The Billionaire Game 2

by Lila Monroe

  “You missed a spot,” he murmured, and then was leaning closer, his body angled over mine as he pressed me back against the picnic blanket, his fingers stroking my shoulders. “Let me get that for you.”

  His eyes were like deep pools, and his lips—oh God, I remembered how soft and warm those lips were—so close to mine…

  So I did the only conceivable thing I could do to save us both from our impending terrible decision and the impacts on our business.

  I pushed him into the ocean.

  Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  After the initial splash, Asher came up spluttering. “What the—Kate, what the—”

  “You cooled off there, Romeo?” I said, leaning casually over the side. “’Cause if not, maybe we can talk about something else. What’s your will like these days? No reason, asking for a friend.”

  He muttered something, and I leaned closer to hear. Before I knew it, his arm had come up and given mine a yank. I shrieked as the cold water closed over my head, and I surfaced to the sound of his laughter.

  “You bastard, I lost my shoes.” But now I was laughing, too.

  “I’ll buy you new ones,” Asher said. “Unless you’d like these back…?” He dangled my shoes over his head.

  I eventually had to swim-chase him down and wrestle him to get them back, our bodies entangling as we fought for them, each of us trying not to giggle too hard and lose our grip on each other’s arms and hips and—oops!—other places.

  I’ll be honest. I didn’t terribly mind.

  FIVE

  Another day, another charity event. Thus is the life of the rich and famous, and also the life of the loyal BFF of the newly rich and famous who has dropped hints like atom bombs to said newly rich and famous friend that oh God, if she has to make one more decision about warehouse insurance or elastic supplier she will scream so goddamn loud they will hear me at that elastic supplier and that elastic supplier is in goddamn Colombia, Lacey, THEY WILL HEAR ME IN COLOMBIA.

  So yeah, that had happened. And here I was, with Lacey and Grant, trying desperately to relax in my one item of formalwear that wasn’t in the laundry from multiple business meetings and press conferences: a too-tight turquoise number that Lacey charitably said brought out my eyes. Maybe it did, but that didn’t make up for how hard it was to loosen up while wearing a dress that made it a chore to breathe, and that also made you constantly worry it would rip in half if you turned suddenly or bent over to untwist the ankle strap on your second best pair of heels.

  Still, it was good to get out of the shop and get out of my own head. The charity event was for emerging artists this time, and to better display the art they were holding it indoors, in a beautiful ballroom done up in classical Chinese dragons and phoenixes in red and gold all over the columns, curtains, and mural on the ceiling.

  Brilliantly colored canvases hung on the wall like exuberant splashes of paint, and sculptures dotted the hardwood floor between buffet tables and a few brave couples whirling elegantly through what space was left to the strains of Mozart from the nearby orchestra.

  “Wine, Kate?” Grant offered, holding out a bottle of very fine California red.

  I held out my glass. “You are my savior.”

  Lacey raised an eyebrow and chuckled as I tossed back a decent gulp. “Damn, Katie. Looks like you needed that.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Hang in there, partner. You’ll make it.”

  I was going to tell Lacey how much I seriously doubted the truth of that statement, but that would probably have taken at least five years, and anyway, our waiter chose that moment to politely interpose himself and let us know that our table was ready.

  I sank into my chair with relief—while not rushing around like a chicken with its head cut off was restful, standing around in heels had not been proving to be a popular decision with my feet—and poured myself another red with an amount of relief that was even greater. Ah, sweet alcohol, solver of all life’s problems. Well, delayer. And okay, occasionally the cause, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  “Do I need to stage an intervention?” Lacey asked teasingly.

  “Do you want to keep your hands attached?” I shot back.

  “Hey, hey!” Grant protested. “I like Lacey’s hands right where they are.”

  “And other places, too,” Lacey added in a low tone that I probably wasn’t supposed to hear, a wicked smile stealing across her lips.

  “Ew, you’re getting love all over the table,” I told them disapprovingly. “Stop that. It makes me want to vomit or cry or do something else not sufficiently fabulous for me to do it.”

  Lacey suppressed a chuckle. “Want to slow down on the wine, there, champ?”

  I sighed and let her take the bottle from me. “All right, all right, I’ll get some food in me before I have any more. But the week I’ve had!”

  Lacey’s brow creased in sympathy as she passed me a basket of bread rolls. “I thought things were looking up between you and Asher?”

  “Sure, sure,” I said, grabbing a roll and passing the basket back to Grant, who passed me the string beans. “Asher’s great. We’ve sorted out all our issues. Oddly enough, while we were doing that, the huge mountain of work we still had to do did not get any smaller. I’m pretty sure it actually got larger. I’m pretty sure it’s just going to keep on growing forever.”

  “But it’s easier now that you’re getting along better, right?” Lacey pressed, shooting a worried look at Grant that I didn’t quite understand.

  “Of course,” I agreed. “But at this point, we’ve been working around the clock so long I know what he smells like when his deodorant stops working, and that is way too much information for me to know. To tell the truth, I’m glad to have this break from him tonight.”

  Lacey and Grant were now looking downright panicky.

  I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth. “What? Do I have string bean in my teeth?”

