The Billionaire's Hired Bride (BWWM Billionaire Romance Book 1)
Read The Billionaire's Hired Bride (BWWM Billionaire Romance Book 1) Online
Authors: Sherie Keys
THE BILLIONAIRE'S
HIRED BRIDE
A BWWM Billionaire Romance By..
SHERIE KEYS
Summary
The terms of the contract seem simple enough.
College student Minnie will agree to be the wife of billionaire playboy Sanders for a maximum of 3 years. At the end there will be a substantial pay off which will give her the perfect head start in life.
Minnie needs the money and a place to stay, whilst James needs to appear to be married in order to shake off his playboy reputation in the business world. It is the perfect marriage of convenience and the contract makes everything very clear.
Unfortunately, things are never that clear in real life.
As Minnie notices the glint in James' eye when he looks at her in public, she wonders. Is he falling for her? Or is he just keeping up the appearances of the arrangement they have?
Either way, it seems that this is one contract that is destined to be breached...
Copyright Notice
Sherie Keys
Hired Bride © 2015, Sherie Keys
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.
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“Come on, Minnie, it won’t hurt to at least meet him, right?”
Minnie (properly, Minerva Saffron Harrison, courtesy of a mother’s affair with new-age philosophy and a father who wouldn’t say no) glowered and shoved the young man’s arm off her shoulder. “I said I need to think about it, Ave. That means at least a day or two, not ten minutes.”
Avery Reynolds slid back into his seat, at an angle from her at their shared coffee shop table, still wearing the grin that reached all the way up to his thick eyebrows. “Look, you can’t stay with your mom forever —she drives you crazy. A place to stay for three years and a good chunk of change afterwards — that’ll give you a chance to get on your feet, at least."
She sighed. Avery had a point, as much as she didn't like to admit it - she'd been trying to get out on her own for three years, since turning eighteen, but still in school and without a job to pay the bills, she hadn't managed. At the same time, she didn't really want to end up like Avery himself, bouncing back and forth between girlfriends and relying on romance to keep food in his stomach.
"And he's not expecting sex any time soon. I already told him you were nervous about it."
"You told him that?!" Minnie's outburst was loud enough that a couple of the students bent over the next table looked up in their direction. She immediately went silent and tried to sink into her seat until they went back to work. "Tell me you didn't say it like that."
Avery just laughed a little at her, which didn't do much to improve her mood, so she kicked him lightly under the table. Minnie's awkwardness about sex was the reason she and Avery had broken up in the first place, after dating most of the first year out of high school. It had been a mutual thing, and a large part of it was their different sexual needs - Avery was high-strung and very interested in sex, and Minnie's own appetites couldn't keep up.
"Don't worry, don't worry—"
"Of course I'm going to worry. He's one of your friends, Avery; I think I'm the only person you know who doesn't try to get laid three times a week."
He just laughed more at that, while her face flushed with embarrassment. "It's not a big deal if you say no," Avery said after a moment, swirling the end of his tea around in the cup. "I just thought - hey, better that one of my friends gets that half a mil than a stranger."
It was Minnie's turn to laugh. "What, so you can mooch more fancy tea off me?" And with that, their conversation turned to other, more mundane things.
But the offer hardly left her mind for the next few hours, even after she left Avery and the coffee shop behind to sit through another hour of animation lecture.
----
The offer was this: five hundred thousand dollars, plus room and board for the duration, for a three year "relationship" with the richest of Avery's playboy friends. Minnie had never met James Sanders, but she knew from Avery that his father was one of those rich, back-room businessmen whose names never quite reached the public eye. James, in contrast, wanted to use the money his father left him to get his name out there - and in a way, he had. It just wasn't in a way that would help him build up the tech business he was looking to start in the next year or two. Living the way he had - five or six girlfriends a year, spending his father's money, rather than getting any kind of job - had given him a reputation as unreliable and a do-nothing, and it was a reputation he was now working hard to reverse .
Part of that meant getting a steady girlfriend and settling down - marrying her, maybe having kids. It was the one thing James couldn't do on his own (he'd already gotten a job somewhere in the middle of his father's company and was working his way up, rather than using his influence to just start out there), but it was something that his money could buy for him.
