Waking Up with a Billionaire (The Overnight Billionaires Book 3) (8 page)

“Which is exactly why this charity event needs to be a success.” Mrs. Beaumont’s gaze sharpened as she gave Chloe a thorough once-over. “And I think I’ve just figured out how to make it one. How far along is Grayson’s painting of you?”

“Umm…not very.”

“Well, we’ll have to do something about that, now won’t we?” Mrs. Beaumont’s chin lifted. “I have decided that your painting, my dear, is going to be the focal point of the charity benefit. The fact that your mother died of cancer as well will tug at people’s heartstrings…and their wallets.” As if that were the end of the conversation, she breezed past Chloe on her way to the front door.

“Wait a minute!” Chloe followed her. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you out with the benefit.”

Mrs. Beaumont stopped. She was a head shorter than Chloe, which didn’t explain why she could still look down her nose. “If you’re worried about your name being released with your nude picture, don’t be. Your name will be kept a secret. People don’t need to know who you are. They just need to know that you have lost a loved one to cancer.”

“That’s not it,” Chloe said. “I’m leaving town in a few days.”

Mrs. Beaumont studied her as if she were a smashed bug on a windshield. “That will not do. Whatever he’s paying you to pose, I’ll pay you double.”

Double?
If Mrs. Beaumont paid her double the money and Grayson paid her too, she would have plenty to relocate. And if Grayson didn’t paint her face and Mrs. Beaumont didn’t release her name, then no one would know who she was. Of course there was still one little problem standing in her way. A problem that Mrs. Beaumont would have to find out about sooner or later.

“I’m afraid that Grayson has painter’s block,” she blurted out. “He can’t even paint an apple.”

Mrs. Beaumont blinked as if Chloe were talking Madison’s pig Latin. “Painter’s block? Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never heard of such a thing. And of course he can’t paint an apple. There’s only one thing that inspires Grayson.” She sent Chloe a pointed look. “And since you’re only here for a few days, my dear, I suggest you strip as soon as he walks in that door.”

A
fter he’d ticked off Miles, Natalia, and Deirdre in the morning, Grayson’s afternoon didn’t improve. He accidentally hung up on one of the stockholders when he tried to put her on hold. Knocked over his cup of coffee and spilled it all over Deacon’s desk, including some important documents. And totally spaced out in a meeting and couldn’t ask one intelligent question. The morning he blamed on himself. The afternoon he blamed on Chloe.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Or more like thinking about the wrath she was going to unleash on him when he got home. He had little doubt that she’d spent the day planning revenge. And when he walked through the door of his bedroom, he expected her to let him have it. Which was probably why, after he left the office, he postponed going home by stopping by to see his new nephew.

Deacon and Olivia had a beautiful house in Pacific Heights. Since Grayson didn’t want to risk his Bugatti’s getting hit on the narrow, hilly streets, he pulled into the driveway on the side of the house and entered through the kitchen door. The housekeeper was standing at the stove and jumped in surprise when she saw him, dropping her wooden spoon.

Grayson quickly walked over and picked it up. “Sorry, Lucia, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He handed her the spoon. “What are you cooking? It smells delicious.” He didn’t know if she would understand the question. Lucia was from Peru and still struggled with the language. He was surprised when she not only understood but responded in English.

“Soup for mister and missus.” She placed the spoon in the sink and grabbed another one from the utensil container next to the stove. “You want?”

He smiled. “You’ve been studying.”

Her face flushed. “The missus, she pay for my tutor.” Her brow wrinkled with concentration. “Would you like some soup, Mr. Gray-son?”

“I would love some, but could you make it to go? I can’t stay long.” He glanced at the doorway. “So where is everyone?”

“Upstairs with the sweet one.”

“Is he sleeping? Maybe I should come back later.”

Lucia shook her head. “You no worry about that, Mr. Grayson. He sleep most the day and stay up most the night.” She grinned. “Much to Daddy’s trouble.”

The housekeeper’s word choice might be wrong, but Grayson had no problem understanding what she meant. He laughed. “So I guess little Mikey isn’t following my big brother’s plan?”

Lucia held up her thumb and forefinger. “Not even little.”

“This should be interesting.” Grayson headed through the kitchen to the stairs that led up to the bedrooms. He peeked into Deacon and Olivia’s room and found his sister-in-law sprawled across the huge bed as if she had just fallen onto it and passed out. She was wearing a wrinkled pair of pajamas, and one house slipper dangled from the foot that hung off the bed.

