Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (101 page)

…

Asher wanted to call Jeremy again. He had a
meeting in less than two minutes, and an important one at that, but he needed
to know. Was Jessika gone? Why had she refused to leave in the
first place?

He wasn’t anything to her, and he knew this. She
didn’t like him in any particular way. At least not him as a
person. She couldn’t. Right? Like most people, she probably
only wanted to be near him for his money. They barely knew each
other. And, even if she did like him for some other reason, it hardly
mattered. He needed to accept that and she needed to, also.

They were both adults, and…

“Mr. Landseer?” a man called to him from the
meeting room door. “Everyone is in attendance, sir. Whenever
you’re ready.”

“Yes,” Asher said, frowning.
“Yes, of course.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

…

“So you messed up the bed?” Jeremy asked,
fidgeting with the upturned corner of the sheets. “And you tossed a
tissue in the trash?”

“I left some soap on the back of the sink and I
used the shower, too. I left a towel on the floor,” I added.

“That’s not quite what I expected.”

“You didn’t tell me what to do, you just told me
not to leave, and…”

“Whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. I
didn’t tell you not to leave. Let’s get that out there right now. I
didn’t tell you anything.” Jeremy held up his hands to halt me, like
some police officer standing guard at a crosswalk.

“Right. Fine. You didn’t tell me to
do anything, and so I just did whatever I thought of. Also, this place
isn’t very comfortable. It’s too clean.”

“No one comes here, that’s why. Do you
think Asher has guests all the time? He’s not extravagant like those
parodies of rich people you see in reality shows. He has a dinner party
maybe once a year, and it’s more of a classy, sophisticated affair. None
of that takes place here, mind you. He comes here on his own sometimes,
but…”

“Why’s he come here on his own?” I asked,
interrupting him.

“I don’t know? The library?”

“What? There’s a library here?”
I had been upstairs and down and I had definitely not seen a library.

Jeremy sighed, annoyed. “Yes, there’s a
library. Which I thought you’d find, but apparently you’re daft.”

“I’m not daft. Show me the library.”

“You’re really demanding, you know that?”

“I’m not demanding!” Perhaps I was a
little demanding. “Please, Jeremy? I’d like to see it.”

“I don’t even know you,” he said, teasing
me. “Why should I show you it? For all I know he specifically
doesn’t want you seeing it.” With feigned reluctance, he added,
“Tell me something about yourself and maybe I’ll agree to show you.”

“What do you want to know?”

He thought about it, but only for half a second.
I assume he’d wanted to ask this all along, but was waiting for a good time to
do it. “Why you?” he asked. “Why did Asher bring you
back here? I don’t understand. He won’t talk about it. I know
that… things… but why?”

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you,”
I whispered. “He might get mad.”

“Right. Just like I don’t know if I was supposed
to tell you that I wouldn’t do anything if you refused to come with me, or how
I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you where the library is, or the fact that
I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you I talked to him on the phone earlier
and he definitely didn’t sound very happy.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is he mad?
Do you think… um… I should leave, shouldn’t I? I know that I…”

“Shut up. Yes, you probably should leave,
but you didn’t before so why do it now? Maybe this sounds like I’m trying
to start trouble, but I kind of want to see what happens.”

“That’s really mean, you know?” I said.

“It’s not mean, it’s honest. He told me to
tell you that I’m here to take you home again, so if you want to go, let’s
go. Otherwise you might as well tell me. I’ll show you the library
and you can leave a crumb on the rug or something.”

“I’m going to pretend,” I said, huffy,
“that you’re trying to help me instead of hoping I’ll cause some disaster
so you can watch.”

“Look.” Jeremy sighed. “I
can’t say I’m helping you, because I don’t know if I am. I just don’t
really know if Asher actually wants you to leave or not. He’s strange,
alright? Now, if you’re trying to do something like embarrass Beatrice
and ruin Asher’s life, then I’m not going to let you, but…” He
gestured to the tissue in the waste basket next to the bed. “All
you’re doing is this, so I can’t say I’m too worried.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll answer your
question. But you can’t tell him any of this.”

Jeremy grinned. “No, of course not.”

“Asher asked me…” I paused.
Did I want to do this? I did, so desperately, because I felt like this
might be a way to fix things, except that made no sense when I thought about it
logically. I was being mean to get Asher to accept my apology? I
lowered my voice, despite Jeremy and I being completely alone in the guest
house with no way of anyone hearing us. “His wife—” I
knew her name now, but I found it awkward to say. “She went to a
doctor and he said she’s infertile. They can’t have children
together. Asher asked me if I would consider being… being an egg donor,
and, um, well he doesn’t think she’d want to carry a child to term, either, so
I’d be a surrogate mother, too.”

“What,” Jeremy said, blinking, barely
intoning a question.

“I know it sounds strange, but…”

“So, wait, basically he asked you if you’d be the
mother of his child?”

“It’s not really like that. Beatrice would
be the mother, I guess, but it would be my egg and…”

“And you’re the one who gets to be
pregnant. Sounds great,” Jeremy said sarcastically. “Why
go through all that hassle? Why don’t you both just have sex?”
He chuckled.

“That’s what I said!” Quickly, I
added, “I didn’t mean to say it, but it slipped out.”

“No way. You didn’t, did you? Maybe
that’s why he’s so upset. I can understand, really.”

“No, I said that before he was upset.”

“What?”

