The Billionaire's Favourite Mistake(25)

He dialed her number and waited as the phone rang several times. Was  she not going to pick up? Fuck, he hadn't even thought about that. This  was a woman that had blocked his calls for months on end. If she was mad  at him, she'd be perfectly fine ignoring him until-

The phone clicked over. "Hello?"

Greer's soft, smoky voice made his balls instantly tighten. Any  playful, flirty things he was thinking about saying to her went flying  out the window. "Why would you think I'm avoiding you?"

"Well," she began. "You went to a lot of trouble to force me into this  bargain we made, and now you're not showing up for it. What am I  supposed to think?"

"You could think that I'm kicking myself for not being there to cash  in? Because it's the truth." He rubbed his forehead. "This has been a  hellish week on my end. If I listen to one more person complain about  contingency meetings-all the while failing on that end-I'm going to lose  my shit."

"I'm sorry," she said, but her voice sounded amused instead of sympathetic.

"How's your week been?" he asked, settling in on the bed. His cock was  aching, and he pictured her sitting on her own bed, maybe surrounded by  fluffy pillows. She'd be reclining, her shirt unbuttoned low, toying  with a lock of her thick hair. . . . Christ, that was a sexy image. His  hand went to his cock and he rubbed it through the fabric of his slacks.

"My week?" She sounded surprised. The throaty chuckle escaped again.  "About as well as you can expect. I found a caterer willing to work on  short notice, found a baker to create three different cakes, and the  girls went dress shopping. The bridal parties-all three of them, mind  you-were finalized, and that meant deciding on dresses and colors for  each person." She yawned. "No one agrees on anything. It's been . . . a  marathon, to say the least."

"You need me to do anything? Offer my opinion on anything for your dad?" Mostly, he just wanted to know if she needed him.

"I'm good. You did make a few decisions, by the way. I had you pick out  the cut of the tux and you selected the groom's cake since I needed  that information in a hurry."

"I did, huh? How'd I manage that considering we haven't talked in  days?" Longest week of his life, too. He absently stroked his aching  cock again, entranced by her voice.

"Well, here's something interesting." Her tone turned amused. "I would  text you pictures and you'd decide which one you liked. It worked out  very well."

That little sneak. She hadn't texted him a thing all week. "And no one called you on your bluff?"

"Not a soul. Turns out that you have excellent taste, Asher." Her voice  dropped to a husky note that made his body react. Hell yes, he did have  excellent taste. He was starting to think the smartest thing he'd ever  done was get drunk and nail Greer, because it forced him to really pay  attention to her, to really see her for the first time.

And damn, he liked what he saw.

"I'm glad I could be so helpful." He hoped she didn't notice the  tension in his voice . . . or pick up on the fact that he was  unbuttoning his slacks so he could free his cock. Jerking off while on  the phone? He hadn't done this since he was a teenager, but he craved  Greer, and not having her in his arms? This would have to do.

Her small sigh made his senses go on alert. "I'm afraid that's the only thing that's gone my way this week."

"What is it? What's wrong?" The need to fix whatever was troubling her was overwhelming.

"Oh, it's just the tabloids." Greer made a small noise of disgust in  her throat. "They follow us the moment we leave the Dutchman castle and  trail me and the triplets everywhere we go. They spit questions at those  poor girls and they have no idea how to answer, so they just make  things worse. I swear there are new insulting things printed about them  every day, and it breaks my heart. I know it's upsetting to Kiki, even  if Tiffi and Bunni are too . . . absentminded to notice things."         

     



 

Absentminded? He would have used the term thick as a brick but Greer  was nicer than he was. "Is it just the online tabloids?" He could have  Stijn's lawyers send them a few cease and desists if he dropped a few  words in the right ears.

"Have you seen the weekly magazines? They're all speculating over which  girl's going to end up marrying him, and digging up every terrible  thing they possibly can about each girl. Tiffi was an escort at one  point, Bunni a stripper, and lord only knows what they've dug up on  Kiki. They're being referred to as the gold diggers of the century and  made a laughingstock." She paused. "It's hard."

Asher hesitated. He didn't exactly feel sorry for the triplets. After  all, they had started dating Stijn because of his money and his  business, not because he was a stunning conversationalist. And the fact  that they all three shared his bed? Of course people were going to talk.  The wedding was a three-ring circus and he'd heard Dutchman magazine  mentioned more times in the last week than he had in the last decade.  Stock was through the roof and he was pretty sure Stijn was thrilled  with the results-and the wedding hadn't even happened yet. So no, he  didn't feel bad for the girls, or for Stijn, who was a ruthless,  calculating bastard.

But this made Greer unhappy, and he didn't like her unhappy. She was  working too hard on this wedding for it to be laughed at, and he wanted  to fix things for her. "Do you want me to step in?"

"Step in? What do you mean?"

"I mean if the tabloids are causing you problems, we grease the wheels  in the other direction. We buy up some puff pieces and throw some money  in their direction so they print positive-spin articles. I can get a  publicist on this full time, if you want. A private publicist, not  Stijn's," he corrected. Stijn's publicist was probably one of the guilty  parties feeding some of the more lascivious bits to the public.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Would that work?"

"It would," he assured her. "It's all about perception. I'll get the  rumor mill grinding on the other end, and hopefully we can staunch some  of the bleeding."

"Thank you." Greer sounded grateful. Grateful and tired.

"Anything for you."

She was silent.

Okay, clearly she wasn't ready to hear that sort of thing yet. He'd  come back to that. Asher circled back around to a topic he knew she'd  talk about: the wedding. "So you finalized the wedding parties?"

"I did."

"Should I know who's in them?"

"It probably wouldn't hurt." For the next few minutes, he half listened  as she rattled off a list of names that meant nothing to him. Stijn's  groomsmen were all stockholders, and Asher wasn't sure if that was the  closest thing the Dutch millionaire had to friends or if it was a  business ploy. The girls were each limited to three bridesmaids and one  maid of honor, and had tried to get around the limitation with having  endless amounts of flower girls and assigning friends to be ushers,  provided they got to wear long, flowing dresses in the matching bridal  colors. He would have been amused at the lengths that the triplets were  going to in order to try and squeeze a few more people into the wedding,  if it wasn't for one glaring omission.

"I didn't hear your name," Asher commented when she was finished.

"What do you mean, my name?"

"I mean, what's your part in the wedding?"

"My, you have been gone for a while, haven't you?" She gave him another  throaty chuckle that made his cock push against the front of his  slacks. He tugged them lower, freeing himself as she spoke again. "I'm  the wedding planner."

"You're also Stijn's daughter. His only daughter, I might add. You  should have some sort of place of honor in the wedding." Now he was  getting pissed on her behalf.

"I don't." She didn't even sound upset. "Come, Asher. You know my  father. You must be close if you're his best man. You know he isn't the  sentimental type."         

     



 

There was a difference between sentimental and straight-up asshole and  he knew which category Stijn fell under. Asher made a mental note to  have a talk with the man when he saw him again. Fucking bastard. "I  don't get why you care so much about this wedding when your own father  treats you like a second-class citizen."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and for a moment he  worried he'd offended her. But then she gave a tiny sigh and spoke. "I'm  not too proud to say that part of me would like for my father to  recognize how much work I've put into things. But it's not about me,  truly. This is the first time he's married, and no matter who my father  picks, that woman is going to be part of my family. It's the least I can  do to welcome her and make her feel loved and important."

Ironic that it would fall to Stijn's often-forgotten daughter to make  his new bride feel important. But he understood. To Greer, it wasn't  about who he was marrying. It was something else entirely. "Family's  important to you, isn't it?"