Betting the Billionaire (6 page)

“What, like the best piece of furniture wins?” Gabe asked.

Her dad nodded his head. “Sounds like a good bet, after all, I just read a story in the papers about your furniture-making hobby.”

It seemed like Keisha was trapped in the room with two crazy people. He had to be joking to think of leveraging everything he’d built on a stupid bet. She dropped down to her haunches to better look her dad in the face, but it wasn’t lunacy she saw in his eyes. It was confidence.

“Pops! You can’t risk the company like this. So what if we lost our biggest client. We’ll find a new one. Someone better. We’ll find a way to cover the loan payment. I can sell my Thunderbird. This asshole isn’t worth it.”

“Trust me, Baby Girl. I know what I’m doing.” Her dad patted her hand as if she was mumbling nonsense and kept his focus locked on the threat to their family’s survival. “You heard my daughter. She doesn’t think you’re much of a challenge. Is that true?”

“Like you’d know the truth from a table saw,” Gabe growled.

“What’s wrong rich boy, can’t take a little manual labor?” Her dad pricked at the other man like a rancher with a cattle prod.

“Name the terms, old man.”

“You and Keisha each make a piece of furniture. The best piece wins.”

That’s it. Her dad was unhinged. She needed to call in the big guns—her mom—before everything blew up in all their faces. She stood and grabbed the phone.

Gabe smiled, looking for all intents and purposes like a cat toying with a doomed mouse. “And I suppose you’d be the judge?”

“Nah. Baby Girl here knows how particular I can be. You’d both probably lose.” Her dad rubbed his chin. “There’s a local family moving into a Habitat for Humanity house in two days. You can each make a piece to welcome them home. They’ll vote for their favorite. Winner takes all.”

The phone dangled in her hand as her fingers hovered over the buttons. This was beyond any bit of reasonableness.

“Have you both lost your ever-loving minds?” She dropped the receiver onto its cradle. “I won’t be a part of this craziness. He can’t force us to do anything, Pops.”

Her dad looked up at her, hope shining in his eyes. “You know the doc said my hands were too shaky to use the equipment anymore. Your mama would be right pissed if I came home with two less fingers because the jigsaw got away from me. She likes to hold hands when we go to the movies.”

Torn between the look on her father’s face and sanity, Keisha hesitated.

“See, old man, even your own daughter knows you’re bound to lose.” Gabe withdrew a pen from his jacket pocket. “Make it easier on yourself, and sign the company over to me.”

Anger shot through her veins like a thunderbolt, singing her skin and leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake. It was one thing for her to question her own family loyalty, but a whole other thing for Gabe to do it. That shit did not fly.

She rounded on Gabe, the urge to slap the arrogant look right off his face making her palm itch. “Excuse me?”

“You’re our best hope, Keisha Louise,” her dad said, his voice pulling her back from the edge. “Say you’ll do it.”

Her father’s soft plea did more to make up her mind than the mocking self-satisfaction written all over Gabe’s handsome face.

“Yes.” The affirmation came out stronger than she thought possible with her jangly nerves.

“That’s my girl.” Her dad squeezed her hand. “How about you, Campos?”

Gabe regarded them both with heavy suspicion. “I win, and you sign the papers? You sell the company to me for one dollar, knowing I’m going to padlock the place as soon as the ink dries?”

Her dad nodded. “And when you lose, you do whatever it takes to get the Barrington Inn and all the other clients we lost to sign exclusive contracts with us, and you stop sniffing after the company like a bored hound dog.”

Keisha held her breath. If Jacobs Fine Furnishings was going to make it, they had to get Gabe to leave them alone and get the hotel chain’s business back. A furniture making bet wasn’t her ideal method of accomplishing either, but if it got the job done, she’d learn to live with it—and she’d find a way to win it.

Gabe took off his glasses and made a big show of cleaning them with a handkerchief while staring at the same hummingbird sculpture that had fascinated her dad earlier. For what felt like an eternity, he didn’t say a word. Then he put on his glasses and pushed them up the bridge of his nose.

He pocketed the handkerchief. “Deal.”

Her dad nodded as if he’d just agreed to a fantasy football trade, not putting his entire company on the line. “It’s a bet then. You two can use the workshop where I started the company. I like the symmetry of that. It’s an old, red barn at the intersection of Highway Twenty-Eight and Thunder Road. You can’t miss it. Be there at six tonight. Bring a bag. You’ll bunk there.”

