The Trillionaire's Kiss: Book One in Trillionaire Wishes (Fountain of Love) (2 page)

She frowned. "You made a wish on a fountain?  I made a wish on a fountain.  The one by the lake?"  Was he as crazy as he seemed?  Or had something...happened to her that was unexplainable?

"Yes
, by the pond.  You wished on it too?"  He was excited that maybe she understood.  "Did you feel like it was going to give you what you wished for?  No matter what it had to do to make it happen?" 

Alicia pulled from him and sat up, her muscles suddenly working correctly again.  "Yes!  It was so strange.  I don't even believe in that kind of thing."
  She believed in actual facts.  As a lawyer, she couldn't let herself believe in nonsense.

He stood up and held his hand down to help her to her feet as he'd seen men do for their women in movies.  "Let's go see it."  When she stood beside him, he smiled at her.  He was a tall man, and she came up past his shoulder.  From what he'd read, most women were much shorter.  He liked the idea
that he'd gotten a tall woman.

They walked through the park together, and he took her to the fountain.  She stared at it with surprise.  "This isn't the park I was in, but this is the fountain.  How odd."  She reached out and touched it, and it felt familiar, but she no longer felt compelled to do anything. "Where am I?"
  What had changed?

"You didn't make the wish in this park?"  Well, that made sense.  The fountain had just appeared there recently.  He walked this park at least three times per week, and he'd never seen it before. 

She shook her head.  "I made the wish in the park in Oakville.  Where is this?"

"Oakville, Texas?  Must be a small town.  I've never heard of it.  You're in McKinney now."

Alicia stared at him in surprise.  "Oakville, Minnesota.  I made the wish on a fountain in Oakville, Minnesota."  She grabbed his arm to try to keep from falling.  What was happening?

Calor seemed as stunned as she was.  "So it not only brought you forward in time, but around a thousand miles?"  He couldn't wrap his brain around how that could have happened.  How could an object be made to grant this kind of wish?  "What did you wish for?"

She bit her lip, almost afraid to tell him.  "I wished for..a man to love me."  She left out the word rich, because she knew that would sound terribly shallow.  "What did you wish for?"

"A woman to
fall out of the sky at my feet who would belong to only me."  He gave her a half-smile, one corner of his mouth turning up in chagrin.

Alicia frowned.  That was very odd wording?  "Only you?" she asked, not understanding. 

"That's how I knew you'd traveled through time, you see.  Women are very rare in this century."  He caught her hand and held it tightly.  "Are you hungry?"

She started to say she'd just eaten, but she realized she was hungry.  Very hungry, as if she hadn't eaten in days.  "Starving."
  Why was she hungry? 

"Come with me then.  I'll fix you dinner and explain everything."  He led her by the hand toward the street that was hidden by a copse of trees.  "You need to understand my century, so you can decide what you want to do."

Alicia shook her head.  "I need to get home.  My friends must be frantic."

He sighed.  "I do understand.  Hear me out, though.  We'll both wish again if you decide you don't want to be here."
  He hated making the promise, but if it made her unhappy to be there, he'd do anything to help her get home.  Already he was falling for the beautiful woman at his side, so what else could he do?

She didn't know what else to do, so she nodded, following him to his car.  And oh, what a car it was.

Chapter Two

Alicia stared around her in surprise.  He was right.  There were no women anywhere.  He drove slowly to a small restaurant and led her to the door.  They stood in front of the host for a moment before the bored looking man looked up.  "Oh, Mr. Bolton!  It's so good to see you and your...
er...friend!  Table for two?"

He nodded, and the two of them followed the man through the restaurant to a small table tucked away in a corner.  As they walked, Alicia noted there was not a single woman in the entire restaurant, and no children.  She hadn't seen a
woman or a child since she'd landed at his feet in the park.

Once they were seated, he took her hand in his.  "Decide what you want to eat
, and then I'll do my best to explain everything."

She nodded, almost embarrassed that she didn't know what to say or do.  She'd never been in a restaurant that was so nice, or with a man who was so...mannerly?  She could only guess that he was a rich man, like she'd wished for.  How could this have happened to her?

She looked down at the menu and chose a steak and baked potato.  Nothing had never sounded as good to her as a huge chunk of red meat did at that very moment.  She closed her menu and pushed it to the middle of the table.

Calor noticed she'd put her menu down and reached over to take her hand in his. 
He wondered how he was going to be able to explain exactly what the world had become in the last three hundred years.  "There's a lot you need to know about the past century or so."

Alicia blinked at him for a moment before nodding.  At first, she had been convinced he was insane, but after seeing the cars outside as well as other small details in the restaurant, she no longer doubted him.  "Why are there no women?"
What could have happened to the world to make all the women disappear?  She couldn't imagine.  This society should be more advanced, shouldn't it?

