Fresh: A BWWM Secret Billionaire Romance (3 page)

W
e walked
out to his rusty truck, and this time I didn't need his push to get inside. I just jumped for it. It was a little different since I was so much shorter than him, but it worked out. It was nice to be in a truck. You could see so much more than you could in my sleek little Corvette, which I barely used. It wasn't worth the hassle of trying to find parking back home. In Wisconsin, open parking stretched for miles and miles around the house. It was open country, all covered by a coat of snow.

We went to a place called Farm and Fleet. Inside, it had more things than I even knew could be put under one roof.

It was gigantic, and the parking lot was gargantuan. The parking lot alone looked like the size of a small strip mall. There were tractors parked there. I followed him through the aisles. I could feel eyes on me. I looked nothing like them. I had dark skin, dark hair, and a multi-colored Prabal Gurung dress on. They had blonde hair, light eyes, and simple, mono-color clothing. There were more overalls than I had ever seen in one place in my entire life.

I was quiet. The eyes weren't hostile. They were just curious, like they didn't see people like me very often.

We checked out, and he asked me, "Do you want to see the real library?"

"Sounds good to me."

"You can use my library card."

"Awesome."

We drove for a little while on Verona Road and turned so that we went north a little bit. Tucked away on Silent Street was a small library. It was pretty. There was a big sign out front that said that it had won some kind of architectural award.

"Come on in."

When we walked in, we were in a small area before the main library. There were bulletin boards on the walls, and there were call-outs for senior citizen gatherings. They had computer classes as well as classes to teach them how to use iPads.To my left, there was a large room filled with schoolchildren watching a documentary. Next to that room, there were bathrooms. I walked through the sliding doors into the main library. The carpet was multicolored with a lot of different shapes in it. Back home, I didn't visit the library that often. I just bought books. But in a farming community that wasn't so casual about spending money, the library must mean a lot more.

We walked inside. "I'll show you to the fiction in a minute, but let me show you our castle first."

A castle? I followed him into the Kids' Zone. I tried not to admire the swagger of his shoulders. He was like a predator, a lion prowling around his kingdom. I admired the ease of his step, like everything here belonged to him.

"Here it is."

I looked at the small gray castle, which was child-sized.

"It's adorable." It really was. It had small little windows with bars over them and no glass. There were two entrances, and there was a circular, big chair in the middle while there were smaller chairs in the corners of the castle. It was a perfect place to play pretend.

"I donated it last year."

I blinked. "Oh?" How could a farmer afford to donate something this adorable? Sure, the castle was small, but I didn't think that it was cheap. I raised my eyebrows.

He flushed. "I mean, I helped raise the funds for it."

"Oh, that's great." That made more sense.

"Anyways, I'll leave you alone in the fiction section. I've read most of the books that I want to, anyway. You can find me in the reading room. It's right by the fiction books. He pointed, and I could see the sign over the bookshelves that said Reading Room.

"Okay."

I watched his ass as he walked away. He had a firm, taut one that his jeans did nothing to conceal. If anything, it enhanced them.

I closed my eyes so I would stop checking out this farm-boy. If I wasn't careful, I'd end up falling in love with him. Then where would I be? I couldn't stay here. I had 6 more nights in this place, then I would be gone.

I wandered through the fiction stacks. They didn't have much, but what they did have was pretty good. I picked up a ton of Robin McKinley books. I loved her when I was a kid, but I didn't read her more recent books.
Pegasus
looked interesting. I also filled my arms with Tamora Pierce books, though I had to go to the YA section to look for them. The YA section was next to the Kids' Zone, and it had a lot of anime.

It was easy to find him in the Reading Room. There was only an old man wearing a down vest over a flannel shirt and an orange hunting cap with sturdy jeans. I tapped him on the shoulder. He was engrossed in the Wall Street Journal. Funny. I didn't know why a farmer would be reading the WSJ, but maybe there were grain prices in there or something. Maybe there was something in there that was important to him. I didn't know much about farms.

I whispered, "I'm ready to go."

He looked at the stack of books in my arms, a stack that reached past my chin.

"I can see that." He stole my books in a smooth move. He still had a spare hand to put back today's WSJ on the shelf. Then, we walked to the center.

The screen had options: English, Spanish, Pirate, Baby, More.

"What does baby do?"

"Don't push it."

I pushed the button.

"Aww, who wants to check books out today, huh?" a saccharine voice said. "It's you! It's you."

"Oh my gosh!" I stared at it. "This is the worst checkout experience ever."

