The Brave Billionaire (Clean Billionaire Beach Club Romance Book 11)

by Elana Johnson

  “Do you find me too sporty?”

  “I’m not sure what that means.”

  “Now you know how I feel.”

  Lawrence glanced up as their drinks arrived, taking a few moments to center his thoughts. “I don’t think you’re too sporty,” he said before Jane even moved away.

  “Are my muscles too big?”

  Lawrence blinked. Was that something women worried about? “Of course not.”

  “Am I too masculine?”

  “No.”

  “I wear too many pant-suits to work.”

  “Do you?” Lawrence was so confused. He wasn’t sure how “sporty” had translated to “masculine” or “you wear too many pant suits to work.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  Lawrence didn’t know how to answer her. “I think you misunderstood me,” he said. “I was simply asking what else you liked to do. You seem…to enjoy the outdoors. Doing adventurous things. I don’t. That’s all.”

  He suddenly wished he hadn’t asked Kaelin and Tyler for dinner conversation topics at that day’s Nine-0 meeting. But they were the two most outdoorsy men, and Lawrence could admit when he needed a little help.

  In fact, that was what made him so successful at his company. He knew what his strengths were, and what he needed a second or third opinion on. But in this case, maybe he should’ve just stuck to his own thoughts when it came to what he and Maizee could talk about.

  Maizee watched him, her blue eyes intense and still searching his, as if he hadn’t spoken the truth.

  “You’re more adventurous than you think,” she finally said.

  “How so?”

  “I’ve never gone out as an alternate identity. It’s very James Bond of you.” She’d returned to her usual, flirtatious self, but Lawrence wasn’t sure if she really felt like he’d explained himself well enough. If she really accepted what he’d said.

  He wanted to tell her how beautiful he found her, that he’d spent the last several hours contemplating how he could kiss her good-night in just an hour or two, that he’d had to leave work early that day simply so he wouldn’t call her up to his more private office and advance their relationship to the next level.

  She wasn’t ready for that, even if she did flirt with him like there was no tomorrow. That was just Maizee. Blonde, blue-eyed, adventurous, fun Maizee.

  The fact that she was a loan officer was a bit of an outlier, actually. “So if you weren’t a loan officer, what would you be?” he asked next, a topic he’d thought of all by himself, thank you very much.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said airily.

  “Yeah, I’m not buying that.” Lawrence felt like he was calling her out left and right tonight. But she didn’t seem to mind, and he really did want to know deeper level things about her.

  “You’re not?”

  The country music song that had been blaring through the space ended, and Lawrence enjoyed the momentary silence before the next one began. The dance floor was full constantly, but he had no plans to join anyone out there. And if Maizee asked, he’d claim to have broken his leg on the way in.

  But she probably wouldn’t ask, not with her ankle still healing.

  “Fine,” she said, pushing out an exaggerated sigh. “When I was younger, I thought about going to pastry school.”

  He thought about her wearing a white apron and making that chocolate cake day in and day out. “Yeah, you’d be good at that.” But it wasn’t something that fit her personality, at least not in his opinion.

  “I always thought it would be fun to be a tour guide,” she said with a little shrug. “Like, at an aquarium or a wild animal park.”

  Lawrence chuckled. “Is there an aquarium or wild animal park here in Hawaii?”

  “We have an aquarium on Lanai,” she said. “And submarine tours. That might be fun.”

  He nodded. Yes, he could see her interacting with people all day long, a smile stuck to her face. A genuine smile.

  “You’d probably hate that,” she said, glancing around the restaurant. “Wow, they’re not very fast here, are they?”

  “Not really,” he said. “You in a hurry?”

  “Yes, I might bite off your arm if I don’t get something to eat soon.”

  Lawrence laughed then, a full belly laugh that rivaled the noise level of the music. He hadn’t felt this lighthearted in such a long time, and he’d had no idea his life was so void of humor, or amusement, or well, life.