I told Jeremy most everything. I left out our
intimate encounter in Asher’s office, because I still didn’t know what to think
of it. Punishment, Asher said, but I don’t know if he believed that or
not. I did mention the book, though, how I destroyed his collector’s
edition of
Dante’s
Inferno during my temporary job cleaning Asher’s
office. How he took the phone call from the doctor while I was there, and
then he broached the subject with me. His request, out of nowhere but
like he talked about this with everyone every day, of surrogacy and egg
donation and then our lunch and the subsequent photo session and…

“Woo boy. So did you have sex?” Jeremy
asked at the end.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you
that,” I said.

He ignored me. “That’s so strange. I
can’t say I’m surprised, though. Asher is… strange.”

“How is he strange?”

“I’m not going to tell you how he’s
strange. You either figure it out on your own, or not at all.”

“I told you things!” I protested.
“I don’t see why you won’t tell me anything.”

“I
am
going to tell you something,”
he said. “I told you I’d show you the library, and that’s exactly
what I plan to do.”

“I suppose,” I muttered.

“Anyways, before we go, I should ask this
again. I was supposed to come here to bring you home. Are you
coming?”

“Shut up,” I said. “No. I
won’t. Where is the library?”

“You’re demanding,” he said, laughing.
“You’re nothing like Beatrice.”

…

Asher frowned. He dutifully stayed for the
entirety of his meeting, as necessary, but wondered the entire time.
Distracted, annoyed, why wouldn’t she leave? What was he supposed to do
if she remained at his house the entire day, and was there when he came
home? Of course he could ignore her, but what kind of message did that
send? She couldn’t just stay at his house, but he felt badly about
forcefully removing her, too. Not that he had to do anything more than
make a phone call or two, but he didn’t think Jessika deserved that.

Except, why not? He planned on never seeing her
again, so what did it matter?

His annoyance only grew when he checked his text
messages during a lull in the business meeting.

“She’s staying,” Jeremy wrote.
“Sorry, boss. I tried.”

…

Jeremy had shown me where the library was.
It looked like a closet from the outside, tucked under the staircase to the
second floor, unimposing and ordinary. Instead, it was a door to the
cellar, which wasn’t a cellar so much as a completely furnished basement
transformed into a library. Jeremy opened the door, walked me downstairs,
laughed as I gaped, then left.

It was so big! Wall to wall bookshelves filled
with books, and a massive table in the middle covered with more books.
The ones on the table weren’t in any particular order, and were just left
laying around for whatever reason. In the far rear of the library, there
was a massive, cushioned chair with an ottoman, and a couch next to it.
Both had blankets heaped on top of them.

The lights in the ceiling were extravagant and
reminded me of the lighting in old, classic architecture style libraries.
I’d never been to one myself, but I’d seen pictures on the internet whenever I
had a fit of wanderlust and wanted to sate it by doing an image search on
Google. Not quite the same as going to these places, but I could imagine
I’d gone. Sitting on my couch, turning off every light in my apartment
except for the one lamp I moved to the top of my coffee table, I liked to curl
up with a book and read and pretend I was at the Angelica Library in
Rome. Or the Athenaeum in Boston… or the Cogrington Library in
Oxford…

I stepped towards the table and looked at the books
there. Five, total: a second edition copy of
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland
, the paperback version of
A Storm of Swords
,
Pride and
Prejudice
,
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
, and
The Time
Traveler’s Wife
. I stared at the zombie book, dumbfounded. Was
that really a book?

Finding a piece of paper and a pen on the table, I
went around to each of the books and opened them. Or I opened all of them
except the Lewis Carroll book, because it scared me somewhat. Regardless
of my plans, I really didn’t want to repeat what I’d done the other day with
Asher’s copy of
Dante’s Inferno
. Each book had a bookmark inside.
I opened the book, plucked the bookmark loose, then wrote the corresponding
page number on the paper I’d found. One, two, three, four.

Placing the bookmarks in a neat pile, I left them on
top of the library table. Then I decided that wasn’t good enough, so I
scurried upstairs and put them on the kitchenette table, then rushed back
down. And, why was I leaving them in a neat pile? I went back
upstairs, threw them on the table so they scattered around, disorganized, then
I went back downstairs.

I pulled his blankets off his chair and couch and
tossed them at the foot of the basement stairs, too. I briefly
contemplated moving books around on their shelves and putting them out of
order, but I didn’t want to go too far, so I stopped. And, as a final act
of defiance, I went upstairs again, found the loaf of bread Jeremy had used to
make toast in the morning, pulled off a corner, and dropped it onto one of the
stairs as I went back into the basement.

There!

And I waited.

And worried.

For all I knew, this was a terrible idea. I
don’t actually know why I did any of this. It seemed… wrong? Yes,
well, definitely wrong, which was the point, except what was the point of my
point? I couldn’t really figure that one out. I sat on the couch,
contemplating this. When I’d decided that nothing I did made any sense
and I should fix it and then leave, or wait and maybe write down some heartfelt
apology to Asher, I…

Footsteps. Upstairs. I heard them, soft
thuds on the ceiling as someone walked around on the first floor of Asher
Landseer’s guest house. If it was Jeremy, I doubt he would have done
that. He probably would have called out my name, maybe knocked on the
door first? That’s what he’d done the other times he came. So, no,
this was someone else.

They walked around upstairs, slowly, inspecting the
place. My breath quickened, heart raced. I felt like I was in a
horror movie. The villain, some insane man with claws in place of
fingernails, would walk down the basement steps any moment and find me sitting
on the couch, easy prey for the taking.

The person upstairs walked towards the staircase
leading to the second floor. I heard brief sounds of their ascent, then
nothing. I should leave, hurry away, run outside and beg Jeremy to take
me home, but for some reason I couldn’t move. The footsteps thudded down
the stairs again, across the living room floor towards the basement door, and
then down those, too.