"I told you not to press the button. I'll just tell you right now that the pirate one isn't much better."

I put a hand over my heart. "I swear to you right now that I am not going to press the pirate button. I have so many regrets."

I saw one part of his mouth quirk up, as if he were fighting a smile. It went back down when he saw me notice it. Too bad. It was nice to catch him being human. We would get along better if he warmed up a little.

He quickly checked out all of the books. The barcodes were on the front of the books. We had a very long receipt, and the computer still spoke to us in baby-talk. I shuddered. I never had patience for that kind of thing, even with actual babies.

He carried my books easily out to my car. I burned a little inside with envy. I was just too small to use my chin to keep the books in place like that. He unlocked the car, and I vaulted in. I was glad that my elementary school gymnastics classes were good for something.

W
e drove home
. At least I wouldn't be bored now. Even though it had been a very long time since I had read YA, it beckoned to me like an old friend. I thought that I would start with
Trickster's Choice
. It was a lovely political intrigue more than a YA book. Tamora Pierce had very adult themes in her books, and it was a bit of a misnomer to call her books YA. Just because the hero was a teenager did not mean that they did not face real problems. She talked about birth control, war, and hunger. It was as gory as Ender’s Game.

When we got home, which was a word that I definitely should not apply to it, he took all my books out for me.

"Where do you want these? Your room? The library?"

"Let's keep them in the library. I don't think that I have any bookshelves. Let's just keep them down there."

"Sounds good to me."

He walked into the library, and he deposited the books. He arranged them carefully on a shelf. I looked at the care with which he arranged them. It was totally at odds with his farm boy in the middle of the nowhere act. He alphabetized them by author name.

"Why are you alphabetizing them?"

"I can read, you know." He arched an eyebrow.

"I know that. My dad would hardly want an illiterate man to take over his company. Why does he want you so badly, anyway?"

He looked at his hands, stained with dirt, as he had never seen them before. "I'm good at what he needs."

"What, plowing the fields?"

There was that mouth twitch again. "Something like that."

"There's a lot at stake, you know. Daddy built up his business from nothing. He was just another boy in Detroit, one out of millions. He worked his way out of the kind of place that is so dangerous that he won't even take me back. It's important to me."

"Why isn't he giving it to you, then?"

I flushed. "He wanted to, but I'm...not right."

"Why not? You seem smart enough." Was that a compliment?

"I'm an artist. I'm all paint-splattered clothes and very little of the practical side. Dad makes my life run smoothly. He's like my patron, if I were working in an Italian court for a noble or something. When Daddy talks about what's going on with his business, Mom would always tell him, 'Not at the dinner table.' It's something that have no interest in. Dad tried to teach me when I was a kid. I understand the basics of accounting. It's not that hard. He taught me how to read financial statements when I was six, in secret from my mom. He kept paying me in toys. When my mom found out, she said that I was too young for that kind of thing. She threw a fit. She made him stop, and she threw me harder into painting, dancing, and singing."

I looked down, though there was no real reason for me to lower my eyes. "My grandfather made Mom become an accountant. Her other options were engineer or lawyer. Maybe a PhD, if it was the right field. He was so strict with her that my parents were sort of the other end of the spectrum. They let me do whatever I wanted. They gave me anything I wanted."

"So that's how you ended up so inappropriately fancy?”

I gasped. "How dare you!"

"It hasn't showed up much, but you have to admit that there aren't too many people who would wear Prabal Gurung to Blain's Farm and Fleet."

My interest sharpened like a knife with a whetstone. "How on Earth would you know that it's Prabal Gurung."

He looked like someone had just shoved a pine cone up his butt. "Uh..."

I crossed my arms, and his eyes dipped to the cleavage that I created.

"I'm waiting."

He gulped. "I have a mom, you know."

"A mom who wears this kind of stuff?"

He winced. "Yes. Prabal Gurung is pretty distinctive."

Even though he had his farm-boy veneer on, he was obviously wealthy.

"Where is your mom? She isn't here."

"No. She lives in Chicago. After my dad died, there wasn't any reason for her to be here."

"And you're here alone."

"This is where I grew up. It's where I went to high school." He looked at me steadily and lifted his chin a little bit. "This is where I belong. This is my home. My roots are here."

Unspoken was the challenge. I'll never move anywhere else, he was telling me. We were getting along for a half second, but now he was reminding me why I was leaving in less than a week. This was not the right place for me, a place where the biggest store in town was the Farm and Fleet.

