Deception_A Secret Billionaire Romance

by Lexi Whitlow

  “I’m an idiot,” I sigh.

  She doesn’t give an inch. “So you said on the phone yesterday. Do you have anything to add to that, or should we just wrap this up now?”

  “I do. First of all, you’ve obviously Googled me by now, so you know what I do for a living.”

  She raises an eyebrow but says nothing. I’m really going to have to work for this.

  “I admit it,” I say. “You could call me a corporate raider. I buy companies that are struggling for pennies on the dollar, take them apart, and sell off the component parts for a profit. I’m a billionaire several times over because of it.”

  “And you lie to the women you date,” she says. Her face is expressionless, but her eyes are blazing. “Don’t forget that part.”

  “I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but you’re the one who told your parents I was your fiancé. I just kept my lie going longer than you did.”

  “That was different!” she protests. “I was lying to them, not you!”

  “You’re right, and again, I’m sorry. But I didn’t know anything about you when you approached me in the bar. Sarah, I’m a billionaire bachelor; I never know if women are just trying to get at my money when they come on to me.”

  “Came on to you? You have an awfully high opinion of yourself, buster.”

  She’s stopped scowling, which is a good sign, but I can tell I still have a long way to go. The wine steward appears with a bottle and pours us each a glass, then disappears.

  “You get wine without ordering?” she asks.

  “I always have the same thing. There’s a case of it in their cellar.”

  She takes a sip and her eyes go wide.

  “My God, this is amazing. What is it?”

  “Domaine Leroy Musigny, 2012. It’s a favorite.”

  “How much is it?”

  That’s one of the things I love about Sarah: even though she’s a high-powered executive and a multi-millionaire herself, she’s still Amish at heart and always concerned about cost.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I say. “My broker mentioned something about a bidding war. Thirty thousand, maybe?”

  I probably should’ve waited until she was done her second sip, because she almost chokes.

  “Thirty thousand dollars a bottle?”

  I shrug. “It’s my favorite.”

  “Wait, you have a wine broker? I didn’t even know that was a thing!” She’s recovered her composure. “Now I see why we never went back to your place. It’s probably a mansion.”

  “Penthouse,” I say. “But that’s not important.”

  “No, it’s not,” she says. “And, to be honest, I didn’t have to Google you, Justin. I already knew who you really were before you sent me that text.”

  Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.

  “How did you know?”

  “That’s… a long story.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “Why did you come here if you already knew who I was?”

  Her eyes soften a bit, or maybe that’s just my hopeful imagination. Either way, the edge in her voice seems to have faded.

  “I wanted to see whether you’d tell me the truth on your own,” she says. “Without me confronting you with it. And that’s what you did, so I thought I’d give you a chance to say your piece.”

  I mull that over for a moment. It makes sense—if she’d forced my hand, I would have been confessing out of desperation. This was more of an act of contrition, I guess, even though I was honestly desperate to se her again.

  Look at me being all relationship-y. Nathan would be proud.

  “I truly am sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have let things get so far before coming clean with you. Things just seemed to snowball and the next thing I knew, I was too far in, and I thought if I told you, I’d lose you.” I let out a low chuckle. “Look how that worked out for me.”

  Sarah smiles, and the sudden hope makes my heart feel like it just caught an updraft.

  “Is there any way we could start over?”

  She peers at me intently for what seems like an eon, as if she’s weighing the fate of mankind. No one has made me feel like this since I was a kid—wondering whether I measured up, whether I was good enough for what I was being given. I wouldn’t allow anyone else on Earth to look at me that way, except maybe Nathan, but I wouldn’t put up with it for long from him.

  “I have a couple of question,” she says finally. “What happens after that depends on your answers.”

  I swallow hard, hoping she doesn’t see. “Go ahead.”

  “Were you lying when you told me about your childhood? The way you grew up?”

  “No. Everything I told you about myself was true, except for my name and my work.”

