The Billionaire’s Crush

by Tineka Brown

  “Oh, yes.” Said Olympia. “Now… where were we? You were about to give me a tour.”

  “Right. Uh, right this way,” said Everett.

  Olympia’s heart skipped, seeing the effect she had on this man.

  The house was, predictably, as grand on the inside as it was on the outside. It had no fewer than five bedrooms, each with its own private bathroom along with two full bathrooms for guests. The kitchen was expansive, and though Everett said he didn’t employ a chef here — he found himself eating out a lot more in L.A. — Olympia was welcome to try out any recipe she wanted. Groceries were delivered twice a week, and of course, there was plenty of fresh fruit when the trees outside were in season.

  The place even had its own pools — one indoor, one outdoor — and a specialized wine cellar that was totally stocked. Olympia imagined them wiling away the evenings, sitting on the massive white leather sofa and chatting over a bottle of wine that probably cost more than her entire outfit.

  When the tour was over, the sun was setting on the horizon, casting the living room in a beautiful orange glow. Olympia realized she was starving; she hadn’t eaten since before getting on the plane.

  “Why don’t I cook for you?” Asked Everett.

  “I thought you usually ordered in?”

  “Well. Yes. But that’s partly because I have no one to cook for.” He gave her a diplomatic smile.

  Olympia shrugged. “Sure. You’re a good cook.”

  “Great. Let’s open a bottle of wine first.”

  A glass of wine later, Olympia was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, watching Everett work.

  “Do your parents ever visit?” The question came out suddenly. Even she hadn’t been expecting it.

  “Hm? My parents? Oh. Well… not unannounced. But they have. Once or twice.”

  “You bought them a house?”

  “I did. A long time ago. They wanted to stay in Louisiana, and to be perfectly honest I was happy to leave them there.”

  “When we left the police station… in Vegas… it seemed like you were sending them money regularly.”

  “I was,” said Everett, glancing from his cutting board to the cook book that he had laid out on the countertop.

  “Not anymore?”

  Now Everett looked up. “No. Quite frankly, Olympia, their behavior at opening night was the last straw for me. I love my parents. They taught me everything I know. But they also taught me a lot of things that I’ve had to un-learn over the years. They set me back, in some ways. And seeing how they treated you and Valentine made it clear that they’ll never change.”

  Olympia looked at him and saw no lie in his eyes. She poured herself another glass of the wine.

  “I’m sorry, Everett.”

  “Like I said, you have nothing to apologize for. If they want to miss out on knowing you because they’re prejudiced, that’s their issue.” He placed a hand gently on her outstretched fingers.

  “Now, will you give me a hand? I need someone to stir this.”

  Olympia smiled, and kissed his fingers sweetly.

  Chapter 11

  “Do you, Olympia Jackson, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  “I do swear.”

  “Ms. Jackson, by your account, what happened on the evening in question.”

  Olympia thought about the night of the casino opening. It had been six months, and it felt like a lifetime ago. She tried to put herself back in that helpless moment, that mixture of excitation and terror flowing through her.

  She began to speak, relating everything she could remember about that awful night. Or had it been a wonderful night? Truly, she couldn’t separate the two emotions in her memory. On the one hand, it had been the best performance of her life, and she’d felt totally elated, standing there on the stage with nothing to think about except for singing her heart out.

  On the other hand, whenever she thought back to it, the emotional turmoil came right back as well. She’d been worried about how Everett felt. She’d been terrified that Valentine would do something to sabotage her performance. Then later, when it was over, her heart had felt crushed by Valentine sabotaging his own performance — not to mention the feelings later when she met Everett’s parents and discovered that they probably hated her before they even lay eyes on her.

  No, it wasn’t an entirely happy memory. But she’d settle for emotionally charged.

  “Did anyone try to intervene when Valentine began to act aggressively?”

  She glanced over at Everett, who was sitting in the front row with his lawyer. “Yes,” she said. “Everett attempted to diffuse the situation.”

  “By Everett, you mean Everett LeBlanc, the owner of the casino where the show took place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Jackson, are you and Mr. LeBlanc romantically involved?”

  “Uh… yes.”

  She saw Everett nodding slightly, out of the corner of her eye.