“Until then.” Gabe spun on his heel and strode out the door with the cocky strut of a man who’d already won.

Keisha couldn’t wait to show him how wrong he was.

Chapter Seven

Standing outside of Jacobs Fine Furnishings, his shoulders hunched because of the cold wind gusting all around him, Gabe glared at the small, black loaner car with the drooping bumper and the threadbare tires. Even as a non-car guy, he knew he hadn’t just climbed down a few rungs on the automotive ladder. No. He’d stumbled down to the lowest rung. Still, it got him from point A to point B, which was all he needed to take down Dell Jacobs.

He was so damn close to taking away the one thing that mattered most to the old man. If all went according to plan—which it would—he’d be dancing on Dell Jacobs’ desk within forty-eight hours.

Glancing around at the snow-covered factory grounds, he waited for the all-powerful rush that usually accompanied winning. But the expected buzz of certain victory didn’t flood his system. Instead, he felt like a soda that had gone flat. He searched his surroundings, trying to determine what was off.

The low-slung building with metal siding didn’t look like much, but the potential was there. Most mass-market furniture was manufactured out of the country, but the high-end market remained open to domestic companies. Customers who wanted to buy American, desired something a little different, or craved quality not seen in mass-market furniture were keeping the domestic furniture industry in business. His motives for going after Jacobs Fine Furnishings may not be bottom-line driven, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t money to be made. And he was the man to make it happen. As an added bonus, turning the company around would be like having extra dirt to rub in Dell Jacobs’ eyes. He warmed up to his new plan.

An image of Keisha kicking his ass in cards and laughing about it flashed in his mind, and his gut clenched. Damn. She was a woman. Just like any other woman. Last night was an aberration—a hot one—but still nothing to get in the way of his latest plans.

Ignoring his inner voice laughing its ass off, Gabe zipped up his coat as high as it would go and marched to the loaner car, his shoes leaving tracks in the snow. He yanked open the door with more force than necessary and slid behind the wheel, his knees knocking against the steering wheel. The door let out a yowling creak as he tugged it shut, nearly drowning out his cell phone’s ring. His cousin Carlos’ photo flashed on the screen.

He hit speaker. “Yeah?”

“You on your way home yet?” Carlos asked.

“Not exactly.” Gabe turned the key in the ignition, and the engine coughed to life with a metal-on-metal rattle thrown in for good measure.

“That doesn’t sound like your Aston Martin.”

“Because it’s not.” He pulled out onto the main road, retracing his path from earlier so he’d end up at Highway Twenty-Eight. “There were…problems.”

Carlos’ bark of laughter boomed through the tiny speaker. “Please tell me you didn’t wreck that cherry piece of mechanical wonder.”

“No. It died on me outside of Salvation.” At least he hoped he hadn’t killed it permanently. The big dude at Fix ‘Er Up with the trucker hat and the tow truck said he’d take a look as soon as the roads cleared.

“Did you run out of gas?” His cousin didn’t bother trying to hide the amusement in his voice.

Annoyance steamed Gabe’s cheeks. “Fuck off. That happened once.”

“In recent memory. I told you your habit of driving on E would catch up to you,” Carlos crowed. “Oh man, I am loving this.”

Three times. It had happened three times, and each time, he’d been on his way to close a deal that had fundamentally changed his business. What was gas when it came to those kinds of stakes?

“So glad I could amuse you.”

“You do crack my shit up, but on less funny side of things—your mom called me twice this morning. She does not believe you’re on a weekend getaway with one of your flavors of the week.”

The loaner car’s balding tires hit a patch of slush on the road, and the car skittered to the right. His blood pressure jacked up to one million over a shit ton. He tightened his grip on the wheel and jerked to the left. The tires screeched, but found purchase on the asphalt. His ears stopped throbbing as his pulse calmed.

One disaster avoided and another one bearing down on him. The second one came armed with a casserole dish of cheese and onion enchiladas baked with love and seasoned with guilt. “How could mom have any idea what’s going on?”

“She’s your mom, man. They always know when shit is up.”

An unfortunate and universal truth. But this time the stakes were a lot higher than the time in high school when she found out he’d been sneaking out after curfew to meet Annabelle Rodriguez. He wouldn’t drag his mother into this. He couldn’t.

