The Geek Billionaire Makeover

by Theresa Meyers

  The frames slipped from his face and everything, including Caroline and her full lips, turned into a multicolored blur that looked more like an Impressionist-era painting than real life.

  “There, that’s better.”

  He wasn’t sure he agreed, but then being this close to Caroline, he didn’t give a damn.

  “Now about those cars.”

  Josh led her through the rest of the house out to the garage. It was a good thing he knew the way, because he sure as hell couldn’t see where he was going. From the blurry outlines of his vehicles, he could still make them out enough to tell her which was which.

  Caroline whistled long and low. “You’ve got quite a collection. Any reason why you didn’t stick to one thing in particular?”

  “They all mean something different to me,” he said. “I like the restored Model T Ford because it reminds me that being first in the industry isn’t as important as being the most preferred by customers.”

  “Interesting.” Caroline tapped her lip with her index finger. “And that white one?”

  “Ah, the 1939 Rolls Royce Phantom III. Just look at those lines with the big arching fenders and the sleek silhouette of it. It’s pure elegance.”

  “It kind of reminds me of something out of Indiana Jones.”

  Josh laughed. “Yeah, it’s the car the sheik wanted Indy to hand over in the second movie.”

  She blushed a little. “Oh.” She shifted her weight from one foot to another. “I thought it looked familiar.” Her steps quickened as they walked down the back of the garage. “Now this, this is gorgeous.”

  From the color alone he knew she was looking at his racy red 1956 Corvette convertible with white scooped-out sides and a massive chromed grill.

  “What’s this one mean to you?”

  “Freedom. No holds barred. Can’t you just feel the air blowing through your hair and the open road ahead of you just by looking at it?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I can see that.” Her smile faded. “Okay, now this is just out of place. What is this doing in here?”

  Josh’s chest tightened a little. “That was my dad’s 1984 Honda Accord.” The brown paint was faded, but it was a thing of beauty to him.

  “Do you keep it because it was his?”

  Josh nodded. “That and it reminds me where I came from. How you can make something out of nothing if you want it badly enough. How it’s the hard work today, day in and day out, that paves the way for the future. He drove this little car 500,000 miles. That’s almost to the moon and back.”

  She crossed her arms. “Well, then, that makes sense. You like to keep things around that mean something to you. You like elegance, class, sophistication, and freedom, but you also want to be the best known, even if it means you have to go the extra mile working to achieve it.”

  “Wow, psychoanalysis via car. Never heard that one before.”

  She waved away his comment as she started walking back toward the house. “Well, every bit of information helps when you’re working with a client’s image.”

  “Caroline.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “Yes?”

  “Can I have my glasses back? I can’t see without them.”

  She frowned; at least he thought it was a frown because the dark bits over her eyes seemed to merge together. It was hard to tell. She handed him his glasses.

  “Enjoy them for now. Tomorrow we’re getting you fitted for contacts.”

  Josh slipped his glasses back into place. “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

  She gave him one quick nod. “Everything I suggest is necessary. Remember, that’s why you’re paying me the big bucks. Now, where’s your home office? I know a workaholic like you wouldn’t be without one.”

  Josh grinned. He had to give her props for already knowing him so well. “This way.”

  Chapter Four

  As promised they didn’t go shopping the next day.

  The shopping came to them. Four trucks were parked in the roundabout outside the mansion. One from Demarco Satorini Custom Tailoring; one from Allen Edwards Custom Shoes; one from a personal shopper from Nordstrom; and the final one from Eyes Express.

  He held his arms out and wondered why he’d agreed to this. The tailor, a short, older man with thinning dark hair and bushy dark brows, strung the cool strand of measuring tape down his arm, pulling it taut and then scribbling down the measurement on his pad of paper he withdrew from his breast pocket. Josh had already gone through this process once, but apparently the man needed different measurements for a jacket than he did for shirts.

  “Are we done yet?”

  “Just a few more measurements, Mr. Martin.”

  “I want them cut on the loose side, nothing too form-fitting,” Caroline said. “He doesn’t like his clothing to feel confining.”

  The tailor bobbed his head in acknowledgement, his eyes narrowed in an assessing look, as he glanced from her to Josh. “I should have a few suits and shirts ready to be fitted at the end of the week.”

  Josh was amazed. He’d never purchased anything hand-tailored before. The tailor’s employees had brought a seemingly endless array of bolts of fabric for Caroline to select from, as well as a myriad of ties and cufflinks. He’d always worn whatever he bought off the Internet and if it fit, great, and if it didn’t fit, oh, well, he wore it anyway. Frankly, before Caroline he hadn’t had a reason to care.

  The next torture he was subjected to was shoes. The man came and measured his feet, then brought out swatch after swatch of leathers. Josh let Caroline pick it out since he had no idea what he was even being fitted for when it came to footwear. If it didn’t have laces and a rubber tread, he wasn’t all that knowledgeable.

