The Billionaire's Secret: A BWWM Romance Mystery (2 page)

"It is!" I exclaimed, happy
to be back in safer territory. "It's a whole hidden meaning. You can put
together a bouquet that tells this whole story...."

I trailed off as I realized he wasn't
even looking at the book anymore. "I am really glad I met you today,
Shay," Liam said.

He sounded sincere. He looked
sincere. Every cell in my body wanted to believe he was sincere. I wanted to
say
me too.

But the small, wounded part of me,
still protective and suspicious, shut my lips and instead I just smiled. And
the moment of openness passed. I felt myself close up tightly again. "So,
Liam. What is your bouquet going to say?" I lifted my pen.

Segues were never my strong point.

He blinked. "I'm trying to
say...." He thought for a minute. Several shadows passed over his face. "I
want to tell her I'm proud of her."

Wait.

Her?

Chapter Three

Her. Of course it was for a
her.

Hot, angry blood beat in my ears.
Her?
How
dare he?
Flirting like this when he was already with someone? What kind of
arrogant bastard does that?

The kind of arrogant bastard you always fall for? The kind of arrogant
bastard you married?

I opened and closed my mouth several
times, each time having to bite my bitter words back.
You cheating son of a bitch, your woman deserves better than you
I
didn't say.

I also didn't slap the dimple off of
his beautiful face.

Instead
I swallowed and tried to regain my professional tone.
 
"You're proud of
her
."
Emphasis on the her. "
Pride, ah, yes, well that's amaryllis,
that's easy."

I stalked over to the fridge and let
the cool air blast my overheated face and took a deep breath. It helped being
away from his dizzying presence.

Feeling marginally less ready to kill
him, I pulled out the few amaryllis we had. "It's a beautiful flower, almost
like a lily." I turned around to see him staring at me, an odd expression
on his face. It was unnerving. I looked back down at the flower instead. "I
like how the petals aren't perfect. They're a little tattered looking,
see?"

He was breathing heavily. "I'll
have to think about it." He looked ill. "I'm...not sure that's saying
exactly what I want to say."

I swallowed again. The store needed
this sale. I had to tamp down my hard feelings and do the whole good customer
service thing. "Well, tell me more about her?"
How long have you been cheating on her, for one?

"She's been through a lot and
she's come out the other side."

I felt my heart skip sideways.
Poor thing gets cheated on right when she
comes through the bad times.
But I looked at Liam again. He was clearly
thinking carefully about this. Who was this man, putting this much thought into
a bouquet? Standing there, in a coat that cost more than my car, fretting about
buying flowers that "mean" something.

Maybe I had misread the flirting?
Maybe I had been out of the game so long I was just desperately seeing
something that wasn't there?

"Well, now," I heard my voice
softening slightly. Jasmine always said I had the worst kind of soft heart.
"You don't have to make it solely flowers," I told him. "Foliage
adds color both to the bouquet and the language. We can add oak leaves, those
mean bravery."

"Yes," his eyes glinted. They
really were the color of the sea in winter.

"There's also 'hope in adversity.'
That's pine, which is nice with the season."

"What about her being
happy?"

I felt my heart skip a small beat.
If you're cheating, no amount of flowers
will make her truly happy. A bit of advice, free of charge.
"Well we
can say two things. There are yellow roses, of course."

He raised an eyebrow. "You said
those mean friendship."

"They do, but not in Victorian
language. That’s like the...," I waved my hands in the air, trying to grab
the right word, "The...superficial meaning. Yeah, there's happiness, but
then there's also the
return
to
happiness. And
that's
lily of the
valley."

He nodded. "She'd like that."

I swallowed. "Okay, so we have a
bouquet here that says bravery, hope in adversity, the return of happiness and
pride. I think you'll want the red amaryllis. Contrast with the little white of
the lily of the valley." I held a few sprigs together to show him.

He cocked his head. "What about
that one?"

I moved to where he pointed to the
brilliantly red and white striped amaryllis still in the fridge case.
"Yes," I nodded, impressed. "This is even better."

Liam tapped the order form. "So,
this bouquet, this
tussie-mussie
,"
He looked at me and dimpled and my anger flared anew. "It says 'I am proud
you made it through the hard times and now I want you to be happy?'"

"Yes." I clenched my fists.

"Perfect." He whipped out
his card. It was black, heavier than normal, made out of some kind of metal
instead of plastic. "When can I pick it up?"

"I can have it for you the day
after tomorrow, provided the snow doesn't cut off our shipments."

"That's perfect." He looked
at me sincerely for a moment. "I really want to thank you, Shay." He
wielded my name like a caress. I felt the breath squeezed out of my lungs.

"You're welcome," I said
tightly.

He extended his hand. I didn't want
to touch him. I wanted him out of the store, out of my life before I did
something I would regret forever. I never wanted another woman to feel as bad
as I did when Tre cheated on me. I would never be the source of someone else's
misery. But those eyes...

They needed to
go.

"Okay. Thank you so much for
your order, Liam," I wanted to say his name again for some reason.

He moved a little closer.
"There's just one more thing...Shay."

He was close enough to slap. Or kiss.
"What?"