  He had his company. His financial pages and magazines and reports. His friends.

  But none of them held a candle to Maizee and the joy she’d brought into his life in the simplest of ways.

  Their burgers arrived before she could gnaw on his arm, and Lawrence enjoyed the home-grown beef almost as much as the breathtaking woman across from him.

  He drove her home and walked her to the door, and she turned back to him as if she’d invite him in, brew some coffee, and they’d continue to chat for a while.

  Then she said, “Thanks, Larry. I had fun.” She grinned at him, opened the door with her back to it, and stepped up into the house without taking her eyes from his.

  “Me too,” he said, knowing he shouldn’t follow her in, and that there would be no kissing tonight. “See you tomorrow.”

  He tucked his hands in his pockets and went down the steps and on back to his car. He wasn’t frustrated, only disappointed. But Lawrence didn’t give up after his first attempt at anything. Just like he would conquer that hike up to the Umauma Falls, he would give Maizee as much time as she needed to realize that she wanted to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss her.

  “So it’s true then?” Lexie Keller—now Burnes that she’d married Jason—lined up her shot and hit the ball off the tee. She faced him, her long, dark hair hanging over her arms. “You’re dating someone?”

  Lawrence refrained from rolling his eyes. Lexie’s family had also been in New York finance, and he thought his father still wanted him to marry someone like her. Someone with their own money, and financial breeding, and all that stuff. But Lawrence found himself quite boring, and he couldn’t imagine being with someone like Lexie.

  She was nice, sure. Professional. Smart as a whip. But he wasn’t excited by her, not in the slightest.

  “You don’t have to say it like it’s never happened before,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not sure it has.” She stepped out of the way so her husband could take his turn. They weren’t actually golfing, but just hitting balls out into a course that would give them points. Lawrence only kept up his golf game on the off-chance his father would show up one day and want to talk business.

  He’d long claimed that the best business decisions were made on greens, and Lawrence felt he should be ready should his dad ever want to take him out on the course. But neither of his parents had come to Hawaii once since Lawrence had moved here years ago, and he wasn’t all that sorry about it.

  He kept the company humming along, and his dad traveled other parts of the world during his retirement, a new woman at every destination. His mother had given up a decade ago in her questions about when Lawrence would find a wife and start having grandchildren for her.

  Thankfully, his two younger sisters had filled that need for his mother, and she lived near the two of them in Maryland. He had six nieces and two nephews he rarely saw, and a twinge of guilt seemed to be ever-present in the back of his mind.

  Lexie peered at him as Jason’s club made a cracking sound against the ball. The other man grunted and turned back to them with a disgruntled look on his face. Lawrence liked Jason a lot—he was low-key, casual. Lawrence didn’t have to be “on” around Jason, didn’t have to know everything about every mutual fund, every stock price, every conversion rate.

  He picked up his drink and sucked half of it down. “I’m no good at golf.”

  Lawrence chuckled and ignored Lexie’s pointed look as he waved his club in front of the sensor that would spit out a ball for him. He bent and pu
t it on the tee as Lexie said, “Well, do we get to know her name?”

  “You know I’m dating someone,” he said, glancing at her, wondering if Maizee would categorize a few meals as dating. “You’re telling me your spies are so bad they couldn’t provide you with a name?”

  He quirked his eyebrows and waited for her to answer. She glared instead, and Lawrence hit his ball, watching it fly straight toward the far target and bounce in for eight points. He waved his club to get another ball.

  “It’s probably a mistake anyway,” he said. “Probably won’t last.”

  “Why would you say that?” Lexie stepped over to him so he couldn’t swing. “I’ve never understood why you don’t always have a girlfriend.”

  “Women are….” Work. Maintaining a relationship took work, and Lawrence had always wanted his focus on his company, not his heart. In fact, he could risk almost any amount of money, but he couldn’t seem to put his heart on the line. He never had, because he’d seen enough men with broken pieces strung from ocean to ocean. His father, for one. And Lawrence didn’t need his fortune split four ways, between four wives he didn’t speak to anymore.

