Her Second Billionaire

Her Second Billionaire

by Julia Kent

Copyright © 2012 by Julia Kent

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

SHE DREW A LINE WITH A ONE NIGHT STAND

When Laura Michaels got one hot firefighter pinging her for a date after joining a popular online dating service, she thought she had won the lottery. A night with Dylan Stanwyck, professional (firefighting) hunk and former model, had been too much. Fearful her curves would turn him off like so many other guys, her pleasant surprise turned to white-hot passion as she broke her own rule and slept with him on the first date.

That turned to regret when she awoke in the wee hours of the morning and found pictures of a hot, buff surfer-type woman with Dylan plastered all over his bedroom. Taking the hint, she made the walk of shame home, deleted him from her contacts and chalked it up to experience.

To her shock, within hours a new guy – Mike Pine, a ski instructor and marathon runner with a body and face like an actor in a superhero movie – messaged her and asked her out. Lightning struck twice in 24 hours! Laura was incredulous but, emboldened by encouragement from her best friend, Josie, she took the plunge and accepted the date.

HE WANTS TO BE LOVED ON HIS OWN

Mike likes simple things. Skiing. Running. Being outside. Uncomplicated love. Good food. For nearly ten years he, Dylan and Jill had a simple love that was achingly easy on the inside, and oh, so complicated from the outside. It worked, though, and made him whole – until Jill’s lymphoma diagnosis and her early death.

Reeling, he and Dylan just took their lives day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, mourning their great love. Broken, Mike descended into a world of punishing athleticism, clocking 14-hour days on the slopes and 100+ miles of running a week, the pounding of his legs on pavement strong enough – he wished – to pound out his pain. What he and Dylan had never expected was what came more than a year after Jill’s death: an inheritance. From her family’s trust fund. More than $1 billion each, with a perpetual income that made everything go from simple to chaotic.

What Laura doesn’t know is that Dylan and Mike are roommates. More than roommates. And they are looking for a third in their relationship. More than a third…but Mike has something to prove, first, and snagging this first date with her is just the beginning.

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Her Second Billionaire
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Her Second Billionaire

Mike knew that there was absolutely no chance that she was going to answer his little chat outreach anytime within the next twenty-four hours. He knew that Dylan had a date with her last night, but hoping against hope and because he was an eternal optimist, he decided to log on while he was having his morning cup of coffee.

And just to see if maybe – just maybe – she might have answered him, even though it was now six minutes before seven in the morning. He figured she was still in Dylan’s bed, probably going on for round seven (knowing Dylan), and there wasn’t a chance in hell that she would…wait,
what
?

He stared at his phone where he’d logged into the app for the online dating site. Her little icon blinked rapidly – he’d subscribed to her and her avatar had suddenly turned green.

Oh, holy hell, no!
he thought.
Hell, yes!
a different voice answered in his poor, addled brain. Enough with the ridiculous self doubts – he had to grab his chance now. She was logged on to the dating site early in the morning after a date with
Dylan
. This meant – oh, the implications stunned him. Made him smirk.

Mike took a swig of coffee and quickly tapped out:

Hi, there. Are you on right now?

She typed back,

I’m just drinking my coffee and getting ready for work and I logged in and saw your message, so hi!

Wait a minute. Back up for a second. So if she was at home drinking her coffee, then that meant Dylan had struck out.
Ooh!
Well that wasn’t quite what he wanted. He wanted Dylan to have some success but not to hit a home run. And so it looked like maybe he’d hit a single? A double?

The app stared at him, as if it were mortal. He quickly punched in:

Oh, good morning! Yeah, I’m not really functional without two or three cups of coffee myself

with a little grin icon.

See, now, this was the problem with trying to find the right women. He didn’t want to be the sloppy second that the women settled for. He wanted someone both he and Dylan could share, equally. When it came to their limited experience trying to find the right, single woman, Dylan had always been the front man and Mike had been the wingman. He was tired of being the wingman. Maybe it was time, really, for the best man to win. That comment to Dylan had most definitely not been just a joke – he’d been very, intensely serious.

And that man was stepping up to the plate now, ready for his turn at bat. Oh God, he was getting sick of the baseball metaphors.