"You said I had no idea what to
do with you. I'd like to prove you wrong...."

Something inside of me snapped.
"I don't think so,
Liam
" I
spat. "You've got some fucking nerve, you know that? Cheaters. You make me
sick."

He looked startled and then amused.
"Wait, you think...?" Then he laughed, "You've got the wrong
idea, Shay."

"Do I?" I seethed icily.
"Actually, in fact I think I have the exact right one." My voice was
rising.
 
"What exactly are you
trying to pull here?" I snapped.

Just then Kit banged the back office
door wide open. "Thank you so much sir, we'll be sure to have that ready
for you tomorrow," he trilled, stepping over to my side. Keeping his eyes
on Liam, he very carefully stepped down on my toes. "What the hell are you
doing?" he singsonged under his breath at me as he waved. "Stay warm
out there, sir, haha...."

Liam shook his head. The bastard was
laughing. I wanted to fly at him, scratch his eyes out, but Kit's heavy boot
had me pinned down.

The door shut behind him and Kit whirled
on me. "What the fuck was that, Shay?"

"He's a cheater, Kit," I
shrieked, my anger exploding.
 
"The
cocky asshole was hitting on me while he put together a bouquet for his
girlfriend!"

Kit held up both hands. "Oh
honey," he shook his head and exhaled. "You need to calm down, okay?
You can't be this...one-woman-morality-crusade against the cheaters of the
world. We need their business." He lowered his voice. "
Mom
needs their business. If a man wants
to come in here and buy a fucking expensive bouquet for his lady and chat you up
at the same time, you need to smile and let it roll off of you. They all aren't
Tre, lover."

I clenched my fists and fought back
the tears, but Kit cocked his head at me and suddenly I dissolved. "Oh
shit, honey, shit I'm sorry," he crooned, folding me into his bear hug.
"You're gonna be fine lover, you already are. You're so much better off
without that shit husband of yours."

"I know," I sniffed.
"I don't regret leaving him for a second. I regret staying as long as I
did."

"You're a different woman now.
Stronger, smarter. You came out okay."

"I'm okay," I repeated,
knuckling away a tear. "But do me a favor?"

"Anything for you."

"You give him the order when
it's done, okay?"

Kit's eyes widened. "Thought you
needed me to do you a favor, but honey, you're doing one for me! Oh my god, did
you see those eyes?"

"Don't remind me," I
mumbled.

Chapter
Four

"He hit on you, then made you
put together a bouquet for his girlfriend? How could he do that?" Kiki's
mouth was a perfect 'O' of shock.

Jasmine sighed noisily and raised her
eyebrows in that arch way she had. I felt sorry for the freshmen unlucky enough
to land in her lecture classes. "Kiki, honey, it only surprises you that
people are awful because everyone loves you."

It was true. With her heart shaped
face and sparkling chocolate eyes, Keysha Mills inspired devotion in everyone
she met. She approached the world with the wide-eyed innocence of a Disney
heroine, and trusted in its goodness. The world seemed to band together to
protect her from ever being hurt, Jasmine and me being her biggest protectors.
She returned the favor by being the most sincerely devoted and loyal friend you
could ask for.

Jasmine, on the other hand, she was
as suspicious and hard-nosed as they came. She viewed everything through the
lens of skepticism. Devastatingly intelligent, I had seen her reduce grown men
to tears just with the sharpness of her tongue. I was always grateful that she
actually liked me and was on my side.

 
My two best friends could not be more
different and I fell somewhere on the line between the two of them. I was not
as naive as Kiki, not anymore anyway, but I was far from Jazzy's world-weary
panache. I was somewhere in the middle. I hoped.

"So he was pretty rich
though?" Jazzy prompted. We were out, at my insistence, at the
hole-in-the-wall Thai place that was way too good for its crappy shopping plaza
surroundings.

I set down my menu. The bone chilling
winter cold had me craving Thai curries. "Want to know exactly how rich?
We used the Graves Foundation as a case study in business school. They're
that
rich."

Kiki made an impressed sound. Jazzy
just looked disgusted. "...can get away with anything...," I heard
her mutter. The "excesses of the plutocracy," as she would call it,
was one of her favorite topics and I knew I'd be hearing all about it later,
most likely while I was trying to get ready for bed.

I hated that I still hadn't found a
place of my own, but I was subject to the whims of my temperamental car and
couldn't move too far away from the flower shop. Anything within a sane walking
distance of the gentrifying block was way out of my price range. So for now I
was still crashing in Jazzy's office cum guest room, sleeping under a pile of afghans
crocheted by her mother.
 
All of my
stuff was still in storage, the remnants of my year and a half long failure of
a marriage.

It wasn't like the two of them hadn't
tried to warn me about Tre stepping out.
 
He wasn't exactly secretive about his
side-pieces. I was naive enough to ignore all of the warning signs until my
best friends had to practically bludgeon me upside the head with the evidence.

