Gambling on a Gentleman: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love)

by Brenna Jacobs

  “You’re coming back to London?”

  “I’ll do what I can from here first, but obviously I’m coming back. You’re not firing me that easily.” She motioned for Geoffrey to put the crate in the Mustang.

  “This is your car?” Geoffrey had heard everything she’d said, but the only thing he could process at the moment was the fact Alice drove a fast car. How could he believe that she’d be willing to risk everything and still go to London when he’d made such a mess of the opportunity he’d given her?

  “Yes. My dream car.” When he still didn’t move, Alice took the crate from him and stuck it in the trunk. “One of the first things I bought when I started making money. It will be hard to leave behind.” She slammed the trunk shut, but then smiled as she turned to him. “I know we won’t be able to keep kissing in public when I get to London—mostly because you Brits are so uptight—but can I have one now? For good luck?”

  Geoffrey came out of his stupor and stepped closer to Alice. “You think the British are uptight?”

  She looked him up and down, not at all intimidated by the extra foot he had on her. “Did you wear those khakis and that button-down on your whole flight here, or did you change after landing?”

  He tucked his chin into his chest and looked at what she saw. “This is casual. What else was I supposed to wear on a ten-hour flight?”

  Alice raised her eyebrows. “You just proved my point.” She went up on tiptoes and kissed him with all the tenderness that he needed to know he’d truly been forgiven. Then she climbed into her car like she hadn’t just performed something of a miracle.

  She went to shut the door, but he stepped in front of it and stopped her.

  “Alice?”

  Her eyes met his, and his heart opened. “Thank you for believing this is fixable—that we’re fixable.”

  Sunlight dappled her face bringing out the flecks of gold in her eyes. Her brow flicked into a crease that she quickly smoothed.

  “If the Thames can be fixed, anything can.” She smiled. “You taught me that.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alice didn’t think she’d said anything very profound, but Geoffrey had looked close to tears when she’d said they weren’t broken. Of course, she was upset that the job she’d dreamed of was on the line, but as long as the Greys had art and a place and a willingness to exhibit it, they still needed her.

  She just had to make sure they still had the art and a place.

  After dropping the paintings off with Mary and giving her time to ooh and ahh over the Unicorn, Alice met Geoffrey at the Beverly Hills Hotel for lunch. She’d never been to the hotel before, but someone who looked a lot like Jennifer Aniston was at one of the tables they passed as the hostess led her to Geoffrey’s table. But the moment of excitement at her celebrity encounter quickly faded into irritation.

  Alice wasn’t an accountant, but if Geoffrey was going to have any money for the museum, he’d have to find cheaper places to eat and sleep. Mentally she added that to the list of things they needed to hammer out over lunch. A lunch that had to stay all business. They knew how they felt for each other, but that would have to be put on hold. Unlocking her heart again (even if it had only briefly been “locked”) didn’t mean she had to stop compartmentalizing.

  Compartmentalize was her mantra. No matter how blue Geoffrey’s eyes looked or how much she liked being with him.

  After being shown to the table where Geoffrey was already seated and giving him a quick peck on the cheek, Alice got down to business. “Mary is really excited about the Unicorn. I think we might have good news from her later that could solve your money problems.”

  “Really?” Geoffrey’s face brightened, then sank. “Do you mean by selling it?”

  Alice hated the look of disappointment on his face. She knew how much he loved that painting, so she backpedaled and took another tack. “Listen,” she said. “My curator positions have always involved fund-raising and grant writing. We can find the money.”

  “Really? You can find an organization to pay off our mortgages?” He sat up straighter, as though a weight had been lifted.

  She hadn’t realized there were mortgages, plural. That changed things.

  “How much do you owe on the mortgages?” Alice took a drink of her water as she waited for Geoffrey’s answer. She wasn’t surprised that he paused before answering, but the answer itself surprised her.

  “Tens of millions.”