"I'm going to my room." I walked up the stairs, and I took off my Prabal Gurung dress. I hung it up in my tiny closet. I dressed in some very plain gray J. Crew in a dress that I normally dressed up with a colorful Hermès scarf. I'd never bought it until Michelle Obama kept dressing her girls in it for public appearances. Then there was a run for the simple, clean lines. I took off my feathers. I pulled my Brazilian blowout into a simple bun at the base of my neck.

I sat on my bed and cried a little bit. Was this what my dad had wanted? For me to become one of these monochrome people?

Something inside of me roared life. No. I'd never stop being the daughter that my mother had raised. Clothes mattered much less to men than women. For men, it was something that you put on your body, unless you were metrosexual or gay. For women, it was a method of self expression.

I took off my gray dress. I was not that person. I was not the kind of person that would ever fit in at the Farm and Fleet. The Prabal Gurung still held the emotional stains of the day. I picked up my Stella McCartney color contouring dress. It was older, and I should have gotten rid of it years ago, but it made me look so good, clinging to every curve. It was a dress that I wore when I felt like I needed courage. Today was one of those times.

"Dinner's ready."

I dried my eyes. I looked in the mirror on the wall. They were a little bit red. I got out my Visine from my makeup kit, and I tipped my head back so I could put in my eyedrops. After a few blinks, I blotted away the excess. I looked back into the mirror. All better.

I walked down the stairs, and my heart pounded in my chest.

"Oh my gosh, that's chicken parmigiana."

"
Y
eah
. You like it?"

"I love it." I blinked. "It's literally my favorite dish in the world. Well, maybe after chicken saltimbocca."

"Sounds fancy. I only recognized the first word of that dish."

"It's just chicken cooked sous vide with some prosciutto inside."

"You'll have to make it for me sometime."

I blinked. "Do they sell prosciutto at the Farm and Fleet?"
"They might have it at Metcalfe's."

"Where's that?"

"Just a few miles north of the library. You have to go to the West Town Mall for that."

I blinked. "Okay. Maybe we'll make that trip out this week."

"Yeah." He rubbed his cheek. "So, let's eat."

I cut it open. I ate my chicken parmigiana. It was so salty and delicious. Someone had taught him to cook and cook very well.

"How on Earth did you learn how to cook this? It's not that easy to get right."

"Ah, my mom is part Italian. We don't speak it or anything, but I did grow up eating a lot of pasta. I can cook a lot of dishes, and I’m not bad at it.“

I looked at his body. "It doesn't show. You're pure muscle." Then I blushed. I wasn't here to ogle his body. I was here to placate my dad before he cut me off.

He smiled lazily. "Thanks. You're pretty fit, yourself."

"I go rowing in the Potomac. It's good for inspiration. So many people around. So many things going on. I go even in the winter, when the water is cold. It's good." I ate more spaghetti and swallowed. "There's so much stuff. I don't know. When it comes to stuff around here, it's all nature. Even in DC, the Potomac isn't really all that woodsy, you know? It's just there. You can see cars from it. But out here, it's so quiet and peaceful. I was outraged that my cellphone didn't work at first."

"I noticed."

I smiled at him. "But now I'm sort of glad that I'm here. It's nice to unplug a little bit and read books as well as paint. It's been a lovely vacation so far. Thank you for cooking for me and taking such good care of me. I really appreciate all that you do.“

He looked me right in the eye. "It's my pleasure."

I saw that he really meant that. I could see the pure sincerity in his eyes. It felt good to have someone take care of me. I definitely loved my father, but he was not all that domestic. Something about growing up out here in the boonies made you self-sufficient, and I liked that. Not enough to stay, but definitely enough to think that I should take some cooking classes once I got home. It wasn't a big thing to cook for yourself, but it was a step forward from living off of restaurant meals. Our current housekeeper didn’t cook at all. Daddy said that eating from restaurants was cheaper than hiring a full-time chef. I'd looked at his numbers and agreed with him.

We both finished our food. As I collected our plates, he wiped his mouth with one of the checkered cloth napkins and stood up.

"I've got to go check on things in the barn, but I won't be in too late. Are you going to be down here?"
"Yeah, definitely for a while. There are enough library books to keep me occupied for the next week, if not the next month. I'll be by the fire."

"Okay, I'll get that started for you, then." He walked over to the fireplace, and I heard the soft thunks as he poked the fire with the poker.

"You should be set." He walked back, and he went to take care of whatever it was in the barn.

I washed the dishes, then I went upstairs to take a shower. I hadn't taken one since I got here.