The Billionaire's Secret: A BWWM Romance Mystery (8 page)

Chapter
Sixteen

Kiki stared at the bouquet. I could
tell she was impressed, but was pretending not to be. For my sake.

"Maybe Lily is his dog?"
she ventured hopefully.

The towering arrangement had arrived
at Jasmine's, right as I got home from work. Jasmine looked at the delivery guy
sidelong. "Well I know for a fact those aren't for me. Shay!"

I unwound my scarf and hung it on the
hook. "What the hell?"

She eyed me. "What did he do?"

I sighed. I hadn't told her about
what happened at the shop last night. I had gone home, too angry at myself to
risk seeing anyone, and locked myself in the guest room, pretending I needed to
sleep. I had actually managed to get through today with a smile on my face, in
spite of how badly I wanted to put my fist through a wall. I had almost made it
too.

Then he sent me...this.

The riot of flowers seemed almost
haphazard. Whoever the florist was had a really loose hand. The arrangement was
jumbled...almost rushed. The flowers were thrown together without regard to
harmony or balance.

Then I had looked at it harder and
saw what flowers he included. That's what made me clamp my mouth shut and turn
bright red.

"Here we go," Jazzy
muttered. "I'm calling Kiki. You need a come-to-Jesus talk here."

"Maybe you're right," I
said softly, staring at the bouquet.

Purple hyacinth was the main flower,
but each bloom was surrounded with white chrysanthemums. Reaching through the
purple and white, though, were the sharp spikes of pine branches and at the
top, one lone red tulip like an afterthought.

By the time we wrestled the
arrangement into the kitchen and trimmed and watered it, Kiki walked in the
open front door, breathless and wide-eyed.

"It's..." she didn't say
beautiful. "What'd he do?"

I blinked at her. The reason he sent
me flowers was evident. But it was what he was saying with the flowers.

"It's an apology," I said.
"Purple hyacinth means apology, though I have no idea how he tracked those
down in the dead of winter. That must have cost a pretty penny."
Not that he would have to worry about
that.
 

"What about those?" she
poked one of the white chrysanthemums. "Do they say something?"

I swallowed hard. "Truth,"
I said grimly. Kiki and Jazzy both looked at me sharply.

"Did he lie to you?"

I shook my head. "No. I don't
know. I don't think so." I walked over to the couch and sank into it,
defeated. "I believe him for some reason...and I hate myself for it."

Kiki walked over and sat next to me,
patting my leg in sympathy, but Jazzy was still staring at the bouquet.
"Pine needles are getting all over my counter," she observed. "I
suppose he's telling you something with those as well?"

I nodded and yanked on the throw
blanket. Kiki shifted, letting me pull it up to my chin. For some reason it
made me feel better to clutch it as I said, "Those I don't quite get. They
may be filler. They could just be seasonal foliage." I shook my head.
"But that's not Liam's way. Pine has two meanings, one is pity...."

"Boy best hope that ain't
it," Jazzy said darkly, slipping back into West Philly-speak for a second.

"But I don't think so." I
shook my head. "The other meaning, well, that's hope."

Kiki made a little "aw"
noise, then clapped her hand over her mouth. "Sorry Shay."

I patted her knee. "Don't
change."

Jasmine was still eying the bouquet
like it had offended her mother. "What about this? Seems really
random." She poked the red tulip and I turned away.

"Red tulips, well, they have two
meanings." I swallowed hard again as I remembered how he had kissed me in
the greenhouse out in Longwood while the tulips swayed around us. There was
meaning in them all right. He knew me well enough to know what tulips would
remind me of. "They mean 'believe me.'"

Jasmine plopped herself onto the
couch next to me. "Okay, spill it."

"Last night, at the shop,"
I started. Images of Liam's face between my legs, that deep dimpled smile as he
watched me writhe around his fingers. "Last night, he stopped by
and...."

"You're awfully squirmy about
it," Jazzy rightly pointed out.

"We...made up," I finally
sighed.

"Aw," Kiki squeaked again.

