and she’d asked.

  “It’s okay.” She brought her gaze back to his and covered his hand with her other one. “My brother died when he was fourteen. He had leukemia.” She nodded several times, little bursts of her head. “His name was Brian, and I started The Straw when I was only seventeen as a fundraiser for his treatments. I have a drink dedicated to him that I still donate all the proceeds to charity.”

  She released his hands and lifted her soda to her lips with slightly shaky fingers.

  “Sasha.” He liked saying her name, especially so quietly and with so much emotion. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  She blew out her breath. “Let’s see. I’m thirty-two now. He would’ve been twenty-seven in a few months.” She put a smile on her face, but Jasper could tell it wasn’t easy. “So he died thirteen years ago. My parents sold our house and moved over to Maui. It’s quieter there, and they didn’t have to face their neighbors or anything.”

  “And you stayed here and kept The Straw.”

  Challenge entered her expression. “I love my drink stand.”

  “I can tell. I didn’t mean anything by it. I think it’s great what you’re doing, donating some money to charity.” He grinned at her in what he hoped was a placating and passive way. Before he could say anything else, their food came, and he watched her face light up with the addition of steak and seafood.

  “So I want to try a roll,” she said, offering him one of her shrimp. “A trade?”

  He pushed his plate toward her. “Take all you want.” He had a feeling he’d give Sasha Redding whatever she wanted, and the thought both thrilled and terrified him. They got the food they wanted, and she bit into the Spam roll without any hesitation, the act somehow increasing Jasper’s attraction to her.

  “Mm.” She nodded as she chewed and swallowed. “That is good.” She finished off the roll in a second bite, and he couldn’t tear his eyes from her mouth.

  Finally getting control of himself—it had been too long since he’d been on a date with a beautiful woman—he glanced down at his plate and picked up the shrimp she’d given him. The bite was crunchy and salty, with that beautiful savory shrimp flavor and he finished the jumbo delicacy before saying, “Yeah, I see why you like those.”

  “Right?” She practically beamed at him as she took a bite of her own shrimp.

  “So what’s your drink called?” he asked. “The one you named after your brother.”

  “The Cancer Killer,” she said. “I was hoping it would be inspirational and all that, but….” She shrugged, a twinge of sadness entering her eyes again. “But it’s got blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, goji berries, and oranges, so it really does have those cancer-fighting ingredients.”

  Jasper couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a berry or an orange, but he kept that fact to himself. “I’d like to try it.”

  “Come on by anytime,” she said. “In the winter, we’re never that busy.” Her face fell, and Jasper wondered if her finances were always strained, not just recently. He wasn’t going to ask that, though. He had enough tact to keep his mouth shut.

  “What about tonight?” he asked.

  “Tonight?” Her eyes flew to his.

  “After this. We can grab a drink and walk on the beach.” It sounded romantic to him, but as the panic mounted in her eyes, she obviously didn’t think so.

  “Okay,” she said at the same time he said, “We don’t have to,” with a shrug. He filled his mouth with an entire Spam roll, hoping to give her time to come back to her normal. He didn’t like the wariness in her eyes, or the way she’d stiffened and still hadn’t relaxed.

  It took her two shrimp to release the tension, and he was dying to know why talking about something she loved—somewhere she spent twelve hours a day—made her so on-edge.

  So he did.

  “You’re a brazen thing, aren’t you?” Her eyes turned dark, but it wasn’t all from displeasure. Her coy smirk made his internal temperature rise, and he could only shrug.

  “You’ve seen where I work,” he said.

  “It’s totally different.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I just didn’t know we’d be going there tonight.”

  “I can come by tomorrow then. I mean, it’s a public beach and you do want to serve drinks, right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s just….” She heaved out a sigh and pushed the last slider toward the middle of her plate. “My stand isn’t as nice as Two Coconuts. I mean, my drinks are way better, but Mo has a better location and a nicer stand.”

  “So what? You think I’m going to judge you?”

  She nodded, her eyes half dangerous and half dancing with flirtation. “That’s exactly what I think.”

  “What have I done to make you think that?”

  She offered him the slider, and he indicated she should put it on his plate. “Oh, maybe because you’re a freaking billionaire and well, I’m not.”

  “That sounds like a personal issue,” he said, picking up the slider. “That has nothing to do with your stand.” He took a bite of the slider, the juicy meat and garlic exploding in his mouth. “This is fantastic.” He put the other half in his mouth and watched her. After swallowing, he said, “And I don’t care how much money you have, or what your stand looks like, to be perfectly brazen, as you said.”

  That life that she’d somehow ignited blazed in him until she nodded.

  “All right.” He wiped his hands and mouth and tossed his napkin on the table. “I’m so thirsty. I really want one of those smoothies from The Straw.” He stood and offered her his hand.