  She choked, nearly spitting out her water before she could cover her mouth with her napkin.

  “The upkeep on Binchley Hall is really expensive—it’s an old house—and we haven’t been solvent for quite some time.” The red in Geoffrey’s cheeks would have been adorable if Alice weren’t so embarrassed for and annoyed by him.

  “But you fly first class and stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel?”

  Geoffrey’s jaw tightened and he waved away the waiter who approached their table with the basket of rolls. “The real question is, will we be able to keep Binchley Hall?” His clipped words pricked at her conscience. Even if he had denied her some delicious-looking bread, she didn’t have any right to judge him about how his family chose to spend their money.

  Except their choices—his in particular—had just cost her the dream job that she’d quit another pretty good job for. Not only that, but she’d also broken the lease on her apartment. Until the Greys had some funding, she’d have to dip into her savings to live on. London was not cheap either, so she wouldn’t be going back there until they had some money to pay her. Which meant, her short trip back to Bakersfield was going to be longer than she’d planned.

  “I can find an organization to invest in the Grey museum, but as far as you getting to keep Binchley Hall, probably not,” she said matter-of-factly. Better to rip off the Band-aid. “It would be owned by the organization and likely operated solely as a museum, not a private residence with a museum as you’d wanted.”

  Geoffrey’s face fell and he folded and unfolded his napkin. “I was hoping I could keep it for Mother.”

  Alice studied the disappointment in his face, and her heart softened. “I understand.”

  During the housing bust in 2008, Alice’s grandparents had lost the old farmhouse that had been in the Donnelly family for generations. They’d taken loans out against it in order to pay for medical and credit card bills, but also for things like ATVs and a motor home. A home was a home, no matter how big or small, and people didn’t always make good choices when it came to money, no matter how rich or poor they were. But when they’d lost their home, Alice, Billy, and her mother had ended up homeless, too, since they lived with her grandparents.

  She wanted to find a solution to Geoffrey’s problems, just like she’d wanted to find a way to save her grandparents’ home, but she was at a loss. She searched for a silver lining. “The upside is that if you don’t own the art or the estate, you don’t have to be in charge of the museum—which you didn’t want to do anyway—and you can just focus on your art.” Alice paused long enough for Geoffrey to tip his head and shrug in a hopeful way. Then she said the really scary thing she was thinking. “And you wouldn’t be my boss,” she said softly. “Which also solves a few problems.”

  He didn’t look at her, but he did nod, which gave her the courage to go on. “If you came forward as G, your work would likely be worth a lot more. Especially if people knew about the connection between the Unicorn and Re-Collecting.”

  “No.” His bark surprised her. “I’m not doing that.”

  Alice sat back in her seat and stared at him, debating whether or not to keep coming up with solutions to his problems when he didn’t seem to be very interested in solving them. Was she the only one expected to make sacrifices?

  “Okay then,” she said sharply. “We’re back to the Unicorn, unless, by some miracle, the Monet turns out to be real. If it is, which I don’t think it is, it will sell for a lot of money. The Unicorn, though, will bring in more money. If it’s part of my client
’s triptych, he’ll want it, and he’ll pay a lot for it.”

  Geoffrey nodded and kept folding and unfolding his napkin, as though he wanted to purposefully irritate Alice with his disinterest.

  “I know you really don’t want to part with it, but if it’s genuine, it’s worth more than any of your other pieces.”

  When he raised his eyes to her, she wasn’t sure whether it was the idea or the sharpness in her voice that was behind the glare he sent her way. Whatever it was, she didn’t appreciate the reaction. He was acting like a spoiled, pouting child who knew he’d done something wrong but still didn’t think he had to face the consequences.

  “I’m not giving up the Unicorn.” He opened his menu and blocked her view of him. “What would you like to eat?”

  Alice held back a gasp and blinked slowly. “Are you serious right now?”

  He lowered his menu.