  Sarah ponders that for a while, too. She’s thoughtful, which reminds me of her father (though I’d sooner run naked through Yankee Stadium than ever tell her that).

  “One more,” she says. “And I guess this is the big one.”

  “Go ahead.” I steel myself for whatever it may be.

  “Are you trying to take over PinkBook?”

  At first I think she must be joking, but her steely gaze tells me otherwise. She’s honestly worried that I might be after her company. It makes answering the question a lot easier than I expected it to be.

  “Of course not,” I say. “What on earth would make you think that? We met by sheer coincidence, remember?”

  Sarah sighs and bites her lip. I’ve never seen her look so confused, and it’s the last thing I want for her. When it comes to me, I want her to be sure of everything.

  “Look,” I say. “You know my MO: I go after companies that have been run into the ground. PinkBook is a success; why would I be interested in it?”

  She tells me about the board meeting where the members recognized me from the contact pic on her phone. Then she mentions the name Darryl Lawrence, and I feel my lips curl into a snarl.

  “Lawrence is the reason I asked you to meet me in the first place. “Believe me, if there’s a threat to your company, it’s from him, not me. Yes, I wanted to apologize, but it was more important that I warn you not to turn your back on that snake for a second.”

  Sarah nods, and I realize I’m not telling her anything she doesn’t already know. That seems to happen a lot with her. But she seems relieved as well.

  “So that’s what you meant about PinkBook being in danger,” she says. “Don’t worry, I definitely don’t trust Darryl.” Her eyes soften “But I do appreciate the fact that you wanted to warn me, and that you did it before you knew what had happened at the meeting.”

  “Your trust means a lot to me, Sarah. I want you to know that I’d never deliberately hurt you. And if you ever need anything from me, you only need to ask and it’s yours.”

  She opens her mouth to speak, but I stop her with a raised hand and a smile.

  “Not that you would ever need my help,” I say quickly. “I’m just saying, I’m a billionaire and all my resources are at your disposal. Even the Amish don’t raise barns by themselves, right?”

  Sarah smiles again and pours herself another glass of wine.

  “As long as you know that, I suppose it’s okay,” she says. “As for your resources, I’ll start by having some more of your $30,000 grape juice and letting you buy my lunch. After that, we’ll see.”

  I grin and lift my glass in a toast.

  “That’s all I can ask for,” I say, my heart lighter than it’s been in weeks.

  11

  Sarah

  I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m the CEO of a major corporation with hundreds of employees. For crying out loud. A self-made millionaire who worked her way up from literally nothing to become the kind of woman that girls all across America aspire to become. When Beyonce asks who runs the world, I’m the answer.

  And what am I doing right now? Chopping potatoes for a pot roast I’m making so that I can impress a guy with my cooking skills. A guy who lied to me about who he
was so he could get in my pants!

  Okay, I suppose that’s not exactly true. But there’s no still no denying the fact that I’m making pot roast for the first time since I was an adolescent, and I’m doing it for a boy. There has to be some sort of lesson there, but whatever it is, I can’t see it. All I know is he damn well better appreciate it.

  Ben—I mean Justin, I can’t believe I still have to catch myself—suggested that I come to his penthouse and have dinner brought it, but I made the counter-offer of cooking for him at my place. I get that he was trying to make up for being closed off before, but I’m not ready to give him the home court advantage just yet. He needs to work for this.

  Although he’s already done a lot on that front by bringing me up to speed on Darryl. I knew he was born a trust-fund baby into a family of real estate developers, and if he’d just stuck to that, he’d probably have turned out fine. How did Justin put it? “Darryl could have simply lived off the family fortune and spent his time jet-setting around the globe and being an entitled asshole. No one gets hurt that way.”

  But that’s not what he did. Instead, he decided that he was smarter than everyone else, so he leveraged the Lawrence name around the city to get loans that let him start dabbling in a dozen different types of businesses. There’s nothing wrong with that on its own, as long as the person knows what they’re doing. But Lawrence is so monumentally arrogant, and more than a little stupid, so he thinks he can run all these companies himself.

