Gretchen: The rose “Blue Girl” has a special meaning for us, so I was thinking that one.
Gretchen: Wait, wait.
Gretchen: BACK THE FUCK UP.
Gretchen: Did you just say you made out with a guy and then he left town?
Greer: Is that bad?
Gretchen: Pretty sure it ain’t good! So who did you make out with? And are we talking like, fourth base or first base?
Greer: First! Jeez Gretchen!
Gretchen: Don’t get all huffy with me, missy! You’re the one that’s knocked up.
Greer: Good point.
Gretchen: You gonna tell me who it was?
Greer: Asher, duh.
Gretchen: I . . . thought you hated each other.
Greer: I’m experimenting in hate fucks?
Gretchen: I AM SO CALLING YOU. Also, Blue Girl roses. Remember that.
Greer’s phone rang a moment later, followed by an incomprehensible stream of squealing and babbling from Gretchen’s side. She held the phone away from her ear for a moment, waiting for her friend to calm down.
“Well?” Gretchen prompted after a moment of silence.
“Well what? What do you want to know?”
“Why is it you hate the guy and are oven-ing his bun but you’re hate-fucking him? There’s a disconnect somewhere around here that I am just not getting.”
Greer sighed. “I still hate him. And it’s part of a deal we made. I fool around with him this month and he gives up all parental rights to the baby.”
There was a long pause on the other end.
“Hello?” Greer said into the receiver. “You still there?”
“My brain just temporarily short-circuited at the thought of Asher giving up all rights to his own kid. Why the hell would he do that?”
“Because he doesn’t want to be a dad?”
“Oh please. Like anyone wakes up in the morning and thinks, wow, I’d really like to change someone’s shitty diapers for the next eighteen years!”
“Diapers for eighteen years?”
“Slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean. No one’s ever ready to be a parent, but when there’s a baby on the way, you sack up and take care of things.” A wistful note entered her voice. “I’m just shocked Asher’s bailing out.”
“It was my idea.” And she was not going to feel guilty about it, damn it.
“You don’t even want child support?”
“Why would I? I have millions of my own.”
“Yes, but he has billions. And think of how miserable you could make him! Doesn’t the fun of misery count for something?”
Greer smiled. “I don’t want my baby to be used as a tool to make someone else miserable.” She’d had firsthand experience in that, thank you very much. “I just want him or her to be surrounded by love.”
“Aww, that’s really cute and all, but I think all this goo-goo diaper talk is drifting away from the real reason for this call . . . which is you telling me all about why you and Asher are hate-fucking. Now hold on and let me get some popcorn, because I have a feeling this shit is gonna be good.”
***
It turned out that Asher’s lie came back to bite him in the ass. The pretense of being pulled away for work turned out to be very real when one of his overseas offices had a security breach and another employee’s laptop was stolen, containing client information for hundreds of small businesses. It was a bit of a nightmare and his new CEO’s first opportunity to right the ship, and important enough that Asher himself wanted to be there to ensure things were running smoothly.
Okay, he was still struggling with being hands-off. But he was getting better all the time. Nevertheless, he wanted to be there for this particular situation and chartered a private jet back to NYC, then spent the next three days closeted in meetings to discuss contingency plans, future disaster scenarios, and security breach statements.
He missed the engagement party he was supposed to be present for. And while he didn’t give two shits about toasting Stijn or his three potential brides, he’d wanted to see Greer in a hopefully slinky dress and spend more time with her. He really wanted to spend more time practicing kissing.
Wasn’t it just his luck that reality decided to intrude on his bubble?
Asher was returning back to his apartment when his phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Greer: I can’t figure you out.
He waited impatiently in the elevator while it crawled up forty floors. He wanted to text Greer back immediately, but it felt too personal to do it in an elevator crowded with people. Hell, even one person would be too many. Probably because he got a lot of inappropriate hard-ons when talking to Greer. He raced to his apartment, shut the door, and then flung off his suit jacket and expensive Italian loafers. He took his phone into his bedroom, relaxed on the bed, and then typed out a response to her.
Asher: Because I’m mysterious and alluring?
Greer: Because you took all the trouble to set up this whole “practicing kissing” thing and now you’re not showing up for any of the lessons. Are you avoiding me?
Fuck. Did she really think he was avoiding her? His entire body craved being near her. She was in his dreams at night, and the image he saw when he stroked his cock in the shower every morning. Avoiding her? If she was in the same room as him, he’d have been all over her.
He wouldn’t text that, though. He’d call her instead. If nothing else, so he could hear her voice.
He dialed her number and waited as the phone rang several times. Was she not going to pick up? Fuck, he hadn’t even thought about that. This was a woman that had blocked his calls for months on end. If she was mad at him, she’d be perfectly fine ignoring him until—
The phone clicked over. “Hello?”
Greer’s soft, smoky voice made his balls instantly tighten. Any playful, flirty things he was thinking about saying to her went flying out the window. “Why would you think I’m avoiding you?”
“Well,” she began. “You went to a lot of trouble to force me into this bargain we made, and now you’re not showing up for it. What am I supposed to think?”