And that was where animation student Minerva Harrison would come in, if she decided to accept his offer.
She didn't really mind that James would probably go right back to cavorting through a line of women after, or potentially even during, the deal. What worried her was moving in with a man she barely knew without having any idea of the way he lived or what his expectations would be. Avery might have said that he would be okay with little to no sex the first few months, and potentially sometime after, but Minnie was inclined to doubt that. One didn't simply change from being a playboy to a chaste future husband at the flip of a switch.
She was even unsure about the potential marriage and family aspects of the deal, no matter how much Avery assured her there would be plenty of time to talk about it. But for all her wondering, she knew one thing — she was never going to find out anything about the guy if she never so much as saw his face.
So it was with that in mind, late that night while she was folding up her laptop and getting ready for bed, she sent a text off to Avery (who would of course still be awake, night owl that he was).
[okay, I'll meet him]
The reply came back before she even finished brushing her teeth.
[Cool! You free Saturday?]
No big projects due, only two essays to write - checking over her calendar, it was as "free" as her Saturdays ever were.
[yeah, 1 pm?]
How Avery got things arranged quickly enough to text her back before she fell asleep, she had no idea. Maybe James was actually with Avery, at whatever party or concert would be going on a Thursday night.
[Sounds good! Usual place.]
That meant the coffee shop where they’d had lunch just earlier that day. Minnie nodded at her phone as though the young man on the other end of the messages could see it, and flipped the phone over so the notification light wouldn't blink against her eyes as she tried to fall asleep.
Better to do it sooner than later
, she reminded herself silently in the dark room.
Gives me less time to be nervous.
Saturday afternoon wasn’t quite dreary, with stray sunbeams breaking through the cover of the clouds. Minnie dressed well and left her bag of books at home, taking only her phone shoved into one jacket pocket and her wallet shoved into the other. It might get a little warmer in the coffee shop with it on than she would like, but otherwise the invisible-strap top she was wearing showed a bit more skin than she wanted to, meeting this guy for the first time.
When she arrived, Avery was already tucked up in their usual corner, with a man who could only be James. Minnie’s first impression of him was that he was incredibly tall; even seated, he was almost a full head taller than Avery, who himself had an inch or two on Minnie’s just-above-average height.
Avery waved her over enthusiastically, and Minnie, trying to not feel completely self-conscious, headed over and took the third seat at the table. She could feel that James was looking her over just as much as she was examining him, but unlike her, he didn’t seem to react to the feeling of someone’s eyes on him.
Aside from his height, he had dark hair, a little longer than she expected from a billionaire heir, a strong jaw line, and an unnoteworthy nose. His clothes were, she supposed, understated for his status—which meant the most expensive of mall designers, rather than personal tailoring. All in all, there was a polished politeness to him that would have surprised her if she thought of him as one of Avery’s friends, but was no surprise at all when she thought of him as a rich boy trying to improve his image. He was maybe two or three years older than her, but not much more.
“Hi,” she said, trying to smile. When she spoke, her voice came out with a bit of a nervous squeak.
James didn’t say anything. Avery grinned at her like it was any other meeting.—“See, I
can
manage to not be late, once in a while.”
“Only when someone gives you a ride,” Minnie countered, realizing what Avery was doing and appreciating it. The little bit of joking, like they would at any other time, was helping to calm her down.
“Hey, my walk cycles are better for me than yours are,” Avery joked, one of the familiar comments that had come out of her last round of finals, when the 3D self-portrait model Minnie was trying to animate for her final project had warped spectacularly in the middle of its walking loop for no evident reason. She’d had six hours to get it back in order and had barely managed, and Avery had been handing her cups of coffee every hour and a half, practically on the nose.
And like that, she and Avery talked for a while, while James stayed silent and observed – it was an effort for Minnie to not glance at him every thirty seconds, wondering what he was thinking, but his expression didn’t seem to show much. He smiled a little at the jokes, and winced sympathetically when Avery paused to explain the story of the arm he’d broken in high school (one of the only times he made an effort to actually include James in the conversation), but otherwise, there was no indication of what he was thinking. It went on long enough that, even with Avery trying to keep her calm with banter, Minnie started getting nervous again. Was this something he was assessing her on, too, as much as her appearance?
