Read The Billionaire Game for Free Online Page B

like, not done—all weekend. I
was moving around, being active, accomplishing things! Okay, so the
things I was accomplishing were on the scale of ‘getting that
nasty stain out of the bathroom tile,’ but still. It was
something. It made me feel like I might be able to do even more.
    The bell rang just as I put the
finishing touches on the living room, the black babydoll draped just
right over the mannequin. “Coming, Julie!” I called.
    And I opened the door right in the face
of Asher Young.
     
    #
     
    I am nothing if not a smooth
professional, and I responded in a classy and accommodating manner.
    “What the hell are you doing
here?”
    Well, for a certain value of classy and
accommodating. A low one.
    Asher looked startled for a second, but
then, when you’ve got a face that looks like the real project
that Michelangelo was slaving over while he knocked off the Pieta as
a fun distraction, you probably don’t get a lot of people
angrily demanding that you explain your presence. When he showed up,
most people probably took one look at him and decided, you know what,
life is short and this guy is beautiful, let’s just not
question it.
    “I’m here to see you, of
course,” Asher said. He looked my body up and down slowly
through those knee-weakening eyelashes. “Somehow, you just keep
pulling me back.”
    “Don’t quit your day job to
join Comedy Central,” I shot back, trying to keep my knees from
knocking together. “Dove isn’t due for two more days.”
    “And yet here I am,” he
said with a maddeningly sexy smirk, and strolled into my apartment
like he owned the place, sprawling on the couch so that his T-shirt
stretched up and revealed those deliciously rock-hard abs, and just a
hint of dark hair trailing down. “I know you like detective
stories. Deduce this, Sherlock.”
    I looked out the window and saw the red
convertible I knew belonged to my client Julie—and there was
Julie herself, climbing out of the car, her long blonde hair whipping
in the breeze—
    Ah. Blonde. And thin. And with the IQ
of a walnut. It all became clear now.
    “Well, you certainly have a
type,” I told Asher. “Are you starting a singing group?
The Two-Timer’s Trio?”
    “I’m going for a barbershop
quartet, actually,” he said with a lazy grin like a jungle cat.
    My heart sped up without my permission.
    Julie blew into the room like a
particularly glamorous storm, and for a little while I was able to
ignore Asher, setting her up behind the changing screen and slipping
her into the babydoll for her final approval. I’d wanted to go
for blue to match her eyes, and I still mourned that missed
opportunity, but classic black looked good on her too, and maybe
after she saw how well it fit, she’d come back and we could
revisit the issue.
    “This is so adorbs!” she
squealed, when she looked at the finished product in the mirror. “Oh
wow, this is literally the best thing that has ever happened to me!”
She shimmied out of the lingerie and back into her jeans, peeking
over the screen. “Asher baby, I gotta jet to this shoot. Can
you pay the nice lady? I left my wallet in my other car.”
    Great. More time with God’s gift
to the blonde and bereft of brains.
    As Julie blew him a kiss, Asher counted
bills into my palm. I tried to take my hand back as soon as he was
done, but he closed his fingers over mine, caressing my skin. “Any
particular reason you’re so grumpy today?”
    I raised an eyebrow and yanked my hand
away. “Any particular reason you’re going for blondes?
Entering a dog show later, maybe?”
    Asher just chuckled, leaning against
the wall in a way that accentuated the muscular ripple of his
shoulders under his tight T-shirt. I licked my lips without meaning
to. “I hear they have more fun.”
    “Well, gingers have plenty of fun
too,” I shot back, silently cursing myself for not managing a
better comeback.
    Asher leaned in. His voice was a low,
intimate rumble. “Well, you’ll have to show