"But?" Jasmine could be a
real bulldog when she wanted information. Served her well in her research but
made it awfully uncomfortable when her research subject was you.

"But...," I shot another
look over at the bouquet. "I asked him to tell me the truth from now
on...and he did."

"I take it the truth was not
something you liked hearing?"

I looked at them both. "He said that
he would always leave if Lily called. Because I was strong and...and she
isn't...."

Jasmine whistled through her teeth.
Kiki jumped up like I had scalded her. "Hang on," she said darkly and
raced into Jasmine's office.

"So Lily is for sure his
girlfriend and you dumped his sorry, cheating ass, right?" Jasmine said
thunderously. When I didn't answer immediately, she pinched the back of my arm.

"Ow! I did! I thought I did.
But..." I rubbed my arm, "but he swore he was telling me the truth
when he said that Lily wasn't his girlfriend...and that there was only me. He
said I'd just have to trust him."

Jasmine growled. Kiki emerged from
Jazzy's office, holding the laptop in her hands. "Okay, I need information
here," she said, plopping back down next to me and typing rapidly.
"Is this him?"

She turned the laptop to me and there
was row upon row of Liam's face looking back at us. "I image searched
him," Kiki explained. "Damn. He is one fine looking brother."

"He's white," Jasmine
clarified.

Kiki cocked her head. "He's
pretty tan for a white guy."

"He's rich," I explained.
"Vacations in the tropics and all that."

She clicked on one of the pictures.
"Damn, I guess he is. Says here William Graves is the only child of Dahlia
Jessop Graves, who can trace her family back to William Penn's time. They're
one of the oldest and richest families of Main Line Philadelphia."

"That explains how he got
hyacinths in the dead of winter," Jasmine deadpanned.

But I was too busy reading. There was
more information on Liam than I had ever considered, but none of it explained...him.
His board's holdings, his charitable contributions, the events he attended,
those were all available with the click of a trackpad. But as for his personal
life, the only thing I could see was that there wasn't much to see.

Or for Dahlia, for that matter. She
looked out of the screen at me with clear blue eyes that looked nothing like
her son's gray storms. She was pale, milky-white even, while Liam was bronzed.
She had a cap of sleek, straight white hair cut into a chin length bob. He kept
his hair short, but I could tell it would be curly if he let it grow.

Whoever Liam's father was, he had
left his mark on him.

I clicked through silently for a
second, hoping to read something about his father. But the Graves family either
never spoke to the press or had an excellent PR person. There wasn't a hint of
anything about who fathered the man who communicated with me in flowers.

"Hey, I want to read something,
gimme that a sec?" Kiki slid the monitor into her lap.

 
I collapsed back on the couch and closed
my eyes. "What do I do, guys? He asked me to trust him. He swore he wasn't
a cheater...and I believe him."

"You believe him," Jasmine
echoed. Not judging, just letting me hear my own words back again.

"I do. But I believed Tre too.
I'm no good at this. They say trust your gut, but my gut is defective."

"Maybe you just let it die
out?" Jasmine ventured. "Don't respond to him, just let it fade
away?"

"I don't think he'll do
that," Kiki piped up.

"Why do you say that?"

"The bouquet." She stabbed
the monitor of the laptop with her finger. "Red tulips. Did you know they
have more than one meaning?"

I looked at her. "Believe
me...and..."

She looked at me with her wide eyes
even wider. "Declaration of love."

Chapter
Seventeen

"It's like he learned about
dating from a manual or something. Published in the 1950s. Or he read a book
about what men are supposed to be like and committed it to memory,"
Jasmine shook her head.

More bouquets were arriving each
day.
 
Daffodils for "you're the
only one." A random nosegay of dandelions that made Jasmine laugh herself
into hiccups before I looked them up and explained they meant faithfulness.
Enough purple hyacinths to take over the apartment. I found myself wishing he
would place the orders at Mrs. Young's. He'd be able to keep us afloat
singlehandedly.

I also found myself yielding. The
sprig of ivy with the white tendrils almost sent me to the phone. 'Anxious to
please,' it meant and it was so lovely in such a simple little way.
 
