Despite the Gentleman's Riches: Sweet Billionaire Romance (For Richer or Poorer Book 1)

by Easterling, Aimee

  Squaawk!

  "Yikes!" I threw my hands up around my head to protect them from Florabelle's beating wings as she launched herself into the air. The cockatiel had finally grown sick of my anguish (or of the loud noises) and had proven once again that clipping the feathers of a determined bird only made her flight ungainly and erratic, not impossible. I'd shortened my cockatiel's wing feathers to nubbins in order to prevent escapes out of accidentally opened doors and windows, having gained my pet through the species' improper sense of direction and not wanting to lose her in the same manner. But clipped wings didn't ground my intrepid Florabelle; they just made her infrequent flights a hazard to herself and to those around her.

  "Here, Florabelle!" I called, calming my voice with an effort so my pet would come in for a landing before she battered herself to death against a window. "How about you go back in your cage and I'll take my grumpiness outside?"

  Suiting actions to words, I soon found myself continuing to pour out my soul to a companion, but this time to a less animated one. Yet, what my apple tree lacked in talkativeness, she made up for in the listening department. I could feel my blood pressure ratcheting down the instant I pulled out scissors and twine and began gently tying down new branches to prompt my tree to focus on early fruiting rather than on reaching for the sky.

  "It's a conundrum, isn't it, Pippin?" I said, calling the tree by one of the three varieties that had been grafted together to make up her dwarf form—Pound Pippin, Arkansas Black, and Virginia Beauty, the names themselves good enough to eat. Unlike Florabelle, Pippin didn't deign to answer, but I still felt the tense muscles in my neck slowly loosening as I worked. My landlord always made fun of the strange appearance of my yarn-clad tree during his far-too-frequent visits, but Pippin didn't seem to mind her own lack of style, and the yarn training really did work. Even though she'd only been in the ground for a year, the five-foot-tall tree had set one tiny fruit this past spring, an orb that grew a little larger each day and promised to turn into a ripe, homegrown apple this fall.

  "How could I possibly move out now that I have you in my life?" I asked, and Pippin clearly understood that the question was rhetorical since she remained silent. "But I don't see how I can find another job in time to keep this place going either."

  My hand jerked involuntarily at the thought, pulling a twig until it cracked rather than bending it gently into position. "Damn!" There went any possible apples next year on the Arkansas Black limb. I threw down my tools, tears pooling at the back of my eyes as I realized that there was a limit to how much drama even Pippin could take.

  Well, desperate times called for desperate measures. If neither of my usual friends was able to cheer me up, I figured I was going to have to take drastic action. Which is how I found myself digging a pit in the earth not too far away from Pippin's roots, topping a stack of flammables off with that scratchy Food City t-shirt and a dollop of gasoline, and letting 'er burn. If my future was going up in smoke, I might as well get some satisfaction out of the flames.

  ***

  "Our Virginia Beauty has arrived!" Okay, yes, I'll admit that I'd chosen my tree in large part because one of her branches shared my name. Not the "Beauty" part, but my parents had christened me Virginia, and months ago I'd made the mistake of telling a non-profit member that my tree and I had the same first name. Ever since then, I'd become Virginia Beauty instead of Ginny to the kind, middle-aged ladies who formed the central backbone of Citizens United Against Dirty Coal (Cuadic for short).

  "Hey, Ms. Cooper," I greeted the high-school biology teacher who had first sucked me into the group, long before we'd streamlined our focus to center around the current travesty. The educator kept asking me to call her Claudia, but old habits died hard and I wasn't quite ready to make the leap from student to friend. Still, I gave her a hug as I walked into the meeting room, noticing the hint of formaldehyde that followed the teacher around on dissection days. If my memory of high-school biology served, today's lesson would have been frog physiology.

  "Ginny, just the person I wanted to see!" exclaimed Brett, the group's paid organizer, as he pulled me away from Ms. Cooper's side. I never let on, but I both crushed on and envied our sole employee, who managed to turn nature into a full-time job. Brett had gone off to some fancy college up north rather than barely managing to eke out two years of community-college night school like I had, so it was no wonder he'd been offered the paid position instead of me. Still, I couldn't help imagining a world in which I was Cuadic's organizer...rather than simply a volunteer who might not be able to attend the next protest if I didn't find a way to pay for gas.