  “You blow off every idea I have to save you and the museum and then ask me what I want to eat?”

  “I’m not ‘blowing off’ your ideas, I just don’t like any of them. There’s got to be a better way.”

  Geoffrey picked up his menu again, but Alice pulled it down, forcing him to look at her as she leaned as far across the table as she could. “You cannot ignore this problem any longer. You may not have been the one to lose all the money, but you are the one who can fix the situation.” She wanted to be encouraging, but her voice skirted the edge of irritation. She had never fallen for anyone as quickly as she was falling for Geoffrey, but she couldn’t be with anyone who would give in when things got tough.

  “I can find a way to keep the art together so it can be shown the way it should be,” Alice went on, willing herself to be encouraging but drifting too far toward forceful. “And the exhibit can include your own art with it, which is also how it should be shown. Do you know how huge that is? It may feel like you’re losing everything, but unless you’re living out of your car or in a sleazy motel, you haven’t lost nearly as much as a lot of people whose homes are foreclosed on.”

  “This isn’t the same, Alice.” Geoffrey tossed his napkin on the table and let his eyes meet hers. “My family has never been working class. To gain back even half of what we once had will be nearly impossible. And your idea for doing so is to sell the one thing that means anything to me.”

  Alice blinked. “Half of what you had is still ten times what most people have.” She hadn’t seen this elitist side of him before, and it surprised her. “You’re educated and connected. Even with nothing, you’ll never be working class. You’ll always have the advantages you were born into.”

  “And what good are those advantages if I have nothing?”

  Alice stared at him, her eyebrows lifting as the disbelief at what he’d said sunk in. “My family could have used your education and your connections when we lost our home and bounced from one crappy motel to another until I got a job and could help pay rent on an apartment that was only slightly better than the hotel rooms we’d lived in. Do you know what I had to do to get where I am now?”

  Geoffrey shifted sideways and crossed his legs. “I suppose you have a stiffer backbone than I have.”

  At that, Alice had had enough. She stood and grabbed her purse. “If you don’t like my ideas, come up with some of your own. In the meantime, I’ve got to find a new job and a new place to live, because I am actually homeless again as of tomorrow morning.”

  Without looking back to see if Geoffrey would follow—even though she hoped he would—Alice made her way to the valet, fighting back tears. In a matter of a week she’d gone from landing the perfect job and the perfect guy to being jobless, homeless, and alone.

  Those thoughts weighed her down as she stepped outside into the bright sunlight and handed her ticket to the valet. Then she tucked herself into a corner to wait for her car. Her eyes wandered to the other guests around her. A couple who were obviously waiting together but had their backs slightly turned to each other and their faces buried in their phones. Another woman who looked vaguely familiar in an LA kind of way hid behind giant sunglasses, a hat, and her phone. A man wearing a pair of alligator dress shoes with his designer jeans and sport jacket paced back and forth yelling at someone on his phone.

  One by one their cars came, and they left, having spent more on a lunch or a hotel room than many people would make in a month. Not one of them smiled or looked as happy as the valet who smiled brightly each time he handed the keys to their owner and said, “Make it a great day!”

  When he handed Alice her keys and said the same thing, she handed him a twenty-dollar bill—much more than she could afford, but more than she’d seen the others tip—and smiled back.

  “I think I will make it a great day. In fact, I’m going to make it a great life. Thanks for the reminder.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Geoffrey should have gone after Alice. He knew that. He’d even started after her minutes after she’d left, but then stopped when he got to the lobby. How could he face her when he’d behaved so horribly? The generosity she’d shown him deserved more than what he’d given in return. He’d pushed her away when it should have been the other way around. She had every reason to reject him, so why had he been the one doing the rejecting?

