Despite the Gentleman's Riches: Sweet Billionaire Romance (For Richer or Poorer Book 1) (11 page)

True to his word, Jack's spaceship of a car was waiting in my driveway when I peered out the window bright and early the next morning. My night-time courage having fled, I pretended not to notice my visitor and instead used the back door to blow the empty seed casings out of Florabelle's food dish before topping off her rations. Like a true coward, I even forewent my usual good-morning visit to my beloved apple tree and simply waved well wishes in her general direction through the windowpane.

The problem was that my fury at my employer hadn't lessened one bit overnight, but I knew that if I spoke with him now, I'd almost certainly apologize. I was terrible at face-to-face confrontations, tending to back down rather than standing up for myself, and I had a feeling that if I saw Jack in the flesh, I'd end up taking back all of the firm words I'd spoken over the phone. And
that
would just make me even madder since I'd meant every condemnation tossed around the night before.

Plus, I wasn't sure whether I still had a job. Even if I hadn't entirely quit last night, Jack would likely fire me as soon as he found a replacement due to the way I'd called him up in the wee hours to vent my spleen. No reason to receive the bad news any sooner than I had to.

So I nibbled at my breakfast and waited for my employer to knock on the door. But Jack seemed to possess boundless patience this morning—his car was always in the same place when I peeked out the window, and the vehicle's inhabitant was a dark, unmoving shape in the slightly reclined front seat. Of course, Jack's apparent lack of agitation just made me
more
agitated, which in turn fueled my anger. Vicious circle.

Eventually, I decided that Lena would rather be woken to greet her brother than be allowed to sleep in and possibly miss several hours of his limited attention. Plus, if I didn't get Mr. Fish Sticks out of my driveway soon, I was going to go crazy. So I shook my charge awake, murmuring: "Lena, get up. Your brother's here to take you home."

She came off the sofa like a shot. "He's here?" the girl asked, her tone of voice similar to that of a kindergartner asking about an imminent visit by Santa Claus. At my nod, Lena grabbed her bag and shoes, not even taking time to change out of her sleepware, and tumbled out the door and down the walk. I watched until the car door closed behind her, then I headed back into a kitchen that suddenly felt empty without my teenage house guest. Lena hadn't even taken the time to say goodbye.

"Well, Florabelle, I guess it's just you and me once again," I told my bird, and settled in to remember how I used to amuse myself before Lena entered my life.

***

The knock on my door came half an hour later, and I almost didn't answer it. Mr. Reed's absence over the past week had been nearly as remarkable as Jack's (although much more welcome), but I had a feeling that my landlord had been staying away primarily because he didn't want an audience to witness his continual harassment. Without my teenage buffer, there was no longer anything to prevent my neighbor from driving his point home.

I would have far rather pretended I wasn't present than be forced to speak to my landlord, but with my car parked in the drive, I knew the falsehood wouldn't hold water.
This day just gets better and better
, I thought, carefully locking my cockatiel into her cage before heading over to answer the door.

But my caller wasn't Mr. Reed after all. Instead, my employer stood on the deck, and over his shoulder I noticed Lena sitting in the passenger seat of Jack's vehicle as if they'd never left my lot in the first place. "Are you having car trouble?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around the Reynolds' continued presence in my life. Even if my employer didn't intend to fire me (a very long shot), there was no reason for him to come calling now rather than taking his sister home.

"Hi, Florabelle," Jack said, greeting my pet rather than me, and also proving that Lena must have told him all about my cockatiel alarm system. Then, with his blue eyes boring into mine, he continued: "May I come in?"

"Sure," I answered, opening the door wider even as my heart sank. Barring car trouble, the only reason I could think of for Jack's continued presence was that I had made him so angry with my 3 a.m. call that he'd opted to chew me out sooner rather than later. I reminded myself that I could handle being yelled at, that I'd been fired before and would find a way to get back on my feet this time too. But the thought of dealing with Jack's displeasure was somehow much worse than my memory of the Food City manager's ire. But what choice did I have other than to let him in?

As my employer pushed his way into my kitchen with quick, long strides, I remembered how I'd once been worried that Jack would judge my trailer unkindly if he ever saw the interior. Now, I was more concerned by my boss's silent, agitated pacing back and forth across my tiny kitchen. With his long legs, it took only three or four strides to make it from wall to wall, and I was afraid that Jack might hurt himself running into the corner of my counter in the tight space. House embarrassment seemed like such a minor matter in the face of my employer's turbulence, and I wished all I had to be concerned about was a sneer at my plastic counters and shabby cabinets.