He sighed. "That's the first thing I want to tell you. 
It's kind of hard to explain.  I guess it was around a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago.  The scientists and doctors decided that it was unsafe for women to be pregnant.  They perfected the art of birth chambers, commonly known as pods. All of the fertile women donated eggs, and childbirth was outlawed."

Alicia stared at him in surprise.  "
That sounds like it would help women live longer.  What happened?" 

"Unfortunately,
it didn't work.  The baby boys were fine.  There were no problems at all.  Half of the girls died in the chambers, though.  Everyone decided that was fine, they'd just make sure to make more girls than boys.  That would work, right?  Well, then many of the girls died before they reached adulthood.  Another fifty percent or so."

She stared at him in horror.  "So that's why there are no women?  They're all kept alive in hospitals or something?"

He laughed.  "If only.  No, the few that survived were all infertile.  We talked about having women who were still alive donate eggs or have babies the real way, but they had taken all of their eggs, and had removed their uteruses.  Did you know a woman is born with a finite number of eggs?"

She shook her head.  "I guess I never really thought about it."
  She didn't necessarily care to think about it now. 

"No, you wouldn't need to."  He shrugged.  "Skip forward to our time, and the only women left are old and infertile.  There's no way for the human race to keep going.  All of the girl embryos were processed in that first generation.  There are none left."

"But...the human race will die out!"  Alicia had never heard of such a thing.  How could they have allowed this to happen?

"A few years ago a religious colony was found that had moved to the backwoods of Wisconsin.  They'd refused to give up the old ways, but there are very few young women there, because it was a small colony.  One by one, the girls have been auctioned off.  Groups of
trillionaires buy them and share them."

Alicia blinked.  "Groups?  They're
shared by groups of men?"  She didn't even find the idea appealing.  Of course, she was one of the last few virgins left on earth, but to have to be with more than one man?  No, she'd stick with one.

"Four men per woma
n is the norm.  I've never heard of it any other way.  I hate the idea of sharing, but if it's the only way to get a woman, how could I not want to?  Unfortunately, the cost is too high.  I'm a trillionaire, but I don't have the kind of money that would let me pay over a trillion dollars for a share of a woman.  I'd have nothing left."  He shook his head. 

"You're a
trillionaire?  Girls in my time fantasize about billionaires."  She'd never really cared to have a billionaire, but a man who could keep her in the manner to which she would love to become accustomed?  She would like that a lot.

He laughed.  "Not anymore."  He raised her hand to his lips.  "I wished for you, and you appeared to me.  Will you stay here and marry me?  Will you help the human race survive?"

She stared at him for a moment before she started giggling.  "Well, that was certainly a marriage proposal I never expected to receive."  Did he have any idea how ridiculous his words sounded?

Calor grinned.  "I guess that sounded pretty corny, didn't it?"  He sighed.  "I watch a lot of old movies.  I tend to get overdramatic and sappy at times."  He took a sip of his water.  "I always dreamed that I would find a woman.  I've avoided relationships with other men, even though most men embrace their homosexuality today.  I'm a closet hetero."
  He whispered the last words as if they were something shameful.

"It did sound corny.  Let me process all this."  Alicia smiled as the waiter came and stared at her for a moment. 

"Can I take your order?"  The young man couldn't take his eyes off Alicia as he asked the question.

Calor was obviously annoyed.  "I'd like the lobster and baked potato."  He nodded to Alicia.  "You?"

Alicia felt uncomfortable under the waiter's stare.  "I'd like a steak and baked potato, please."

"How do you want your steak cooked?"  He didn't take his eyes off her as he stood with his pen poised to write her answer. 

"Medium well, and I'd like the baked potato with butter, cheese and sour cream, please."  She handed the waiter her menu, trying not to squirm under his intense stare.  She knew she was an oddity in this time period, but did he have to make her feel like she was a freak of nature?

As the waiter walked away, Calor shook his head.  "I'm afraid you'll get a lot of that if you don't marry right away.  There will be men offering you everything in the world to get you to marry them.  It would be easy for you to be a victim of kidnapping or even rape."
  He hated admitting that she was in danger in his time, but the simple fact was, there were way too few women and too many men.  She would be appealing to everyone who saw her.

Alicia sighed, staring down at the table.  She could see she'd have to make a decision soon.  "Tell me about yourself?  I want to know about the man who wants me to marry him after meeting me a few hours ago."
  She'd always day dreamed about meeting a man and him proposing within hours, but now that it had happened, it just seemed odd to her.

He took another sip of water.  "Well, I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas.  I've lived in this area my entire life.  I went to North Texas University and got my degree in
aerospace engineering.  I've done a lot with the space program, mainly finding ways for new inventions to be easily used in space."