  Then came the haircut. He let Caroline decide that, too. After all, he was paying her for the full image makeover; he might as well let the professional do her work. Spending this much time with her was better than he expected. He just had to find a way to make her fall for the new him…

  …

  Caroline marveled at the transformation. The stylist took Josh’s look from shaggy and overgrown to clean-cut with just enough length in the front that it still partially skimmed the tips of his lashes, giving him a dashing GQ look that was relaxed, but made his blue eyes all the more intense.

  The stylist stepped back for a moment. Josh leaned to one side of the chair and made eye contact with Caroline. “What do you think?”

  Her lips twitched. She couldn’t wait until he looked in the mirror. A haircut alone didn’t turn a guy from geek to Greek god, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt. The new and improved Joshua Martin was hot. It killed her to think it, but she did. Caroline sucked in a sharp breath, a little shocked by her own reaction. Heat blossomed over her skin. “I think you’d better see for yourself.”

  The stylist nodded and handed a mirror to Josh. His eyes widened and he frowned a little. “I look like I’ve just come off a boy band tour.”

  “Yes, but fortunately for you, boy bands have many girl fans.”

  He turned his head to the side and took another look in the mirror, then flicked his fingers through his new haircut. “You really think this makes any difference?”

  “There’s only one way to tell. But I don’t think you’re ready to go out to the club and see how women react to you yet.”

  He grimaced.

  “Not to worry. We’ll go slow.”

  “Mr. Martin?”

  He turned. The personal shopper from Nordstrom had a selection of clothes draped over his arms. “Are you ready to try on a few items?”

  Josh gave a dramatic sigh and turned to Caroline. “How do you do this all the time?”

  “Shop?”

  “Power shop. This is exhausting.”

  Caroline laughed. “Because we can’t wait to show off what we’ve bought.”

  “That’s the payoff?”

  “No. The payoff is when we see a guy’s eyes light up the moment we walk in the room.”

  “You do all
this for us?”

  She nodded. “For the right guy, it’s amazing how much we’ll do.”

  “And for the wrong guy?”

  “That depends.”

  The moment seemed to stretch between them, the air growing thick and heavy as they stared at each other. A tingle of awareness sparked across her skin, and her breasts tightened involuntarily in response. What the hell? She’d never been attracted to a client before. Not like this. And why him, why now? It was the worst possible combination for what she had planned. All cleaned up, with a great haircut and those killer blue eyes, he reminded her of Ian Somerhalder and she couldn’t look away. Clearly her body and her mind were not communicating with each other. She couldn’t get attached in any way. She had a job to do or her brother would be ruined.

  The personal shopper cleared his throat. “Mr. Martin? Did you want to make a selection?”

  Josh never took his eyes off her and nodded. “Let her pick it.”

  Caroline walked over to the impeccably dressed shopper, using the moment to regain her equilibrium, and selected a pair of jeans and a polo shirt that she handed to Josh. It was casual enough for what she had in mind. She waved the shopper away. The last of the people she’d brought in were finally gone. “Go try this on.”

  “Sure you don’t want to help me get undressed and dressed?”

  She blushed at the thought of running her hands over his naked skin. Caroline cleared her throat and smiled, deflecting his question and trying to get them both refocused. “While your clothing is being made, we’re going to get out of town for a bit.”

  “Don’t want to ruin the great unveiling of the new and improved me, huh?”

  “That’s generally the idea. Part of changing your image is molding the perceptions people have of you the first time they look at you. Right now they think—”

  “Gamer geek with a lot of cash.”

  It was better he acknowledged it than for her to say it. “What we want them to see is playboy billionaire sex god.”

  “Sex god, huh?” One eyebrow rose up.

  He took a step closer to her, bringing them into contact that was almost chest to chest. “I could go for that, if you’d be willing to assist me,” he said, the husky quality of his voice filtering past her shields and making her want to lean into the solid wall of muscle in front of her. Only her sense of survival held her back. Getting involved with Josh could bring her whole world and that of her brother crashing down. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  “But before that we need to help you work on your fear of crowds.”

  “How?”

  “We’re going to help you have some fun and relax a bit.”

  He slipped a hand around her waist, the hot weight of it making her intimately aware of him. “And what’s the doctor’s orders?”

  Caroline pulled away reluctantly, stepping back from the temptation he offered. “Unplug from technology for a start.”

  “No computer? No phone? Just the two of us and no Internet connection? I can’t leave like that. There are too many things—”

  “That Mr. Carvales has already arranged to take care of since I told him I believed this was an essential step in your image remodeling.”

  “So we’re leaving. To do what, may I ask?”

  The corner of his mouth tipped up in a sexy smile that made her heart stop for a moment, then restart twice as fast as before. She swallowed hard. “We’re going riding on the dunes.”

  His face lit up with genuine enthusiasm. “On what?”

  “ATVs. Sorry, they were fresh out of landspeeders like Luke Skywalker’s.”

  “Do not mock the hero.”

  “Didn’t you think he was a bit whiny?”

  “Well, yeah, at first, but he was just a kid. Look at what a badass he turned into.”

  Caroline put her hands on her hips. “He was not a badass.”

  “What are you talking about? He could bend shit and control people with his mind!”

  Caroline cracked a grin. She couldn’t help herself. When Josh was passionate about something, he was all in. For a moment she considered what it might be like to have that kind of devotion focused on her. “You do know that’s all fiction, right?”