  No, he wasn’t going to follow in those particular footsteps of his father’s.

  “Women are what?” Lexie pressed.

  “Work,” Lawrence said truthfully. “And I’ve always had plenty of that to do somewhere else.”

  “So what’s different about this one?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Lawrence gestured her back so he could take his next shot, the white lie burning his tongue. He smacked the ball, but it shanked to the left, and he turned and put his club back in the bag. “She’s adventurous. She does things I’ve never thought about doing.”

  “Like what?” Jason asked, everyone apparently giving up on the golf. Relief flowed through Lawrence as he sat at the table, the air conditioning blowing over him and the waiter arriving with his nachos.

  “Sea kayaking,” he said.

  “You have a yacht,” Lexie said. “You’re not afraid of the ocean.”

  “I am when I’m in a sea kayak,” he said. “Yachts are huge. Kayaks are not.” He picked up a cheese-laden chip and popped it into his mouth. The ooey, gooey texture made him groan, and he was glad he’d taken today off from the bank.

  He figured he’d give Maizee a break. A chance to think without him in her face, on her phone, or anywhere she knew about.

  “I met her hiking,” he said once he’d swallowed.

  “I didn’t know you hiked,” Lexie said.

  “I don’t,” he said. “I was trying something new, and it started raining, and yeah. There she was.” She had been the only human being around, seemingly in the whole world. He didn’t want to admit it quite yet, but he felt like she’d rescued him that day on the trail, not the other way around.

  “So it was recent,” she said. “It rained, what?” She glanced at Jason.

  “How should I know?” He grinned at her. “You’re the one who memorizes stuff like that.”

  “With Tropical Storm Eric,” she said. “Last weekend.”

  “Right,” Lawrence said. “So it’s still really new, and….” He hesitated before saying much more. But Lexie had gotten word that he’d eaten with someone at the Cattleman’s Last Stop. Had he known that, he wouldn’t have texted Jason to go golfing this morning.

  “And what?” Lexie really didn’t want to let anything go today.

  Lawrence gave her a glare. “You’re really nosy, you know that?”

  She laughed and shook her head, though her eyes still watched him like he was the most interesting thing she’d seen that year. “It’s just that you never date.”

  “Never?” Lawrence asked.

  “Name the last woman you went out with,” she challenged.

  “Easy,” he said. “Her name’s Maizee Phelps, and we ate at the Cattleman’s Last Stop just last night.” He gave her a triumphant smile and dug into his food again.

  “Before that,” she said. “But I got her name from you.” She laughed as Lawrence shook his head, glad for an easy day, for this easy conversation with an old friend.

  “I guess that would be Rachael,” he said.

  “A decade ago,” Lexie pointed out, shooting a look at Jason as if her husband cared when Lawrence’s last date was.

  But it sounded pathetic to him. Had it really been that long? Ten years since a woman had caught his eye. It sounded like forever when he thought about it, and he pushed the numbers out of his head.

  “She works with me,” he said, watching them both for their reactions.

  “So?” Lexie asked when it became apparent that Lawrence wanted her to say something.

  “You don’t think that will be a problem?” Everyone he’d known who tried a workplace romance ended up in tears.

  “Why would it be a problem?” Jason put his arm around Lexie. “I worked for Lexie when we started dating.”

  “Not the first time,” Lawrence pointed out.

  “She’s still the boss,” Jason said. “And she knows it.”

  Lawrence laughed with his friends, and Lexie had gotten the answers she’d apparently wanted, because the conversation moved on to something else. But Lawrence’s mind had seized onto one sentence—why would it be a problem?—and he couldn’t let go.

  Maybe a relationship with Maizee could work, and for the first time in a long time, he returned to his penthouse without the possibility of just collapsing on the couch for the evening.