  “Were you and Mr. LeBlanc romantically involved at the time of the incident?”

  “Um--”

  “Objection!” Valentine’s lawyer, a heavy-set man in a grey tweed suit, stood. “I don’t see what this has to do with my client.”

  The judge turned to the prosecutor. “Please, get to the point Mr. Adams.”

  The prosecutor gathered himself and spoke. “Answer the question please, Ms. Jackson.”

  “Yes, we were. Not seriously.”

  “Would you say that Everett would have been likely to intervene even if you hadn’t been in danger, or if you hadn’t been involved?”

  “Oh, certainly. That’s the type of person he is.”

  Everett gave her the tiniest of smiles.

  “Thank you, Ms. Jackson. That will be all.”

  Olympia stood and walked from the witness stand back to the front row.

  “You did fine,” Everett assured her, patting her knee.

  “Thanks.”

  The rest of the trial went on without incident. Sitting slightly behind the accused, Olympia caught herself a couple of times boring holes into the back of Valentine’s head. But he didn’t once turn around — in fact, he barely acknowledged Everett and Olympia’s presence in the room.

  Partly, Olympia was thankful for this. But another part of her — some insane, vestigial part of the Olympia that had fallen in love with Valentine — missed him. He was no longer the Valentine she’d known. Everything had become much more grown up, much more serious in the past six months, and while things were good, for her, she couldn’t shake that nagging feeling of guilt that perhaps some of Valentine’s misfortune had been her fault.

  She felt Everett squeeze her thigh as if reading her mind, and shook her head, forcing herself to focus on what the judge was saying.

  Six months in a rehab facility, following by two months of community service, and a 300 dollar fine.

  Standing outside the courtroom, after the sentencing, Olympia leaned against Everett. His black pea coat smelled faintly of wet wool. “Is he going to come out this way?” She mumbled into his shoulder.

  Everett put his arms around her. “I’ll keep an eye out. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then I guess we should stay.”

  A moment later, Valentine did emerge from the court room, walking next to his lawyer.

  “There he is,” said Everett.

  Olympia turned, not knowing what force compelled her to do so. Valentine was no more than three feet away and raised his eyebrows when he saw her. “Olympia,” he said.

  “Valentine.”

  “Thanks for testifying.”

  “You’re thanking me?”

  “I mean… if you hadn’t… who knows. Someone could have made it sound worse than it was. At least you were honest.”

  Olympia nodded and chewed her lip. “I’m… glad you’ll be getting help. In rehab, I mean.”

  Valentine’s face hardened slightly, but he didn’t
reply. Instead, he turned to Everett, who was standing a few feet away, watching closely. “Take care of her, okay?”

  Everett nodded solemnly. “Of course. When she needs taking care of.”

  Valentine gave a crooked, almost-smile, and turned to walk away.

  *****

  A week later, Everett got a call from Terrence. He nodded, speaking short affirmatives for a few moments, then put down his phone and said, “the master recording is done. They’re inviting you to come listen to it.”

  Olympia grinned, excitement swelling in her chest. She’d been looking forward, anxiously, to this day since the recording had been finished.

  Taking a few deep breaths, she was struck with another, more complicated feeling. Oh, she thought, realizing she still hadn’t had the talk with Everett about him managing her.

  Is now really a good time? She thought, then: better than any.

  But Everett, she soon realized, had beaten her to the punch. He was sitting down beside her and putting a hand on her leg in that gesture that she’d come to realize was almost always intended to comfort. She softened, facing him.

  “I don’t want to ruin the moment…” he said, “but we should talk about whether or not you want me as a manager.”

  Olympia felt relief wash over her and was caught so off guard that she blurted out, “I don’t.”

  Thankfully, Everett seemed to take this in stride, looking taken aback for only a moment before smiling and saying, “oh… well, I’m glad you’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Sorry. I just… well I’ve been thinking about it since the first test recording. It’s not that you’ve done anything wrong. I think you’ve been a great manager. I just… I don’t want to mix business and pleasure. I shudder to think of what would happen… to us… if you had to do something that was in my career best interests, but that I hated, or vice versa. If I’m going to be angry with someone else’s business decisions… I’d rather they not be yours.”