“Did you tell her?”

“Hell no,” Carlos said, biting out the words. “I wish I’d never told you.”

“I deserved to know.” Anger at being kept in the dark for his entire life had him seeing red. No. He refused to target his mother. She loved him. She cared. Gabe was furious with Dell Jacobs. He was the one who was really at fault. He was the one who needed to be punished. “But that’s not important now.”

“I’m sure she had her reasons for keeping it quiet all these years,” Carlos said.

He’d lived his whole life thinking Cesar was his biological father. He’d never questioned it. Never thought about how strange it was that every maternal relative lived in Harbor City’s middle-class suburbs while he’d grown up in a glass and steel high-rise, going to private schools and spending Spring Break in the French Alps or Monaco. Why his mother and father both had brown eyes while his were blue. Why his mother hyperventilated every time she got into a car.

What kind of son would he be if he questioned his mother?

Annoyed by the direction of his thoughts, Gabe’s fingers tapped out a tune on the steering wheel. “I’m sure she did have her reasons, but it doesn’t matter because now I know, and I’m finally doing something about it.”

“He agreed to sell?” Real excitement punctuated Carlos’ question.

“Sort of,” Gabe hedged.

Silence filled the car’s interior. Well, as much quiet as there could be with the mangled roar of the loaner car’s engine as he turned onto Highway Twenty-Eight headed for Fix ‘Er Up to check on the Aston Martin’s diagnosis.

Carlos cleared his throat. “Continue.”

“We made a bet. Whoever makes the best piece of furniture in two days wins.” So much for being a titan of business. He’d gotten suckered by a wily old man who somehow knew how to push all Gabe’s buttons. Dell Jacobs had done everything short of spitting on his palm and triple-dog-daring Gabe.

“I’ve seen the desk you made.” Carlos spoke slowly, obviously choosing each word with care. “But do you really think you can beat a trained professional?”

“I’m not going up against the old man.”

“Who then?”

“His daughter, Keisha.” She of the snarky one liners, amazingly soft skin, and the ass that could make the most intelligent man in the world babble like a total loon. Damn, she’d been pissed to see him in her office. Really pissed.

“Oh, now I get why you just
had
to go down to Salvation yourself instead of sending a lackey. Is she as hot as she sounds on the phone?”

“Who said she sounded hot?” Gabe glared at his phone.

“Do you remember Thursday night? After the fourth beer, you wouldn’t shut up about her, going on and on about how she had the voice of aged whiskey, whatever the fuck that means.”

Embarrassment scorched his ears. Yeah, he remembered all right. “Shut it, Carlos.”

“And you think you have a chance?”

“With her?” Damn, Gabe hoped so. Who said billionaires couldn’t be fools?

“Not
with
her.
Against
her.” Carlos snorted. “Priorities, man. Then again, maybe you finally have them straight after going on this nut job quest to avenge a father who never needed avenging.”

“I’m not going to let anything, or anyone, stand in my way.” Of that, he was damn sure. He hadn’t turned one hundred thousand in seed money into a billion in fifteen years by letting his little head rule the big one.

Carlos sighed, his weariness coming through loud and clear despite the static connection. “You’ve got me really regretting ever telling you about the police report.”

“I don’t have time for regrets.”

“Only revenge?”

An ice-cold calm filled him as he focused his energy on the two-lane road ahead and the dot on the horizon that would grow into Fix ‘Er Up. “If I wanted a lecture, I’d have told my mom where I was going this weekend and why.”

“Ever think that maybe the fact that you didn’t should tell you something?”

An ache built behind Gabe’s right eye, dull but growing in strength. He loved his cousin, in truth they were more like brothers, but on this topic, he couldn’t deal with any touchy-feely-TV-doctor bullshit. “Was there a purpose for this call?”

“Your cousin can’t call just to check in?”

Yeah, right. “What are we, chicks?”

“I found the medical examiner’s report from your dad’s accident.”

An investigator at Maltese Security in Harbor City, Carlos had the computer skills to get his hands on almost any document in the world.

The ache turned into a sharp knife jabbing Gabe right in the eyeball. Fix ‘Er Up sat a mile up the road, and he started to slow down way before he needed to. “And?”