Billionaire With a Twist 2
Read Billionaire With a Twist 2 Online
Authors: Lila Monroe
By L I L A M O N R O E
Copyright © 2015 by Lila Monroe
Billionaire With A Twist 2
Cover Design: British Empire Designs
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including emailing, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
Paige and…Hunter Knox?
My eyes had to be deceiving me. I
wasn’t actually seeing my perfect big sister hanging on the arm
of my client and sometimes make-out partner. I was seeing something
much less upsetting, like a Mafia hit or an escaped saltwater
crocodile on a bloodthirsty rampage.
I blinked rapidly, but the scene
refused to resolve into anything other than what it actually was:
Hunter. On a date. With my sister.
I will not cry in public,
I
repeated desperately to myself as I pressed my lips together and
tried to laser burn through Hunter Knox with my eyes.
I have no
reason to cry in public, and therefore I will not cry in public, I
will not, I will not, I will not!
The onions in my spring salad were a
little over-fresh, and that was the only reason my eyes were
watering.
I reached up to wipe them with my
napkin, and Hunter, displaying the kind of fine timing that lost the
Battle of Waterloo, chose that moment to meet my gaze.
His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped
open slightly. He looked as surprised to see me as I had been to see
him. But surely he would have known to expect me at a family dinner
with his new girlfriend; why was he bothering to put on a show? Did
he think I could be fooled that easily?
Did he think I wouldn’t realize
that he had been dating my sister the whole time he had been making
out with me? And then something else hit me.
I can never tell Paige.
Hunter strode over, never taking his
eyes off me, practically pulling Paige in his wake like a tugboat.
“Ally! I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Yeah, I bet,” I almost
growled.
A response like that normally would
have won me a full-on glower from my mother, complete with a hissed
‘Allison Brierly Beignet Bartlett, that is not the way a lady
comports herself;’ fortunately for me, my mom was in full
match-maker mode, and wouldn’t have noticed if little green men
fell out of the sky and demanded we worship them. So my sarcasm went
sailing right over her head like it was filled with helium.
“Oh, I can barely ever manage to
drag Allison away from her dreadful work,” my mother said,
sparing me barely a half-second of disappointment before turning the
sun of her approval back to Paige, batteries on full. “Not like
my Paige, what a good girl! Always RSVPs, so considerate, and what an
eye for detail! Oh, any man would be lucky to have such a wife,
someone who understands the importance of little things, like having
dinner and a martini ready when a man comes home from a demanding day
of work—”
My mom chattered on in a state of
rapturous low-level misogyny, while Paige and Hunter made matching
pained-but-polite faces at her ability to mentally time travel back
into the 1950s. I bet they’d be the kind of couple that matched
everything. Matching towels. Matching golf bags. Matching T-shirts
with cutesy sayings like—
I think I’m going to be sick.
“I’m going to the
restroom,” I announced. “If the waiter gets back before I
do, somebody order me a white zin. And have them leave the bottle.”
“We’re having lamb, dear,
with that a more appropriate order would be—”
“Actually, Ally, I have to go
over some numbers with you and make a phone call to my CFO,”
Hunter interrupted apologetically, his puppy dog eyes lowered in
deference to my mother. He didn’t need to have bothered—having
a Y chromosome absolved you of pretty much anything in my mother’s
book. “Mrs. Bartlett, Paige, if you’ll excuse us—”
Great, now I didn’t even get a
full private moment to compose myself.
“Oh, but couldn’t it wait
until after the dinner?” my mother pleaded, already folding
like wet tissue paper in the face of an assertive man. “All
this talk of business, so terrible for the digestion…”
“Ah, actually…” he
leaned over and whispered something in my mother’s ear. She
beamed, and I caught just enough of his whisper to gather that he was
pretending to want my input on a surprise present for Paige.
I deeply pondered how much it would
hurt my career if I walked up to him and kicked him in the balls
right at that moment.
I mean, I’d never get hired
again, but it just might be worth it.
“Oh, I suppose we can spare you
for a few minutes then!” My mother beamed up at Hunter like he
was the Second Coming of Christ, and then wagged a finger in my
direction. “Don’t you go keeping him too long, Allison;
remember, he’s your sister’s!”
“How could I forget?” I
said with a smile so brittle you could have put peanuts in it and
sold it at a confectionary store. I didn’t add,
You’ve
all but written her name on him in Sharpie marker.
“If you’ll follow me,
Ally…” Hunter’s voice was smooth, but his eyes
stayed wide, and something in them begged me to follow without any
fuss.
I stomped resentfully after him as he
led the way to the restaurant entrance, my stomach churning with
anger, betrayal, and something suspiciously like yearning—but
I’d deny it in a court of law.
Hunter stopped me once we were out of
hearing range. His mouth worked for a moment as if he couldn’t
find the words, and then he said hurriedly: “I met Paige out in
the lobby for the first time—I swear I didn’t realize
until then it was supposed to be a date. Your mom made it sound like
she was just inviting me to meet some members of the historical
society.”
Relief washed through me sweet as
spring wine, until I remembered that I had no right to feel it. “Oh.”
I still felt dizzy, off-balance, like I’d been thrown from a
horse. I wanted to grab onto him for support. Onto those strong, firm
arms… “I see.”
But could I really trust this answer?
Had he just been lying to me this whole time, was this just another
lie?
“Good,” he said gruffly.
