A Billionaire Between the Sheets (3 page)

“It's no joke.” Olivia held out the pen. “With a simple signature, you could be a millionaire.”

“So what's the catch?” Deacon asked.

“No catch.” Her innocent eyes stared back at him. “I want your shares of the company.”

It was rumored that the Beaumont men had an uncanny ability to read women's minds. Deacon didn't believe in such hocus-pocus. He believed in General Patton's theory of knowing your enemies. He'd done his research on Michael…and Olivia. In numerous interviews she had made no bones about the fact that she ate, slept, and breathed her job. She loved the company. Loved it enough that she wouldn't want three men who knew nothing about the lingerie business having any kind of control over it.

He should be elated. This was what he'd dreamed of, wasn't it? To make his first million before he turned thirty-five? And even with Francesca's backing, it was unlikely that he would achieve the goal in three years. Now fifty million had landed on his doorstep. It was just unfortunate that the windfall had come from the same family he wanted nothing from.

He glanced at the contracts. “I'll need to read through it and then talk to my brothers before we sign anything.”

She nodded and got up, picking up her glass of tea. “I'll be on the front porch.” She paused on her way out the door and looked at Deacon. “Do you think I could use your cell phone? Mine got wet and isn't working.”

Deacon took his phone from his pocket, swiped the touch screen, and tapped in his passcode before handing it to her. Then, because he couldn't seem to help himself, he held open the screen door. She stopped on her way out. So close that he could smell the scent of his shampoo that she'd used and see the splash of gold that lined the pupils of her green eyes.

“I know you don't like me, Deacon,” she said, “but please don't let that keep you from getting money you obviously need.”

The word
need
annoyed the hell out of him. He didn't
need
anything from Olivia. But he kept his cool and waited for her to walk out onto the porch before he let the screen door slam and closed the heavy wood door with a decisive click. When he turned, he found his brothers staring at the legitimate-looking documents on the table as if they were a pot of gold at the end of a life that had been anything but rainbows.

Unfortunately, Deacon didn't believe in pots of gold, rainbows, or women with innocent green eyes. He believed that you worked for everything you got, and life was a bitch and then you died. Walking over, he picked up the contracts and handed one to each of his brothers.

“Let's not count our chickens before they hatch.”

O
nce on the porch, Olivia would've moved over to the open window and tried to listen in on the Beaumont brothers' conversation if not for the dog who lay sprawled in front of it. With his floppy ears and droopy face, he didn't look vicious, but she wasn't willing to take the chance. So instead she did some snooping on Deacon's phone. Despite the crack, it was a newer version of hers with twice as many apps, and she had to wonder if he needed money as badly as she'd thought. Her question was answered when she scrolled through his recent text exchanges with his brothers. It appeared that Deacon did need money and was having trouble getting it. Numerous banks had turned him down for a loan.

Relieved, Olivia started to close the message screen when she noticed a woman's name in the list. The name Francesca brought with it an image of a lush, full-figured woman who enjoyed stomping grapes with her bare feet and seducing men with her deep-throated laugh. It turned out that the mental image wasn't too far off. Francesca's text about meeting for lunch was filled with sexual innuendo.

Olivia wasn't surprised. Not only was Deacon extremely good-looking but he also had a sexual aura around him that could make any woman think naughty thoughts. Olivia's brain still clung to the image of Deacon in all his naked glory and was now trying to insert her into a fantasy that involved lots and lots of touching.

Not wanting to go down that dead-end road, she clicked over to the phone app and dialed the French Kiss corporate office. Setting the glass of tea on the railing next to her drying clothes, she moved off the porch and around the corner of the house. She sidestepped an anthill where an industrious ant was trying to get a Cheez-It into the small hole. Olivia couldn't help sympathizing. Since Michael's stroke she'd felt like she carried the weight of saving the company on her shoulders, and the window of opportunity was getting smaller and smaller.

Three trucks were parked at the side of the house. One older and mud-splattered, one dinged up and splotched with gray primer, and the last newer and sparkling clean. She didn't wonder whose was whose as much as how they had gotten there. Obviously there was a road to the house. Which meant that the old gondolier had cheated her out of a hundred dollars. While she was fuming over this, her assistant Kelly Wang finally answered.

“Okay, so I'll have sex with you. But don't think that it's going to lead to anything permanent. I'm way too young to be tied down to one man…or one penis. And no kinky stuff—well, maybe a little kinky is okay. But I'm not dressing up like your mother or letting you lick my shoes.”

