Despite the Gentleman's Riches: Sweet Billionaire Romance (For Richer or Poorer Book 1) (9 page)

"Wait," I said before my boss could hang up. "There's a Cuadic meeting tomorrow night that I really have to go to. Do you want me to leave Lena at home, to drop her off at your house, or what?"

"What's a Cuadic meeting?" Lena asked, but this time I had to ignore the girl and focus on her brother instead, fluttering a hand in silent promise of an explanation to come in due course.

"I'm not threatened by my sister joining the opposition," Mr. Fish Sticks said, a chuckle warming his words. "If Lena wants to go, more power to her. If not, it's no big deal—I don't expect you to babysit my sister every minute. She's a big girl. You can leave her home alone."

I realized that Jack had raised his voice enough to ensure that Lena would pick up his last few sentences, and for once I was glad that he was a manipulative bastard. Just like when Florabelle had allowed Lena to scratch her neck the first time, the girl seemed to sit up straighter after overhearing her brother's praise. My charge needed a lot more of that kind of treatment if we hoped to make her smiles more frequent.

"Put Lena back on the line, will you," Jack said abruptly while I was still watching his sister parse her sibling's praise. I couldn't help shooting a quizzical glance toward my rear-view mirror, but my employer just raised his eyebrows and smirked in reply. So, with a shrug, I handed off the cellphone.

"Uh huh," Lena answered. Then after a pause: "Okay." Mr. Fish Sticks must have been whispering now because, try as I might, I was completely unable to make out my employer's words.

Not that I had to wait long before finding out the big secret. "Do you want to come to dinner with us tonight?" Lena asked, turning to me and letting the cellphone drop into her lap (although I noticed she didn't end the call).

"Are
you
asking or is your brother asking?" I knew the answer to that question, and couldn't resist wondering:
If I turn down Jack this third time, will he really give up and start treating me like an employee rather than like a potential date? And will that make me relieved...or disappointed?

I needn't have been concerned. Jack was still reeling in his prey and was far from ready to cut bait and set me free. "
I'm
the one asking," Lena answered quickly, making it obvious she'd been coached to provide that exact reply. Mr. Fish Sticks wasn't ready to waste his third try quite yet.

Well, if Jack wasn't prepared to commit, then neither was I. "Not tonight," I answered. "But I'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow." And with one last glance at my employer in the rear-view mirror, I bade farewell to both Reynolds for the night.

When the name showed up on the caller-ID screen of my newly-upgraded phone the following morning, I held my breath.
Reynolds.
My heart was suddenly beating faster, and Mr. Fish Sticks' handsome face swam in front of my eyeballs, but, rather than grabbing for the receiver, I wavered. The smart thing to do would be to treat my employer in a businesslike manner, and since I didn't quite think I could maintain that professional distance at the moment, I should probably allow him to leave a message rather than picking up the phone. The fact that I wanted to start off my day with a dose of Mr. Fish Sticks was a sure sign that it would be wiser to receive any information he cared to impart secondhand.

I vacillated long enough that my voice-mail greeting boomed through the morning air, startling Florabelle into a sleepy squawk. In the background, I could hear Jack and Shirley talking quietly, a feature of the phone that I'd often taken advantage of since people sometimes let slip things they wouldn't have otherwise when they thought their words weren't yet being recorded. Now, Jack seemed to be passing the phone off to his housekeeper, who was laughing at his cowardice. (
Cowardice? From Mr. Fish Sticks?
) "You might as well talk to her, sugar," Shirley said in her gravelly smoker's voice. "Especially if you're going to stand right there and breath down my neck while I do it for you."

Beep!
Mr. Fish Sticks didn't succumb to his housekeeper's admonitions, and if I hadn't been hovering over my own answering machine, I would never have known that my employer was present on the other end of the line. "Morning, sugar," Shirley said into my machine instead. "Lena stayed up late with her brother last night, so she's sleeping in this morning and won't be ready for you to pick her up at nine. One of us will drop her by your place later, and then Mr. Reynolds has given me the next few days off. A paid vacation!" I could barely hear the sounds of a scuffle and guessed that the middle-aged housekeeper was nudging her employer—Shirley had definitely gotten over any awe she might once have held for Mr. Fish Sticks, even if she
did
still call him by his last name plus honorific.