At last, I couldn't bear the silence any longer, and I caved to the inevitable. "I'm sorry," I said, my voice barely loud enough to be heard over Jack's footsteps. He immediately whirled to face me, sweat running down his brow and making me realize that my employer probably hadn't slept at all after I woke him with my late-night call. Even if Jack had been able to summon a private jet to ferry him home, the nearest airport on our end was an hour's drive away, leading to a very long night.

"Why are
you
sorry?" Jack demanded now. "I'm the one who's trying to figure out how to explain why I've been such a bastard. I acted just like my father, and Lena could tell you that Mr. Reynolds senior is
not
the kind of man to emulate. I've spent the last half hour promising my sister that I'm not going to make the same mistake again, I'm struggling to find words to tell you the same thing, and here
you
are apologizing to
me
?"

My employer's final sentence rose at the end like a question, so I explained even as I struggled to wrap my head around Jack's almost-apology. "I'm apologizing because I called you up in the middle of the night and chewed you out," I said carefully, barely letting myself hope that I might come out of this altercation with job intact.

And with Jack still as my friend.
Where had
that
thought come from? Lena and I might possibly be working our way toward a friendship, but I needed to remember to keep things businesslike with my boss if I hoped to stay employed. I barely knew Jack, and if I wasn't willing to let Kimberly move up a tier in my estimation from good acquaintance to true intimate, then Mr. Fish Sticks certainly didn't deserve that honor either.

Although he
did
seem to have transformed into a more genuine person this morning. "I'm
glad
you called me last night," Jack said now, stepping closer and taking my hand in his. It was the first time we'd touched since my car trouble, and the jolt of electricity that leapt through my body seemed ten times as intense as it had before. "I needed a swift kick in the pants," he continued. "But more than that, hearing you rant made me hope that your strong feelings mean you care about me as a person. Most of us don't get out-and-out angry at someone we don't harbor intense feelings for, so I'm
glad
you regard me highly enough to think I'm worth being furious with."

I stared at my employer, his words bouncing through my mind like the orb in a pinball machine.
My anger proves that I care about Jack?
I could have argued that Lena was the one I had fond feelings for, that my passion last night had stemmed from wanting to protect someone younger and weaker than myself. And, in some ways, that argument would have held water.

But why lie by omission in the privacy of my own mind? I'd never yelled at Kimberly or at Ms. Cooper, couldn't even imagine raising my voice to Brett or Tom at their most annoying. And yet, Jack had inspired a rage so intense I'd felt the need to wake him out of a sound sleep to vent my ire.

Meanwhile, if I were being entirely honest, I had to admit that I'd been just as hurt by Jack's florist deliveries as Lena had been. It had felt like Mr. Fish Sticks was minimizing our own relationship by sending me impersonal flowers and fruit baskets, and I'd wanted to cut my employer down to size for my own sake as well as for my charge's. When it came right down to it, yelling at Mr. Fish Sticks had felt good.

Jack tilted his head to one side, waiting for the pinball to work its way down to the bottom of my brain. "And now you're calling me 'Mr. Fish Sticks' in your head again, which I'm pretty sure isn't a good sign," my employer murmured, his guess remarkably astute, even more so since I'd only slipped and used the moniker to his face that one time. Granted, I'd sometimes called my employer 'Mr. Fish Sticks' in Lena's presence when I wasn't entirely happy with her brother, and it was beginning to appear that my charge had been a more capable informant than I'd ever imagined. But Jack had also paid attention to the fruits of his sister's spying and had remembered the details, both now and when he showed off his ability to enter my trailer without losing his eardrums to Florabelle's shrieks.

Which led me to believe that perhaps I'd underestimated my boss's interest in me after all. Maybe Jack hadn't just been dallying with the help. Could the beautiful and powerful businessman really be attracted to me despite everything that stood between us?

"Please say something," Jack continued, his posture starting to regain some of the frenetic nature that had marked his rapid kitchen pacing. "Or I'll be forced to get down on my knees and apologize, and Florabelle would never let me live it down."

I breathed out through my nose in an almost-laugh. "I don't call you 'Mr. Fish Sticks' in my head as much lately," I offered, not knowing what else to say. Failing to disabuse Jack of the notion that I cared about him was nearly equivalent to telling my employer that he was correct, but I couldn't quite muster the cold-heartedness to say he was wrong...or the bravery to tell my companion that he was right.