Grayson walked in and removed her slipper before placing the edge of the down comforter over her. Then he went in search of his brother. He found Deacon in the next room trying to quiet his fussing son. He appeared as exhausted as Olivia. His hair was mussed, as if he’d been running his fingers through it, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in days.

“Now that will be quite enough, Michael Paris,” Deacon said in the same stern voice he used with French Kiss employees…and his brothers. “You’ve been fed, burped, and diapered exactly like it says in the book. It’s time to go to sleep, young man.” Mikey minded almost as well as Nash did. Instead of stopping, his fussing grew louder.

Grayson bit back a grin as he rested a shoulder on the doorjamb. “Somehow I don’t think he’s listening.”

Deacon turned around. “Holy hell, Gray, you scared the sh—”—he glanced at Mikey—“the shoot out of me. And close the door, would you? I don’t want to wake Olivia. She was up all night.”

Grayson walked into the room, pulling the door closed behind him. “From the looks of things, she wasn’t the only one up all night. You look like hell, Deke.”

His brother glared at him as he jostled Michael on his shoulder. “Shut up and hand me that Binky.”

“The what?”

“The pacifier.”

Grayson looked around the room at all the baby paraphernalia. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“The blue nipple-looking thing on the diaper table.”

“Gotcha.” Grayson walked over and had started to grab it when Deacon yelled.

“Don’t touch the nipple, you idiot! It’s sterilized.”

Using just the tips of his fingers, Grayson grabbed the plastic ring of the pacifier and carried it to Deacon, who quickly stuck it in the baby’s mouth. It worked for about two seconds before Mikey spit it out and continued to cry. Both Deacon and Grayson stared at the pacifier on the floor.

“So I guess it’s not sterilized anymore,” Grayson said.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“You mean
shoot
, don’t you? No shoot, Sherlock.” When Deacon mad-dogged him, Grayson figured he’d teased his brother enough. Especially when Deacon looked like he had been put through their grandmother’s old washing machine wringer. “Here,” he said as he held out his hands, “let me see if I can quiet the little guy.”

Deacon hesitated for only a second before he pointed to a bottle of hand sanitizer on the dresser. Once Grayson had disinfected his hands, Deacon handed the baby over. “Be careful. You have to support his head.”

“I got him. So you can let go now.”

“Don’t hold him like a football. You have to cradle him like a watermelon.”

Grayson adjusted Michael in the crook of his arm. “Okay, Deke. Relax, man. I’m not going to drop my nephew on his head. That would be something that Nash would do. And quit hovering. You’re freaking Mikey out even more.”

To get away from his domineering brother, Grayson walked to the window and tried to quiet his nephew by bouncing him. It seemed to work. Mikey’s cries stopped, although Grayson wasn’t sure if it was due to the bouncing or the view outside the window. Mikey’s eyes seemed to be focused on the garden that twilight had painted with strokes of ultramarine, cerulean blue, and cobalt violet. It was an overwhelmingly beautiful sight that needed to be captured on canvas. It was too bad that Grayson could no longer capture anything.

“What happened?” Deacon hurried over.

Grayson looked down at the wrinkled face peeking from the swaddled blanket. “I’m not sure, but I think he likes gardens.”

“Gardens?” Deacon picked up a book that sat on a table by the rocker and thumbed through it. “This didn’t say anything about babies liking those.”

“Maybe every baby is different. You, Nash, and I are all different.” He glanced down at Mikey. “Hey, I think he’s going to sleep. Should I put him in his crib?”

“No!” Deacon hissed in a whisper. “That’s what started him crying the last time. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Grayson continued to bounce. “For how long?”

“For as long as he’s sleeping.” Deacon slumped down in the rocking chair. “But don’t worry. It never seems to be more than ten minutes.” He released his breath and leaned his head back. “So fill me in on what’s going on at the office. I saw the
ET
piece, and you handled it well. You answered the question about being handcuffed with just enough detail to satisfy people’s curiosity, but not enough to make them think that you were hiding anything. And once the camera panned over to Madison and Natalia, no one cared about you anyway.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“It’s true. Those two models are worth their weight in underwear. And speaking of Madison and Natalia, I want them front and center in the new catalog. Miles took some great shots of them that should work.”

This was the point where Grayson should have mentioned that he’d pissed off both Miles and Natalia. Instead he left that piece of information out and skirted the subject.

“I’m not really feeling the photos that Miles took. I want something edgier—especially for my collections.”

Deacon opened his eyes. “Edgier?” He thought for a moment before he nodded. “Okay, I’ll leave that up to you. I’ll have enough to worry about when I get back in a few days.”

“Are you sure you’ll be ready to come back to work in a few days?” Grayson glanced down at his sleeping nephew.

