Jokers: BBW Billionaire Menage Romance (Billionaire Brothers, II Book 2) (5 page)

“Aim higher,” Owen scowled.

“Excuse me?”

“He means you're underselling yourself,” Lyle explained in a sleepy, slightly bored voice. My stomach knotted up. I could feel that I was losing their attention.

“Well I think I would be a terrific curator,” I asserted, hearing the uncertainty in my voice. But I would be. Why did I sound like such a wuss?

Owen nodded. “That's not the point. I said you could write your own ticket, and you come up with 'curator?' That's best you've got?”

I heard irritation in his voice and tried to ignore it, thinking it was probably just that he was ready for sleep.

“Yeah,” Lyle added. “We have practically infinite resources, real estate holdings all over the world… You could do better than this.”

I stretched my shoulders, trying to find a release for the tension that was building up in my body. They’d switched from boyfriend to businessman modes effortlessly and I had a hard time keeping up. Cranky, sleep-deprived businessmen. Suddenly the awareness that I was still standing there completely naked began to creep to the front of my mind.

What are you doing? What were you thinking?

Owen yawned loudly and for a long time. “It's okay," he said, holding out one arm and giving me a come hither gesture with his fingers. “I've already put something together for you anyway. Something I know you're going to love.”

I crawled up on my knees on the bed again and edged toward him. My shoulders slumped with defeat.

“But I would love being a curator,” I protested weakly.

“You’re gonna love this too,” Lyle said through a dramatic yawn. He raised his arm so I could crawl underneath it.

“I'll leave you the address by the door in the morning," Owen said, his words taking longer and longer as he drifted away. “You'll see, baby. Just trust us.”

I nestled between them, begrudgingly loving the way that their arms felt around me. At the same time, part of me was also aware that I had just fallen into the sweetest trap ever.

Melita had dressed like a librarian for the occasion, and I couldn't help but be completely amused by her bookish glasses and conservative bun hairdo. She'd even painted her nails and austere petal pink instead of the usual dragon lady shades that she loved so much.

The property manager seemed way too excited to be showing me around the space. She kept fluttering her hands underneath her chin like a schoolgirl though her voice had the husky overtones of a long time smoker. She looked like an over the hill ingénue in her a-line swing dress and Jimmy Choo mules as she yammered on about accessibility laws and sidewalk traffic counts.

“So you've got 14,000 square feet here, and there's an adjacent 7000 feet that you could use as a warehouse. I think that they have already arranged for shipments.”

“Shipments?” I repeated.

She nodded excitedly. “The collections,” she said as though I knew what she was talking about. I wanted to ask her more about it but I didn't want to seem like the complete idiot that I felt like at the moment. Owen had said I would love what he was putting together and I believed him. I just wished he had taken thirty seconds to describe it to me.

“They should be here within the next week for the most part, and then some of the more distant pieces will take a little longer to get through customs, I imagine…”

“Of course, of course,” Melita nodded sagely. I glared at her with my eyes wide open. I had no idea who it was she was pretending to be, but I was about 75% certain that nothing good could come of it.

I took another stroll around the wide-open space. It was a ground-floor level retail space with tall, arched windows along the front looking out onto Michigan Avenue. The phrase ‘prime retail’ doesn't even begin to describe just how fucking
prime
this retail was.

The big problem: I had no idea what they expected me to do with it.

“There were already plans in place for improvements and a schedule," the manager explained while rolling her hand in the air in a movement that looked suspiciously like a magician's assistant. “And I'm sure you want to go over those.”

“Of course, of course,” Melita murmured again. I knew I shouldn't let her get too far away for me to kick her.

“Yes, I'd love to see —”

“But of course you can make any changes you want!” she interrupted me eagerly. Her eyebrows went up and she had wide-eyed expression of someone who was protesting her innocence.

I have absolutely no clue what's going on here.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest to give myself a moment to think. What did I really know? This was a retail space in a building that the Jacks probably owned. They had collections that were apparently already on their way. I could safely assume that the collections were probably various works of art. Yet, when I had offered to correct curate their collection they had declined, so this couldn't be a curating gig. So…

Nope. I was still lost.

“Well maybe if I could see the plans,” I suggested vaguely, narrowing my eyes in what I hoped looked like an intellectual squint. Melita nodded simultaneously, hopping right on my pseudo-intellectual bandwagon.

“Oh of course!” she said with her hands in the air. “Wait right here! I think I have an extra set that I can give you to look over.”

As the property manager half-jogged across the enormous room, Melita sidled up to me, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose with one finger.

“So what do you think?”

“I think that if this is your new disguise, you have an exciting future in librarian espionage awaiting you,” I quipped.

She sighed impatiently. “Listen, I suddenly find myself with a lot of time on my hands. What's the harm in a little bit of dress-up? I think this outfit looks really fucking cute on me."

I looked her up and down and tried to relax my body. “Actually, you do the hot librarian thing pretty great, I have to admit.”

“Don't I?” she said, running her hands over her wide hips and her pencil skirt. “I think this could be a totally new look for me. I'm pretty much over the trashy gas station attendant thing.”

“Well, it's been done to death,” I agreed.

“So? Spill it. I can tell you're avoiding the subject,” she warned.

I took a deep breath, daring myself to say it out loud.

“The thing is, I have no idea what I'm doing here,” I admitted, leaning my head toward her and lowering my voice to an urgent whisper. “I don't know what's they think of going to do with the space, but I am pretty sure they think that I
do
know what they think I'm going to do with the space. Know what I mean?”

“Nope.”

“They turned me down for the job that I described,” I told her, my eyes immediately burning with humiliation.