  He wrestled with that question as he walked the hallway to his ground-floor room. A room on the first floor rather than a suite seemed like a difficult but economical sacrifice; then he’d heard Alice’s story. Losing an estate and having to sell a favorite painting to become solvent again seemed like a hardship until set against the background of Alice’s life. Her story had filled him with shame for not only feeling sorry for himself, but also for not being strong enough to face a future different from what he’d always known.

  As he walked into his room, he was more aware of its luxury. When he’d checked in that afternoon, he had been disappointed by its small size and lack of a view, but now he noticed, and appreciated, the marble tub and well-appointed furniture. He may not have had a view of the lush hotel grounds, but he did have a comfortable bed and a really nice TV and a million mind-numbing, binge-worthy programs to choose from, if he felt so inclined.

  Geoffrey sat on the bed and slipped off his shoes with Alice’s words running through his head. As tempting as it was to forget everything that had just happened and everything that lay ahead, Alice’s statement that he couldn’t keep ignoring what was happening repeated over and over in his brain. Isn’t that what his father had done, escaping into gambling and alcohol to numb the worry? He glanced at the TV remote, tempted to escape his problems, but instead, he laid back and stared at the ceiling, replaying his conversation with Alice, particularly the parts that made him really uncomfortable.

  Why had her ideas and words bothered him so much?

  The answer he came to was difficult to admit, but when he’d settled on it, it felt true.

  He was afraid.

  Afraid to give up the lifestyle he enjoyed. Afraid to be rejected by his friends and peers when he would no longer be able to spend the kind of money they were able to spend. Afraid of what his mum would do—who she would be—without her family’s estate and the importance that came with it. Afraid of attaching his real name to his art and having it panned again.

  There were so many things to fear, but the one that hurt him the most was the fear that he wasn’t worthy of a woman like Alice.

  Why would a woman who could look disaster in the face and tell it to back off want to be with a man like him who ran and hid at the first sign of trouble? She deserved better.

  But that didn’t make him want her less.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and physical exhaustion from a week of sleepless nights overtook him.

  When he opened them again, the sky outside his room was dark and the clock said three a.m. A buzzing had woken him, and as he searched for its source, he realized it was his phone. The first thought that came to his mind was that maybe Alice was calling him. But the number on his phone belonged
to his father. Because, of course, the idea that Alice would call him was ridiculous. If anyone should call anyone else, it was him. He owed her an apology.

  If that thought hadn’t scared him as much as every other unknown in his life, he would have ignored his father’s call and dialed her number. Instead, he stared at his phone, debating whether or not to accept a call from the man who was the cause of Geoffrey’s financial problems. If his dad hadn’t squandered his fortune, there would be enough money for the upkeep on the Grey estate without taking out loans or opening up the house as a museum. Things could have gone on as they always had with none of them worrying about money.

  But they hadn’t really been happy like that.

  And he never would have met Alice.

  He’d been happier with her over the last few weeks than he’d been for as long as he could remember. Maybe since his childhood.

  Geoffrey pushed the accept button and put the phone to his ear. “Hello, Dad. It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Hello, Son. Where are you that it’s three in the morning?”

  “LA.”

  “Ah. Sorry. I didn’t realize. Shall I call back?”

  Geoffrey almost said yes, but he’d been asleep for roughly twelve hours. He wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Not to mention the fact that he was starving since he hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner.

  “I’m awake,” he answered, then sat up to prove it to himself. Which was a bad idea, because blood rushed to his head making him woozy enough to decide to lie back down.

  “Good. Who’s the girl in the picture?”

  Even at his worst, Lord Chatsworth had never missed an opportunity to tease his son in a good-natured way. Geoffrey let out a laugh that relieved some of the heaviness in his chest and replaced it with something close to love for his father. Appreciation, maybe?

  “She was supposed to be the curator for our museum.”

  “Supposed to be?”

  “Mr. Barclay pulled the funding. I hadn’t quite broken up with Clarissa.” Geoffrey rubbed at the pain in his brow that started every time he thought or talked about his predicament. “No funding, no museum, no job.”