The Billionaire Game (2 page)

“Oh my gosh. Her stuff is sooooo
amazing, honeybun,” she gushed. “Most of the time you
have to sacrifice comfort for sexiness, but Kate knows just what
materials and cuts to use to keep that from happening. I can actually
breathe when I wear her designs!”

“As long as I can’t,”
Asher said drolly, setting the magazine back on the shelf, and Dove
giggled as she ducked her head back down. I felt my back rankle, and
tried to tell myself I was being irrational. Of course he was going
to flirt with his girlfriend. That was what his girlfriend was for.
The way he had looked at me before was just…chivalry, or
something. And of course he’d been impressed by the original
copy of Graham’s; who wouldn’t be?

I glanced over just in time to see his
tongue steal out for a second to lick his lips—and then our
eyes met and I momentarily forgot how to breathe.

Wow, Katie. Calm your rockets.
You’re reading way too much into this. You’re reading so
much into this it could be a Russian novel.

I cleared my throat. “So you’re
still going with just two teddies and a brassiere?” I asked
Dove, only partly to clarify the order, mostly to clear my head. “Can
I persuade you to kick it old school with a peignoir?”

“I don’t know…”
Dove dithered. She peeped over the top of the changing screen again.
“Honey, what do you think?”

“What’s the difference?”
he said dismissively, shrugging. “As long as they’re
sheer and short, they’re basically the same thing.” Ah,
there it was. The typical too-hot-for-his-own-good male personality
in its natural state.

I felt a twinge of disappoint. Damn,
but it had been too much to think a guy existed who was hot and also
not an asshole.

Adding insult to injury, my body
apparently didn’t care that this guy was a jerk, or that he had
a girlfriend. It was too busy noticing how the muscles in his
shoulders rippled when he shrugged, and sending memos to all the
blood in my body to hop the fast lane to my pussy.

I sternly reminded myself that it
shouldn’t matter to me whether his manners were straight off
the Jersey Shore or if he was a perfect gentleman—he was Dove’s
problem, not mine. I snapped the measuring tape with a little more
vehemence than was strictly necessary—other than for my mental
health, for which it was crucial—and retreated behind the
screen, starting in on the important work of making sure that Dove
hadn’t shed too many pounds since her last photoshoot to fit
into her previous measurements. You can’t be too careful with
models.

I had barely finished wrapping the tape
around her hips when on the other side of the screen, Asher let out
an anguished sigh, as if he had been exiled from his home country for
his entire life. “Surely this whole screen thing isn’t
necessary?” he purred smoothly. He had a voice like molten
chocolate. “I assure you, I have seen Dove naked before.”

Dove giggled like this was the wittiest
thing she had ever heard, and I ground my teeth and told myself I was
annoyed because he was disrupting the fitting.

It definitely wasn’t because I
was jealous or anything.

You know, I was probably just extra on
edge because of that whole thing with Stevie. It had set my Asshole
Detector on high alert, and was now pinging even trace amounts of
douchebaggery in the atmosphere.

But hey, look on the bright side!
I reminded myself.
Sure, your life is going to be hell until a
Christmas miracle gives Stevie the ability to empathize with other
humans and stop being a dickwad to you, but in the meantime, you can
blame him for everything! Hair-trigger temper? Stevie! Inability to
trust men? Stevie! Global warming? Probably Stevie! Especially since
he’s always leaving the fridge open. Jerk.

“Good lingerie is as much about
strategic concealing as revealing,” I said, belatedly answering
Asher’s query. “It shouldn’t matter if a team of
scientists has had a woman under a microscope—a well-crafted
piece should cultivate an aura of feminine mystique. She’ll
feel empowered, like she knows things you don’t know, and
empowered equals sensual. So no, you may not peek behind the curtain
of Oz the Great and Sexy Designer.”

I heard a deep, throaty laugh, and I
started revising my opinion of him back upwards—I make it my
policy to get along well with all hot, muscular men with nice hair
who laugh at my jokes—but then his reply derailed that faster
than a log on a railroad track: “Really, though, how many way
can you string minuscule bits of lace and silk across a body?”