The app beeped as she replied with:

So I see you’re like, Mr. Triathlon and ski dude, and my idea of exercise is walking across the room to get the remote.

Oh, man. She was chatting him up. There was a natural opportunity here and he – he couldn’t blow it. He
couldn’t
blow it. He sat there in his boxer briefs, typing away with one finger on his ridiculous smart phone interface and realized that the boxer briefs were getting awfully uncomfortable. Because as he typed, he stared at her little avatar with those sweet dimples, and that amazing, intelligent look on her face and decided that his body’s response was telling him pretty much all he needed to know.

He typed out something that sounded good on the surface, and then the second that he hit enter –
augh!
– he wanted to take it back.

lolol, yeah don’t be afraid, we could just go for a hike if you want.
Oh, I think I just asked you out.
Yeah I did.

and then he ended it with a question mark.

Shit, a hike? A hike? God, could that be any lamer? Why couldn’t you come up with something romantic? Beating himself up came naturally, and this time he had good cause – a hike? Dylan had taken him up on his advice and taken Laura out to the fancy Asian fusion place that so many of the women they had dated loved to go to but, then again, he could count “all of the women they dated” on one hand.

All of the women had also flatly and resoundingly rejected what they were offering, which was, he had to admit, pretty unique. However, settling for second best had left them both hollow and incomplete, and now they had an added complication. 2.2 billion of them, to be exact.

A hike, yeah, I’d like that. That sounds really cool.

The words sat on the screen like fairy dust, as if some unseen spirit had conjured them from a mystical layer in the universe and plopped them on Mike’s phone. Seriously? She said yes?

She
liked
the hike idea. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
He sucked down more coffee, the hot liquid helping to regenerate his brain cells, making him come alive and
think think think
to say the right answer.

Which was…? Smacking his forehead, he ran twitchy fingers through his hair, his palm grazing a day’s growth on his chin. Jesus. She was saying yes! The coffee felt like a pool of hot lead in his gut now as he raced to reply, typing out a response.
OK, OK, breathe dude. Breathe, breathe, breathe.
What could he say?

What could he say? Keep it simple. With a shaking finger, he wrote:

OK. So, how about this afternoon. After work? You wanna do lunch and then go for hike? I know a great spot in this State Park, a nice easy trail, it won’t be too hard on you.

He hit enter and then realized that that was probably one of the stupidest things he could have said, his fingers itching to find some magical “retract” button, a switch he could flip to withdraw his words from cyberspace.

Fuck!
He wasn’t implying when she was out of the shape, he didn’t mean to… oh, shit.
Mike, you idiot!
He buried his head in his hands and fully expected her little icon to go away and disappear, and for Laura to think he was just a double failure at this shit, to go running back to Dylan – who knew how to handle women. Then again, if he was that good, why was Laura chatting right now?

She replied:

Sounds good. I’ll wear my hiking boots, don’t worry. I have feet, I can walk, I can use them, I can even move them independently while chewing gum.

And funny, too!
He laughed and wrote back:

OK, phew, good to know. I like bipeds

and typed down his phone number. Laura sent hers back and he realized that he needed to say something, yet had no idea what to say because this was the first time that he had actually found a woman, on his own, without Dylan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah
– technically Dylan had found her, but Dylan had no idea that he was independently pursuing her. The not-inconsequential fact that he had just essentially sniped her couldn’t be ignored, either.

Wow! He just stared at his smart phone, dumbfounded, willing his erection to go away but it wasn’t, and there was no hope that it was going to go away. He could tell as he just stared at the blinking cursor.

Finally she wrote back,

Hello, hello. Are you there, Mike?

Oh, Jesus. He startled as he realized he needed to respond, and quickly typed back,

Yeah, sorry. Not enough coffee yet. So, great, it’s a date? And thanks.

She wrote back a little smiley face, and he realize as he leaned back in the chair that he may have just made the biggest mistake of his life.

Had she really just made a date less than three hours after sneaking out of another guy’s bed? She opened up one of the seventeen texts from Josie which, as she scrolled through them, appeared to all be variations of “Please tell me about the hot guy.”

So she finally decided to put Josie out of her misery and typed out,
“Hey. Awesome night. Will tell you the deets later
“, hit “send” and almost instantly got back a response.

What do you mean later? Hell, no. I’m coming over.