The Playboy's Ménage (The Billionaire Bachelors Series)
Read The Playboy's Ménage (The Billionaire Bachelors Series) Online
Authors: RG Alexander
The Playboy’s Ménage
Billionaire Bachelors
Series, Book 3
RG Alexander
The Playboy’s Ménage
Copyright 2014 RG Alexander
Editing by D.S. Editing
Formatted by
IRONHORSE Formatting
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Table of Contents
The Billionaire Bachelors Series
I’m with Holly. She says hi. Want to join us?
Peter sat in front of his laptop inside his latest acquisition—an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city—and ground his teeth together as he read the text.
Asshole.
According to his recent phone call with Dean, Henry had left his own Hummer and driver behind so he could take Dean’s car without asking and wasn’t answering his cell. Curious, since he’d gotten a message from him this morning, Peter sent Henry a text asking what the hell was going on… Why he’d expected an actual answer, when he’d gotten nothing but
this
all week, he’d never know.
Fuck you.
He responded to the smartass text.
Dean wants his car back.
He dropped his phone on the rusting worktable and stared blankly at his computer screen. Henry Vincent had a twisted sense of humor and a talent for ticking him off, but his bullshit was no longer remotely amusing. The man must be bored, and as restless as Peter was from staying in one place too long. Henry needed to give up his early retirement idea and get busy making music with his band again. Soon, before Peter found a creative way to get even with him for this aggravation.
It had started at last week’s dinner, meant to be an intervention and a strategy meeting to get Dean out from under his uncle’s thumb. That was why Peter was still in town instead of on his way to Italy and the energetic twin swimsuit models who’d left him an open invitation to join them for the summer. It was also why he’d purchased this vacant edifice of rust and steel—to create a physical address for the “mystery buyer” the older Mr. Warren couldn’t resist.
Dean was a good friend and he needed Peter’s special brand of help. The twins could wait.
A few simple keystrokes, an open back door or two on certain so-called secure servers and a bank account with funds from himself, Henry and Tracy Reyes, and the four of them would soon be the majority stockholders of Warren Industries. If all went according to plan, it would end the annual review game the board of halfwits was playing with Dean for good.
When it was done, the CEO of Warren Industries could stop being such a grim, sexless jackass and they could all go back to business as usual. Tracy to his cattle empire and his overabundance of cousins. Dean to his company and possibly the redhead he’d mentioned at dinner. Henry to his music, his traveling and the epic spoiling of his older brother’s children and Peter to…wherever his life took him, as long as it was exciting enough to distract him from what he didn’t have.
That was the plan, until Henry started going off about the latest Ms. Anonymous column, fantasies and wish fulfillment. About Holly. And he hadn’t stopped after they’d left Franco’s that night. Henry now sent him an email or text every day intimating that he knew where she was or that he was talking to her. Suggesting they all get together.
Like old times.
Four years. Until now, that’s how long it had been since they’d mentioned her name in each other’s presence. Four years, five months, two days and six and a half hours since they’d gotten drunk in the red light district of Amsterdam and admitted that—despite the depths of debauchery they’d both unapologetically striven to reach over the years—the days they’d shared with Holly Ruskin were still unmatched.
But though that was the only time they’d talked about her, it was clear neither one of them had forgotten their first love. A year ago, after the last Warren charity gala, Henry had come to the Faraday estate and seen a few of the sculptures and paintings in his private collection—the ones Peter created whenever he needed to think or take his mind off a problem. He never meant to show them to anyone, particularly his best friend. They were too revealing and always depicted the same subject. The same woman who was the inspiration for the song on Henry’s latest album,
Broken Heart Baby
.
It was her. As Henry had insisted at Franco’s, she was their fantasy. Holly had left her mark on both their hearts. Which was why he couldn’t understand Henry’s recent behavior.
Peter had known Henry most of his life. Since his third birthday party, in fact, when the tiny terror had shown up with a pirate patch and a small but deadly sword that he’d used to annihilate the expensive four-tiered cake covered in ivory fondant after it made him sick to his stomach. Peter’s mother had nearly fainted following the carnage, vowing to ban the toddler from all upcoming celebrations, so it was no surprise that the boys had instantly become inseparable.
Henry was the confidant and troublemaking brother he’d needed to pull him out of his isolation—he’d taught Peter to swear and sneak out, and taken him on adventures with his older brothers that had sent Peter home with scraped knees, muddy shoes and the occasional broken limb. Shockingly normal stuff anywhere else, but unheard of at the Faraday estate.
Peter had been raised by servants who were paid to see to his care and feeding, since the older Faradays had no desire to deal with the terrible twos or the headaches of adolescence. His father spent most of his son’s formative years across the ocean at the manor in England, and his mother was forever encircled by a small group of friends who filled their days planning charity events for other people’s children.
