Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (118 page)

“It’s not that simple,” Asher said.
“There’s a lot at stake here. It’s not just the marriage, but the
company, too. Beatrice is a major shareholder and even if she’s not
involved in day-to-day business, she has benefactors working on her
behalf. If we separated and she left the company entirely, the divorce
proceedings could get out of hand. I know that it might be easier for
both of us in regards to happiness, but then what? I’m heavily invested
into Landseer Enterprises and she isn’t. This is a purely business
standpoint, but she could potentially set the company back by decades if she
wanted to be vindictive.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “I can
understand that. It’s as good a reason as any. Seems like a
terrible reason to stay with her, though. Isn’t marriage about love and
happiness and all that? Saying that you need her to keep your corporation
afloat is sort of the opposite of that. I’m not going to say you should
just up and get rid of everything and be poor, but there’s got to be some way
that everything can work out in the end.”

“I… I try. I really do. We’re just
two very different people. I still try, and I think Beatrice is trying,
too. She’s accepting this surrogacy situation very well, all things
considered. Beatrice isn’t very open-minded about much and she doesn’t
enjoy obtuse, creative solutions, so…”

“What about Jessika?” Jeremy asked.

“Jessika’s wonderful,” Asher said.
“She’s been really accepting during all of this. I enjoy her company
a lot, too. Maybe Beatrice and her can spend more time together,
too. Maybe… maybe it’ll help? I don’t know.”

“You’re thinking from a business point of view
again, Asher. To use your own words, that’s an obtuse creative
solution. Except, you know, sometimes it’s better to keep it simple.
You don’t always need to do something the hard way just because you can.”

Asher frowned. He didn’t know what he should do,
or how he should do it. During important business meetings he could
always come up with a plan, and if he didn’t know what to do it only took him a
little while to concoct a call to action. Business was easy that
way. He understood the rules and he knew how to use them to his
advantage.

This, though, it wasn’t that. Jeremy was
right. Jessika wasn’t some rule to be understood, a piece of a puzzle
that he needed to set into place. Jessika was so much more than
that. And, truthfully, Beatrice was, too. It was just so
difficult. What should he do and why should he do it? He didn’t
have a plan and there was no call to action. It was him, alone, a
corporation of one, needing to decide the future for himself.

He needed to figure things out fast.

…

The inside of the passageway was easy to
traverse. Whoever had built it made it more simplistic than otherwise,
with emergency-style maps placed at even intervals along the hallways. It
didn’t split off into different routes often, and when it did there were
easy-to-read signs explaining which way was which. Very logical and nice
and it helped me a lot in figuring out where I was going.

Apparently, as far as I could tell, the passageways
went to every major point in the Landseer main house. I checked a map to
make sure and saw exits at all the rooms I knew. The dining hall, the
front foyer, Asher’s bedroom, even Jeremy’s room. And then, of course,
Beatrice’s bedroom. Down the hall from Asher’s, clearly indicated on the
map and easy to find.

I walked there while the dim light from emergency
floodlights glared onto me, illuminating the pathways and leaving a large
shadow behind me. It felt like I was somewhere in a horror movie, almost,
escaping the zombie plague. Not the best of thoughts to have while on a
mission like this, but the idea stuck.

Once I arrived at the doorway to Beatrice Landseer’s
room, I paused. Did it open as easily on the inside as it did when I
entered the tunnels from the guest home? And where exactly would I come
into her room? What if someone was there cleaning the room and I burst
inside? If they saw me, if…

I glanced at a console in the walls. “No motion
detected,” it said.

Oh, well, that was easy. I tried the handle of
the door and it opened just like that. On the other side was a panel that
slid away when I touched it. I knew Asher liked this kind of thing, the
whole high tech science fiction fantasy feel, but it just seemed so
strange. Was I stepping onto a spaceship somewhere or was it Beatrice’s
room?

It was Beatrice’s room. Her walk-in closet to be
specific. The panel moved out of place at the back of her closet beside a
huge rack of shoes and shelves full of folded towels. I snuck through the
closet—the massive closet that was about as long as two of my bathrooms
combined—and made my way to the door. I opened it an inch and peeked
outside, listening for anyone on the other end, but there was no one.

So, now what?

I stepped into the room and looked around. It
was extravagant and excessive, but I expected that. Beatrice owned an
old-fashioned four-poster bed that stood high off the ground on stilted
legs. The bed had a curtain around it with a canopy above it, and a
mirror built into the top so anyone laying on it could look at themselves by
looking up. Then she had a private bathroom, currently darkened but with
more than a hint of a myriad of feminine luxuries peeking through. A double
sink and wall-sized mirror with counters covered in premium skincare products.

The desk with her laptop laying on it was near to the
window. Dressers and bureaus sat against one wall, with a sofa against
the opposite one, and a wall-mounted TV situated so that she could watch it
from the bed or the sofa. Beatrice’s room alone was about twice the size
of my entire apartment, give or take a regular sized closet or two.

I stopped gaping and convinced myself to check out the
laptop. This was probably my best option, right? Except I wasn’t
some kind of genius computer hacker. I knew spreadsheets and word
processing programs and email and the internet, but…

Oh well, I didn’t come here for nothing. I
lifted the screen and pressed the power button. The laptop wasn’t fully
shut off, just in sleep mode, and it powered up fast. No password
protection, either, just straight to the main screen. Beatrice had left a
website up with a description of a hotel in California: the Solage Calistoga.

Adara King studio, I read. She’d selected a
twelve day block for her vacation, and then clicked off every single
enhancement available. Some of them looked really nice, actually.
But, honestly, a prelude to romance on every day? That was nine-hundred
dollars extra! Also, I wasn’t entirely convinced about the necessity of
both chocolate chip sandwiches and a chocolate fondue included in the room.

