Billionaire Games Boxed Set 1-3 (50 page)

He sucked in a gallon of courage, enough to give him the mental strength to sustain him in case she came crawling back.

Yeah, right!
Nick laughed at himself for being such a fool. He tried to shake away his stupidity, although doubting that he could accomplish it.

He pushed himself up to head for the garage. He was going to go see Dean. Maybe he could get him to help move some of his things over from the loft above Hang Ten.

Nick Matthews was going to move on if it killed him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Marseilles, France

JULIAN DE LAURENT, BRIEFCASE IN HAND, puttered along the hallway toward the second floor entry of Pacifique de Lumière. He checked his watch. 7:30 AM. Good, he had plenty of time to get to the office if he left now.

“Julian…?” Claudette’s sweet voice—the one she always used to lull people in when she wanted something—drifted up behind him.

He stopped, sucked in a breath, then turned to greet his stepmother. “Claudette.” He smiled. “How nice to see you before I leave for work.”

“Oh, never mind all that, Julian.” She shook her head and paused at his side. “We
have
to talk.”

“About?”

“Your father.”

Uh oh. What’s he done now?
Julian glanced at his watch again. “All right.” He guided her toward the small salon just down the hall. “I have a few minutes to spare.”

They went into the room, but Claudette didn’t speak until Julian closed the door.

“What’s Papa gotten you so excited over?” Julian asked. He could’ve used a more appropriate term, like
angry
, but why invite trouble?

“He wants Lecie to come home.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.” Julian chuckled. “Did you remind him that she’s just as immovable as he is?”

Claudette nodded. “He’s an obstinate man, though.”

“Well…” Julian was enjoying this far too much. “It’s not as if he can
cut her off
.” He’d learned that one from Camille. He’d have to remember to say it directly to Papa. That’d drive him nuts. “And Papa has no one to blame but himself.”

“You know your father well enough to know…” Claudette shook her head. “He will not relent so easily.”

Julian agreed with an expressive nod. It’d take a lot more than Papa’s inability to cut Lecie off financially to keep him from meddling in her life. “Any idea what he’s planning?”

“I think he’s going to try to have her deported.” Claudette signed heavily. “He thinks that will force her to come home. But let’s face it…if he angers her, she will do anything but.”

Damn it, Papa! Why must you?
Julian had a feeling that this could turn out much worse than Papa could ever imagine. “I thought he would’ve have learned by now,” Julian said with a slow, disbelieving shake of the head. “But as you well know, once Papa gets started, there’s not much anyone can do to stop him.”

“I was thinking…” Claudette glanced down at the floor, then slowly lifted her gaze back to meet Julian’s. “More along the lines of talking to your sister. See if it’s possible to stop her from making a bad situation worse.”

Julian moved to the door, wrapped his hand around the knob, and before opening it, he said, “I’ll do my best.”

But how he was going to stop Lecie from overreacting was anybody’s guess, since she was in America and he was here in France.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AFTER SPENDING THREE DAYS BROODING on Dean’s couch, Nick decided it was time to move his things from the loft above Hang Ten over to the house. It was clear that Ginny wasn’t coming back.

Nick backed his truck, the bed crammed full of his mother’s furniture, into the driveway and hit the garage door opener.

Dean opened the passenger door, but didn’t get out. “Where do you want to put the stuff?” he asked. “In the garage or inside the house?”

While the garage would be the easier thing to do, Nick knew full well that if he wanted help getting the furniture inside the house, he’d better do it now. “Let’s take it inside. It’s better not to clog up the garage.”

They bailed out of the truck, Nick went to the rear and dropped the tailgate. The piece closest to them was an old dresser that Nick’s mother had said belonged to her mother. Well, at least Nick would have a place to store his clothes that Ginny had seen fit to dump onto the middle of the bedroom floor.

Dean hopped up on the tailgate and grabbed the bottom of one side. “Get that end,” he said of the one nearest Nick.

Piece by piece, bit by bit, they unloaded the truck. The dresser, a matching headboard and two nightstands, a coffee table, and small bureau
were all that would fit in Nick’s truck on this trip.