It wasn’t until his father was in the last stages of his quiet battle with cancer that he’d requested sixteen-year-old Peter’s presence. He’d talked to him about his upcoming responsibilities to the employees of the estates, introduced him to the family’s lawyers and financial advisors, and even said he was proud of Peter’s scholastic accomplishments and heartened that his legacy would continue after death. But by then it was too late— a stranger’s praise meant nothing to Peter. His mother’s passing two years later had been harder to accept. She, at least, had remembered his birthdays.
Without Henry and his boisterous family to drag Peter away from the ancient estate where children weren’t allowed to breathe for fear of breaking something priceless, he didn’t want to imagine what he would have become. One of those eccentric, reclusive billionaires who lived in his perfectly pressed pajamas, Henry often assured him. Or a mad scientist who grew out his fingernails and couldn’t get a date unless he built one from scratch in the lab.
He would always owe Henry for that. He’d owe Dean and Tracy as well. They’d introduced him to life and all its pleasures, and he’d made the ride his own. He traveled extensively, slept with as many women as he liked and took physical gambles whenever the opportunity arose. His parents had been hothouse flowers with more money than they could ever spend. They’d lived narrow, insulated lives that barely made a ripple in the world, and he refused to live by their example.
And what ripples have you made, playboy?
He lived. Peter supposed he could have channeled his energies and worked at one of the businesses he’d created over the years. The latest handful still held some of his attention—the private space and exploration company, the alternative energy research center and the educational app business he’d started during a long, dull flight to Hong Kong all showed promise. The reasons he gave for staying away were sound—he didn’t want his reputation muddying the waters or in any way hurting a potentially profitable and beneficial endeavor.
But the truth was far less noble. Once a challenge was met, Peter inevitably grew bored and restless, and it was better for everyone involved—particularly the men and women he left at the helm—to take his ideas and money and allow him to remain as he was. A deviant who had embraced risk and excitement, experience and excess as if it were a career for so long that now it was all he was known for. The playboy. The lewd Billionaire Bachelor.
That moniker couldn’t be entirely blamed on Ms. Anonymous. Henry had put him on that road long before the gossip column was created. He supposed it was a side effect of knowing him so well. Their friendship had no doubt lasted this long because it was based as much on rivalry and one-upmanship as mutual admiration. Everything was a competition. A new challenge.
When Henry won an award for his poetry, Peter became one of the youngest authors to have an essay published in an esteemed scientific journal. When Peter led their school basketball team to victory after Henry convinced him to leave the math lab and join the team, it was his friend who managed to celebrate with the cheerleaders. All of them, much to the dismay of Peter’s teammates.
And their game was still going strong, Peter couldn’t stop his lips from twitching in amusement when he thought about the night he’d celebrated Henry’s Grammy win a few years ago. His evening with both an Olympic gymnast and an Academy Award nominee in Paris had been scandalous enough to steal all the headlines away from his best friend’s morning show victory lap. Henry had shrugged it off the way he always did, but he’d yet to top it.
Back in college, they’d both gone after Holly Ruskin with that same spirit of competition. At first. They’d each taken her out twice, doing their best to charm her out of those vintage dresses that hugged her hourglass figure before the other had a chance. How she’d managed to hold their interest while skillfully keeping her clothes on and not letting either get past first base, Peter would never know. It was a talent he hadn’t encountered in a woman before or since.
By the end of his second date, after she laughed at something he’d been taking seriously and kissed him senseless in front of the bookstore, Peter had stopped thinking of her as a challenge to be met. He’d begun to want something different. Something new.
The kiss had changed everything. It tasted like the sweet mint tea she’d had at the restaurant and red cherry lip gloss. Like raw, carnal sex that lasted all night and a thousand lazy morning-afters. Like falling in love for the first time in his life.
The more he learned the more he wanted to know. Everything about her fascinated him. From her raven-black hair to the broken heart tattoo on her ankle, and every mouth-watering inch in between. The way she argued passionately with her professors in class and laughed in delight whenever anyone attempted to put her down because she worked in a diner instead of living off her stepfather’s wealth. Holly was down to earth and fearless. Different. Sexy, funny, and completely unimpressed with his pedigree. She saw him, who he was beneath the surface, and she wanted to know more.
He’d been planning to talk to Henry about backing off when Holly turned the tables on him by inviting them both out to dinner. During appetizers she’d let them know she was aware of their competition. By dessert she’d made it clear that she wouldn’t mind letting it continue.
His phone vibrated against the table and he sighed disagreeably, knowing who it would be.