Six-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-two dollars.

I stared at the number. I think I made that much
in five months after taxes if I was lucky. Beatrice wanted to spend that
much in twelve days. I kind of would have loved to spend that much in
twelve days, too, except, well…

Snap out of it, Jessika! I mentally reprimanded
myself and forced myself to look away for a second. When I turned back, I
minimized the web browser and scanned through the laptop’s desktop icons.
Beatrice was a minimalist, it seemed, and she had little more than the
necessary programs. Not that this meant too much, since maybe she kept
everything hidden in folders?

I clicked through My Computer, the Local C: Drive,
Users, Beatrice’s folder, and then to her documents.

There wasn’t much there. She had basic files,
but little else. The only thing of some interest was logs of her AOL
Instant Messenger conversations, but even that was so wildly random and
confusing that I couldn’t make much sense of it. I clicked one to check
it out, just in case, and saw mostly business-like conversations. Besides
having no idea who these people were from their screen names, it didn’t look
very useful anyways.

I closed that and went back to the Local Drive to see
if there was something I’d missed. No sooner than I did, I heard someone
at the door. The voice was muffled and it sounded like they were talking
on the phone. Passing by, I hoped? Or…

The doorknob wiggled.

“Hold on a moment. I have a lot of bags
from shopping. Let me put you down so I can open my door. Just give
me a second.”

It was Beatrice. I stood in her room, at her
desk, spying on her computer right before she was about to walk in.

To the closet! Right. Except, no, it was
too far away. I wouldn’t make it in time before she walked into the
room. The bathroom seemed like an equally bad choice because I had
nowhere to hide in there. And what if she wanted to use it? Well,
she’d see me, obviously.

In a fit of complete nonsense and randomness, I bolted
for the bed, crouched down low just as Beatrice opened the door, and rolled
underneath it. Thank God she didn’t keep anything under there. That
was probably beneath her, I assumed. Only normal people stowed totes of
their belongings under their beds, and Beatrice wouldn’t stoop to their
standards.

I saw her high heels and the lower half of her calves
walk into the room. She hurried, placing her bags by her desk. I
realized belatedly that I hadn’t closed her laptop. She walked over to
it, paused for a second, and I was positive she’d realize something was up and
start scanning the room for an intruder.

“Yes, I left it up. I wanted to make reservations
soon. Solomon, I love this place. We can get the prelude to romance
package for every single day of our stay! Isn’t that wonderful?
There’s fresh rose petals scattered throughout the room, with lavender massage
oil and an aromatherapy candle. We’ll have massages during the day, too,
but I think we can find some use for the massage oil and candles after dark,
don’t you?”

Well, this wasn’t what I had in mind, but it worked
out somewhat. Here I was, in Beatrice Landseer’s room, while she talked on
the phone about her future sexcapades with Solomon Royce. Unfortunately I
didn’t have my phone, or I could have tried recording some of this.
Still, maybe she’d mention something better? I had no idea what, but I
held out hope.

“I ordered the chocolate fondue, too. I’d
rather use it for unconventional purposes, though. Do you think you can
handle it, Solomon?” Beatrice clicked her laptop shut and sauntered
over to the bed. “I want to melt it and drizzle it all over you.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, then lifted her legs
up and rolled onto it. I lay hidden beneath her, feeling the weight of
her body pushing down slightly against me.

“Are you alone in your office? Yes?
Good. Lock your door. I don’t want any interruptions.”

Beatrice presumably waited until he did that.
The sexy talk kind of squicked me out, and I didn’t quite feel comfortable with
it, but there wasn’t much I could do, now was there?

“I’m going to drizzle chocolate fondue all over
your
cock
,” Beatrice said into the phone, sultry and
seductive. “I’m going to smear it all over you and then lick it
off. I’m going to make you cum like that and then I’m going to smear a
strawberry in a mix of chocolate and your cream and I’m going to make you eat
it.”

He must have said something back, though I couldn’t
hear what it was.

“Let me get my vibrator,” she said.

Like some giddy schoolgirl, Beatrice jumped off the
bed. She knelt down right beside me and I panicked. Oh God, was her
vibrator under the bed? Maybe, probably, and that’s where I kept mine, in
a shoebox. Fuck.

Thankfully her sex toy wasn’t completely under the
bed, but just under the mattress. She lifted it up and grabbed it and I
prayed to every major religion(though I don’t know why any of them would care)
to help me out here.

“How hard is your cock?” Beatrice asked
after she’d jumped back on the bed.

I saw her panties hit the floor next to me, casually
tossed aside by their owner.

“Make it harder,” she said.
“Harder.”

“Oooh, you bad boy. You had a new assistant
the other day? Did you fuck her? I love hearing about it.
Tell me.”

I didn’t
want
to listen, but I had no
choice. Also, I kind of did want to listen in a morbidly fascinated sort
of way. It wasn’t that I wanted to usually, but when put in the position
of having no alternative, it suddenly became interesting.

And apparently they were talking about me.

“You did not? You threw her on the couch in
your office? My God, then what?”

I slipped! He didn’t throw me on his
couch! I slipped!

“How wet were her panties? Did you take
them all the way off or did you push them aside and finger her hard?
No. I don’t believe it. You’re entire fist?”

This—what the fuck—I was kind of pissed.
Besides the obvious annoyance of being stuck in Beatrice’s room, hiding under
the bed, now I had Solomon completely lying about everything that happened in
his office that day. We didn’t have sex! We didn’t even do anything
of the sort, even though it was obvious he’d wanted to.