Once again Olivia wished she'd hired the gray-haired, Nazi-looking woman instead of a twenty-two-year-old nympho who thought that working at French Kiss would get her free lingerie and a wider selection of sexual partners. Of course the gray-haired lady had been scary, while the plump, talkative young woman had seemed more willing to take orders from a non-confrontational boss. Boy, had Olivia been wrong. Kelly spent her days reading
Cosmo
and talking inappropriately to the male employees.

“It's me, Kelly,” Olivia said.

“Ms. Harrington? I thought you were doing a spa day with your mom.”

Olivia didn't like lying to her assistant, but Kelly was a notorious gossip, and Olivia didn't want anyone finding out about Michael's will or her plans to buy the Beaumonts' shares until things were settled.

“I just called to check in,” she said, “and to let you know that my cell phone got wet so you can't reach me by that number.”

“What happened? Did you drop it in one of those sea salt soaks? I dropped my cell phone once when I was in the bathtub. It scared the shit out of me. I thought I was either going to be electrocuted or start reading women's thoughts like Mel Gibson in that movie—what was the title?”

“I don't know. I really don't have time to watch movies.”

“You don't have time for anything. All you do is work, work, work. Which makes absolutely no sense to me. Especially when you're the boss. If I were you, I'd be going to the spa twice a week. And not with my mother. I'd be taking my hot boyfriend for one of those couples' massages. And speaking of hot boyfriends, Mr. Calloway came by looking for you and seemed kinda annoyed when I told him you weren't here.”

Olivia was shocked that Kelly knew about her relationship with Parker. Not that she would call it a relationship. They were more FWOB—Friends with Occasional Benefits. Still, she didn't want anyone from work knowing about it.

“It's probably not any of my business,” Kelly continued, “but you need to be careful with clingy guys. I mean, this isn't the Dark Ages or
Fifty Shades
. If you want to spend the day with your mom at the spa, or with some other guy, then that shouldn't be any of his—”

Olivia cut her off. “If Mr. Calloway should come back by, would you please tell him that I'll call him later. And if there's nothing else…”

There was a long pause. “Well, I did sorta spill my Diet Coke on the computer, and it sorta quit working. But that lawyer guy you just hired who always has the food stains on his tie—Jason something or other—came by and got it running. I hate to say this, but I think he wants to have sex with me. He got a major hard-on when I bent over to flip the power off. For a second I thought he was going to boink me right there on the desk. Not that I would've gone along with it—although he does have pretty eyes.”

Olivia massaged her temples. “Okay, then. If there's not anything else, I'll talk to you when I get back.”

“Sure. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

Olivia felt that left things wide open. “I'll try not to.” As soon as she hung up with Kelly, she called her mother. The voice was less friendly, but the morals pretty much the same. Deirdre Beaumont looked at sex as a way to a man's heart…and his wallet. And for her it had been true. Her beauty and sex appeal had captured the attention of three wealthy husbands in her lifetime. Which was a good thing, since her mother went through money as quickly as she had gone through husbands. Michael had been the one exception. The one man her mother had actually loved. When Michael met her, Deirdre had been in her late forties. Well past her gold-digging prime. Her last husband, Olivia's father, had disappeared without a trace after bankrupting his company. With no prospect of a rich husband in sight, she and Olivia had been living off credit cards and close friends. Michael had arrived like a knight in shining armor. Something Olivia would always be grateful for.

“Hello, Mother,” Olivia said.

“Olivia? Whose phone are you calling from?” Deirdre didn't even wait for an answer before she started in. “I cannot tell you the hell I've been in since you left. That Frenchwoman you convinced me to invite into my home is nothing but a foulmouthed guttersnipe who will no doubt kill me and the entire staff in our sleep.”

“Stop being dramatic, Mother. Babette is not going to kill anyone. She's just creative and high-strung.”

“High-strung, yes. Creative, no. I don't have a clue why you brought her from Paris. You are much more talented than she is.”

Olivia smiled. For all Deirdre's flaws, she had always been a proud, protective mother. “Thank you, but if I was that good, Michael would've had me designing. Babette is considered one of the best lingerie designers in the world.”

“I find that hard to believe. And Michael was always selfish. Even if he liked your designs, he would've wanted you helping him, instead of helping Samuel in the design studio. Does Samuel know about Babette?”

“No, not yet. But I plan to tell him soon.”

“I doubt that he'll be happy. He's extremely sensitive about his work.”

The head designer wouldn't be happy that Olivia had hired someone else to design the new line. But she had to do what was best for the company. With sales declining, French Kiss needed fresh blood and new ideas. Babette seemed to have both and had convinced Olivia that adding a collection of men's underwear was the way to save the company from the brink of bankruptcy.

“Samuel will go along with what's best for the company,” Olivia said.