Deep down I had always known Tre was
a cheater. It was just easy to ignore how bad he made me feel because he always
made me feel so
good
afterward - the
attention, the compliments, the backrubs. He would make promises to me, get me
purring again, content as a housecat, then go trotting off to cheat on me once
again. And then it would be the same routine as before - the late nights at the
office, the weird phone calls, the fevered texting as I laid in bed next to him,
pretending to sleep. I was a fool. An innocent, trusting fool.

The day I finally confronted him with
the emails he left open, he lied to my face. I told him either he had to get
out, or I would.

He was still lying to me as I walked
out the door.

No, Kiki and Jazzy tried to warn me about
Tre and I hadn't listened to their advice until it was way too late.

I wasn't ever going to make that
mistake again.

Not that this episode with Liam was
going to require advice. Clearly he was a dog and a cheater, and after tomorrow
I would never see him again.

Still, he had gotten under my skin in
a way no man had in the six months my divorce had been finalized. "Pretty
slick, the way he was getting to me though, talking about flowers meaning
something," I added.

"It's like he read your manual
before coming in the store," Jazzy remarked, picking up her menu again.
"'How to get under Shay's skin. Step one, talk flowers.'"

"'Step two, be ridiculously hot,'"
I muttered angrily.

"He was hot too?" Kiki
fluttered her eyelashes. "Wow, that lucky girl."

I flashed back to his stormy gray
eyes and shook my head to clear them away. "If he's a cheater, she isn't
lucky at all. He's probably breaking her heart over and over again." I was
warming to my favorite topic of late. "He probably showers her with
flowers and gifts, treats her like a princess and then goes off and does
whatever he wants. Rich prick!" Cheating men and their nefarious ways. It
seemed like a never-ending refrain of mine.

Keysha and Jasmine eyed each other
and seemed relieved when the waiter came to our table, sparing them from the
rest of my rant. "Are you ready to order?" he asked in that soft,
lilting accent of his.

I took a deep breath. "The
usual," I smiled up at him.

"Jasmine tea, vegetable rolls
and green curry, very good," he smiled back.
 
I had asked him his name numerous times,
but to my embarrassment I never was able to pronounce it correctly. He sure
knew my order though.

"I'll have the red chicken curry,"
Kiki said. "Extra hot, please." In spite of her sweet ways, Kiki was
a demon for spicy food. Neither of us could touch her dinner plate without
spontaneously combusting.

"Dragon noodles, medium,"
Jasmine finally decided. "And could I have chopsticks?"

"Of course," the waiter
took our menus. "You ladies enjoy."

"I love him," Kiki sighed
as the waiter left. "He's so nice."

"You say that about
everyone," Jasmine huffed. "It's you that's nice, babe."

"That's so nice," Kiki
squeaked and I had to laugh.

"Sorry that I'm especially
man-hating tonight," I sighed.

The two glanced at each other.
"It's fine, honey. That's what we're here for," Jasmine said.

I felt instantly guilty. "What's
going on with you? You haven't been home in a few evenings."

"Start of a new semester."
Jasmine was an associate professor at a college out in the suburbs.

"Oh my gosh, that's right, I'm
sorry."

"You've been wrapped up in your
own thing."

I felt like a terrible friend.
"Well how's your course load?"

"Manageable."
 
She nodded at the waiter as he set the
teapot in the center of our table.
 
"Nothing really earth-shaking."

I nodded. That was all I could get
out of her. Bitching and gossiping about her job was something Jasmine never
did. Jasmine kept her work life and social life so completely separate; I
sometimes forgot she even had a job. She managed to make balance and harmony
actually look achievable. Living with her these past few months had taught me
more about being an adult than my parents ever had.

Mom and Dad were just eager to hand
me off to the first guy that came along, so they could go back to life being
what it was before my birth interrupted their good time. I always suspected as
much, and it was confirmed pretty clearly the night I announced my engagement
at the tender age of twenty-two.
"She's
someone else's problem now,"
I heard my dad tell my mom behind their
bedroom door.
"We're finally
done."

I shifted in my chair. No need to
relive the bad memories. "And how are the kids?" I asked Keysha.

Kiki sighed rapturously. She was a
teacher at one of the special ed preschools for the county. "There's this
little guy? Trevor? He's absolutely truck-obsessed. For weeks I couldn't get
him out of the corner. He just stayed there with his tucks, rolling them across
the windowsill, completely oblivious to everything else." Her eyes shone.
"Today? He sat on my lap."

"Oh that's incredible,
congratulations!" I clapped. Kiki beamed.

"Is he autistic?" Jasmine
wanted to know.

"Spectrum for sure. But he's
such a special little guy, I hated that he was so locked-up." She looked
down at her fork and sighed. "I hope the parents are doing the recommended
OT."

"He has you, and that's so
important," Jasmine smiled and patted Kiki's thigh.

The pensive look slid right off of
Kiki's face and she went right back to beaming.

I smiled at them both and as I did, I
caught my reflection in the darkened plate glass window behind Jazzy. In the
low light, I felt beautiful and safe for the first time in a long time. Snug in
the warm restaurant with my two best friends while the world froze out in the
dark gave me a safe, warm feeling in my belly.

It was fleeting, gone before I could
grasp it and hold on, but it was enough to make me duck back down to my curry
with a smile on my face.

I was going to be just fine.