Melita's mouth opened in surprise. “Your proposal? The one you worked on like all day? Your dream job?”

“Right! Well… Not my dream job, maybe. But the job that I thought they would be most likely to accept for me, that's for sure.”

She pulled a face. “Why not your dream job? I thought that was the point?”

I shrugged apologetically. “Well, I mean… I was trying to fit in, you know. Trying to figure out how to add value, as they say.”

“So, they told you you could write your own ticket, and you figured you would just guess what they wanted instead of telling them what
you
wanted?”

My hands flopped against my flanks. When she said it like that, it sounded pretty stupid.

“Something like that? I do not fucking know anymore.”

“Well that is just terrifically weird,” she sighed, rolling her eyes and tapping her pointy toed stiletto heel against the terrazzo floor.

It didn't seem weird at the time. It sure seems pretty weird right now.

“So you don't know what you're supposed to do with the space, but they
are
giving you the space, right? Do I have that right?”

I shook my head and gazed at the ceiling, hoping some of those invisible guardians Melita was always talking to were going to show up and offer me some guidance.

“So my point is, what's to stop you from just doing what you want, I mean, what you
really
want? Take the space, get in, and then just go completely gusto.”

“Gonzo,” I corrected her absentmindedly.

“Whatever.”

I looked around, breathing through my nose. Could I do that?

Well, first you have to figure out what you really want to do.

“Yeah,” I agreed sullenly, “that's definitely an idea. Actually, Melita, that's a great fucking idea. But… What if I fail?”

“What if you fail at what? At being yourself, finally? Yeah, girl… If you fail at that then I don't even know what to tell you. Go back to being a phony? You’re great at it, after all.”

She shrugged noncommittally but the words lanced through me like arrows. Sometimes Melita's insight could be pretty cruel, and she didn't even seem to know it.

I heard footsteps at the back of the room again and looked over Melita’s shoulder for the property manager. I arranged myself in a pose of confidence and clarity, thinking that was a good start. Everything else would fall into place, right? I only had to channel the bombshell, embrace whatever was going on here with open arms believing that I was uniquely suited for this opportunity, and then ride the wave into the future, supermodel-smiling the whole way.

The manager came striding out of the door that connected the retail space to the warehouse space, swinging a cardboard tube that presumably held the plans I was supposed to be looking over. Then she spun around as though someone behind her had called for her. As I watched, a hand emerged from the door to wave her back. The property manager stood there and stared at it like she didn't understand, like she was listening. After a few seconds, the caller stepped through the door.

Whitney Fucking Avery.

Suddenly my knees threatened to stop being reasonable supports for the rest of my body weight. My hand shot out toward Melita’s shoulder and I gripped her way too hard. She winced in pain and then followed my eyes toward the back of the room.

“Ohhhhhh, shit,” Melita said in a low growl.

Somehow from even this distance I could tell that Whitney knew I was standing there and was determined not to make eye contact with me. She darted back to the doorway and disappeared, and the property manager resumed her journey across the vast space, smiling winningly and holding the plans out in front of her like a banner.

“Who was that?” I asked in a voice that sounded too loud and a little rough around the edges.

“That?” She blinked as though emerging from a dream state. “That's Ms. Avery. She’s part of the consortium that owns the building? She and her fiancé are working on the adjacent space?”

Melita's fingers circled my arm, squeezing tightly. Her nails dug into the skin over my elbow like little claws, and I was grateful for the distraction.

“Adjacent space?” I repeated in as bland a tone as possible.

Fiancé?

She nodded avidly and stuck her hands out so I could take the plans. I took reached out with trembling hands and swallowed hard, then let my hands fall back to my sides.

“I don't think is going to work out,” I heard myself say.

“What? No!” she objected, her hands flying up in front of her as though I had just accused her of something, the rolled papers fluttering. “You're going to just
love
them! They'll be excellent neighbors. They're such a sweet couple. You just
love
to see people like that getting what they deserve.”

Lady, you don't even know.

She stared at me with what looked like mounting terror. Had the Jacks threatened her life by some chance? The amount of anxiety this woman was displaying seemed completely inappropriate for what should have been a pretty boring interaction overall. Maybe she was just naturally weird like that, like a scared little mouse.

I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with her. I need to go.

“I think she's going to need some time to think about it,” Melita interrupted reasonably. She pantomimed impatient dismay at me and stepped toward the manager. My heart swelled with gratitude at the idea I was going to let Melita finish the conversation for me.

Tell her we need to go.

“Can we just take a look at those plans?” she said in a calming voice. “We can get them back to you in a couple of days.”

Dammit
.

The property manager let her breath out in a whoosh between her puffed cheeks as though she had narrowly escaped a disaster. She held the plans out to Melita, nodding enthusiastically.

“Okay, yes!” she blurted out, the relief hissing through her voice as though it had come from a leaky steam valve. “Do that! You can reach me on my cell at any time. I mean, like, 24 hours a day. Anytime at all.”

Melita took the plans from her and cradled them in her arms like a baby.

“Okay, okay,” she said in a supportive voice. “We’ll get back to you soon as possible.”

“Great!”

“Thank you!” Melita exclaimed.

“Oh, you're so welcome!”

“
Really, thank you!
”

Melita stared hard at the woman until she faltered and began backing away. Then, with a wave, she whirled on her heel and began half-jogging toward the back door again.

“That lady… Girl, she was weird!”

I shook my head. My lips felt glued together. I stuffed my fingers under my arms to stop them from trembling

“Bree? Are you okay? Come on now, let's get it together.”

“I can’t do this,” I muttered under my breath so quietly that she had to lean her head toward me. “I can’t do this. Fuck this. Let's get out of here.”