Her Billionaires_ Boxed Set(87)

“Dylan can bench about a thousand pounds,” he said, grinning.

“What?”

“Yep. Carrying that ego around...” She laughed. Score.

“It’s almost a fourth partner,” she joked back. Warmth spread through him, unexpected and welcome, his throat thick with emotion. If she was going to make threesome jokes, this was deepening nicely. Jill had told him a long time ago that she began to really accept their relationship when she could wisecrack about it.

“Hey, Mike? The wax guys are on the line—they said there’s a problem with the order,” his admin, Shelly, interrupted. Full-figured, energetic, and highly opinionated, she was only nineteen but had been in the back office for three years, practically running the show. Now she tapped her foot and managed somehow to convey urgency and ignore him all at once as she worked on her smart phone. “Seriously,” she added. “They won’t talk to me. Only you.”

He held up one finger in Shelly’s direction. “Shit,” he muttered. “Sorry, Laura—I’ve got a work problem here.”

“A work problem? As in, you have no snow and can’t work?”

“No, a supplier needs some attention.”

“I didn’t know you were so heavy into the business side of things.”

You have no idea. “Oh, I help out with inventory sometimes,” he explained. Shelly shot him a “what the fuck” look and he started to feel unmoored. This was veering into dangerous territory, fast. He wasn’t ready to tell Laura about the money. Soon, but not just yet.

Torn, he paused, wishing he could just take a thirty-mile run and think. Think it all through. Telling her was the obvious, right choice, so why not just say it? What was holding him back? A part of him feared, deeply, that he would regret this one day. That she would find out the truth and hate him.

That these secrets were eating away at his soul.

“I’ll hurry then—I just need a few seconds more. Can you and Dylan come over to my place for dinner tomorrow night?”

The warmth returned. “Of course,” he gasped, surprised by the offer.

“I’m not as good a cook as Dylan,” she added. Shelly twisted her wrist in repeating circles, pushing Mike to get off the phone. Hell of a time for this!

“Whatever you make, we’ll savor,” he said. “What time?”

“Seven?”

“We’re there. See you tomorrow.” As he said the words, Shelly reached up and plucked the phone from him, slamming the red button to end the call.

“Hey!” he shouted, pulling himself up to his full height. Who did she think she was?

Shelly didn’t even bother looking at him. “Yeah. Right. Like that’ll intimidate me.” Her snort followed him as he marched away to talk to the wax dudes. Madge’s granddaughter was a chip off the old—well, the old.



What caught Dylan off guard most was how pink her apartment was. He hadn’t pegged Laura as one of those pink girls, but the apartment practically glowed. Not in a sickly-sweet Barbie dream house kind of way, but more like IKEA had decided pink was the color of the season and Laura had happened to decide to decorate her entire place that year. Even the bathroom had some shade of pink that dominated.

It wasn’t a show stopper. Chuckling as he dried his hands on a pinkish bath towel with blue and lime highlights, he paused to stare at himself in the mirror. This was really happening. Mike had been wrong. Mr. Doubt Everything had come back this morning from one of his killer runs and declared that the situation with Laura was tenuous at best, and that they needed to pour their hearts out tonight at her place and just tell her about the billions.

“You’re nuts,” Dylan had told him flatly. He was off for the day and ironing work shirts while deciding what to wear that night. The ratty Rush t-shirt or the ratty Dead shirt? Hard to decide.

“Not nuts,” Mike retorted. “Sane. Rational. Reasonable. We’re skating on thin ice here by not telling her. And if it comes out before we’re the ones to sit down and talk about it with her, all hell will break loose.”

“How will it come out, Mike? She doesn’t know anyone we know.”

“The workers at the ski resort figured it out.”

“That’s because there are financial people there who had to know who owns the place, and they sniffed the money trail back to you. But they don’t know about the trust fund, right?” Mike’s uncomfortable silence had sent a chill down Dylan’s back. “Right?” he said sharply.

Mike had looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. “Someone there knows. They had to. I couldn’t buy the entire resort outright and I needed to give financial statements proving the steady income. I’ll finish paying it off next year, but there was no way to do this without disclosing it.”