  “One man’s fiction is another man’s reality.”

  “Whatever. Serves me right for getting into any kind of a Stars Wars argument with an ardent fan. The sooner you change, the sooner we can get going.” Her gaze never left his broad back and shoulders as he disappeared around the corner to change into his newly selected casual clothes. She was going to be all alone with him. What happened on the coast could stay at the coast and no one would be the wiser. Caroline shook her head and nibbled at her bottom lip. No. Absolutely not. She shoved the wayward fantasies out of her head. It might be hard to keep her eye on the goal with his gorgeous new look and his constant flirtations, but she could do it. She had to.

  By the time they’d driven the six hours down to the Oregon dunes it was close to ten at night. The chilly air, spiked with the scent of ocean brine and the sound of the waves rustling against the shore, called to her. Some of her fondest memories of her teen years had been at this stretch of the coast. The small hotel perched on the edge of a bluff gave an incredible view of the black ocean slicked with sliver moonlight on the ever-moving waves.

  Josh got out of the car and stretched. “Small and intimate? I thought you wanted me to be with crowds.” He looked a lot taller now that he’d unfolded himself from the car. Six hours sitting next to a remodeled Josh who looked hot enough to be on the cover of any magazine had made her edgy.

  “I believe you need to work up to it. For now, having another person around to interact with is a good start. Doing something that taps into your ability to relax and have a good time is key to my efforts in reshaping your image.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  It was sweet that he’d even be concerned. “Starving.”

  He glanced around at the dark coastline with the sprinkle of streetlights here and there. “Is there a decent place to eat around here? I think they rolled the streets up as soon as it got dark.”

  Florence was small enough that there weren’t likely to be many restaurants open this time of night, and she didn’t think it was a good idea to take him out into public just yet until he was further along in his transformation.

  “There’s a great pizza place that delivers,” she said as she opened the trunk. Josh pulled out her bag before she even got a chance to get her hands on it. “I can get that,” she said.

  He locked gazes with her, and that alone told her he wasn’t going to let her win this time. “No. My father raised me to be a gentleman, and since you drove us here, the least I can do is get the bags.”

  For a moment Caroline wondered if her opinions about him as a purely money-motivated man were prejudiced. She appreciated the simple gesture. It wasn’t often people did things for her. Then a sudden sour sensation invaded her stomach. She didn’t like lying to him. That wasn’t like her. But stealing the plans for Aeon’s first complex was essential to saving Connor. So Caroline shoved down the discomfort and kept moving forward. Had the circumstances been different…who knew what could have happened between them?

  They walked side-by-side into the hotel and she went to the front desk and got them checked in using his company credit card, then returned and handed him his room key.

  “Separate rooms, huh?”

  She raised a brow, giving him a stern look.

  He raised his hands and gave her a boyish grin. “Sorry, I was just kidding. That came out all wrong, didn’t it?” He clasped his hands together, his index fingers coming together at his mouth, then pointed them at her. “Can I start over?”

  She nodded, annoyed with herself as much as him for the way she so easily responded to him at a primal level.

  “What about dinner?”

  “Better, but we need to work on your delivery a little more. We’ll practice in the morning,” she said as they headed for
the elevator to take up to the third floor.

  “You aren’t going to make me eat alone, are you?” He quirked one brow upward, challenging her. “I’ve paid for your services, so I would think that includes dinner.”

  Did he realize he was flirting with her—or how it was impacting her?

  They got into the elevator, and Josh took up a lot of room. His shoulders looked broader in his tailored polo shirt than when he was wearing his baggier clothing. Caroline shifted her weight from foot to foot and crossed her arms to hide any evidence of hardened nipples that might be showing through her shirt.

  “Fine. I won’t make you eat by yourself,” she said with just enough sternness he’d know she meant business. All business. Yeah. That.

  He grinned, the planes of his face relaxing. They exited the elevator and Caroline glanced at the wall plate to see which direction they should turn. The attendant at the front desk had given them rooms across the hall from each other.

  “You aren’t on any low-carb, vegetarian, or other kind of diet, are you?”

  She glanced at up him. “No. Why?”

  “Good, because you don’t need to be. You’re perfect the way you are.” He took out his phone as they walked, then glanced up. “What kind of pizza do you want?”

  She was too startled by his comment to respond to anything more than the question about pizza. “It depends. Anything as long as there isn’t any fish or fruit on it. Try Sardino’s. They’re one of the best in town.”

  He started tapping the screen. “They can deliver in thirty minutes.” He glanced over. “That good for you?”

  Seeing Josh as a man—a sexy, appealing man she’d like to rub up against—was not in any of her plans. She’d devised various scenarios so that if one thing failed, she had another strategy to replace it with.

  “Do you mind if we eat in my room?” he asked, handing her her bag.

  Their fingers brushed and she felt a surprising, and completely unwelcome, zing travel up her arm from the point of contact and straight down to the apex of her thighs. She squeezed them together tightly. No. No. And no! Caroline nodded and shoved open her door. “See you in thirty.”