  Not that any of those issues were relevant at the moment. Everyone here was united in our fight against so-called Clean Power, so I pasted on a mostly-real smile and helpfully asked, "What do you need?"

  "Did you turn off your cellphone?" Tom interjected. Our resident conspiracy theorist, Tom was positive that the government was listening in on our conversations using cellphone technology. That seemed like a tremendous waste of manpower to me since Cuadic members spent most of their time eating cookies (gluten-free, honey-sweetened rocks when it was my turn to bake) and gossiping about grandchildren, but what did I know?

  "Sure," I lied, not wanting to explain for the twentieth time that I didn't own a cellphone. Sometimes it bugged me that all of the other members of Cuadic were pretty upper crust and considered cellphones about as costly (and definitely as essential) as shoe laces. But I had to pick my battles, and keeping a mercury-spewing power plant out of our neighborhood was the battle I'd chosen to fight. The truth was that pollutants in the environment caused cellular mutations, and our region already topped the nation in cancer deaths per capita. My campaign to ensure that everyone around me achieved their maximum longevity made helping Cuadic an essential part of my week, even if the other members seemed to live in a slightly different universe than I did.

  In front of me, Brett rolled his eyes, proving that he at least recalled that I possessed no cellphone to turn off, then the organizer took my arm and drew me further away from the crowd that had gathered around the snack station. Usually, actions like this one would have made my knees go a bit weak as I imagined that Brett had finally come to his senses and decided to ask me out on a date. But for some reason, the fish-sticks-and-pizza guy's face drifted up in my mind instead. Before meeting Mr. Movie Star, I'd thought that Brett was handsome, but now I realized that the organizer's face was a little childish and soft around the edges. No firm jaw slightly covered with the hint of a five-o-clock shadow, no blue eyes that seemed to pierce my skin and head straight for my soul....

  Remember, Mr. Handsome made you lose your job, I grumbled silently, forcing my flight of fancy to make an emergency landing. Cuadic was my real life, the reason I was able to put up with creepy landlords and soul-crushing jobs, so I'd better pay attention during my three hours of reality per week. Because the truth was that, while I really did care about my crusading efforts to extend lifespans (and had harbored a major crush on the organizer for years), my perfect-attendance record at Cuadic meetings was primarily due to feeling accepted among its members in a way I never did in the outside world. Despite our differing incomes, the middle-aged ladies of Cuadic embraced my weirdnesses, and I wanted to enjoy fitting in while I could.

  I turned my attention back to the guy in front of me, who had started our conversation without preamble. "Tonight we're going to be strategizing about the public hearing next week," Brett said, his eyes earnestly gazing into mine with a stare that had attracted so many middle-aged women to our cause. "I know you said that you'd be willing to make some posters for us to hold up outside the building, but I was hoping I could count on you to speak as well. I think more of our neighbors can relate to you than they can to the Señora," he added, the organizer's hint of a smile offering to share the joke with me. But this time I frowned instead of playing along.

  While it was true that Brett and I had laughed together about the Señora in th
e past, the organizer's joke now seemed to be in bad taste. Sure, the so-called Señora was a humorous figure, the ultra-rich ex-wife of a coal company executive who had joined our group as a way of thumbing her nose at a cheating husband. While the rest of us showed up at protests in old jeans and t-shirts, the Señora emerged from a slick sports car in heels and pearls. She thought hefty contributions to the cause would buy her new companions' affections, too, but nobody ever invited the Señora out for ice cream after a sit-in. In the end, although anyone could join Cuadic, that didn't make the Señora one of us.

  But was I any more a member of the group? I suddenly wondered if "Virginia Beauty" was my only nickname, or if Brett and company had dreamed up a less-fond moniker that they used behind my back. Was I equally laughable, the poor little trailer princess whose car roared as it pulled up out front because I couldn't afford to get the muffler fixed? Did the other Cuadic members sneer at all of my late-night cramming sessions as I used free library books to try to catch up to their level of education, hoping to make myself worthy of their organizer's notice?