Nick stalled in the living room, sitting down on the coffee table, the last item they’d hauled in and deposited it in the middle of the living room.

“Well…” Dean laughed, leaning against the wall near the front door. “A few more trips like this one, and you’ll have a place to eat, sleep and watch TV,” Dean
said, poking fun at Nick’s small short-bed truck.

Nick gazed around the living room, then peered into the dining room and kitchen off to his right. Every inch of this house, even though she’d completely emptied it, reminded him of Ginny.

Just looking at the place where the couch used to sit in the living room—that girly-looking flowery couch where Ginny used to snuggle up to Nick—left a bad taste in his mouth.

The memory of Ginny sitting at the dining table while he cooked, smiling up at him and waiting for him to serve her, wrapped around his chest like strapping vines, with thorns, tightening and squeezing until he could hardly breathe.

Dean stepped toward Nick. “You ready to go grab another load?”

“I hate this house.” Nick’s voice was flat.

“Yeah…” Dean shrugged and nodded. “It’s not exactly you. But then…what is?”

“I mean it.” Nick kicked his tone up a notch on the serious meter. “I
really
hate this house.”

“You sure this isn’t your anger at Ginny talking?”

Nick snorted a laugh. “Probably.” He glanced up at Dean. “But I still hate this house.” He paused, letting that notion sink into his own thoughts. “I…can’t live here.” His voice serrated the words. His fury at Ginny swirled with the disgust he was feeling over what she’d done to him. “
She
was the one who wanted to live here. Not me.” Heat flushed through his body. He wished Ginny would’ve left something behind so he could break it. He looked around for something. Anything. But everything here now was his mother’s belongings. He couldn’t harm any of those. “I was perfectly fine and happy living over the restaurant when she invaded my life.”

Dean started doing that little fidgeting dance he does when he wants to say,
I told you so
. Nick didn’t want to hear that right now, no matter how true it might be. Dean hadn’t liked Ginny from the get-go, but Nick had been too blind to see that she was a gold-digger—obviously—of minimal proportions. Seriously. There were tons of guys out there with access to way more money than Nick could scrounge up. So why him?

“She set her sights pretty low, didn’t she?” Nick laughed at himself. “I can’t believe she spent three years with me, just to get some second-rate furniture.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Dean offered, “she’s a second-rate gold-digger.”

They both knew Ginny liked to put on airs, Dean more so than Nick, but Nick was beginning to see the light. Funny thing was, the so-called
second-hand
furniture he’d inherited from his mother, that Ginny had made him store above the restaurant, was far more valuable, monetarily, than the furnishings she’d cleaned out from the house.

Dean was right. Ginny sucked at gold-digging. Somehow, that made Nick feel better.

“I’m gonna move back into the loft,” Nick said with a confident nod.

“That place is a mess.” Dean rolled his eyes.

“I like messes.”

Dean chuckled. “That’s true.”

“You suck at this friend thing.” Nick pushed himself up from the coffee table. “You know that?”

“You’re welcome.” Dean feigned innocence, then stepped forward. “Want to load this stuff up and take it back to the loft?”

Nick nodded. He had a direction now, and one he felt good about. He hadn’t felt this positive in months. Everything was going to work out fine.

Wasn’t it?

T
he next morning, Nick was back at work, tending to the needs of the restaurant before it opened at eleven—in two hours.

His first order of business was to check the inventory to make sure there were sufficient supplies for the weekend. He’d have to call today, if he wanted deliveries by Friday afternoon.

He left his office and cut through the dining room toward the kitchen. The storage room was located down a hall off to the left side. Before he got to the double doors that swung open into the kitchen, he was distracted by a knock on the front door.

Nick peered through the window next to the door, seeing Dean standing there looking troubled. Without hesitation, he pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. Dean scurried inside and waited silently while Nick relocked the door.

“What are you doing here?” Didn’t he have a community center to run?

“We need to talk.” Dean was fidgeting, but it wasn’t that rooster fidget he does when he’s proud of himself. This time, it was his coyote fidget, the one he does when he’s antsy.