  “Hello,” said a cheerful voice from behind me. “Not too late, am I? The Whomobile sprung a leak, and you would not believe how hard it is to get that thing serviced.”

  Asher?

  I turned to confirm it, and there he was, looking relaxed and delectable in a loose blue silk dress shirt and tight black slacks.

  Oh no, oh no, oh no. I’d managed to keep from ravishing him because of the tight schedule and role constraints of working together, but this…where we were tonight, the way he looked, the way he made me feel…

  Grant shot me a sheepish, pleading look. “We, ah…we invited him to join us?”

  “Great,” I said, trying to smile like I meant it and not like I was showing my teeth to the dentist.

  Asher took my hand and kissed it. Lacey’s eyebrows shot off in the stratosphere.

  “It is good to see you outside of work, Kate,” he said, low, his eyes almost… smoldering? “You look like an entirely different person.”

  “Kate? Who is this Kate you speak of?” I said in my best robot voice, and took the opportunity of everyone laughing to grab back the bottle of wine and add a hefty portion to my glass.

  Great, a double-date with the one person in the world who it would be the worst idea for me to fuck. What could possibly go wrong?

  #

  Thanks to that dear old friend and life partner, alcohol, nothing went wrong for quite some time.

  Asher and Grant traded stories of college days and the escapades they had gotten themselves into, including Grant getting stuck on a fire escape in his underwear, and Asher trying to rescue him, only for his bowtie to get caught on the rusty metal, leaving them both trapped until the girls’ basketball team happened to be passing by to catch their bus for the early morning game.

  Lacey and I provided appropriate shocked faces and giggles before trading a pair of mischievous grins, deciding to let these amateurs know how irresponsible college escapades were really done. By the time we finished our own story about the policeman, the Victorian
ball gown, the mosh pit, the wheelchair race, and the Buy One Get Two Free margarita night at the local karaoke bar, Grant and Asher’s mouths were hanging open like they’d decided to switch careers and go into the fly catching business.

  And we hadn’t even gotten to the part with the monkey yet.

  The story trading went back and forth, all of us trying to top each other or else prove that one of the others was stretching the truth. I relaxed into my chair, savoring the food and the companionship, my worries melting away.

  This was what life was supposed to be like: good wine, good friends, good conversation. There was a lovely warmth singing through my body that was one part the fine Merlot and another part the way Asher’s arm had come to rest proprietarily on the back of my chair. I smiled up at him as he talked, almost dazed by the way his eyes sparkled with light and life, by the way he tossed his hair as he laughed at something I said. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this content.

  No, things didn’t really start to take a turn for the worst until dessert arrived.

  “You’re eating that wrong,” Asher said as I dug into my crème brulee.

  I raised an eyebrow, still chewing. This was the good stuff—you could tell the caramel crust had been made by sprinkling sugar on top of the custard rather than using a pre-made caramel disc, and the custard itself wasn’t off-the-shelf vanilla but flavored with cinnamon, orange zest, and hint of rum and raisin.

  “I’m using my mouth, aren’t I?” I said after I had swallowed—I must be getting more mature and professional, since I resisted the urge to answer with my mouth open just to piss Asher off. “Traditionally I believe that’s the part of the human that’s supposed to do the eating. What have you been using?”

  Asher rolled his eyes fondly. “You’re supposed to break the crust gently to release the heat, then take a small bite,” he said, as if I were an untutored savage he was trying to bring to the British court. “Not pour your milk on top and then use your spoon like an ice cream scoop to pop almost the entire thing in your mouth.”

  My parents had made sure I knew the correct way to eat crème brulee by the time I was five, and I liked to think that every time I ate it the uncouth way I preferred, it was like a giant invisible middle finger to them. But I didn’t feel like sharing these precious memories with everyone, so I just said, “Yeah, but it’s super delicious this way, so I feel like your ‘one true way to eat’ hypothesis is kind of completely invalid.”

  Grant chuckled, giving Asher a friendly slap on the back.

  “That’s the downside to the kind of focus that can earn you billions—it can make your friends want to shove you in a lake,” Grant said, and I shot him a smile for backing me up. “Food’s always been one of the things Asher’s particular about—I remember one time at school, I’d finally convinced him to go on a double date with me, my girlfriend at the time, and the hot exchange student he was pining after. So he insists that we leave the meal to him so he can impress her with his knowledge of her culture. He spends all evening cooking up things with names I still can’t pronounce, and then when she gets there she’s like, ‘Oh, this looks delicious, what is it?’ And Asher immediately goes on a tirade about how can she not see what it is, he followed the instructions to the letter, it looks just like the pictures from the cookbook. And then she picks up the cookbook, frowns, and says—”

  “‘I’m from the southern half of the peninsula!’” Asher filled in, shaking his head and laughing, shoving away Grant’s arm in mock anger. “Come on, man, don’t sell me out like that! I’ve gotten way better. I didn’t say one thing about the way Kate was holding her chopsticks wrong when they brought out the saffron crab rice.”

  There was a long, awkward silence.

  “Well, you kind of did now,” Lacey pointed out.

  “That doesn’t count,” Asher said dismissively.