“You could think that I’m kicking myself for not being there to cash in? Because it’s the truth.” He rubbed his forehead. “This has been a hellish week on my end. If I listen to one more person complain about contingency meetings—all the while failing on that end—I’m going to lose my shit.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but her voice sounded amused instead of sympathetic.
“How’s your week been?” he asked, settling in on the bed. His cock was aching, and he pictured her sitting on her own bed, maybe surrounded by fluffy pillows. She’d be reclining, her shirt unbuttoned low, toying with a lock of her thick hair. . . . Christ, that was a sexy image. His hand went to his cock and he rubbed it through the fabric of his slacks.
“My week?” She sounded surprised. The throaty chuckle escaped again. “About as well as you can expect. I found a caterer willing to work on short notice, found a baker to create three different cakes, and the girls went dress shopping. The bridal parties—all three of them, mind you—were finalized, and that meant deciding on dresses and colors for each person.” She yawned. “No one agrees on anything. It’s been . . . a marathon, to say the least.”
“You need me to do anything? Offer my opinion on anything for your dad?” Mostly, he just wanted to know if she needed him.
“I’m good. You did make a few decisions, by the way. I had you pick out the cut of the tux and you selected the groom’s cake since I needed that information in a hurry.”
“I did, huh? How’d I manage that considering we haven’t talked in days?” Longest week of his life, too. He absently stroked his aching cock again, entranced by her voice.
“Well, here’s something interesting.” Her tone turned amused. “I would text y
ou pictures and you’d decide which one you liked. It worked out very well.”
That little sneak. She hadn’t texted him a thing all week. “And no one called you on your bluff?”
“Not a soul. Turns out that you have excellent taste, Asher.” Her voice dropped to a husky note that made his body react. Hell yes, he did have excellent taste. He was starting to think the smartest thing he’d ever done was get drunk and nail Greer, because it forced him to really pay attention to her, to really see her for the first time.
And damn, he liked what he saw.
“I’m glad I could be so helpful.” He hoped she didn’t notice the tension in his voice . . . or pick up on the fact that he was unbuttoning his slacks so he could free his cock. Jerking off while on the phone? He hadn’t done this since he was a teenager, but he craved Greer, and not having her in his arms? This would have to do.
Her small sigh made his senses go on alert. “I’m afraid that’s the only thing that’s gone my way this week.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” The need to fix whatever was troubling her was overwhelming.
“Oh, it’s just the tabloids.” Greer made a small noise of disgust in her throat. “They follow us the moment we leave the Dutchman castle and trail me and the triplets everywhere we go. They spit questions at those poor girls and they have no idea how to answer, so they just make things worse. I swear there are new insulting things printed about them every day, and it breaks my heart. I know it’s upsetting to Kiki, even if Tiffi and Bunni are too . . . absentminded to notice things.”
Absentminded? He would have used the term thick as a brick but Greer was nicer than he was. “Is it just the online tabloids?” He could have Stijn’s lawyers send them a few cease and desists if he dropped a few words in the right ears.
“Have you seen the weekly magazines? They’re all speculating over which girl’s going to end up marrying him, and digging up every terrible thing they possibly can about each girl. Tiffi was an escort at one point, Bunni a stripper, and lord only knows what they’ve dug up on Kiki. They’re being referred to as the gold diggers of the century and made a laughingstock.” She paused. “It’s hard.”
Asher hesitated. He didn’t exactly feel sorry for the triplets. After all, they had started dating Stijn because of his money and his business, not because he was a stunning conversationalist. And the fact that they all three shared his bed? Of course people were going to talk. The wedding was a three-ring circus and he’d heard Dutchman magazine mentioned more times in the last week than he had in the last decade. Stock was through the roof and he was pretty sure Stijn was thrilled with the results—and the wedding hadn’t even happened yet. So no, he didn’t feel bad for the girls, or for Stijn, who was a ruthless, calculating bastard.
But this made Greer unhappy, and he didn’t like her unhappy. She was working too hard on this wedding for it to be laughed at, and he wanted to fix things for her. “Do you want me to step in?”
“Step in? What do you mean?”
“I mean if the tabloids are causing you problems, we grease the wheels in the other direction. We buy up some puff pieces and throw some money in their direction so they print positive-spin articles. I can get a publicist on this full time, if you want. A private publicist, not Stijn’s,” he corrected. Stijn’s publicist was probably one of the guilty parties feeding some of the more lascivious bits to the public.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Would that work?”
“It would,” he assured her. “It’s all about perception. I’ll get the rumor mill grinding on the other end, and hopefully we can staunch some of the bleeding.”
“Thank you.” Greer sounded grateful. Grateful and tired.
“Anything for you.”
She was silent.
Okay, clearly she wasn’t ready to hear that sort of thing yet. He’d come back to that. Asher circled back around to a topic he knew she’d talk about: the wedding. “So you finalized the wedding parties?”
“I did.”
“Should I know who’s in them?”