  Whether my suspicions were true or entirely off base, though, I cared too much about the cause to let my insecurities sway me from the path. "Sure," I told Brett, agreeing easily. "I'll speak at the public hearing." No matter that stage fright would keep me up half the night beforehand, and that the action would make my job hunt even harder. I'd brave my way through the former, and would figure something out when the time came to pay the bills.

  I promised to speak at the hearing...but I didn't stay and bask in Brett's presence the way I usually would have. Instead, pretending that I'd developed a sudden craving for salty snacks (bound to raise my blood pressure and give me a stroke before I saw my fourth decade), I fled back into Cuadic's core group. For once, I wished that I was at home where I could consider my Cuadic membership in private, but the best I could do at the moment was to pull up a happy face and pretend to be having fun.

  No one else seemed to notice my silent misery as I rejoined the masses jostling around the snack table, but Ms. Cooper's astute eyes took in my flushed face and down-turned lips. "Is everything okay?" the teacher asked, her words making it clear that she cared about me as a person, not just as a soldier in the battle against dirty power. And, for a minute, I wanted to let my tears gush out and to tell Ms. Cooper that I'd realized I didn't fit in at Cuadic any more than I did in the outside world. Instead, I just gave a humorless chuckle and admitted: "I lost my job today."

  "Oh, you poor thing!" my mentor exclaimed, making as if to give me another hug, but stopping short when she saw the don't-touch-me tension in my shoulders. "But maybe it's a blessing in disguise," she added. "After all, you're too smart to work at Food City. Maybe you should take your time finding another position, wait until something shows up that's worthy of your talents."

  Usually, Ms. Cooper's pep talks buoyed me up, her faith in my abilities shoring up my own. But now, the teacher's words were yet more proof that even my mentor had no idea what it was like to be entirely on my own with no safety net to fall back on. Ms. Cooper regularly overflowed with praise for her niece, who was teaching English as a second language to kids in Bolivia, but I couldn't even imagine how I'd buy a plane ticket to a gig like that. I couldn't spend time shopping around locally for a better job, either, not if I wanted to keep a roof over Florabelle's head. Instead, I had to take whatever position I could get and count myself lucky if I found another minimum-wage position before my landlord tossed me out on my ear.

  This was why I persisted in calling my ex-teacher Ms. Cooper instead of Claudia. But the distinction between my lifestyle and that of her relative was too hard to explain, so I used the only defense I had and contorted my face into that fake smile that no one ever seemed to see through.

  "Sure," I agreed. "Of course you're right."

  Chapter 3

  Three long days later, I hadn't found a job, but I had used my last twenty bucks to fill up my gas tank anyway before heading over to the high school to help sway the community over to Cuadic's point of view. I was doing my darndest to yank the huge posters I'd decorated out through the tiny door of my car (how had I gotten them in there in the first place?), when a large hand landed on my shoulder.

  "Here, let me."

  "Mr. Fish Sticks?" The embarrassing words were out of my mouth before I realized I was actually speaking instead of just thinking. And even though I mentally berated myself for the slip of the tongue, I was glad that I'd gone for that title rather than for some of the more flattering ones that had rolled through my head as I dreamily fingered the stranger's business card over the last few days. Your Highness. Mr. Beautiful. Hunky Guy. Yep, I would have been truly mortified if I'd let one of those monikers slip.

  It had seemed safe to let my imagination wander on lonely evenings since I'd known that a man like this wouldn't spend much time in our tiny, rundown county. The movie-star look-alike had to have been merely passing through, never to be sighted again, so why not turn him into a European prince in disguise or a Silicon Valley millionaire? Except, here was the enigma in the flesh, looking at me quizzically as my face turned beet red.