  Everett looked her in the eyes and smiled. “I understand completely,” he said. “Now, I can recommend a few people that I know, who I think would do a splendid job of managing you. But, if you’d prefer I not be involved at all, I totally understand that as well.”

  Olympia considered this for a moment. While she was partly inclined to tell Everett that she’d take care of it, she also didn’t know the first thing about hiring a manager. She had no idea where she’d look, and even if she found some willing candidates, she had no idea what she wanted, or what made someone an ideal manager.

  “No,” she said, at length, “I think I’d like your help, in this case.”

  Everett brightened. “Great! While you’re at the studio listening to the master, I’ll make a few calls. We can meet with people tomorrow. Take the BMW, I’ll be here.”

  Olympia nodded. She’d gotten used to driving Everett’s car — or rather, fleet of cars — around the city. While she hadn’t driven very much beforehand, her mother had been adamant she get a driver’s license as soon as she was old enough, so she still had the skills buried somewhere. A few months of cruising around Los Angeles in a car that was probably a little too powerful for city driving was all it took to reawaken those skills.

  Now, Olympia relished the drives, especially when the opportunity arose for her to take off on her own for a bit, put on her favorite music, and pretend that she was a wealthy celebrity in her own right, out for a drive, wearing big sunglasses to hide her face.

  The trip to the studio was too short for her liking, but by the time she arrived her heart was pounding, and her palms were sweating. She wiped them on her jeans after she parked and before she had to shake hands with everyone in the studio.

  Geoff put a pair of giant noise-cancelling headphones on her as soon as she walked through the door and gave her the thumbs up before pressing play on the first track.

  At first, it felt odd to be listening to her own voice like this. Olympia had to try to get past the awkwardness by pretending she was listening to someone else. As an impartial third party, she thought, how would I judge this record?

  Eventually she realized that she loved it.

  The track ended, and she turned in her chair, pulling off the headphones and grinning. “It’s amazing! I love the instrumental track,” she said. “It sounds just like I imagined it.”

  Geoff smiled, and Olympia could swear she saw relief on his face. Getting the instrumentals down had been no easy feat — Olympia could read sheet music, but she’d never been the greatest at writing it. She’d had the ideas for the melodies in her head and had hummed them while a pianist pressed keys and made notes on a staff.

  Eventually from these simple, one-note melodies, they’d managed to devise complementary tracks and percussion. It had been an eye-opening experience for Olympia, who had never really thought about just how much went into producing a single record.

  “I’m glad you think it’s good. I’ll pipe in the full album and we can all listen to it; I just wanted to make sure that the first track had your approval.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “This is the track that’s going to hook people — we’re going to release it as a single first. I hope that suits you.”

  Olympia nodded.

  Terrence, who up until now had been leaning in a corner, arms crossed, watching the scene unfold, stepped forward and said, “where’s Everett?”

  “Oh, he, uh… he’s making some calls. At home. Actually Terrence, I wanted to mention, Everett’s stepping down as my manager.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Well, we both knew that he was only going to be in the position temporarily. Neither of us wants to mix business with our, uh, with our relationship.”

  “Ah. I understand. That’s very smart of you, Olympia, I’ve got to say. I’ve seen too many couples crack under the pressure of one of their music careers.”

  Olympia felt a pang of something run through her, but she brushed it away. She and Everett were stronger than that. They’d met under the pressure of show business, after all. They wouldn’t be torn apart by it.

  “So, who’s the new manager, then?”

  “Oh! Well… I don’t have one yet. Everett’s making calls to people that he thinks would be best.”

  Terrence nodded, his face unreadable.

  They listened to the rest of the album in the room. Geoff opened a bottle of champagne at some point, but Olympia waved away a glass. “I drove here,” she said.

  “Just one?”

  She shook her head, and Terrence chuckled. “Responsible girl.”

  When the album ended, Olympia felt an odd mixture of pride and sadness. Her mind oscillated between the excitement and fear of seeing the album released to the public, and the slight bitter sweetness of knowing that she’d never again go through this experience, that the next time she was in the recording studio, it would simply be work — that she’d never again know the elation of hearing the master of her first album, all that hard work coming to fruition.