  Sasha rolled her eyes and stood up too. “You don’t have to yell it.”

  “They’re so good,” he practically bellowed, definitely drawing some attention from the other diners nearby.

  She slipped her hand into his with a giggle, and Jasper felt content for the first time in years.

  They arrived at The Straw a few minutes later, her nerves bleeding into the tiny sports car. Jasper got out and surveyed the beach, the stand, and the few tables around it. “This is great,” he said.

  “Two Coconuts does better,” she said. “Because of that new hotel.”

  Jasper could definitely see that as being true. “Well, that’s easy to fix,” he said, glancing toward the other bay where he could definitely see the top of Sweet Breeze all lit up. “You just go talk to Fisher DuPont and ask him to feature your stand in his hotel.” When he looked at Sasha again, she made a terrible scoffing noise and stomped away. Well, as stompy as she could get in sand.

  “What?” he asked the empty beachwalk aro
und him. He joined her in line at her own drink stand, not quite sure what he’d done wrong. Awkward silence reigned between them, but he’d been brazen enough for one night. If she wanted to talk, she’d have to start the conversation.

  Chapter Nine

  Sasha clenched her arms around her middle, trying to keep her emotions dormant. But they swirled inside her like a whirlpool, becoming more violent the longer she stayed silent.

  She did not need the advice of a freaking billionaire. He had no idea what running The Straw was like—he’d never even been to her drink stand before. He probably didn’t even know what it was like to live in a house smaller than ten thousand square feet.

  The storm brewed, billowed, grew, groaned inside her.

  “Look,” he said, and that broke her composure.

  “No, you look.” She turned toward him, very aware that she stood only a few feet away from her employees, and only a few inches away from other people. She grabbed onto his forearm and towed him further down the beach. They left behind the lights of The Straw until only moonlight fell over them.

  Sasha felt sure she’d explode at any moment. “I don’t need your advice.”

  “I wasn’t giving you any advice.” Jasper cinched his own arms across his chest, and darn him, it only made him seem bigger, more muscular, more impressive. “I casually mentioned you might want to talk to Fisher. I’m friends with him, you know.”

  “Oh, of course you are,” she bit out sarcastically. “You and your billionaire best friends. What? Do you have a club or something?”

  He blinked and in that single moment, she knew she’d hit the nail on the head. She sucked in a breath and covered her mouth. With wide eyes, she lowered her hand and said, “You do, don’t you?”

  Jasper gazed back at her coolly, his voice as equally unemotional when he said, “We’re friends. We talk about business. It’s not a club.”

  Oh, but it was. And Sasha would bet everything she’d ever made on her brother’s drink sales that they had dinners and maybe even corporate retreats or something equally as fancy. Some of her anger ebbed away into the night, and this time when she crossed her arms, it was to keep the chill off her skin.

  “Look,” she said, this time with an accompanying sigh. “I….” Did she want to tell him this? Ninety percent of her did. The other ten percent was shrieking a warning about getting involved with another nosy, rich man.

  He’s not like Newton, she told that ten percent and it quieted.

  “You’ve said ‘look’ twice now,” he said, softening right before her eyes. She liked this vulnerable side of him, the way he relaxed and let his emotions show in his eyes. Under the moonlight, they were still hard to read, especially as they raced across his face. “I don’t want to fight with you. I just wanted to get a drink, hold your hand, talk about our lives.”

  Sasha heard the words he used, but she interpreted them a bit different. He wanted to share his life with her. The concept wasn’t all that new to Sasha, but everyone besides her girlfriends in the Women’s Beach Club seemed to have an agenda, like simply being her friend wasn’t enough.

  “I want that too.” She bravely reached out and put her hand in his. “I may have overreacted.”

  “Why’s that?” He strolled with her back to The Straw, which had a longer line now. Sasha wanted to be annoyed about that, but she simply couldn’t be.

  “My last boyfriend—the one who stole my money and went to Spain?—he had endless amounts of advice for me. Everything from what color the stand should be, to how big the drinks should be, to specials I should run.”

  “Mm.”

  Sasha appreciated that Jasper didn’t rush to defend himself again, that he was willing to listen to her until she was finished. She wasn’t sure when that had happened last. Her friends in the Beach Club were great, of course. But sometimes she felt overshadowed, or like she wasn’t really being heard. The bets were an indication of that, and a prick of guilt that she’d done them and taken her friends’ money stung her heart.

  “Anyway.” She shook away the feelings. Jasper didn’t need to know about the bets, at least not right now. “I took some of his advice—all of it, actually. And a lot of it was bad, and I started losing money. I…stopped listening to my gut and my heart, and I’m still trying to rebuild from that.”

  And not just The Straw, she wanted to add, but the way Jasper’s hand tightened on hers said he understood that her rebuilding process was about more than just her drink stand.