  "I guess the nickname is my own fault for failing to introduce myself," the stranger replied after a minute of silence, during which I tried vainly to think of a way to build a time machine that would let me take back my words. The posters I'd created were now leaning safely against the outside of my vehicle, having been disinterred by Mr. Fish Sticks while I was lost in thought, and I tried to force myself to latch onto the excuse to walk away and deliver them to my compatriots. Instead, the stranger stuck out a hand, remedying his error and gluing me more firmly in place. "I'm Jack," he said.

  "Ginny," I replied, social conventions forcing me to shake the guy's hand even though I knew before the tingle hit that the touch of his skin on mine would do nothing to diminish the red filling my cheeks. When I thought of how many times I'd brushed Brett's hand while working on Cuadic projects together, with so little effect on my body, I realized that the crush I'd nurtured for our organizer was a mere childish infatuation. These strange yearnings I was currently feeling were more like...trouble.

  "You never called me," Jack murmured, not letting go of my hand. I tried to tell my brain to pull the offending appendage away, but neurons must have misfired because my fingers instead tightened their grip on Jack's palm. "I've been wasting away on pizza and beer for days and days," he continued when my mouth refused to spit out any words in a timely manner.

  "You got me fired," I answered, finally remembering that Jack and I were not best buddies, just in time to break the enchanted silence between us. "I've been busy looking for a new job."

  "I'm sorry." The words sounded strange coming from his lips, as if Jack might have forgotten that apologies were possible until this instant. Then the corners of his mouth curled upwards into an unbearably sexy smile. "So let me make it up to you with a meal at least."

  "I'm busy right now," I evaded, still having a hard time remembering that simple, two-letter n-word when Jack was standing right in front of me. By way of explanation, I waved vaguely over at the cluster of Cuadic members peering my way from the entrance of the school. I had a feeling half of the middle-aged ladies were already picking out a wedding present—they kept trying to set me up with their kids and grandkids and were endlessly miffed (although politely so) when I repeatedly declined to cooperate. Talking to this hunk in plain sight was probably enough to make the ladies program their minister into speed dial.

  "Fan club?" Jack asked, seeming to lap up the ladies' attention as if it were his due. I was ninety-nine percent sure my companion shifted his feet as he spoke, angling his body so the women could get a better view of his strong jaw and patrician profile.

  "Protest group," I countered, finally getting up the courage to slip my hand out of his. Belatedly, I regretted the action, my digits unbearably cold when they were no longer cupped in Jack's massive paw.

  "Hmmm," he said by way
of reply. "But that meeting doesn't start for an hour, and I have something I want to show you."

  Turning away, Jack started walking toward his car as if sure I'd follow. And maybe I would have if the vehicle in question hadn't seemed so crazily out of place in our rustic county, the passenger door Jack opened to entice me inside folding skyward instead of out like any ordinary portal might. Strange car doors and fancy suits, the rational part of my brain warned. He's out of your league. In fact, he's probably playing a different game than you are entirely.

  "I don't think so," I called, hating the way I had to raise my voice like a fishmonger to reject the guy's advances now that he was several yards away. I knew that I'd be hearing about this exchange for weeks from the Cuadic gossips, who would likely phone Jack themselves in an effort to force me into joining the handsome stranger for a romantic dinner. I'd definitely have to burn the business card that I kept transferring between different pairs of pants like a lucky charm if I wanted to keep it out of Ms. Cooper's match-making hands.

  "Of course," Jack agreed, changing gears easily as he walked back to my side. "You don't know me from Adam." As he spoke, Jack was quickly moving my posters again so that they were held up by a handy telephone pole, one that I wasn't so sure had been present before my companion needed it. Did even inanimate objects jump to fulfill this guy's every wish? "We can take your car for safety," he said breezily. "If I turn out to be a psychopath, just club me over the head and push me out the door. Should we stop and buy a baseball bat?"

  "We only have an hour," I muttered. Then I realized, when Jack smiled, that I'd conceded the debate. Mr. Fish Sticks sure did know how to get his way.

  ***

  Although pushy, Jack was far from predictable. I was too shell-shocked by his charismatic presence to try to speculate about what he wanted to show me, which was a good thing since I never would have guessed our destination in a million years. What Jack wanted to share was...his kid sister.