What Matters Most: The Billionaire Bargains, Book 2 (9 page)

Narrowing it down to the top three would be tough. “We didn’t talk about that last night either.”

“You don’t know that.”

“If we’d talked about it, you wouldn’t be asking.”

She shrugged and finished her drink. “Maybe I want to see if you name the same three you did last night.”

“You didn’t know about Jenni. And that was probably number one.”

“Maybe you were so caught up in me, you didn’t think about her once.”

He thought about that. “That was very possible.”

She snorted. “Three more dumb things. Go.”

Well, he could just pull three out. There were plenty to pick from.

“I might have spent a million dollars on a beer mug that Mickey Mantle once used.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

“How do you know Mickey Mantle used it?”

He paused. “Exactly.”

Her smile was slow but knowing. “I see.” Then she frowned. “You really have a million dollars to spend on stupid crap?”

No one
really
had a million dollars to spend on stupid crap. “I have a lot of baseball memorabilia. It’s my thing.”

She thought about that for a minute. “When you say a lot, are we talking like a room in your house or a whole separate house or what?”

He laughed. “Two rooms.”

“Okay.”

“Big rooms.”

She chuckled. “Well, that’s not exactly
stupid
.”

Okay, good. “Another of my top three—I decided I wanted to try skydiving, but everyone thought I needed to have lessons first. So I bought my own plane and equipment.”

She stopped dancing. “You
skydived
without any lessons? You just got a plane, went up and jumped out?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t actually jump. I looked down out of that plane and totally chickened out.”

She blew out a breath and started moving again. “Well,
that’s
not stupid.”

“And because I didn’t want to admit that I overreacted, I turned the plane into a skydiving business.”

She shrugged. “Turning an investment into a business isn’t stupid.”

“And I still haven’t skydived. I
own
a skydiving business and I haven’t skydived. That stupid, spontaneous urge scared the crap out of me and now I can’t do it.”

She laughed. “Again, not jumping out of airplanes is not really that stupid.”

“Okay, and then there was the time I kidnapped a woman.”

Reese stopped dancing again and stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“It was a misunderstanding,” he was quick to fill in.

“Uh, huh. Go on.”

“I was supposed to pick up a friend’s girlfriend from the airport,” Tony said. He tried to get Reese moving again, but she was having none of that. She crossed her arms, waiting for the rest of the story.

“The plan was to drive her around until I got the word from my friend that the big surprise he had planned back at her house was ready.”

“Okay.”

“So I picked Carrie up, we drove around, even when she got agitated, I kept going until I heard from my friend. She made a couple of calls, but she didn’t know my license plate number or anything, so by the time the cops showed up, we were back at my friend’s surprise party.”

“And then she forgave you and the cops realized it was just a mistake?”

“Not exactly. I spent the night in jail and had to explain to the judge in the morning that I had innocently picked up the wrong Carrie.”

Reese’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah. In my defense, even my friend admitted they looked a lot alike. And when I approached her and said “Carrie?” and she said yes,
and
she’d been waiting for a car service to pick her up… Well, I just got unlucky.”

Reese put a hand over her mouth.

He reached for her and she stepped back into his arms.

“Is it safe to say that most of the other stupid things have to do with women and/or money?” she asked a moment later

“Oh, yes, that is very safe to say. Money more often than women.” He thought about that for a minute. “I think. Yeah, that’s probably true.”

“But put the two together and you’re really in trouble?”

“And add in a little tequila and…” He realized what he was saying way too late. “I don’t mean.”

She waved it off. “No, of course not. In
my
case, it was the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

He really believed that. But it was pretty clear from her tone that she was being sarcastic.

“Reese—”

“And of course there was the time you lost this club to me in a poker game.”

Fucking Matt. Tony looked over his shoulder to find his friend—though he was beginning to use that term loosely in regards to
all
of his friends—standing there grinning at Reese.

“You lost this club?” Reese asked, looking from Matt to Tony. “In a
card game
?”

“Yes. But in all fairness, I only owned it for those six months because Matt lost it to
me
in a poker game,” Tony said.

Reese shook her head slightly. “Why do I think you would have put it up in a poker game even if Matt hadn’t owned it previously?”

“I didn’t want to own it anyway. It was a lot of work,” Tony said.

Matt nodded his agreement. “It is. I should have thrown that game. Being Tony’s club manager was way less pressure and paid pretty damned good.”

“You paid Matt to manage the club that you’d won off of him?” Reese asked. She rubbed her forehead. “Never mind.”

“Well, yeah. What do I know about owning a club?” Tony asked. He was a smart businessman who was successful in part because he knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t. And he knew how to hire the best to take care of the things he wasn’t good at.

Reese shook her head again. “I’m guessing Matt can add to the list of stupid things you’ve done?”

Tony shrugged. “I admit there have been more than four.”

“You do this stuff because you just don’t think things through or because you always have a plan B?”

Matt laughed and slapped Tony on the back. “Tony always lands on his feet. That’s what matters.”

Tony glared at the other man. Like Matt was so innocent. “You’ve charmed and paid your way out of plenty of messes.”

Matt nodded. “Sure have.”