I bit my tongue to keep from launching
myself into a history of lingerie starting with Lady Duff-Gordon of
Lucile, founder of the concept, and ending with Kate Jameson,
revolutionary designer extraordinaire just waiting to be discovered,
made famous, and showered with accolades. “You’d be
surprised.”

I could hear the grin in his reply. “I
can’t wait for you to surprise me.”

And oh, didn’t that set off a few
dirty films in the theatre of my mind.

As I continued my measurements, and
answered Dove’s questions with slightly distracted answers,
half my attention was still taken by the sounds of Asher moving
around outside the changing screen.

What was he doing? I really, really
hoped I had cleaned up the room good enough. If another stray sock or
pair of mass-market panties or dog-eared romance novel happened to
fall out from behind the cushions when he prodded them, I might have
to kill him and hide the body. And in addition to the crime against
hotness that his death would be, I think we’ve already
established that I’m potentially on the hook for one murder.
Real-life detectives may not all be Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes,
but even they can usually spot a pattern.

A rustling sound. “Ah, this looks
familiar. Was it on sale at the local craft store?”

The direction his voice came from made
me realize what he was touching, and my blood boiled like a pot left
on the stove by a harried executive.

“Not unless Michaels has taken to
selling spider-silk gossamer, and if you get any dirt on that, I
will
be charging,” I snapped, throwing the concept of diplomacy
right out of the window. Diplomacy? What’s that? Never heard of
it. “I had to buy that in bulk and it cost an arm and a leg, so
if you could
not
grub around in things you don’t
understand—”

“I assure you, my hands are very
clean,” Asher smirked. “If you’d like to inspect
them…”

Unbelievable. He was
blatantly
flirting with me now, even as I was fitting his girlfriend for
lingerie. And what’s worse, it was making me blush. I never
blush. I have a strict no-blushing policy that I instituted in
seventh grade and never looked back. Oh damn, it was spreading down
my chest, my skin flushing hot beneath my clothing as my nipples
hardened.

“Just keep them out of the
materials,” I shot back, pleased to note that my voice was firm
but no longer in danger of being mistaken for a harpy’s. The
customer is always right, even when you could cheerfully contemplate
kicking them out of a window. Or at least chaining them to a bed
until they’ve learned a lesson. Thoroughly.

Asher seemingly complied—at
least, I couldn’t hear him moving around anymore—but kept
talking, sounding interested. “Bulk, huh? You see enough demand
for that particular material to make it worth the investment?”

“Long-term, yes,” I said
around the pins I was holding in my mouth as I adjusted the fit of the
violet silk teddy. I felt my shoulders relax—I so rarely got
the opportunity to talk shop, and it was nice for someone to be
taking an interest. “It’s versatile, and laying in a good
supply will keep me from having to run after manufacturers to meet
client deadlines. If I’m not constantly extending deadlines,
clients will be more satisfied and more likely to recommend me to
their friends.”

“That’s how I came to her,”
Dove put in. “Through friends. Jessaminda—you remember
Jessaminda, sugar dumpling, she was hanging all over you at that
premiere—she had that sex tape leak with her in that utterly
divine babydoll, and I thought, ooooh, I just have to get one of
those. Except different, of course.”

Hey, it wasn’t an ad in the New
Yorker, but I’d take my advertising where I could get it.

“An excellent business strategy,”
Asher said, his tone so neutral that for a second I was sure he was
being sincere, and in the next sure he was mocking me.

Jeez, Kate, self-doubt much?

Like I’ve said before, it’s
a hell of a lot easier for a statuesque redhead to get compliments on
her looks than it is for her to get compliments on her artistry or
business acumen. And once she’s got them, how is she ever
supposed to trust them?

I remember in college when my art
mentor Professor Carey told me I had real talent, that with my vision
and my head for business I could make it as far as I wanted to go; I
remember that soaring feeling of joy in my stomach.

And then I remember how he put his hand
on my knee, and began to stroke my leg as he told me how he just
wanted to guide me on my path, and how much he could help me if I
would just help him, and I remember that crashing sensation of my
stomach dropping down to the floor as I realized that it had all been
lies to butter me up, and I remember the tears rushing down my face
as I fled from his office.

