The Billionaire Game Read online

  “Of course you do, sorry,” Lacey said apologetically. “Anyway, and then I had a great big attack of common sense, and I thought: you know who I want to make mine? Katie!”

  I felt an answering grin bigger than the Grand Canyon split my face. “Oh my god, Lacey!” I grabbed her hands and jumped up and down. “OMG, OMG, OMG, I have so many ideas already! This will be the best trousseau ever, I swear, all the other trousseaus will just go home and cry their little trousseau hearts out! Oh, wow, I can’t even stop thinking of ideas! Shit, I need to write them down.” I dropped Lacey’s hand abruptly and began to paw through my purse for my notebook. “Okay, so we’re going to go with, like, just all the teddies for you, and a few babydolls. And a peignoir, I’m trying to bring those back. Red is a good color on you, and purple, and gold is pretty great. Can’t go wrong with black. Damn, I wish I had my fabric notes! Okay, I remember you liked the design with—”

  Lacey let me ramble on for what was probably ages, until my imagination ran dry, and shortly after that, my pen. Before I could tell Lacey that I was fine, she motioned to her assistant, who came running with a new one.

  “Damn, girl,” I said, “free pens whenever I need one? I knew hooking you up with a billionaire was going to have its perks, but I can say with complete honesty that I was not expecting this one.”

  “Oh, you weren’t?” Lacey said with a completely straight face. “But everyone knows that billionaires have unlimited pens, staples, paper clips, and all other office supplies. Except toner.”

  “Oh really?” I asked, trying to match her deadpan. “Why is that?”

  “The Great Toner Wars,” Lacey said, affecting a voice of deep sorrow. Then she ruined it by nearly snorting champagne out of her nose as she broke into laughter.

  I joined her. “You are the silliest damn person I know,” I told her. “And I know me, so that is saying something.”

  “Oh, there’s Grant,” Lacey said. “Good. He can rescue us from our silliness. He can be our knight in extremely serious armor.”

  It was just possible that we’d had too much champagne.

  Maybe. Just putting it out there as a hypothesis. Were there any scientists at the party? We could ask them to test it.

  Grant came strolling up to us with the self-satisfied saunter of a man who has successfully parted several people from their not-terribly-hard-earned money for a good cause. He was accompanied by two other guys, one tall and sandy-haired in a rumpled suit, his square jaw and slight belly making him look like a jock gone to seed. The other one—

  —was Asher.

  If I’d thought he’d looked good in that T-shirt while at my apartment—well, shut my mouth. And open it again, because those dimples were in danger of making my jaw hit the floor.

  He wore a midnight black suit, the jacket unbuttoned and the tight red silk of his shirt making his skin almost glow. He’d tugged off his tie in the heat, and was now absentmindedly wrapping it around and around his strong, graceful hands. His green eyes seemed to sparkle in the faint light of the torches and fireworks, and his hair fell in defiant curls around his face. A hint of stubble graced his cheeks, just enough to rasp against someone’s skin if he leaned down to claim their mouth with those full, pouty lips…

  Oops, Grant was saying words. I should probably pay attention to Grant’s words and not Asher’s lips.

  Though the lips were definitely more interesting.

  He’s got a girlfriend, I reminded myself. He’s off limits, and also, he’s a jerk! You have instituted a strict no jerk policy! All jerks must be put in checked luggage; if you attempt to board this relationship with a jerk, Security will ask you to step from the line.

  “—all in university together,” Grant was explaining to Lacey. “Brody and I played on the polo team together, and Asher was his roommate. Lacey, Kate—Brody and Asher. If I’d taken either of their advice back at college, I’d have made my fortune a lot sooner. Asher and Brody, Lacey and Kate. They keep me on the straight and narrow.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Brody said to us.

  Asher took Lacey’s hand and kissed it. “Delighted.”

  Lacey’s eyebrows climbed so high they could have formed their own airline.

  Asher took my mine. “Del—”

  “We’ve met,” I said shortly, pulling my hand away.

