Seduction on the Sand (The Billionaires of Barefoot Bay #2) (6 page)

But she didn’t really know anything about him at all.

From behind the glass, she saw him smile.
 

“What?”

“You have a camera?” he asked, lowering the glass. “’Cause it would be easier to take a picture, Francesca.”

She felt a warm rush to her cheeks at the use of her full name. And being caught staring. “You’re standing in front of me gulping like a hog.” She forced herself to turn, leaning on the sink and looking away. “How’d you get so”—
built
—“rich?”

He chuckled as if he knew exactly what her real thought had been. “Told you already. Dumb luck.”

She gave a scoffing grunt, pushing off the sink to go back into the living room. He followed, with Ozzie practically crawling up his jeans, of course. “Not buying it. Nobody’s that lucky.”

“I am.” He sat in Nonno’s old recliner, the first man—the first human—to sit there in three months. Pushing back, he popped the footrest with a loud snap. “Haven’t been in one of these for a long time.”

“No La-Z-Boys in the mansion?”

He grinned, getting comfortable and, of course, making room for Ozzie on his lap. “I might have to change that.”

Didn’t deny he owned a mansion, she noticed.

“Anyway, to answer your question, I bought a very valuable piece of property.” He crossed his feet and looked at her from under thick lashes. “I paid forty-six thousand dollars for about six acres of land in western Massachusetts.”

“And selling that made you rich?”

“Nope. I never sold the land and never will.”

She eyed him, curious, watching his smile grow and his dark eyes dance.
 

“But the first time I put a shovel in the ground, I hit some stone. Beautiful gold stone.”

She gasped. “You struck gold in Massachusetts?”

“Close enough. Goshen stone. Rare and desirable, and the amount I had on my land—land that I bought as a favor to my cousin who really needed to sell, I might add—netted over two billion dollars.”

“Wow.” It was the best she could do because, wow. That
was
lucky.

“I know,” he agreed. “So I might be arrogant about a lot of things, but not my money-making skills. I literally fell into wealth, so it doesn’t really change who I am, just how I live. And, yes, I gave my cousin a cut.”
 

He searched her face, probably looking for the usual drool women have to wipe when they learn his net worth. A flicker of discomfort registered on his expression when she imagined what he saw instead. “I mean, I live well,” he said slowly. “I have a—”

“Yacht.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Sure, I have a pleasure boat.”

“And a private jet.”

“It makes travel easier.”

“Multiple expensive homes.”

He lifted one shoulder. “I like to stay in my own place if I can.”

“Butlers and staff and, of course, some ridiculous collection like art or horses or...”

“Rare cars,” he supplied. “I’m not going to apologize for how I live. I told you I was in the right place at the right time.”

But, still, she knew all she had to know about him. He worshipped at the money altar, and she despised people like that. She learned at a tender age that when you put money in front of everyone else, the ultimate price is too high. Her parents paid that price, and it still hurt her to think about it. You can’t love people and money at the same time or with the same intensity. One wins out, everytime.
 

“Look.” She took a steadying breath. “I really appreciate your concern for my safety and your interest in goats and whatever else you’re going to dream up to persuade me to give you access to...me. But I don’t think this is going to work out.”

He didn’t move, except for his infernal petting of her dog.
 
“It’s the money, isn’t it?” he finally asked.

She scowled at the question, not believing she was quite that transparent.

“You have issues with money,” he explained.

Well, yes, she
was
that transparent. “Who doesn’t?”

“Most women—”
 

“Hey, newsflash, Becker.” She snapped her fingers three times. “I am
not
most women.”

Charcoal-black eyes raked her, from face to body and back up again, just as smoky and sexy as a man could look. “I noticed.”

Damn it, she hated the heat that generated. Two words. One look. And a couple of billion dollars. “I don’t believe money buys you happiness.”

“So says everyone who doesn’t have it.”

She managed not to scoff at that. “Money buys nothing but misery. Trust me, I know firsthand.
Misery
.” If her parents hadn’t been chasing the almighty dollar...they’d still be here.

He finally smiled. “This is good, Frankie. Really good.”

“What is?”

“This arrangement.” He gestured to her and then to him, as though they had actually made an
arrangement
. “You can teach me about goats and farms and animal science, and I can teach you that you are completely wrong about people who have money.”

Could he? Maybe someone needed to do that, otherwise, she was never going to fully heal from the pain of losing the two people she’d loved and needed so desperately. Without giving herself a chance to think deeper than that, she nodded.
 

“Okay, then.” She put her hands on her thighs and pushed up.

“Can I stay?”
 

Ozzie let out four furious barks, as though he could answer for her.

“I have six sets of very dirty hooves waiting to be cleaned and trimmed. That’s a total of twenty-four goat hooves, which means forty-eight toes that need your attention.”

He frowned, making her wonder if the simple math threw him. “I thought you had seven goats.”

“One’s a buck and, trust me, you cannot handle him.”
 

He pushed up from Nonno’s chair and smiled at her. “You have no idea how I live for a challenge. If I clean all twenty-four feet, can I stay?”

“Their called hooves, not feet. And, we’ll see.”

He scooped up the dog like he weighed nothing. “Let’s go, Wizard of Ozzie. Farmwork to do.”

As soon as she opened the door, Harriet came bounding over with his cowboy hat in her teeth. Well, what was left of it. The brim was shredded.

Frankie bit back a laugh, but Elliott just hooted as he put down one dog to give his attention to the other. “Would you look at that?”

“Sorry,” Frankie said, fighting an outright giggle.