Her mother released an exasperated huff. “I cannot understand why you continue to care about the business. And now you've talked me into selling the house and investing in your crazy scheme when I should sell it and retire to the French Riviera. And just so you know, I hate having complete strangers trooping through my home at all hours of the day and night.”

“They're called real estate brokers and prospective buyers, Mother,” Olivia said, “and you don't have to be there when the house is shown. The broker selling my house calls beforehand.”

“And just where are we going to live if the houses sell at the same time?”

“We'll rent an apartment downtown. And it won't be for long. I'm going to get the money from the sale of the house back to you as soon as Babette's new line starts selling.” Unless it didn't sell, in which case they would both be in big trouble. “So has Babette been working?”

Deirdre snorted. “Not that I can tell. She spends most of her time in the guest wing eating my imported Swiss chocolate and watching the past seasons of
Downton Abbey
on demand.”

Olivia really wanted to yell at her mother to light a fire under Babette's tight French ass. But it wasn't her mother's job to keep Babette on task. Olivia was lucky that Deirdre had been willing to keep an eye on the annoying Frenchwoman while she was in Louisiana. Until the new line was finished, Olivia didn't want anyone knowing about her plans.

“So did you find the Beaumont brothers?” Deirdre asked.

“Yes.” She glanced at the house. “And I don't think that they're doing much better than they were when they came to visit years ago.”

“That was certainly a surprise. I didn't even know Michael had a brother until the ghastly man showed up with his three delinquent sons. Of course Michael never talked about his past…or talked much period.”

Olivia's stepfather had been a man of few words. Which had worked nicely for an introverted nine-year-old afraid of her own shadow. Michael's silence and stability had been a welcome relief from her mother's constant chatter and unreliability. After her father ran off without a word, Michael was the strong, reliable father figure Olivia craved, and he didn't seem to mind her tagging along behind him, or spending every possible second she could at the corporate offices of French Kiss. She had always struggled in school with her attention deficit disorder, and the company and Michael became her entire world. And when she went off to college, she followed in Michael's footsteps, majoring in business and marketing, even though she was more interested in design. After college she'd worked side by side with Michael on every new line, marketing idea, and store opening.

Michael was the one person who had known how much French Kiss meant to her. Which was why she couldn't understand how he could have willed it to three men who had never set foot inside French Kiss's doors. Three men he didn't know or love. And maybe he hadn't loved her either. Maybe it had all been wishful thinking.

The slam of a screen door pulled her out of her thoughts, and she quickly finished the call. “Listen, I have to go. Try not to kill Babette.”

“You ask too much,” her mother said dryly.

Olivia hung up just as Deacon came around the corner of the house. After his shower he had changed into a blue T-shirt that hugged his muscles and a pair of faded jeans that hugged his…

“Do you always stare at men's crotches?”

Her gaze lifted to Deacon's annoyed eyes. Between the sapphire-blue shirt and azure sky, they looked even more purple. “What color would you say your eyes are?”

He squinted. “Is something wrong with you? Do you have a hearing problem? I ask you if you always stare at men's crotches and you answer by talking about the color of my eyes.”

“I'd say indigo—somewhere between a deep blue and dark purple.” She pulled her gaze away from his eyes and looked down. “And me looking at your crotch is strictly business. I'm planning on starting a new line of men's underwear.”

“Right.” He held out his hand. “I'm assuming you're done with my phone.”

She handed him the phone. “It's slimmer than mine. Did you just buy it?”

“Let me guess. You thought my cell phone would be the size of a sneaker.” He slipped the phone into his back pocket. “Obviously you're still the same stuck-up little rich girl you were at fourteen.”

She had never been stuck up, just terrified and jealous of the three brothers who had shown up on her doorstep. They had come into Michael's mansion like a whirlwind of burping, roughhousing, cussing testosterone, and Olivia had been completely unprepared. Like her mother, she hadn't known that Michael had family. She'd thought she was the only child in his life—the only one vying for his attention. Suddenly there were three boys who shared his blood. And no matter how hard she'd tried to be a perfect little stepdaughter, she couldn't compete with that.

Her fear of losing Michael's love had kept her from being a good hostess. She'd tried to avoid the Beaumonts, until…the one afternoon she'd discovered Deacon in the garden. His resemblance to Michael surprised her and made her even more jealous, which led to her doing something completely out of character. Now all she could hope was that Deacon wouldn't hold the incident against her.

“So did you read the contract?” she asked.

“Most of it.”

“And?”

Instead of answering he headed back to the house, leaving her no choice but to follow. Once on the porch, he sat down in the rocker and scratched the dog's ears, rocking slowly back and forth. It was a stall tactic if ever there was one, and she tried to push down her apprehension and act like it didn't matter.