  Oh, no. Tonight, he was going to hike to that waterfall and cross an item off his bucket list.

  Nine

  Maizee didn’t see Lawrence in the branch all week. She worried that she’d upset him somehow, but she’d been over every detail of their date at the Cattleman’s Last Stop, and she couldn’t come up with anything.

  He’d left her house with a smile, pleasant and gorgeous as always.

  So why had he suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth? She didn’t dare ask around the branch in case it came across as inappropriate. No one seemed to care when he was there or if he wasn’t, and she didn’t want any attention on her.

  Her head stayed down, and all the loan applications and files were up-to-date and meticulous. Friday afternoon found her playing cards on her computer, the screen tilted so no one could see it. But wow, the Getaway Bay branch was slow, and she was bored out of her mind.

  She told herself she wouldn’t have been upstairs in Lawrence’s office anyway, but just knowing he was in the building made work more exciting.

  Not only that, but he hadn’t texted her for days either. She wanted to go out with him that night, and she moved another card onto the deck, stewing about what to do.

  “Just ask him,” she muttered to herself. Maybe that was what he was waiting for. Her to make a move that said she liked him. A dozen floodlights went off in her head, and she scrambled for her phone.

  Haven’t seen you all week. Are you too busy for dinner tonight?

  She could cook. Or order something and take it home. Make dessert. Something low-key and out of the public eye. Did she dare invite him into her house? She hadn’t been brave enough to do so on Monday, and maybe that was why Lawrence had backed off a little.

  Or maybe he thinks this romance has already fizzled out.

  Maizee frowned at her phone, willing him to respond. Respond now. Now.

  I’ll pick up something tasty and make my famous marbled brownies.

  She almost scoffed at the word famous. So her dad liked them. Didn’t make them world-reknowned or anything.

  Tell me more about the brownies.

  Relief rushed through her and she laughed at his text.

  Chocolate and caramel, she typed out. Swirled together and baked. They’re great.

  I’ll bring the food. Your place?

  Sure. Seven?

  See you then.

  Maizee relaxed into her chair, her breath leaving her body. She’d done it, and he was coming over that night.<
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  Sudden panic hit her, and she stood abruptly. “I have to clean my house.” The clock on her computer read three-thirty, and she knew the next hour and a half were going to be torture.

  It was only six-forty-five when someone knocked on the door. Maizee had been scrubbing the kitchen, the floors, and the bathroom since the moment she walked in. She wiped her hair out of her face and turned toward the door, listening.

  The doorbell rang this time, and she ripped her yellow rubber gloves off and tossed them into the nearest cupboard—which happened to hold plates, not cleaning supplies. She didn’t care. She could deal with them later, when there wasn’t a handsome man on her doorstep.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, giving it a little fluff before opening the door. But it wasn’t Lawrence on the stoop.

  “Oh,” she said at the same time the Polynesian man said, “I have two pizzas for Maizee?” He started to open his insulated bag before she answered. “Barbecue chicken and Hawaiian with Alfredo sauce.”

  “Yes,” she said, though she had no idea what type of pizza Lawrence had ordered. She took the boxes, signed the receipt, and retreated into the house.

  It smelled like antiseptic and cheese, and she hurried to put away the vacuum before dashing down the hall to make sure her hair and makeup still looked presentable.

  The next time a knock sounded on the door, it was precisely seven o’clock, and Lawrence looked so dreamy and delicious that Maizee sighed into the doorframe and just stared at him.

  “Hey,” he said, seemingly unfazed by the sight of her. “Did the pizza arrive?”

  “Yes.” She gathered her wits about her and stepped back. “Come on in. I’m just about to start the brownies.”

  He moved into her house, and the anxiety about having such a high profile man in her humble abode almost made her shove him right back out. He didn’t even glance around, but kept his gaze right on hers.

  “I’m sorry, what?” she asked, blinking to try to get her brain to work.

  “The brownies? You haven’t even started them?”