The tin of nuts made me laugh out loud
for the first time in weeks, then laugh again when I explained to a bewildered
Kiki that they represented stupidity. Jasmine's brown eyes gleamed as she
popped one into her mouth. "Maybe you should invite this boy over. If
nothing else, I like his humility."

I had my mouth open, ready to pop a
macadamia into it, when I froze and stared at Jazzy. "That's it!" I
cried

"That's what?"

"You guys. You need to meet him
and tell me if he's sincere or not. I didn't listen to you about Tre and I'm
not doing that again."

Jasmine nodded sagely and Kiki
clapped her hands. "Invite him over. You know I'll tell you the brutal
truth," Jazzy said, and I got the distinct impression that she wanted to
rub her hands together in evil glee.

Chapter
Eighteen

Kit was now openly staring from the
back room. I pressed the door closed on him - as gently as I could - and turned
back to Liam.

"Thank you for getting back to
me," he said. Even his dimple looked grateful.

"You wore me down," I
exhaled.

"That was the idea," he
grinned sheepishly.

"You're a very persistent man
who doesn't know how to take no for an answer."

Liam raised his eyebrows. "I
would have stopped if you told me no, Shay. But, I thought very hard about it, and
I couldn't remember a single time you actually said the word 'no.'" He
leaned forward, and brushed his lips against my lobe. "Except when you
were telling me 'no stopping' while I ate your pussy."

My mouth fell open, in shock and a
flood of desire at the memory. "Of course I told you no!"

He shook his head. "You
didn't," he moved a little closer. "You told me you wouldn't be my
other woman." His gray eyes darkened. "But since you weren't...and
you still aren't...."

"You didn't listen to me."

He nodded, his dimple flashing.
"I listened to what you meant."

I blew out a puff of breath.
"You...."

He took my hand and brushed his lips
across my knuckles. "Me," he nodded.

"You're maddening."

"You're fascinating."

I inhaled sharply. No one had even
called me fascinating before. "You're arrogant and controlling."

"You don't trust your own
instincts."

My shoulders slumped. "You got
me there."

He tilted my chin up. "And yeah,
I'm pretty controlling. I'm working on that." He grinned. "You're
helping." He bent his lips, closer, closer, holding back, "Ah!"
he teased, pulling back as soon as I started reaching for him. "I have a
condition, though. When I kiss you again, it's for real. You believe me when I
tell you you're it."

I watched his face, breathless with how
near he was. Those instincts I was learning to trust were screaming at me to
kiss him, kiss him now, and never stop kissing him. "Okay," I
half-moaned, "I believe you."

I finally did.

"Shay." The way he said my
name was just sinful. Like a whisper of a promise, it slid across his tongue,
more breath than word. It was a sigh and a song at the same time and it made my
toes curl. I strained upward, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him
to me, eager to close the distance I was tired of feeling.

When he finally kissed me, I knew it
was with everything he had. Relief, desire, pent-up yearning, he poured it all
out into the intensity of his kiss. His mouth covered mine, the heat searing
and intense. We stayed that way, locked in a frantic embrace, for maybe
forever, I wasn't sure.

I was breathless, my breasts heaving,
when he finally pulled away.

"I have a condition too," I
panted, holding up my hand.

"Talk quickly," he growled
against my ear.

I pushed lightly on his chest. "You
keep taking me on these incredible dates to impress me, but I barely know
you.
I need you to stop trying to
impress me and be normal."

He stepped back, looking slightly
stunned. A flicker of a wistful grin twitched on his face. "I'd love to be
normal," he said. "Tell me how."

"Hang out with me," I urged.
"Spend time with me...without all the grand gestures. Not everything has
to be a huge production."

He blinked and hesitated. I could see
the muscle jumping at his chiseled jawline. I held my breath until he finally
agreed, "Okay."

I smiled widely and touched his
collar. "Come over and hang out with my friends tomorrow. We'll make
dinner." I couldn't keep the excitement out of my voice.

He paused. Swallowed. Then nodded.
"Okay, Shay. Let's be normal."