  He runs them, all right—straight into the ground.

  Justin said Darryl’s holding company is in a lot of trouble right now, which explains why he’s suing for more of an interest in PinkBook. He must be as dums as Justin says he is if he thinks he’s going to somehow get more stock that he already has for his paltry investment of $15,000. Sure, we needed it at the time, but we could have cobbled it together somehow without him. And it’s not like he’s done anything since then except collect his dividends, so any judge would laugh the suit out of court.

  But Justin’s worried that about the timing of it, and that Darryl will use the threat of bad press to force me into settling instead of going to court. If Darryl truly believes that’s going to happen, then he’s even stupider than we thought. He’s messing with the wrong woman.

  The fact that said woman just happens to be making a pot roast for a man right now is beside the point.

  My hands make the magic happen as all this runs through my mind. Even though I haven’t made pot roast in over a decade, it’s still part of my muscle memory from childhood. Slicing the carrots and potatoes and onions and mushrooms, shredding the garlic with a serrated ceramic dish so that it becomes a paste, toasting the rosemary just the tiniest bit to bring out as much flavor as possible. And the secret ingredient: homemade marmalade.

  The key to the meat itself is to choose the right cut. My mother taught me that cooking pot roast slowly is what makes it taste so good. When you grill a steak, you want a nice, tender, well-marbled cut like a rib-eye because it cooks quickly and the fat provides the flavor. But with pot roast, the tougher the beef, the better the roast will be when it’s done cooking because the muscle fibers hold flavor until it’s released by the cooking liquid and heat over time.

  Speaking of liquid, I uncork the wine I bought specifically for this roast and measure out a cup. It’s a syrah that will compliment the marmalade and balsamic vinegar in the roast, and that we can drink with the meal as well. I splurged on it, but I figured if Justin can pay $30,000 for a bottle, I can afford $750. Every fiber of my upbringing was screaming “wasteful, wasteful” as I handed the gal at the vintner’s my black AMEX card, but hey—every once in a blue moon I have to remind myself that yeah, I’m rich, bitch. I’m just not Justin Lucas rich.

  Yet.

  I click on the slow cooker and turn my attention to the dough for the rolls I’m going to bake. I make these quite often as gifts for friends, so they’re even easier to do from memory. Once those are in the oven, I’ll get started on the butter with a pint of fresh cream I picked up from the Union Square Greenmarket and my mixer. It won’t be like when I was young and churning it with cream straight from the cow, but it’s a close second. And I’m willing to bet Justin won’t be able to tell the difference.

  I’m mid-swipe on a Candy Crush level when the doorbell rings and I almost jump out of my seat. Great start, Sarah, I scold myself. You’re supposed to be playing this cool.

  My reflection looks damn good in the hallway mirror: hair neat but not really styled, just a touch of blush in my cheeks, nothing on my eyes but mascara, and no lipstick. Like I said, Justin’s going to have to work for this.

  I smooth my skirt and open the door on Justin’s smiling face. He’s shaved for the occasion, and his hint of cologne smells of musk and sandalwood, with just the tiniest floral note. He’s dressed down in a casual short-sleeved shirt and jeans that are loose in the right areas and tight in the wrong ones. The combination of it all sends an electric tingle runs through my belly and down to my groin, and suddenly all my bravado threatens to go flying out the window.

  No, Sarah. You’re stronger than that.

  “Come in,” I say, trying to sound breezy.

  He hands me a bottle as he enters, and my heart gives a little thud as I realize it’s the same stuff from our lunch yesterday.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I protest, even though I’m thrilling on the inside at the thought of another taste. “It’s—”

  “Wasteful?” he finishes. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to that around me. I make an awful lot of money.”

  “If you do say so yourself.” Prideful, my father’s voice says in my mind.