"Good to know," Jack responded. He released my hand long enough to reach into his jacket pocket and pull out an envelope bulging with cash. "I should have given this to you right away, but I wanted to wait until I thought it wouldn't make you quit on the spot and order me out of your kitchen." Jack's hand lingered near mine as he passed over my back pay, and I shivered at the near-contact.

"So you're not firing me?" I asked, requiring the clarification since our encounter had turned out so much differently than I'd imagined.

"Are you kidding me?" Jack asked, his face relaxing for the first time since he'd shown up at my trailer door. I loved the way laugh lines appeared at the corners of his eyes as they crinkled up into a true smile. "You're a miracle worker. Lena actually
talked
to me out there in the car, and she asked if we could go on a college tour. You, me, and her."

My companion gazed at me so intently that I nearly took a step backwards, but I forced myself to stand my ground. I could tell that Jack had something more to say, but we seemed to be suspended in the moment, his blue eyes freezing me to the spot. At last, Jack opened his mouth again, the words rougher now that he wasn't talking about his sister. "This is where I request something I've been itching to ask for ever since I saw you in that cute checker outfit," he continued, his voice dropping into a husky whisper.

"You want me to go out to dinner with you," I breathed, knowing that my body language, if not my words had proven to Jack that I wouldn't turn down his third advance. The gentleman's code of honor needn't be tested after all.

"No," Jack answered, a wicked glitter in his eye. "Consider this a bonus." Then he bent his head down and kissed me.

The rough prickle of incipient beard against skin reminded me that the last time I'd been kissed was by someone who wasn't much more than a boy. Jack was all man.

Then the firm softness of my companion's lips overwhelmed mine and I stopped being able to think at all. Instead, I kissed my employer back, my hands reaching of their own volition up behind his head to pull Jack's face closer, as if I wanted us to meld into one being. I seemed to be falling into a whirling pit of sensation and desire, and I realized that I'd never really been kissed before, not like this.

Then, just as quickly as he'd swooped toward me, the contact was broken and Jack took a step back to lean against the counter. My kitchen felt even smaller now, as if the walls were closing in around us, and the confined space seemed to be forcing me toward the heat of Jack's lithe body. "Did you know that an orgasm increases your risk of a heart attack by three-hundred percent?" I asked inanely, and then my cheeks immediately flamed with embarrassment.
Smooth, Ginny
, I admonished myself.

To my further chagrin, Jack started to laugh, the chuckles low in his chest turning into a deep, rolling guffaw. I wanted to sink into the floor, or, better yet, to push the maddening Mr. Fish Sticks out of my trailer so I could cry in peace—I had been consumed by our shared experience, while the other participant was left so unmoved that he was able to make fun of me. Yet, the most activity I could muster was the ability to keep breathing in the face of my own stupidity.
Of course
Jack had only been playing games. To Mr. Fish Sticks, everything was a game.

Or not. "I
would
take you up on that kind offer if my kid sister weren't waiting out in the car and doing her level best to get a line of sight through your kitchen window," my companion answered, once he was able to speak over his own merriment. Immediately, my cheeks blushed brighter.

"I wasn't offering...." I stumbled over my words, unable to go on. Because maybe I
had
been offering, or at least hoping that Jack would kiss me again.

But the reminder of Lena's near presence was a helpful buffer against the sexual energy zinging around the room. With an effort, I followed Jack's lead and took a step back until I was pushed up against the refrigerator in a vain hope that the appliance would cool me down. There was still barely more room between us than the spread of Florabelle's wings, and I yearned to reach out and touch Jack to reassure myself that he was really there. Yet, despite my baser wishes, I forced myself to say, "You shouldn't keep Lena waiting. She needs some brother-sister time."

"You're right," Jack admitted, and his broad shoulders slumped in response, lowering the temperature of the room by at least ten degrees. Fickly, I now resented the loss. "But we're not finished here," my companion continued. "You deserve some time off, and Lena and I need to figure out which colleges she wants to visit. And then I'll pick you up. Say ten o'clock Friday?"

For a minute, he was Mr. Fish Sticks again, suave and businesslike, assuming I'd just go along with whatever plan made his own life easier. But then I could see Jack think back over his own words, and he shot me a self-deprecating smile. "There I am being a bastard again. Let me start over. Will you come with me and Lena to check out colleges?"