“It probably wouldn’t hurt.” For the next few minutes, he half listened as she rattled off a list of names that meant nothing to him. Stijn’s groomsmen were all stockholders, and Asher wasn’t sure if that was the closest thing the Dutch millionaire had to friends or if it was a business ploy. The girls were each limited to three bridesmaids and one maid of honor, and had tried to get around the limitation with having endless amounts of flower girls and assigning friends to be ushers, provided they got to wear long, flowing dresses in the matching bridal colors. He would have been amused at the lengths that the triplets were going to in order to try and squeeze a few more people into the wedding, if it wasn’t for one glaring omission.
“I didn’t hear your name,” Asher commented when she was finished.
“What do you mean, my name?”
“I mean, what’s your part in the wedding?”
“My, you have been gone for a while, haven’t you?” She gave him another throaty chuckle that made his cock push against the front of his slacks. He tugged them lower, freeing himself as she spoke again. “I’m the wedding planner.”
“You’re also Stijn’s daughter. His only daughter, I might add. You should have some sort of place of honor in the wedding.” Now he was getting pissed on her behalf.
“I don’t.” She didn’t even sound upset. “Come, Asher. You know my father. You must be close if you’re his best man. You know he isn’t the sentimental type.”
There was a difference between sentimental and straight-up asshole and he knew which category Stijn fell under. Asher made a mental note to have a talk with the man when he saw him again. Fucking bastard. “I don’t get why you care so much about this wedding when your own father treats you like a second-class citizen.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and for a moment he worried he’d offended her. But then she gave a tiny sigh and spoke. “I’m not too proud to say that part of me would like for my father to recognize how much work I’ve put into things. But it’s not about me, truly. This is the first time he’s married, and no matter who my father picks, that woman is going to be part of my family. It’s the least I can do to welcome her and make her feel loved and important.”
Ironic that it would fall to Stijn’s often-forgotten daughter to make his new bride feel important. But he understood. To Greer, it wasn’t about who he was marrying. It was something else entirely. “Family’s important to you, isn’t it?”
“It’s been the one thing I’ve never truly had.” Her voice was soft. “My mother died when I was eight, and the only memories I have of her are . . . not pleasant. She was in a very bad place for as long as I can remember, but she still loved me and made sure I had a caring nanny. Then, when she died, I went to live with my father, and, well.” She paused. “You can see how loving and attentive he is. But like I said, I did have nannies. And the staff at my father’s home has always been wonderful to me. They’re my family more than my father has been. My father’s parents were dead before I was born, and he had no brothers or sisters. There’s just only been him.”
He didn’t miss that wistful note in her voice, though. The tone that said as much as she accepted the past, she still hoped for it to someday change. And he hated that and wanted to fix it for her. He wanted to give her the big family she craved. He’d never had one himself, but he’d also never felt the loss like she had. Asher had grown up in a series of rigid foster homes and state care and the moment he was old enough, he’d escaped their control and set off on his own. “What about your mother’s side of the family? Did you ever visit them? How come they never took you in?”
“My father wouldn’t let them when I was younger,” Greer admitted. “I think it was a vanity thing more than anything else. When I turned eighteen, though, before I went to college—before we met—I went to
India and visited my mother’s family in Agra.”
“You did?” He’d never known. “How was it?”
“It was wonderful.” The wistfulness in her voice nearly broke his heart. “India was like nowhere I’d ever been before and I loved it. The people there looked like me, not like Barbies. Everything was so vibrant and alive.”
“But . . . you didn’t stay?”
“I didn’t.” She sighed. “To them, I was still too American. Too different. I didn’t know the culture, or the language. And my mother’s family was extremely traditional and my mother . . . well. I mentioned she did porn, yes?”
“You have.”
“It sort of polluted things before I ever set foot there. India was beautiful, but I still didn’t fit in. I didn’t fit in there or with my father’s world, and I eventually realized that if I wanted a home, I’d have to make my own for myself.” She paused, and then her voice grew lighter. “Happens to everyone, I imagine.”
He knew what she meant. Having been bounced from foster home to state care facility as a teenager, he’d had no one he could call his own, until Donna. Maybe that was one reason why he’d latched on to her so hard. He’d wanted a family of his own, too. “You could always go back, you know.”
“I could,” she agreed. “I could take lessons in the language and learn the culture, but it still wouldn’t be a perfect fit. I love India. It’s beautiful, and it makes me realize who I could have been. But I’m not that girl, so I came back.”
He hated to hear her say that. “I think you’re beautiful.”
She chuckled. “Oh, come on, Asher. We both know you’re just sucking up to me because you want to extend the deadline for our bargain.”
He wasn’t. To him, she was beautiful. Not in an exotic way, but in a comforting way. She was brown-skinned and dark-eyed because it was who she was, just like her stubborn adherence to flat shoes despite her diminutive height. She was who she was, and she owned it, and he loved that. To him, that subtle confidence was a thousand times sexier than all the overly made-up Bunnis and Tiffis in the world. “I don’t need to extend our deadline.”
The Billionaire’s Favorite Mistake Page 13