  “I’m just being honest.” His grin is a thousand watts easy, and it makes me quiver. “I don’t want to keep anymore secrets. And it’s a fact that I’m very wealthy.”

  “I suppose I asked for that, didn’t I?” I sigh. “Well, I hope you’re not expecting the same kind of meal we had at the Blackthorn.”

  “Not at all. I eat there all the time. When you said you were making dinner, it was all I could do to not just rush over right that minute. I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in—you know, I honestly can’t remember the last one.”

  I lead him into the kitchen and set the wine on the counter. He sniffs the air and suddenly his expression changes, like a wolf catching the scent of his prey. For the briefest second, I wonder if he’s somehow smelling me and the desire that I’m trying to keep bottled up. What if he was to grab me right now and carry me to the bedroom and throw me on the bed and just…

  “Is that pot roast?” he breathes, his eyes wide.

  That brings me back to reality.

  “Sorry,” I say. “That’s probably not what you expected. I make a pretty mean one, though, if I do say so myself.”

  There I go already apologizing for the meal. Get it together, girl! You’re in charge here, not him!

  If I keep telling myself that, maybe I’ll eventually believe it.

  “God, I haven’t had pot roast since I was a kid,” he says.

  I raise my eyebrows. “Does that mean you like it, or that you hated it so much you stopped eating it?”

  “I love it. Stella used to make it for me whenever I did well on a test at school.” He gives me a wry half-grin. “Which meant I didn’t get it very often.”

  The joke is an attempt to distract from the obvious emotion in his voice. I heard it the last time he talked about Stella, too.

  “She sounds like a very special woman,” I say. “You should talk about her more often.”

  He clears his throat and grabs the bottle he brought.

  “What we should do is open this up.”

  He’s obviously not in the mood, so I reach behind me on the counter and grab the bottle of syrah that I used on the roast.

  “I’ve already got one open,” I say, grabbing a pair of glasses from the cupboard. “Let’s finish it off. I’d kind of like to save your bottle f
or a special occasion.”

  “Any time I get to see you is a special occasion.” His fingers brush mine as I hand him his glass, sending another electric jolt down my belly.

  Steady, girl, my brain warns.

  But another part of me is telling my brain to shut up and mind its own business.

  “Seriously? You made this?”

  “Sure,” I say. “It’s just butter.”

  On the outside I’m all casual, but inside I’m preening at the fact that he’s so impressed by it. He’s savoring each bite like it’s the tasting menu at some snooty Paris restaurant instead of my kitchen in SoHo.

  “It’s incredible,” he says. “All of it. I mean, the roast is better than Stella’s ever hoped to be. And these buns are phenomenal. You could serve this meal at Tavern on the Green. Hell, at the Blackthorn, where they don’t even put the prices on the menu because they’re so high.”

  I feel warm blood in my face. “Oh, come on. It’s not as good as all that.”

  Justin wipes a bun over the surface of his plate to mop of what’s left of his third helping of roast and gravy. Then he pops it in his mouth and chews slowly, his eyes closed.

  “It’s more than as good as all that,” he says through his food. “And it’s not just the taste, Sarah. It’s the fact that you made all of it with your own two hands. In your kitchen. I don’t even know where my kitchen is.”

  I let out an involuntary giggle, and he smiles. Every time he does, my resolve gets weaker and weaker.

  “It’s just cooking. I’ve been doing it since I was a little girl. My earliest memories are of standing on a stool next to my mother, peeling vegetables. It’s just part of life in an Amish community.”

  “Except then it was a job, or at least that’s how you made it out to sound. Like it was something that was expected if you.”

  “It was,” I say simply.

  He nods. “See, that’s what I mean. I didn’t expect you to do all this tonight.” He waves a hand over the spread on the dining table. “You didn’t have to do this. Believe me, I would have been just fine with ordering in a pizza. But instead, you went out of your way to make something that stirred up memories of some of the best times of my life.”