"Sure," I answered. "Say, ten o'clock Friday? Why don't you pick me up?" We exchanged a smoldering glance that should have set off the smoke detectors, and then my employer (who was now possibly something more) walked out the door.

***

Of course, I couldn't really take the day off. This was my first week pulling ten hours for the nonprofit on top of my job as Lena's life coach, and I needed to be present to manage volunteers and hand out snacks at an upcoming lake cleanup. Still, I felt like I was walking on air as I tucked Florabelle away in her cage that afternoon and steered my rust bucket toward Emerald Lake.

Despite the name, our local watering hole was anything but pristine. The popular kids from our high school liked to come up here for drunken parties on warm summer nights, which tended to result in lots of empty beer cans, along with trash of an even less wholesome nature. So, a few times a year, Cuadic rounded up the troops to haul off garbage and repair broken signs. Mostly, we held cleanups because it was fun to fix a problem that was easy to solve and that allowed us to play around in the outdoors, but we also generally got much-needed good press for the occasion. A definite win-win.

Today was one of those rare volunteer days that didn't fall on a weekend, but Ms. Cooper had come through with a cadre of arm-twisted youngsters to round out our usual battalion of retired folks. In general, the teacher had no problem tempting students to show up since she doled out extra credit liberally, filling our ranks with attendees more interested in good grades than in good karma. And while I understood the teacher's impulse to get as many kids as possible involved, a lot of those bribed youngsters were more trouble than they were worth. So I was glad that school had already let out for the summer and I only had to handle the more serious-minded students on my first time out of the gate.

One girl caught my attention as I rustled up extra trash bags and kept volunteers moving toward the less-obvious trouble zones around the lake shore. This particular teenager dove into the project with gusto, initially unsure which end of a litter stick went up, but soon filling bags much faster than her neighbors. Unlike most of the girls volunteering, the youngster I had my eye on even dove into the muddy edges of the lake shore, rooting out buried fishing line and one tremendous tire. If all of our participants were that industrious, we'd run out of trash within the first hour rather than always leaving a few areas behind to be dealt with on our next cleanup day.

"She reminds me of you at that age," Ms. Cooper said, coming up behind me as I peered out across the water. Now that the teacher mentioned it, the girl I'd been watching
did
act like my younger self, although the comparison wasn't as flattering as our shared teacher had meant it to be. This particular teenager always smiled brightly when other kids passed by, but never quite made it into any of their cliques. A loner, just like me.

"Crystal could use an older sister figure," Ms. Cooper continued, taking the box of trash bags out of my hand and giving me a little push toward the lake. "And you could use a break. This is the smoothest any of our cleanup days has ever gone and we could all quit now without falling behind—Cuadic is lucky to have you."

The giddiness that had been shivering through my chest all day expanded at my teacher's words, especially since I knew that Ms. Cooper didn't pass out undeserved praise. All afternoon, I'd been floating not just on the aftereffects of Jack's kiss, but also on the heady realization that I was able to keep an event running as well or better than Brett ever had. So Ms. Cooper's reinforcement of that realization now made my face shine with a rare, true smile.

"Thanks," I told her, hoping that my gratitude would be understood to encompass all of the mothering Ms. Cooper had shown me over the years, not just the simple fact that she was spelling me from my duties now. Almost, but not quite, ready to call my teacher by her first name, I instead shot her another grateful smile before trotting out across the mud to meet Crystal.

***

I wish Lena were here
. The thought pulled me out of my muddy trash-picking joy for a moment before I drifted back into the splendor of doing good, getting dirty, and exploring the outdoors—an exhilarating combo. It didn't hurt that Crystal and I got along like a house on fire, which is what had produced my wishful thought in the first place. This serious-minded, but funny, girl would be just the kind of local friend Lena needed.

"Hey, can you come help me with this?" Crystal called from the other side of a dead tree that had fallen out into the lake. I straddled the trunk and hauled my nearly-full trash bag across to join her...only to be met with a fistful of flying mud slamming into my shoulder. The soil was the perfect consistency for a mud fight—soft and smooth enough not to cause damage, dry enough to form into a ball, but still containing enough water to ooze down across my clothes and produce a completely irrecoverable stain. And, from the expression on Crystal's face, the teenager was now rethinking whether the sally had been a good idea...or a friendship breaker.

I didn't let her stew in her own juices for long. Dropping my trash bag, I scooped up a mud ball, and the war was on.