  “Asher, did you forget your manners again?” Grant asked. “He likes to put on the whole Prince Charming act now, but when I first met him, he couldn’t speak two words to girls that weren’t ‘move, you’re blocking the Lord of the Rings trilogy.’”

  “Grant, please,” Asher said, starting to look embarrassed.

  “This one time,” Grant started, a wicked grin blooming on his face, “he didn’t know his crush from the debate team was in the lobby, and he was racing down the stairs, skinny arms flailing in the wind—you should have seen him before he got into body-building, a toothpick could have taken him in a boxing match—”

  “Don’t go digging up my tragic past, man,” Asher said with a laugh, giving Grant a friendly punch in the shoulder. His face took on a mischievous cast, and his slightly awkward smile widened. “Unless you want me to bring up that incident with you, the sorority, the whipped cream, and the fire department.”

  Grant shot a fake-panicked look at Lacey, who rolled her eyes. “Another tale of your misspent youth? I’ve probably heard worse.”

  “I think I’ll play it safe,” Grant said, “and change the subject. Where’s your lovely date, Asher? Have you met her, Kate?”

  I was about to say I had, when suddenly a blonde woman who was ten pounds too thin and six inches too short to be Dove Steele shot out of the crowd and wrapped herself around him, nestling her head onto his shoulder and letting out a contented little murmur. He had another girl already? Or in addition? This guy gave ‘player’ such a new name they were going to have to add another page to the entry in the encyclopedia.

  “Oh, there you are, sweetums!” she simpered like a little lost kitten. “Ugh, this charity ball is such a drag! And oh my God, books, like, what are poor kids even going to do with books? Can they even, like, read? Aren’t they all on crack?”

  Everyone froze for a second. You could see the thoughts slowly travel across their faces as they wondered if they had really heard what they thought they had just heard, and if so, whether they should laugh, yell, or cry.

  Asher looked like he sincerely hoped the ground would open up beneath him and he would be kidnapped by Mole People before he had to figure out how to respond.

  “Excuse me,” I said as straight-faced as I could. “I think I see something over there. Yes. A thing. That I should go—see. Bye!” And I fled behind the band’s stage where no one could see me.

  And then I laughed until I was very nearly sick.

  #

  When I had recovered, I poked my head back out and surveyed the scene. The coast was clear; Asher and his…I wanted to say ‘date,’ but ‘disaster’ seemed so much more accurate…seemed to have fled. Brody was nowhere to be seen either, but Lacey and Grant were still lounging hand in hand where I had seen them last.

  I paused for a moment before going to rejoin them, just watching them, so in love and so unselfconscious. Grant teasing Lacey by holding a chocolate-dipped strawberry just too high for her to grab, and then kissing her gently before feeding it to her himself. Lacey laughing and relaxing into his arms, her eyes closing in delighted contentment.

  Lacey had her man and her job, and she loved them both beyond reason. It was the whole package.

  And sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if my whole package had gotten lost in the mail.

  I set my shoulders and told myself to stop wallowing. I had more important things to focus on. It didn’t matter if achieving my dream took years or even decades; I had set my mind and heart on it, and I was going to do it.

  And hey, in the meantime, there was always champagne. I snagged a glass off a passing waiter’s tray, and he turned to me with a
grin like electricity. Oh, hello, cute waiter from before. Still looking twice as delicious and intoxicating as the champagne he was carrying.

  “So,” he said with a Louisiana drawl that had me contemplating how that voice might sound coming from between my thighs, “what’s a pretty lady like you doing in a place like this?”

  Well, if he was going to flirt with me first, I definitely wasn’t going to cling to any reservations about flirting with him.

  “Oh, nothing much,” I answered back, coming forward and letting my hand rest lightly on his arm. “Just…admiring the scenery.”

  Dreams were hard things to achieve. It was a good thing life was stocked with so many pleasant distractions.

  THREE

  “Hold, please!”

