The Billionaire's Hired Bride (BWWM Billionaire Romance Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter3

Their first “date” was actually a party, and Minnie felt incredibly unprepared to attend, given the circumstances. It was a large enough party that she could get lost in it, although she knew she should probably stick near James, or at least Avery, they both knew a lot more of the people here than she did, and more than she would probably be able to remember individually if she was introduced to all of them in a night. As it was, the first half an hour was full of Avery dragging her towards people for just long enough to have that shaky first-five-minutes-of-knowing-someone-exists conversation before he pulled her off to meet someone else.

After that, wandering around a bit in the crowd – there were a good forty or fifty people there – she instead took the chance to explore. It was, after all, a party at James’ house (which was more accurately a small mansion, complete with massive chandelier entrance hall), and if she was potentially going to live here, she wanted to know a little more about it.

There weren’t many people in the back areas of the mansion, although James hadn’t barred off any areas of it that she had seen. The bare handful of people Minnie encountered were split into two groups: couples who slipped off to find somewhere more private, and a group of young men playing pool in a game room on the second floor, overlooking the outdoor pool that was still empty due to the late February chill.

Eventually, she found herself alone in one of the smaller bedrooms, where she flopped on her back on the fancy queen-sized bed. It was softer than she expected, and her weight sank a bit into the mattress. She stayed there for a while, looking up at the canopy over the bed – a rich wine-colored fabric hung between dark hardwood poles that matched most of the rest of the room.

Eventually she did get up to explore the rest of the room. The first step was what she thought was the closet door, which turned out to lead instead to a private bathroom that seemed almost too large for the size of the bedroom it was attached to. The bathtub alone, almost large enough for three people and set with massaging jets near the bottom, was almost the same floor space as her bathroom at home. The actual closet was a door off the bathroom, and was a small room in itself; Minnie felt like she could tuck an armchair and a lamp between the empty racks for hanging clothes and no one would ever find her.

She was investigating a mini fridge hidden in a cabinet by the dresser when there was a polite cough behind her. Minnie jerked up, standing straight so quickly her head glanced off the top of the cabinet, which lead to her rubbing hard at the painful spot as she looked to see who had interrupted her.

It was James. His clothes were a little less neat, now, after the party had gone on for an hour or two. The way his shirt was only tucked into his pants on one side made Minnie wonder if he’d actually stripped for some girl over the course of the night. His expression at her reaction was a little amused as he spoke. “This could be your room, if you like it.”

Minnie’s mind took a moment to catch up to the implication. She closed the cupboard door over the mini fridge. “It’s so fancy,” she said. “I’d be scared of breaking something.”

“Don’t worry about it. Most of the stuff in here is replaceable.” He walked over to the cupboard, close to her but not uncomfortably close, and ran his hand along the top edge. “My mother is the one with a weakness for antiques, so I keep them all in her guestroom. Everything else is party-safe.”

That made her feel a little better. “Speaking of the party,” she said, “how’s it going down there? I can’t even hear the music.” The thumping bass had followed her down the hallways at the start of her exploration, but she hadn’t heard it in quite some time. It had added to the feeling of being lost in the mansion’s hallways, even though logically she knew how to find her way back out again.

“People are starting to pair off for the evening, if they’re going to,” he said. She wondered if
that
was why he’d come to find her, looking a little disheveled; it would certainly make their “relationship” seem less out of the blue. “I imagine someone would probably have disturbed you up here soon, anyway.”

She made a disgusted face. “If I’m going to live in here, you’d better put a lock on the door.” The last thing she wanted was to come in after a party – although hopefully they wouldn’t be as regular, if he was trying to clean up his image – and finding that some couple had already made use of her bed.

“Of course,” James responded. “I do the same with Mother’s room. But I was thinking, now that the floor has cleared out a little, perhaps you would do me the honor of a dance?” He extended a hand towards her with a flourish and a slight bow, as though she were a princess, instead of an under-dressed animation student.

Minnie blushed a little, than took his hand. His grip was gentler than she expected; a lot of the time, it seemed like men were just barely bracing themselves from crushing her fingers.

“I think we can work that out,” she said, and let him lead her back to the party.

*

They danced for quite a while that night, some of it modern, some of it more classical ballroom dancing. Minnie had never waltzed before, but with James showing her the steps.  It was easy enough, though, because of the difference in their sizes, she had to take an extra step every so often to keep up with him. The whole time she was down there, he didn’t dance with any of the other girls hanging around the edges of the dance floor, although she danced with a few other guys, including Avery. One of them tried to pinch her butt, and she saw James give him a talk in the corner, a stern look on the tall man’s face. She didn’t see the guy in question the rest of the night, and had the feeling he probably wouldn’t be at the next party, either.

That made her feel a little safer in the decision she was slowly coming to; if James was already looking out for her when they hadn’t done much beyond a little flirting and some dancing, then she could feel confident that he wouldn’t let any other men happen to her, so to speak.

She stayed late, later than she usually would on a Saturday during the semester. Even Avery left about a half an hour before she did. She had one martini, just strong enough to feel it for about an hour or so, but not enough that she couldn’t drive herself home. James walked her out to her car when it was nearing midnight; behind them, though, there was still quite a bit of party going on.