Ten minutes later, my companion and I were both brown from head to toe and were laughing so hysterically that we could barely walk straight. Crystal had suggested a dip in the lake to clean off, but I'd promised her a ratty old towel from my car to keep her seats clean on the way home instead. Wet mud is even worse on upholstery than dry mud, and I'd seen the fancy vehicle Crystal drove up in. Her parents wouldn't be thrilled if their kid's volunteer session resulted in a multiple-hundred-dollar cleaning bill.

As for myself, I knew that mud would be barely noticeable amid twenty-odd years of grime in my rust bucket's fabric, so I simply enjoyed the moment, sun on my face, friend by my side, and a trash bag completely full of found garbage. The lake had been emptying over the last half hour or so, and I knew that all we had to do now was to throw the last few trash bags into Tom's truck to be hauled to the dump, then I could go home and soak in a hot bath while reliving every moment of this glorious day.

But, as I looked across the mostly bare parking lot, it became clear that my work day wasn't over quite yet. Ms. Cooper had accumulated companions over the last half hour, and not ones I was looking forward to speaking with.

On any other day, Cora and her television crew would have been good news. Most of the local journalists did their level best to make Cuadic out to be a band of kooky out-of-towners, but Cora was sympathetic to our cause. The reporter never came out and said she was opposed to Clean Power's plant, but she always lobbed questions our way that helped us present our stance in the best possible light, which meant the resulting articles tended to lean in Cuadic's favor.

And today's event was a no-brainer. Turning Emerald Lake back into an immaculate community playground would definitely make Cuadic look good...as long as the spokesperson for the organization didn't show up so embedded with soil that you couldn't quite find her face beneath the mud.

I shot Ms. Cooper a please-help-me-escape look, but the traitor only smiled and mouthed
Camera's rolling
. I could almost hear the teacher deciding that televising Cuadic's organizer smeared in the signs of her good deeds would give us extra street cred, and I could see her point. The trouble was, all that mud meant I would have to be twice as articulate as usual if I wanted to be taken seriously, and on-demand public speaking was far from my strong suit.

"Eep!" The little squeak from my companion proved that Crystal had noticed our nemesis as well, and I quickly grabbed the girl's arm to prevent her escape. If I was going into battle, then my new friend was coming along.

"I'm joining you live today from Emerald Lake where Cuadic volunteers are just finishing up a successful trash cleanup," Cora said into the microphone.
Live! Yikes!
Cora was kind to warn me that she wouldn't be able to edit out any "um"s and "er"s, but the reporter's cautionary statement was also making me a bit weak at the knees. Luckily, the camera guy was turning to film Ms. Cooper as Cora asked about the sheer quantity of garbage our volunteers had hauled out of the lake.

But our reprieve was short-lived. "How about you, Virginia? What was the most interesting piece of trash you found today?" Cora asked, her eyes twinkling as she eased me into the interview.

"Definitely this homemade cassette in a ziplock bag," I answered, pulling the old-fashioned sound equipment out of my pocket. "I'm going to take it home and find a tape deck to listen to the contents, hopefully find out why someone wanted to protect their music but also chose to throw it away."

"Hear that?" Cora said, speaking directly to our audience now. "If Virginia has
your
top-secret confession that was tossed into Emerald Lake by accident, you now know where to find it. But, more seriously, I know many of our viewers are interested in Cuadic's most talked-about project, your attempt to bar Clean Power's plant from being located on the outskirts of town. I also noticed that your cleanup today was full of local young people. Are you concerned about the argument that this power plant is essential to provide jobs that will keep our youth from leaving the area?"

"No," I replied, thankful that Cora had posed her question in this manner, making it easy to rebut. "Young people are one of the biggest reasons I oppose bringing another coal-fired power plant to our region. Kids like these don't want to grow up to be coalminers—they want to start a kayak-rental company or to build an internet business bringing their ingenuity to the world. And they also want a clean, beautiful landscape to play in during their downtime, which means that they won't start those businesses here if our environment is compromised. The proposed power plant will just make the brain drain worse when all of our best and brightest kids go off to college and then choose not to come home."

"How about you, Crystal?" Cora asked, the spotlight turning away from me as I exhaled a huge (but silent) sigh of relief. "I understand you're spending the summer working in the office of your father's coal company. Does the fact that coal is sending you to college make you more inclined to think Clean Power's plant is a good idea?"