  I tried my best to keep my voice chipper as I transferred the call, massaging my temples and wincing as the last pangs of my hangover headache shot through my brain. Ow ow fuckity ow ow. Sometimes distractions are just not worth it.

  The waiter hadn’t been much better than the champagne. We’d barely started to get our flirt on when his girlfriend appeared out of nowhere. It turned out she was a waiter at this event too. What was with all the two-timing guys lately?

  And so here I was, manning the phones on reception, trying not to die of boredom and second-hand entitlement from all the asshats who thought that ‘receptionist’ was an archaic English word for ‘person put on Earth to cater to my every whim and whom it is appropriate to scream at if she does not immediately divine my exact wishes through telepathy.’

  I could see one of those asshats approaching, and it was with considerable relief that I saw one of the phones light up. I grabbed at it like a lifeline.

  “Devlin Media Corp., front desk, how can I help you?”

  “Hey, Kate, it’s Lacey, time to gossip?”

  “Sure thing, ma’am, I’ll walk you through that right now, it should only take about an hour,” I said sweetly. Asshat made an annoyed face, but moved off looking for someone with a more open schedule to harass.

  “That scare them off?” Lacey asked. “I still don’t know how you do that job. I had just one jerk yelling at me all day in my old position, and that practically had me running for the hills.”

  “Like you ever ran for the hills in your life,” I said. “I bet you don’t even know where the hills are. Anyway, yeah, the hyena’s headed out in search of different prey. What’s up, girl?”

  “I cannot believe Grant talked me into a business trip right after the party,” she complained. “I’m so hungover and jetlagged I can’t even get excited about being in London yet. Thank goodness I have the week—I’m going to make time around the meetings to see the Globe Theatre, and Picadilly Square, and at least a few museums.”

  “You going to hang around the BBC headquarters at all?” I asked. “Maybe see some of those old spy-fi show stars you love?”

  “I wish,” Lacey said with a sigh. “They tore down the old headquarters awhile back, though.”

  We chatted some more about her travel plans, with me occasionally going into fake professional-speak when someone walked by, or putting her on hold when someone came up with an issue that actually fell in my job description.

  Meanwhile I occupied my hands by sketching some new designs, mostly things I was toying with for Lacey’s trousseau. I didn’t usually work with leather, but I know Lacey had a thing for the spy team of Steed and Mrs. Peel, and I thought I could put together a sort of homage to one of Mrs. Peel’s kinky leather catsuits. The trick would be to find leather that had been tanned and cured until it was soft as velvet—maybe I could line it with real velvet as well…I would have to cut it just right, so that it gripped and defined without chafing…

  An instant message popped up, from a lingerie client, an actress named Maura. SAT OK 4 U? LOVED IT LAST TIME. SO HOT!!!

  “Ahem.”

  I looked up, automatically closing the message as I did so, though I wasn’t sure if the speaker had already seen it. Her face didn’t give me any clue either. It was my manager Sarah, a middle-aged woman whose expression always suggested that she was sucking on a lemon while trying desperately not to let on how much she wanted to spit it out. There were two HR flunkies behind her; I hoped they didn’t have two different requests, or I could be stuck helping them for awhile.

  “Yes?” I asked. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Just come with me,” she said. Her voice sounded a little nervous, the way a rookie cop’s might as he collared his first suspect. What the what?

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ll have to call you back,” I said in my I’m-definitely-talking-to-a-real-client-and-not-tying-up-a-work-line-to-gossip-with-my-BFF voice. “Have a pleasant day, and thank you for doing business with Devlin Media Corp.!” I looked back up at Sarah again, who was fidgeting like someone had relocated an entire anthill to her pants. “Seriously, what’s up? Is it performance review time again? ‘Cause I have to say, I think you have been doing an excellent job.”

  Usually I can get a smile out of anyone, even my bosses, with the way I rattle on, though okay, Sarah’s smile usually looks a little nervous, like she thinks the thought police are going to rappel down from the ceiling and disappear her for having fun at work. This time, though, she didn’t smile at all. Neither did the HR flunkies. Wait, were they all together? Like, as a group? For me?