"Anyway," Shirley continued, "I'll be around if you need anything at all." My coworker rattled off her phone number, but I was too engrossed in straining my ears for signs of Jack in the background to write the digits down. Good thing the answering machine was keeping track of this conversation after all.

If Jack takes the phone and actually speaks to me himself, then I'll pick up
, I promised silently, even though I knew that being separated from Mr. Fish Sticks by a housekeeper, copper wires, and a chunk of plastic was the wiser course. But Shirley finished up the call with no overt sign of my employer, and the brightness that had come into my day faded with the final click. Time for some apple-tree therapy to get me back on track.

***

Unfortunately, my garden failed to cheer me up yet again. Sometime during the recent damp spell, Pippin had come down with fireblight, the bacterial infection blackening the ends of several twigs. And as much as it pained me to consider surgery on my tree, I knew I had to cut off the affected areas, or risk the disease spreading deeper into my tree's limbs.

Of course, if I removed the twigs in question, then Pippin might respond with a flush of new leaves...and succulent summer growth tended to attract yet more of the problematic bacteria. Plus, there was that ever-expanding apple to consider. Would my tree drop her lone fruit if I took away some of her organic solar panels?

But the damage was already done—I just needed to help Pippin move past the trauma. So, closing my eyes at the final moment, I made the first cut...

...And dropped my pruning shears in surprise when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder. I immediately knew who the appendage belonged to from the way my body shuddered at the contact, and I quickly shrugged Mr. Reed off before turning to face him.

"Doesn't look good," my landlord opened without preamble, eying my tree critically. "Might need to cut it down before that blight spreads to all the other apple trees in the neighborhood. I'll bet that's what the extension agent would say to do."

My nostrils flared with barely-concealed anger.
What
other apple trees in the neighborhood? Half of the nearby land was unused forest while the other half consisted of mown lawns and the occasional vegetable garden. I hadn't seen another fruit tree for miles.

But I knew what Mr. Reed was really saying. The statement was a threat, and his intimidation didn't stop there. "It's time to lay our cards on the table," my landlord continued, his voice gentle but his eyes hard. "You're a right nice little filly, and I thought we had an understanding going. But I'm beginning to suppose you're just a cock tease."

Mr. Reed reached over and tilted my chin up with one finger, making me quiver with disgust and fear. I wanted to spit in my landlord's face and call him an asshole the way I knew Lena would have, but I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. At the moment, my choices consisted of packing up Florabelle and camping in my car until I saved enough money to move to another place, or finding a way to bend with Mr. Reed's demands...without letting his unpleasantness go too far.

Or I could ask Jack for help.
The words came unbidden into my mind, but I shook them away. If I begged for a loan from my employer, I suspected that Mr. Fish Sticks would be glad to dole out the money, might even outright
give
me enough funds to move my trailer to a new lot. But there were always strings attached, and somehow I found the thought of being in Jack's debt even less bearable than my landlord's unwanted touch.

While I was mentally running through my options, Mr. Reed was still speaking, and I figured I'd better pay attention if I hoped to get out of this situation with skin and home intact. "I hope you realize that I've been giving you the friendly rate these last couple of years," my landlord told me, the scent of rotten celery emanating from a mouth that was suddenly too close for comfort as the man leaned toward me to drive his point home. "I could make a lot more off this property if I moved a nice new double-wide onto this plot of land and then rented the whole thing out to some young family," he continued. "I'm doing you a favor by letting you stay, whether you understand that or not."

A favor. I could feel hysterical laughter welling up through my skin, but couldn't think of anything to say in reply. If only I possessed a protective older brother like Lena did, or even a bit of the power that her inheritance provided. Instead, I was stuck accepting so-called favors from slimy lechers who made my skin crawl.

"Think about it," Mr. Reed concluded, his voice now as hard as his eyes. By way of farewell, the man's boot-heel came down on my pruning shears and twisted, the plastic handles cracking loudly in the still air. But I said nothing, just stood and shook as my landlord walked away.

***

"You look like hell," Lena greeted me as she walked into my trailer door several hours later. I tried to resist craning to look over her shoulder in an effort to find out whether Jack or Shirley had been the one to drop off my charge. After losing the battle, I won a wave from the matronly housekeeper for my efforts. "What's wrong?" the girl continued, ignoring my contortions.