I pushed that memory away violently.
“All right, let me just tuck in this little bit here…”
I said, adjusting the fabric. “There! Take a look. This is
basically what it’ll look like when it’s all done next
week.”

Dove paused from making kissy-faces at
Asher over the top of the changing screen to look at herself in the
mirror, and an expression of awe bloomed across her face. An almost
disbelieving smile dawned as her hand—so slowly she seemed
almost unaware of it—trailed across the sheer fabric cupping
her pert breasts. I watched her shoulders straighten as that smile
grew wicked, predatory, and delighted; a little sway sashayed into
her hips as she twisted to look at herself from another angle. Oh
yeah, Dove had definite plans for this outfit, and she was going to
see them through.

And I felt the last of the tension go
out of my throat and shoulders. This was why I did what I did—this
was why I emptied out my rent budget to get ahold of luxurious
fabrics, this was why I gave myself migraines tracking down
old-fashioned lace-making techniques, this was why every spare moment
I found my hands sketching a new design, trying to find a way to
convey sleekness, sophistication, daring, and sexiness, all in the
minimal amount of cloth.

I did it all for the looks on the faces
on my clients when they gazed at themselves in the mirror wearing one
of my creations and realized that they were powerful, gorgeous, sexy
goddesses; that they deserved to have self-confidence, to have fun,
to have good things.

“You know what, Kate?” Dove
breathed. “I think I will take a peignoir too.”

“I’ll just add that to the
order, then,” I said with a smile.

Mission accomplished, NASA. The eagle
has landed, and it is looking fly as hell.

#

Events conspired to sour my mood a
little after that, and by ‘events,’ I mostly mean ‘Asher
Young.’

Dove had barely redressed and come out
from behind the changing curtain when he glommed back onto her like a
leech—not that she seemed to mind—and began pelting her
with questions: well, what color had she chosen? Was it low-cut? How
easily would it hold together if someone were to, say, try to rip it
off? He tickled her and she giggled like a hyena every time she
refused to give an answer; I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to
tell him that I suspected that he was the kind of guy who read the
last page of a mystery story first and then told everyone the ending,
and therefore had a special place waiting for him in hell.

They were both still giving each other
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as they headed out the door.

“It’s not their fault,”
I reminded myself once they had left. “You’re not in a
very pro-couple mood, remember? Asher and Dove could be a pair of
graceful monogamous-for-life swans and you would still want to wring
their necks. Or penguins! Everybody loves penguins! But right now
those smug little mated-for-life fuckers in tuxedos can go fuck
themselves.” So maybe I was feeling a little bitter.

I decided to distract myself by
cleaning up. I was just starting to transform my studio back into my
living room—and mentally calculating how long I could live on
Whole Foods samples (a little trick my best friend Lacey had taught
me) and coffee shop jam packets; surely it would be worth it if I
could just put down the money on an actual studio space—when
the doorbell rang. With a sinking heart, I went to check it, and my
worst fears were confirmed.

Like the terrible icing on the worst
ever cake, the person at the door was Stevie.

He was trying to peer through the
peephole, the lens making his eyeball bulge, his nose seeming to
swell. “Kate? I know you’re in there. I watched your
‘clients’”—he did the actual air quotes
around the words, like this was still the nineties—“take
off, so it’s just you and me. I’m taking back that
magazine.”

I bet my landlord let him in, even
after I told him not to. Damn. Mr. Briggs was an old sweetie, but he
had all the memory retention of a piece of soggy Swiss cheese. He
couldn’t seem to hold it in his head that Stevie and I were no
longer together; though, in all fairness to him, the fact that he had
absorbed that we had once been together was pretty impressive, given
that he regularly forgot that WWII had been won seventy years ago.

“Look, you can drop this whole
act,” Stevie said, lowering his voice as if he was about to
tell me a secret. “You don’t have to pretend to be all
intellectual anymore, okay? It was cute how you tried to do literary
analysis on those ‘classics’—” he did the air
quotes again—“to get my attention so I would date you,
but it’s over and you need to let it go. Props to you for
pretending to read them all the time, that was a real commitment, but
since we’re not together anymore you can drop the whole façade
and go back to reading whatever fashion magazines you usually read.”