“What’s up?” Nick didn’t know why, but his insides started to quiver.

“It’s about that check you gave me the other day for the community center. The computers, remember?”

“Yeah.” Nick’s insides relaxed. It was just like Dean to get him all worked up over nothing. “What, did you lose it?”

Dean had a hard time looking Nick in the eye. Nick didn’t like that. Dean shook his head, and said, “It bounced, man.”

“What?” Nick’s mouth dropped to the floor, carrying his confidence along for the ride. “There’s gotta be a mistake. Did you go inside the bank?”

Dean shifted from foot to foot and then rubbed his forehead. “There’s no mistake. Hang Ten’s petty cash account is empty.”

Nick massaged his chin. “That can’t be. There’s never less than twenty grand in that account at any given time. If it drops below, money comes straight out of the line of credit to top it back off.” Nick shook his head adamantly. “They made a mistake at the bank.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but you’d better call the bank.” Dean offered the check to Nick. He took it, wondering if this was another one of Dean’s pranks.

If this was a joke, Dean was one hell of an actor. Besides that, Dean wouldn’t use something that meant so much to both of them as vehicle to fuel his prank.

Uncertainty gnawed at Nick’s insides. This
had
to be a mistake. He headed for his office, waving at Dean to follow him. Nick wanted him to hear it for himself that there had been a mistake. That’s all it was. A simple mistake. Maybe the teller was new and hadn’t quite learned the system yet.

Whatever. Nick would get this cleared up in a jiff.

After getting the bank on the phone, and explaining the situation, Nick gave the girl his petty cash account number and then she put him on hold.

Each second that passed while Nick waited jabbed at his confidence. What if Dean was right? What if there was no money in the account? But that didn’t make sense. Nick had plenty of money at his disposal. Not tons, but enough for him and Hang Ten.

Nick heard the click at the other end of the line. “Mr. Matthews…?” When she said his name, her voice was not nearly as confident as it had been two minutes ago. “I’m afraid your account is overdrawn.”

“Overdrawn?” Nick said in a sharp tone.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “By twelve hundred thirty-two dollars and forty-eight cents.”

“That’s impossible.” Nick adopted a defiant tone. “When that account goes below twenty thousand, the bank automatically transfers funds from my line of credit to top it off.”

“Let me check that account.” She paused. Nick could hear her typing in the background. After a moment, she said, “Can you give me that account number so I can make sure I’m looking at the right one?”

“Sure.” Nick fished his wallet from his back pocket and rifled through the contents until he found his list of account numbers. He rattled off the line of credit’s number and waited.

And waited.

Finally, the girl on the other end of the call cleared her throat. “Mr. Matthews…?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid your line of credit is maxed out.”

“What?” Nick’s voice had gone high and loud, fueled by the instant overdrive his heartbeat had gone into the second she said the words
maxed out
.

“Yes, sir. In fact, all of your accounts are overdrawn or maxed out, except for payroll and the account that pays the mortgage on the restaurant.”

The Hang Ten mortgage and the payroll accounts?
Suddenly, and sadly, the clouds were beginning to clear. Ginny had access to all the accounts except those two. “How badly overdrawn am I?” Nick asked in a low, strained voice, afraid of the answer.

“Give me a sec and I’ll add it up.” More clicking. Nick’s heart thudded harder against his chest. His thoughts went fuzzy. He was almost able to grasp the notion that he might be financially ruined. The girl cleared her throat again, and said, “All totaled, your accounts are overdrawn by eight thousand seven hundred fifty-six dollars and seventy-eight cents. Plus there’s the one-hundred thousand that you now owe on the line of credit.”

And that, no doubt, would soon start accruing interest. How in the world was Nick supposed to pay back a hundred grand? He
was
financially ruined, and it was all Ginny’s doing. “My ex-fiancée did this,” he said. “Do I have any kind of recourse?”

“She
is
a joint owner on all of your accounts but two.”

“We need to stop that right now.” Nick struggled to hold his temper, reminding himself that his real target was Ginny, not this poor girl on the other end of the phone.

“You’ll need to come down to the bank to sign a form for that.”