He gave her that slow, sexy, careless smile as he set the hat on his head and the ragged brim dipped over his forehead. “Let’s get to the hooves, boss.”

Damn it.
Damn
it. Did he have to be so stinking sexy?
 

Chapter Five

Elliott rolled over, a jolt from head to toe. Pain jabbed his back and something fuzzy scraped his ear. His forearms ached from compressing the damn shears, using every ounce of strength he had to snap off hard chunks of goat toenail. His thighs hurt from squeezing the beasts between his legs as he bent over goat butts and held their hind legs up to do the work.

Holy mother of misery.

Everything hurt and needed rest and a five-hundred-dollar massage and sauna at the club in Manhattan. Later. He’d make an appointment later. Now, he had to sleep, the need pressing his lids closed and numbing the pain. In his ear, a soft sigh pulled him a little further from a dream, and he reached out to...

He dug through sleep-fog for a name. Francis. No, Frankie. Fiery, feisty, funny, and...
furry
?

With a grunt, he threw himself backward, as far away from the little goat as possible.

Ruffles
.

A musical laugh filled his ears. That pretty, girlie, bell-like laugh he hadn’t heard nearly enough while he cleaned shit—actual,
real
manure—out of goat hooves. Shifting in the hay bed he’d made the night before, he squinted to see Frankie at her milking station, already wringing the crap out of Clementine’s titties.
 

Holy hell, he knew their names. Plus, it couldn’t be seven in the morning. Did it never end, this goat business?

Well, this was part of the deal he’d made with the lawyer, right? Burns had salivated at Elliott’s offer and asked for one week to close the sale. During that time, Elliott had to make sure Frankie hit nothing but roadblocks until he and his partners owned the land. That required constant supervision and, evidently, sleeping in a goat barn.
 

“How’d you sleep?” Frankie asked, the splash of milk into a metal bucket not hiding the little note of concern in her voice. She might act like she didn’t care that he had to sleep here, but she did.

“Like hell in a haystack.” He leaned up on one elbow, scowling into early sunlight that streamed through the opening behind her, backlighting her so she looked...great. Really great. “You’re up early.”

“It’s a farm, big boy. That’s how we roll.”

Too tired to argue, he rested his head and let his eyes focus on her. Jeans today, faded but tight enough to show every curve. And an oversized T-shirt so loose that when she leaned over to adjust the milk pail, he could see right down to a tank top. Her hair was pulled back in her Heidi braid. Small, taut muscles in her arms bunched as she squeezed out milk, her lower lip tucked under her teeth in concentration, a glisten of perspiration giving her a glow.

 
“You can use the facilities in the trailer,” she said, not even looking at him.

“In a minute. I’m mesmerized by milking.” And the milk maid.

She tried to hide her amusement by tucking her head under the goat’s belly instead, but he caught the smile. “Good, you can finish for me. I think you learned how to do it last night.”

Yes, he had. Squeezed the udders till those suckers were dry as bones. And never wanted to put his hand on another goat nipple as long as he lived. “Aren’t you almost done?” he asked.
 

“Still have Ruffles and the little girls. And I need to leave in less than an hour.”

He sat up completely. “Where are you going?”
 

“County Clerk to get to the bottom of this Burns guy and his bogus will.”

Except, the will was not bogus. Elliott was certain of that. How Burns’s client was able to coerce the old man to sign it might not have been the most ethical of means, but the will was legal. “I’m going with you.”

That earned him a vile look. “No, you’re staying here to milk the goats.”

“I’ll do both, but I’m going with you.”

“I can handle it. I’ve already started, to be honest. Last night I Googled that lawyer and the name of his client.”

Oh, that was not good. “What did you find?”

“He’s a real lawyer, sadly. But Island Management doesn’t have a Web site or anything trackable. But I have some contacts in the county government who helped me after Nonno died without a will or a deed to this land.”

Brushing some hay out of his hair and off his jeans, he finally got up from the homemade bed, his real estate experience taking over his brain for a moment. “How can he not have a deed to the land?”

“He was a founder of the island, back in the 1940s. A group of people actually settled the island, and were able to claim ownership of land. That’s how the lady who owns Casa Blanca got a lot of that land, from her grandparents who were part of the founding group. But there’s a deed now, on file, and in eight, no, seven more days, it transfers to my name.”

Not if it transferred to another name first. In six days, if all went according to plan. An unwanted pressure of guilt punched hard enough to push him to a stand. “Let me hit the head and I’ll finish the goats, shower, and go with you.”

Her jaw unhinged.
 

He ignored it. “C’mon. You know you want company.”

Before she could argue, he was crossing the pen and headed for the trailer, blinking into the blinding sunrise, making plans for who to call first and exactly what strings to pull and palms to grease. He
had
to be at those government offices with her.

Her grandfather was a founder of the island.

He silenced the voice in his head with a litany of rationalization. This place was perfect for the stadium, great access, close to a good population base on the other side of the causeway, still small and out of the way enough to be a real tourist draw. Plus, they’d already secured the surrounding properties, and this little plot shouldn’t hold them up. The whole plan wouldn’t work without a good access road and parking. This was too
easy
to start over.

Fast, easy, simple, lucrative, and...a shitty thing to do to Frankie.

Swearing softly, he stepped inside the little mobile home to find the bathroom in the hall. He’d have to go get some things from the resort if he was going through with this plan, but Frankie had thoughtfully laid out an unopened toothbrush package with toothpaste, a washcloth, and something that looked like a bar of soap. It was brown and lumpy and smelled...amazing.