"Nothing," I said automatically, summoning a semi-believable smile to smooth over my current rough edges. "You're just in time, though. The Cuadic meeting starts at six, if you want to come along, and I need to make something for dinner before then." I turned to let Florabelle out of the cage that I'd stuffed her into just in case Jack was the one knocking at my door, knowing that my bird might react badly to a stranger. And while I
should
have been relieved at my employer's absence, the newly intense ache in my already queasy stomach made me admit that I'd been hoping Mr. Fish Sticks' face would wipe away this morning's bad memories. No such luck.

"Nuh uh," Lena objected, interrupting me before I could open Florabelle's door. "I'm not eating any bean sprouts and granola. Jack gave me cash to take you out to dinner, and I want pizza."

Okay, it
was
true that I was currently germinating some mung beans from last year's garden, the kernels of goodness even now soaking in a mason jar beside the sink. But I didn't go in for granola—too much grain and sweetening to be truly healthy, in my opinion. And pizza.... I hadn't succumbed to the siren song of white bread and greasy pepperoni for years, although the mere thought now made my mouth water.

"What is it about you Reynolds wanting to take me out to dinner?" I complained, but felt the smile on my face become real as I followed Lena back out the door to my car. "Luckily for me, the only pizza place in town has a salad bar, so I can probably find something nutritious there," I finished, the words more for myself than for the teenager's benefit.

"Nope," Lena countered, snapping on her seat belt. (Yes, I checked. My charge might send herself to an early grave with her dining habits, but she wasn't ignoring basic safety precautions on my watch.) "You're eating pizza. It's an even trade—I'll put some rabbit food on my plate if you put some deliciousness on yours."

I knew the smart choice was to stand my ground, but how could I resist the girl's bargain when it gave me the chance to ensure that she consumed at least a modicum of vegetables to round out her junk food? So I caved with a simple "Okay." After all, today called for some serious mood stabilization, and if that happiness came in the form of a slice of pizza, it probably wouldn't kill me...

...Even though eating habits like that had been responsible for the deaths of both of my parents. The memory of my family seemed to hurt a little less than usual, though, perhaps because there was little room for navel gazing when a Reynolds was filling up my car with her hereditary charm.

"Why don't you live with your parents?" I asked suddenly, my own lack of family making me curious about Lena's relative paucity. The words had popped out of my mouth before I could soften them up, proving that I didn't have Mr. Fish Sticks' level of slickness, or even the budding cunning of his little sister. But Lena didn't take offense, nor did she complain about my out-of-the-blue question.

"Not interested," she answered. From her words, I couldn't tell if my charge was uninterested in living with her parents or if her parents were the ones disinterested in her. "Mom has a new husband, twice as rich as Dad, which is saying something since our father is so loaded that Jack and I will both be billionaires when we turn twenty-six. In case you're curious, that's next year for Jack, if he keeps toeing the company line."

I guess raping landscapes pays pretty well.
I barely managed to reinsert the filter between thoughts and words before I said something truly heinous. But it was depressing to remember just how rich and powerful Mr. Fish Sticks really was. And to recall why I should be running as fast as possible in the other direction.

We were now stopped at one of the town's few traffic lights, and I took advantage of the lull to glance over at my passenger. To my surprise, I caught the girl shooting a covert glance back in my direction, assessing my reaction to her words, and I did my best to respond with a reassuring smile despite my internal confusion.

"Jack doesn't want you to know how rich he is," the girl continued, seemingly content with whatever she'd read in my body language. "Because he's always ending up with girlfriends who just want a sugar daddy, and they keep breaking his heart. But I don't think my brother gets the fact that you don't care about that kind of stuff. Do you?"

Okay, this conversation was going too deep too fast. There were so many assumptions being bandied about here that I didn't know where to start tearing them all down. Lena was speculating that her brother was romantically interested in me, while I was pretty sure that Mr. Fish Sticks was just killing time playing with the help while making sure that his sister's needs were met. And as for me, I definitely wasn't looking for a boyfriend, especially not a complicated one like my wealthy employer who was also my opponent in the power-plant arena.

But we were already pulling up in front of Pizza Town, and soon listening ears would make it tougher to speak openly. Relieved to be off the hook, there
was
one thing that I could say with all honesty. "No, I don't find wealthy men very attractive," I agreed. "In my experience, money just seems to complicate things."

"Exactly," Lena replied, and her grin would have done justice to the Cheshire cat. She was out of the car and slamming the door before I'd even put the vehicle into park. "Come on—let's eat!"