"Has life on other planets been discovered?"  She'd always been a huge Star Trek fan, and she loved the idea of finding another planet. 
Somewhere like Vulcan or Kronos.

"We've met other species, but most are not nearly as advanced as we are.  There's been no one who even begins to look like a human.  A lot of time and energy has been spent trying to find a species that would be compatible with humans, due to our lack of women."  He shrugged.  "So far, there's been no one."

She sighed. "A girl can always dream, right?"  She frowned.  "Okay, so if you have no parents, who raised you?  How does that work?"  She really wanted to understand the time period she found herself in.  It was strange that she believed him wholeheartedly, but looking around her, she didn't feel she had a choice.

"We're all raised in boys' homes.  There will be around twenty boys all living in one house.  They try to keep two of each age, so that we can all learn to get along with all different age groups."  He shrugged.  "There were boys up to four years younger than me in the homes, but they've run out of embryos.  The human race is about to die off."

"Way to put pressure on a girl."  Alicia played with the pattern on the table cloth, unable to keep meeting his intense gaze.  She was attracted to him, very attracted, but she wasn't certain she was willing to agree to marry a complete stranger.  She had always been one to think about every decision before even thinking about jumping in.

Calor
shook his head, picking up her hand again, his thumb rubbing against the back of it.  "I'm not trying to pressure you.  I'm trying to make you understand the world you've fallen into.  We need you here.  We need you badly.  I can understand not wanting to be a part of a world that is as messed up as the earth has become, but I don't know that we can send you back."  He did know that he didn't want to try.

Alicia
took a deep breath.  "I believe everything happens for a reason.  I probably need to be here...for whatever reason.  I just need to sort that out in my head."  How did you sort out the fact that you were sent forward in time to ensure the survival of the human race, though?

"You're here to marry me, of course."  His voice was calm as he explained his theory.  "We both wished on the same fountain, and it brought us together.  That means that somehow, some way, we're meant to be a couple.  You're meant to be my wife and the mother of my children."

Alicia sighed.  "I was going to wait a few more years before I had children."  She shrugged.  "I don't think that would be possible at this point."

"How old are you?" he asked, hoping she was as young as she looked.  He was thirty-five, and wanted someone close to his age, but young enough to have children.  Lots and lots of children.

"I'm twenty-seven."  Alicia thought about that for a moment.  She was twenty-seven and had never married.  She'd never even had a serious relationship.  Now, there was a trillionaire before her, asking her to marry him and saying they were destined to be together.  Why was she hesitating?

Calor smiled and nodded.  "That's a perfect age for me."  He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed the back of them, fascinated by how soft her skin was.  Would he ever tire of looking into her beautiful blue eyes?

"How old are you?" she asked, hoping to learn a little more about him.

"I'm thirty-five.  I've never been in a relationship.  I have a sex toy that I've named Mona that has to be enough for me."  He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

She giggled.  "You do realize that telling the woman you want to marry you about your sex toy generally doesn't make things happen faster, don't you?"

He shrugged.  "I won't ever lie to you."  The waiter came back with their meals and they were placed in front of them. 

Alicia cut into her steak and sighed.  Over three hundred years later, and they still couldn't cook a steak medium-well?  "This isn't done enough for me.  Could you make certain it's medium-well?"  She handed her plate back to the waiter and felt her stomach groan in protest.  She'd never been so hungry.  Of course, she'd never gone for over three hundred years without a meal, either.

Calor watched as the waiter took her plate back to the kitchen, and couldn't help but notice her eyes on his food.  "When did you eat last?"

She shrugged.  "I guess over three hundred years ago!  I had just finished a meal and my friends and I were walking through the park when we made the wish, though.  It didn't take me more than thirty minutes after eating to come here, but now I feel like I could eat a horse."  She clutched her stomach, wishing it would stop growling at her.

He blinked at her in surprise.  "Was horse meat something you ate regularly?"

Alicia laughed.  "It's just an expression."  She wanted a bite of his potato so badly she could taste it.

He saw where her gaze was going, and he put a huge bite of potato on his fork and fed it to her across the small table.  "Now will you marry me?  I fed you a bite of my potato!"

She chewed it up, laughing softly.  "I don't know if that's enough reason for me to marry a total stranger."  Was there ever a reason good enough to marry a stranger?

He sighed.  "Okay, tell me all about yourself.  Are you married?  Do you have children?  What do you do back in the twenty-first century?"  He frowned.  "I guess I should have asked that before I ever proposed, huh?"

She smiled, taking her fork and stealing a bite of his potato before answering.  "I'm single.  I have no children.  I've never even been in a serious relationship."  She stared at his potato for a moment, debating another bite.  Her plate appeared in front of her, and she cut into the steak.  "Thank you.  That's much better."   She smiled at the waiter before cutting off a piece and popping it into her mouth.