Eventually, Avery made an excuse to go to the bathroom, more for the purpose of leaving them alone together than anything else. Minnie tried not to watch him go, and wound up staring at James’ shirt collar instead.
“…So,” he said, and Minnie was surprised at how rough his voice was, like he’d had a cold last week and still had a bit of a cough. “You’re an animation student?”
Either he had been paying attention or Avery had told him beforehand – likely both, really. Minnie nodded. “Yeah. Mostly 3D motion rigging, but I’ve done a bit of environmental modeling, too.”
His interested look turned a little sheepish. “To be honest? I have no idea what that means.”
She laughed a little, then, and felt better. He didn’t know everything, even being a rich kid who probably had private tutors from the age of four. That made him seem more human.
Minnie wound up pulling out a napkin and a pen and explaining the basics of rigging to him, and was just starting to talk about textures when Avery came back and dropped himself lazily into his seat. “Uh-oh, James, look out. You managed to find one of the two things she can talk about for an hour straight. The other one’s how much she hates living with her mom.”
James smirked a little, from where he was bent over her napkin and the crummy pen diagrams of polygonal shapes and rigging lines. “Well, that leaves something for the second date, right?”
Second date? Did that mean she had passed whatever metric he was using to decide if it was even worth making the offer to her? She hadn’t even decided if she was interested enough to consider it yet; James seemed okay, but it wasn’t the kind of okay that she would be comfortable spending three years with.
Minnie capped the pen and gulped down some of the last of her mocha. Would now be a good time to bring up the business end of things? Or would it make her seem too pushy, too focused on the money?
Fortunately, the decision was taken out of her hands, because James broached the subject first. He took a sip out of his drink and slid the doodle-covered napkin aside, then put a small stack of papers on the cleared table. It was only three or four sheets, but the header alone was enough to make the point:
RELATIONSHIP NEGOTIATION CONTRACT
Seeing the way she stiffened up, James smiled. “Relax. I’m not asking for any signatures or anything – this is just a rough outline of what I’m looking for, and what I’m willing to offer. You can go ahead and take this copy.”
She did, skimming down through the first page, mentally highlighting the key facts the same way she would in a textbook –
live-in relationship
,
three years, $500,000 plus additional gifts.
The last bit made her look back up at him.
“Gifts?”
“Well, if it was a real relationship, of course I’d buy my girlfriend gifts,” James replied, his voice changing a little, the rough edges sliding out. Minnie could tell immediately that this was his best “charmer” voice, and she had to admit that it was pretty effective. “So if I didn’t buy gifts and only gave you the money that would look pretty suspicious.”
“Makes sense.” She turned to the next page, which started off with a description of how she’d actually get paid – seventy-five thousand at the start of each year of the relationship, and the rest at the end of three years. Even that first year’s pay would be enough for her to live comfortably on her own for long enough to finish school and find a job, but if she went into this deal, Minnie didn’t intend to back out unless she discovered James somehow unbearable.
Most of her part of the deal was pretty straightforward; aside from living with him, there was a date every week or two, a two week vacation in the summer – with a note saying that she should get a passport, if she didn’t have one already! – meeting his parents for Christmas… All fairly normal girlfriend kind of things.
Sex got its own paragraph in the outline, but it boiled down to him being okay with her hesitation, as long as she was aware that he would fulfil his needs, discreetly, elsewhere, if she wasn’t willing to get involved with him on that level. It seemed pretty fair to Minnie; as long as she wasn’t involved with him, she didn’t really care who he did get involved with. And it made it easier to imagine keeping an emotional distance from him. She could do her thing, and he could do his.
Yes, she was definitely starting to warm up to the whole idea. Not enough to pack her bags and try to wedge her things into the back of her little car, but enough that she didn’t immediately balk at his next sentence.
“So,” James started as she set the papers down. “Are you free tonight?”