“They’ll go until I kick them out,” he said in response to the question on her face. “And since this is the last time I’m going to be doing this for a while, I might as well let them.”

She nodded. “Well, I have an essay due Monday for Art History, so…” She trailed off, but James picked up the threads of her thought.

“And it’ll be Sunday in half an hour, so you should get home.” His smile was warm as he helped her into her car. He smiled at her a lot, she thought. “Should I expect to see you again?”

She thought about it. “I think so. Probably next weekend.”

By then, she could have her thoughts a little more in order, and it would give her enough time to look at things without the influence that smile had over her objectivity.

“Then I’ll see you soon.” He waved a little as she pulled out down the long driveway, and didn’t turn back towards the house until she was through the gate and gone.

When she got home, Minnie crawled into her bed and fell straight asleep. The next morning, there were four texts from Avery on her phone, all of which boiled down to the same thing:

[Are you going to do it?]

She made a point of ignoring her phone entirely until she was done with her late breakfast (more like lunch) and had at least thrown together an outline for that paper. Then she sent simply, [still thinking about it] and proceeded to not think about it anymore until she was done with the paper. It was only then that she sat down to a dinner of leftover pasta and a cup of coffee, that she turned her thoughts towards James and his deal.

Her mother wouldn’t approve of her moving in with some guy she barely knew, which Minnie found, to her surprise, was more of a point in favor of the deal than against it. Her mother meant well, but there was a level of controlling to her that drove Minnie up the wall; unless it was for school, she made Minnie feel guilty about any time taken for herself. As it was, she didn’t approve much of Minnie going into an art field, either, and kept talking about how much better it would be if Minnie went into the sciences and got a real job. There was always an implication that, if she did so, Minnie would also be able to support her mother as well as herself. Then her mother could go off and retire to do nothing but New Age meditation camps for the rest of her life, like the one she was (thankfully) at that weekend.

To hell with that, as far as Minnie was concerned. She had intended to leave as soon as she could anyway, and the deal she was being offered just moved that up much closer to being a possibility. While she was at it, she also decided, point-blank, that there was no way her mother would ever be allowed to know what the deal actually entailed. As far as Minnie was going to tell her, the relationship would be exactly what it seemed to James’ business contacts.

It was in thinking about how to announce the decision to her mother that Minnie realized that she had, essentially, already made her choice. That thought made her sit down on her bed for a few minutes, staring at the computer screen where her paper was still pulled up without her really seeing it.

It’ll at least pay for me to finish school
, she thought to herself.
No more freaking about scholarship deadlines and loans.
Most of her classmates were worried about their debts already, except for the few who were like James and had parents rich enough to pay for everything they might ever want to do. It would be something like bliss, to walk out on graduation day and not have to worry about it.

Really, the only thing that was still a concern on her mind was the potential of missing someone ideal because her relationship status was tied up. At that moment, Minnie made the decision: if they couldn’t wait for her to finish out the three years with James, then they weren’t worth spending her life with, anyway. With that resolve in mind, she texted first Avery, then the number that James had given her the day before –

[i’ll do it.]

[05 Moving In - Adjustments]

Minnie arranged to move in the next weekend – as soon as reasonably possible – and spent that week packing her bags with a near-ridiculous intensity. Her mother wasn’t very happy about it, of course, but luckily, Minnie’s things were mostly clothes, bedding, and school stuff like textbooks and her old art class supplies. Even if she had furniture to bring, she didn’t think she would need it, and most of the things she might have needed she didn’t really want anyway.

Her mother could sell it, for all she cared. She probably wouldn’t need half the blankets and pillows, either, but they got wrapped around the decent things to come out of her high school  pottery class just in case, then wedged into the space below her passenger seat.

When she got to the mansion, James swung the gate open for her from somewhere inside the building. He was standing at the door when she pulled up to the curb. Minnie killed the engine before getting out. After extracting herself from her mother that day, she couldn’t even pull up the energy to be nervous about this part of the move. Instead, she was bright and cheerful as she greeted James, with a friendly hug for anyone watching. He seemed a little surprised by it, but responded to her bit of improv with an arm around her shoulders as though it was rehearsed.

“Gonna help me haul this stuff in?” she asked as they pulled apart.

James grinned, a bit of teasing in his voice as he replied, “Anything for you, dearest.”

He had to have gotten tips on settling her nerves from Avery or someone. It didn’t matter. Minnie loaded him up with duffels of clothes and grabbed her own basketful to follow him in, leaving the trunk of her car open so they could grab the next load more easily.

(Why worry about someone stealing out of the back of it with all the security James no doubt had in place? It was a weird thing to think about; Minnie just had to be sure that it didn’t turn into a habit of leaving her car open
everywhere
.)

As it was, getting her things up to the second floor and into her new room proved to be enough of a hassle on its own. Minnie dumped most of the bedding into one of the comfortable armchairs arranged near the end of the bed, and after James left, she set about sorting her clothes into the dresser and massive closet.