One thing Tony did like about the men he called friends—they knew who they were and owned their successes and their faults. It came with the territory. When you dealt with other powerful men there was never a shortage of people pointing out your asshole and stupid moments.

“I just thought I should let you know that Liz is here,” Matt said.

“Fuck,” Tony muttered.

“Who’s Liz?” Reese asked, looking around as if trying to locate the other woman.

“An ex,” Matt said with a grin.

“Of yours or Tony’s?” Reese asked. “Or both?”

“Both,” Matt said.

Tony wanted to punch him.

“But she
really
hates Tony, and the last time they were both here I lost a shitload of glassware. So you need to get out of here.”

“Why can’t you make
her
leave? I was here first. And we’re
friends
,” Tony said.

And he and Reese hadn’t done the body shots yet. He needed to stay far away from the tequila, but there were plenty of other liquors he could happily lick and suck off of her.

“Because I’m sleeping with her,” Matt said.

“Jesus,” Tony muttered. “You’re a dumbass.” And he was ruining Tony’s night.

“Takes one to know one.”

“Who
are
you guys?” Reese asked. “I feel like I fell into a movie or something. This isn’t some big joke is it?” She sounded almost hopeful.

Matt laughed. “Well, I’d definitely ask to see the marriage certificate if I was the one who ended up married to Tony Steele. You just never know.”

Tony felt like telling Matt that it was
Reese
who was insisting their wedding had really happened, but he wasn’t sure that would help him at all.

“Nice to meet you, Reese,” Matt said, turning Tony toward the door. “And if you were here with anyone else, I’d let you stay as long as you wanted to. But Tony’s gotta go.”

“It’s fine,” Reese said, taking Tony’s hand. “The cab is where we first kissed. And the next club is where you proposed. The first time.”

Well, that’s all he needed to hear. “Fine. It’s not like there aren’t a dozen other great clubs in this city,” Tony said loud enough for Matt to hear.

“You going to take her to the other one you owned for a while?” Matt called. “That wasn’t a poker game though.”

As a matter of fact, that club was his second favorite in the city.

Thankfully, Tony and Reese moved out of earshot of Matt as they wound through the crowd on the way to the door.

“You owned
another
club for a while?” Reese asked.

She wasn’t going to let that go. Okay, great. “The owner owed me money and couldn’t pay, so she turned the club over to me.”

“She?”

He nodded and put his hand on Reese’s low back to usher her through the door and into the balmy Vegas night.

“What did she owe you money for?” Reese asked.

“She totaled my car.”

Reese stopped and turned to face him. “What car?”

“My Ferrari.” He felt his gut twist. He’d loved that car.

“You had a Ferrari?”

Reese had a strange look on her face and Tony felt like he needed to proceed with caution, but he wasn’t sure why. “Yes.” There, he’d just keep the answers simple and not get himself into trouble.

“And you had a girlfriend who totaled it and then paid you back by giving you her Vegas club?”

Again, he thought about his words before saying them. “She wasn’t a girlfriend. She borrowed the car without asking—”

“She stole it?” Reese’s voice rose a little.

Tony hadn’t considered it theft even when the cops had asked him the same question. “She was a friend. And I did leave the keys lying on the table…” When he’d gone out to dance with the two Victoria’s Secret models. Tony was proud he’d thought that through and
not
included that last bit of info.

“Okay, she borrowed it,” Reese conceded with an eye roll. “And totaled it. She was okay?”

“She was,” Tony confirmed. “And she only gave me her
part
of the club. She was a co-owner with six other people. So it’s not like I owned the whole club.”

“Right. Well, that makes it completely rational,” Reese said. Sarcastically.

“And then she bought it back from me. So I don’t actually own any Vegas clubs at the moment.”

He raised a hand and signaled for a cab. There was a backseat fantasy to fulfill for the gorgeous woman in front of him.

“What do you own?” Reese asked.

He looked down at her, his hand still in the air. “What do you mean?”

“What do you do for a living? You own a business or something, right?”

He nodded. “I own a few. I invest. I buy and sell things.” Truthfully, he did a lot of different things. He was nicely diversified. It helped not only his bottom line but his tendency to get bored easily.

“Tony,” Reese said, her tone very serious.

He dropped his hand and focused on her. “Yes?”

“When you offered me a million dollars earlier to recreate this night for you, were you serious? You could really give me a million dollars?”

He frowned, that same feeling of needing to tread carefully coming over him. But it was a straightforward question. “Yes.”

“And you really did spend a million dollars on a mug Mickey Mantle drank from? Like you just wrote a check for it?”

“Yes.”

She blew out a breath. “Who
are
you?”

A cab pulled up behind her and Tony signaled for the driver to wait. “What do you mean? I’m really Tony Steele. I can show you my driver’s license, credit report, whatever you need.”

“Are you secretly a celebrity or something?”

He laughed. “No.”

She frowned. “Well…what’s your company’s name?”

“T.S. Enterprises.”

She stared at him. “T.S. Enterprises?”

“T.S. Tony Steele,” he said. “Why?” His company was an investor in many businesses and behind many well-known companies and endeavors, but T.S. Enterprises itself wasn’t a household name.