  “Let’s just go have a discussion in my office, Kate,” Sarah said.

  “Uh, sure,” I replied. “But I’m supposed to be manning the phones, and—”

  “Lisa will do that,” Sarah said, gesturing to a mousy little intern so short and unassuming that I’d dismissed her as Sarah’s shadow. “If you’re not in the middle of anything—”

  Oh, just wasting company time talking to my best friend and setting up appointments for my side business, I didn’t say.

  Instead I stood up and held out my wrists like a suspect being collared. “You got me, copper!”

  Sarah’s lips thinned. “Please, Kate, try to be professional.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I could feel the eyes of the lobby on me—I probably shouldn’t have pulled that stunt with the fake handcuffs. When was I going to learn how far was too far to push a joke? I followed her, the HR flunkies hanging back a second before swooping in behind me, like security detail at the parade.

  #

  I sat down in the folding chair in Sarah’s office, which was really a glorified cubicle, since she only ranked about a head higher than me on the corporate totem pole. Peeling inspirational posters peered down at me from the walls, and the fluorescent light over her computer hissed and spat, blinking on and off so rapidly it looked like it might be in Morse code. Sarah sat down at the desk and nervously shuffled some papers, while the HR cronies took up positions flanking her like bodyguards. I waited for her to say something.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Damn, those pieces of paper were getting really thoroughly shuffled.

  “Look,” I said when I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer—I am terrible at movies, don’t ever take me—“What is this about? Is it about that coffee spill on Dan from Accounting? Because first of all, that was an accident, and second of all he was harassing me and he had it coming—”

  Sarah cut me off with a wave of her hand, and hemmed before finally beginning to speak.

  “As you know, we regularly monitor company internet use—”

  “What?” I blurted, too startled to keep from interrupting her. “I didn’t know that!”

  Sarah heaved a sigh, and settled back into her chair, seeming more comfortable. Ah, the familiar old ground of having to explain something to me. “It was in your employment contract.”

  “Oh. Right.” So sue me, I hadn’t read the employment contract. Yeah, yeah, I knew that wasn’t smart, but give me a break, the thing was as thick as seven Bibles and didn’t have half the human interest. I’d figured I could pick up most of it as I went along, and so far, I’d been right
.

  “As I was saying, we monitor company internet use, and, well. There’s no easy way to say this.” Sarah took a deep breath like she was about to plunge into a deep and roiling ocean. “Kate,” she said in the kind of portentous tone used by mystical prophets in cheesy movies with bad CGI, “we know.” She took another deep breath. “We know about the porn.”

  What?

  “Oh good,” I snarked, “I was worried I was going to have to explain the birds and the bees to you, and believe me, that is not a conversation I would be comfortable having with my boss.” Then something about her previous sentence jangled wrong in my brain.

  Sarah said primly, and a touch frostily, “I was referring to a specific instance of pornography, or rather several specific instances, namely those that you have been viewing on your computer.”

  “What?” I exclaimed indignantly. “I have never watched porn in my life!”

  “Oh, no?” Sarah said, fingering one of the pieces of paper in front of her.

  “No ma’am,” I said. “Cross my heart and hope to die. I read my porn, like a classy person.”

  “Well, I’m afraid the evidence says otherwise,” Sarah said. She slapped several pieces of paper down in front of me. “What do you call this?”

  “Uh, I call this ‘research,’” I said. “For my lingerie company? That I run on the side?”

  Because that’s what it was. Sarah must have done her internet monitoring when I was working on my plus size line designs, because the pictures in front of me showed larger women of all races and a variety of weight distributions, each modeling sporty, frilly, or sexy underwear. Man, looking at all these brought it back. I could see now where I’d been making my mistake—I’d been trying to use the underwear to convey a look of slimness, when for this range I should have instead been emphasizing the curves. Oh, man, as soon as I got out of this meeting I was going to grab my design notebook and—