“I’m glad that’s been cleared up.”
“Crystal clear.”
He leaned in a little closer. “Are
you still…angry, with me?”
I looked away, unable to meet his eyes.
“Why would I be?”
“No reason.”
I tried to pretend I didn’t hear
the disappointment in his tone. I probably didn’t hear it. I
was probably deluding myself. And even if I wasn’t, it didn’t
matter, because even if that disappointment was there, which it
wasn’t, I couldn’t allow myself to hear it. Couldn’t
allow myself to get sucked right back into an infatuation that could
never lead anywhere.
“So you’re not angry?”
His voice was disbelieving.
“Of course not,” I lied
through my teeth.
“Good,” he said, relieved.
A slight hesitation, then: “Because…well, your sister is
a remarkable young lady.”
The ground receded from under my feet
at a remarkable place. “Ah.”
“And I would potentially, despite
the false pretenses your mom got me here under, be interested in
seeing her. Potentially.”
“Ah.” My pulse pounded in
my ears, but my face was frozen in a panicked smile as my brain
cycled through a series of vivid memories of Hunter and me together,
failing to reconcile the connection I knew we’d both felt with
the sister-chasing, cold-hearted swine standing nonchalantly before
me.
“If that’s not a problem.”
“A problem.” I could hear
my words coming from far away. They were coming out remarkably calm
and well-formed, as if they were leaving the lips of someone who
wasn’t trapped at the center of a spinning world. “Why
would that be a problem?”
“It wouldn’t!” he
said quickly. “After all, you made it clear that nothing was
going to happen between us. That you’re not interested. That’s
still the case?”
I kept my face resolutely still.
“Nothing’s changed, Hunter. Nothing at all.”
“Alright. But you still seem…”
He reached out towards my arm, then thought better of it, letting his
hand hang above my bicep like an unresolved promise. Like a
temptation, like the fruit of Tantalus, hanging over his head.
God, I wanted him to touch my arm.
“…kind of angry,” he
finished. He shuffled his feet. “Is it Paige? That’s
she’s your sister, is that too—” He waved his arms,
unable to quite come up with an adjective that Paige might be too
much of.
Paige was always the exact right amount
of everything, pretty and sweet and demure. No wonder everyone
preferred her to her wilder young sister. To me.
A lot of the time,
I
preferred
her to me.
“Would you rather I didn’t
date your sister?”
What would he do if I said yes? Would
he just keep dating her, secure in the knowledge of just how much I
wanted him? Or would he dump her, ruining her temporary happiness and
bringing the sourness back into Mom’s voice, the disapproval
back into her eyes, just so…what? We could pine for each other
from afar?
The truth was useless to me. To him. To
both of us.
So I lied.
“Of course I don’t mind you
dating Paige,” I said, with a smile faker than a Rolex sold on
a street corner. “I was surprised, is all. You can date her if
you want. Knock yourself out. I fully approve.”
And with that I spun on my heel and
strode back toward the dining room, head high, toward what would no
doubt be a long, cozy dinner in my own personal hell.
#
“I wouldn’t want to
disparage the chef, but his braised lamb with asparagus simply isn’t
a patch on what Paige can do with the same ingredients—”
I decided to make an attempt to
de-board the Paige Is Perfect in Every Way Train. “Oh hey,
those dinner rolls look delicious, Mom, could you pass them?”
“I’m closer,” Hunter
said, “allow me.”
Before I could protest that I could
reach them myself, he swung the bread rolls around so quickly that I
had to reach out and grab them or get smacked in the face. Or worse,
appear rude in front of my mom. My fingers accidentally brushed
against his and I felt a frisson of electricity dance across my skin,
fierce and dangerous.
I snatched my hand away before it could
yank Hunter across the table for me to ravish him on top of the
asparagus.
I tried to casually look around to see
if any of my family members had noticed me spazzing out. Paige’s
face was just a little too carefully composed; shit, what if she
realized I had feelings for Hunter? I couldn’t ruin this for
her.
Thankfully, my mom lost all peripheral
vision when she had a potential marriage in her sights, and went
sailing gleefully on full steam ahead: “And Paige is most
accomplished, have you seen her watercolors? Perhaps she might paint
a tasteful landscape for your manor—”
Paige rolled her eyes behind Mom’s
head at an angle only I could see, her face suggesting that she would
much rather be doing a cubist study of a slaughterhouse than anything
like a tasteful landscape. I shot her a sympathetic smile, and she
slung one back at me while Mom chattered on, oblivious to communiqués
the two allied powers were sending each other.
It was impossible to be mad at Paige.
Someday, scientists might isolate the exact chemical formula of
Paige’s you-can’t-be-mad-at-me-ium, but for now, I would
have to settle for being absolutely furious at Hunter.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to him, but
hey, who said life was fair?
“And the historical society would
simply be lost without her organizational skills—”
“Must be a family trait,”
Hunter jumped in smoothly. “Ally has made the library a joy to
behold with her re-filing of all those dry old documents; I’m
seriously considering hiring her as a clerk.”
“You couldn’t afford me,”
I snapped before realizing that I was supposed to be acting like I
wasn’t angry. Because I had no reason to be angry. I wasn’t
angry! Or at least I was definitely going to not be angry sometime
soon.
I could see my mother’s eyes
narrowing, her selective blindness slowly fading away as she sensed
blood in the water of the Ally-behaving-inappropriately kind.