  “I think I’m the one who gets to decide whether or not it counts,” I said. It rankled a little, I admit, that while I’d been enjoying his stupid hot face and his stupid perfect hair and his stupid lovely arm, he’d been apparently criticizing the way I put food into my mouth. “Enlighten me about the right way to eat rice, oh great sage of eating.”

  Asher shrugged, starting to look embarrassed. “It’s just—you were holding the chopsticks wrong.”

  “I like that way of holding chopsticks,” I retorted.

  “You see, that’s just the problem,” Asher went on, launching into a complicated explanation of the proper technique.

  Lacey and Grant were very distinguished pillars of society and the stoical role models of the business pages, which is why they were holding up their napkins to hide their giggles.

  “Guys, this is serious stuff!” Asher said. “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.”

  Some of my tension drained away with Asher’s indignant outburst, and as I thought about it, I decided that maybe I had been being too sensitive. I was teasing him too, after all; if I was going to dish it out, then I’d better learn to take it.

  “Cool your jets, Flash Gordon,” I told him. “I promise to try your supposedly ‘right’ way of eating crème brulee, if you’ll undo your straitjacket for a second and try it my way too.”

  Asher looked for a second like I had suggested drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa, but then he nodded. “All right.”

  He dumped his milk on top of his dessert, took a deep breath as if he was diving into the deep end of a pool that also contained a shark, and jammed his spoon deep into the custard, scraping the bottom of the bowl as he brought forth a large gob to cram into his mouth. His eyes widened as he chewed.

  “Not bad,” he said after swallowing. “I don’t think I’ll be pulling that at any business meetings, though.”

  “Look at that, the world didn’t end,” I said, patting his arm.

  “Your turn,” he pointed out, signaling the waiter for a new ramekin since mine was already cleaned out.

  I raised my spoon in an overly fastidious fashion and gently rapped the crust. Steam and the sweet scent of orange zest rose from the crust. I dipped my spoon gently into the creamy custard below and brought it to my mouth, watching Asher’s eyes darken as they tracked the path of the spoon between my lips, the darting of my tongue outward to lick away the last trace—

  “Asher, did I just see you murder a perfectly good dessert?” came a distressingly familiar voice. “I think I may have to call the cops for what you did to that innocent crème brulee.”

  On one hand, it was probably a good thing that Brody Dalton interrupted me before I could give a full-on simulated blowjob to a spoon in front of my only investor and my two best friends. On the other hand, goddamnit, Asher and I had been having a moment.

  “Brody!” Grant said happily. “The gang’s all here!”

  “Brody,” Asher echoed, with about one hundred percent less sincerity. “You made it after all.”

  “We just don’t see enough of each other these days,” Brody said with a grin that had probably charmed all the ladies back when he was an eighteen-year-old polo player, but that now seemed a bit desperate and sad.

  He was trying and failing to fit into a sky blue jacket that looked like it had been tailored for me five years and twenty pounds ago, and the bright lights made it clear that his sandy hair was beginning to thin. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table, without even asking them if they planned to use it, and planted himself at ours.

  “How have you been keeping yourself? Settled that furniture issue yet? It’s rough trying to jump-start a business that requires so many initial investments. Not at all like the wheat enzyme business.”

  “Well, that sounds so interesting, but Kate and I were actually about to hit the dance floor,” Asher said, standing so quickly I’m surprised he didn’t break a record. He grabbed my arm and whisked me away.

  “What the hell was that about?” I asked when I thought we were out of earshot.

  “Nothing,” Asher said. “Just a falling out ov
er an old business deal. Shall we dance?”

  “Well, I guess we kind of have to, now that you made that excuse,” I said, trying not to sound like my insides were jumping up and down and ordering celebratory drinks at the thought of being held in his arms. “But, uh, fair warning, the last time I hit the dance floor in earnest was seventh grade hip-hop class, and I do not think those moves would be welcome here.”

  Asher gave a dazzling smile, placing his hands on my waist. “Don’t worry. The waltz is simple, and I’ll lead.”

  His arms were steady and sure as he gathered me up and began to guide me across the dance floor. I stumbled at first, but he didn’t even break stride as he caught me and kept me from a twisted ankle, moving with effortless grace. In just a few short turns, I felt as though I were walking on air. Out of nowhere, he dipped me, and I laughed in startled delight, clinging to his sturdy frame as he brought me back up.

  “Where did you learn this?” I asked, breathless. The wine still singing in my veins, the closeness of his body equally intoxicating.

  “I took up ballroom dancing at the same time as bodybuilding,” he murmured in my ear. “All part of my master plan. What do you think?”

  About you? Hell if I know.

  About the dance, well…

  “Not bad,” I said. “Could use a few hip thrusts, some extra grinding.”

  Asher choked and snorted simultaneously, his expression halfway between amused and scandalized. “Kate, this is a dance of grace and precision!”

  “What, you can’t grind precisely?”

  We sniped back and forth as he whirled me across the floor, but it was somehow more gentle, less pointed, than all of our arguments before, all of our insults softened by the smiles tugging at our lips, by the way neither of us could seem to look away from each other’s eyes.