  “Is that why you’ve had some unexpected expenses lately?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She stepped forward when it was their turn and smiled at Macey, who was handing a drink to another customer. “Hey, Mace. Two of Brian’s Cancer Killers, large.” She glanced at the woman taking the orders—the person Jasper had brought in.

  “This is Lexie,” he said. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  The brunette beamed at Sasha like there was nowhere she’d rather be than taking orders and making change on a Friday night. “Nice to meet you. I see why Jasper was so desperate to go out with you tonight.” She threw him a knowing grin, and he made a motion for her to shut up!

  Sasha laughed, the sound of joy coming unexpectedly.

  “Glad you think she’s funny,” he murmured in her ear, his lips so close, so close. She froze, the laughter dying in her throat.

  “I assume there’ll be no charge for the drinks?” Lexie asked.

  “Oh, I’m paying.” In one fluid motion, he withdrew his wallet from his back pocket. “How much?”

  “Nine fifty-seven,” Lexi said. She hadn’t used the calculator on the counter. Or even looked away from Sasha yet. She seemed nice, like she enjoyed teasing Jasper, and that she knew him much better than Sasha did.

  Jasper handed over a hundred dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”

  Sasha started to protest, but his hand swept along her waist and pulled her close. “It’s for charity, right?”

  She nodded and said, “Right,” but she wasn’t sure if he meant for Brian’s cancer research charity—or if Sasha herself was the charity case.

  The next morning, Sasha finally got to sleep in. Jasper didn’t require cleaning on the weekend, and she still hadn’t said if she’d go to his theater party or not. They’d talked about a lot of things last night as they strolled through the sand, and Sasha wondered if she’d dreamed the whole date.

  The empty cup with the dark purple dregs in it from Brian’s Cancer Killer testified that she hadn’t. So did the four texts waiting on her phone. All from Jasper, they wanted to know when he could see her again in some form or another without coming right out and saying it.

  She smiled, a giggle slipping through her lips as she relaxed against the pillow again, the sunlight coming through the slats in the blinds.

  So you’re asking me out again, is that it? Date number three?

  His response came in seconds. Yes. When?

  She didn’t mind that he was forward; she liked feeling like he was desperate to see her again. While she’d thought a lot about kissing him last night, the right moment hadn’t presented itself. Even when he’d walked her to the door, something rippling between them that felt like electricity, the mood was still a bit awkward.

  And while he was brazen and bold, he also had a vulnerable and hesitant side she really enjoyed. She’d swept her lips across his cheek and tiptoed through the door, closing it solidly behind her and drifting around the house until she made it to bed.

  Is the “party” still happening tonight? She hoped it was, and that he hadn’t invited anyone else.

  Unfortunately, that has to be canceled. I have some family business I need to do tonight.

  Her spirits fell, but Sasha understood family. She should probably go see her parents this weekend, and a plan to do exactly that formed in her mind as she thought about when she might be able to see Jasper again.

  They both worked a lot in the evenings, and she didn’t have a replacement. She didn’t
think his friend would want to fill in on a permanent basis, and Sasha wouldn’t ask her to anyway.

  I like to hike, she told him. Maybe we could get away next weekend again? Do some hikes to waterfalls over at Oahu?

  She hadn’t had time for hiking since Newt had taken Amber and left her high and dry to find and train new employees. Not to mention how she was still digging herself out of debt.

  I can tolerate hiking, came Jasper’s reply.

  If you’d rather do something else, I’m all ears.

  Several seconds passed while she fantasized about what he might say. He probably owned a yacht as big as the bay. Or a jet. Maybe he’d whisk her off to Paris for a night of tasting delicate pastries before he kissed her for the first time in the glow of the Eiffel Tower.

  Her phone chimed, interrupting her insane imagination. He’d said, A helicopter tour? Have you ever done one?

  Growing up in Hawaii, Sasha had always wanted to see her home state and islands from the sky. But her parents weren’t wealthy—didn’t own diamond mines across the world—and once Brian had been diagnosed, every spare penny went to his medical treatments.

  So Sasha found herself at age thirty-two never having been on a helicopter tour of the islands. Nope, she texted. Never been.

  Let’s do that, he sent back. I’ve always wanted to go and never made the time.

  Warmth flooded Sasha that he was making time to do more than work—and that it would be time he spent with her too.

  Perfect. We’ll be in touch. I think I’m going to catch a flight over to Maui for the weekend and visit my parents.

  What about The Straw?

  A groan filled her whole body. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about it. And she hadn’t. Not really. For some reason, she’d slipped back into the person she’d been before Newt had disrupted her life. A life where she had full-time employees to work some evenings and most weekends so she could have time off. A life where she could afford to pay those employees. A life where she wasn’t working two jobs just to keep the electricity on.