“Mikey is going to be fine. He just needs to figure things out.”

Somehow Grayson didn’t think it was Mikey who needed to figure things out as much as his father, but he kept that to himself. He bounced the baby for a few more minutes before he glanced at the cow-jumping-over-the-moon clock on the wall.

“I better get going, Deke.” He turned to hand the baby off to his brother and discovered Deacon fast asleep in the rocker.

If Chloe hadn’t been locked in his bedroom, Grayson might’ve continued to hold the kid and let his brother sleep. But he’d delayed dealing with her wrath long enough. So he carried Mikey to his crib and tried to lay him down. But as soon as his nephew’s cheek touched the sheet, he started crying, waking up not only his father but also his mother.

During the ensuing chaos, Grayson slipped out of the room. Not more than fifteen minutes later, he was entering his house with a Tupperware container of Lucia’s spicy chicken soup. He should’ve stopped by the grocery store for some bread to go with it. And some smooth peanut butter and chocolate milk. His paltry offering of soup probably wasn’t going to go over very well.

Loosening his tie, he climbed the stairs and prepared for battle. He froze on the landing when he noticed his bedroom door was open. One glance told him that Chloe was gone…and that his room was spotless. Which annoyed him almost as much as her being gone.

“What the hell?” he said.

“What the hell is right.”

He glanced up and saw Chloe’s head peeking over the steel-and-glass railing of the staircase.

“What the hell kind of jailer are you, leaving me nothing but a few measly crackers and crappy crunchy peanut butter?” she asked.

Grayson didn’t know if he felt relief or regret that she was still in the house. He climbed the stairs and found her standing at the top. She wore an oversize T-shirt, her legs bare and her painted toes curled over the top step like ten tiny black piano keys. Since she stood on the top stair, their lips were even. Although why he noticed that he couldn’t have said.

“So did you climb out the window or jimmy the lock?” he asked.

“How would I jimmy a dead bolt?” She nodded at the container in his hand. “So is that all you brought me for dinner? What are you trying to do? Starve me to death?”

He glanced up at the ceiling. “Okay, so when is the bucket of hot tar going to drop on me?”

“You are such a wussy, Gray,” she tossed over her shoulder as she turned and walked away.

It wasn’t the
wussy
part as much as his shortened name that made him tense. Only his family called him Gray. Only the people who cared about him. And Chloe did not care about him.

He jerked off his tie as he climbed the stairs. She was seated at the breakfast bar with her chin cupped in her hand. Those big brown eyes followed him as he tossed his tie on the back of the couch and walked into the kitchen. He tried to ignore her as he pulled a bowl from the cupboard, but it was hard when she wouldn’t shut up.

“Please don’t worry about fixing anything for me. I already made myself an omelet. You’re out of eggs, by the way. And sardines.”

He turned. “You ate Jonathan’s sardines?”

“Oops.” She made a face. “I didn’t realize those were for your pet. Although he probably wouldn’t have eaten them anyway. He was too busy destroying your bamboo plant on the balcony. Not that it was a big loss. It was a bad choice for your small balcony. I would recommend a golden creeping Jenny potted with some Japanese pieris.”

He poured some soup out of the container and into his bowl. “Let me guess, you know plants as well as you know how to cut hair.” He put the bowl of soup in the microwave and slammed the door a little harder than necessary before hitting the minute button. Then he turned to Chloe. “So why didn’t you leave?”

She shrugged. “I started thinking about Eden’s honeymoon. And I don’t really want to ruin it. So I guess I’ll stay until she gets back. It’s the least I can do, since she gave me a place to stay after I left Zac.” She looked down at her finger, which was tracing a vein of the granite countertop. “And since you’re the one who took me to her parents’ house, I guess I owe you too.”

“You owe me nothing.”

She lifted her gaze and smiled. “Good. Because I hate to owe people. And speaking of owing…Olivia’s mother came by and wasn’t real thrilled with the selection of paintings.”

Grayson stared at her in disbelief. “You let Deirdre go through my paintings?”

“What was I supposed to do when she had a key and let herself in? Kick her out? She’s your brother’s mother-in-law, for God’s sake. Besides, she had to find out sometime that you lost your ability to paint.”

His eyes widened. “You told her that?”

“Don’t worry. She refused to believe that you’ve lost your painting mojo.”

Up until that point, he’d done a pretty good job of keeping his anger in check. But no more. He took two steps closer, his voice ringing off the ceiling. “I did not lose my painting mojo!”

She completely ignored his anger and slipped off the barstool, then casually strolled over to a kitchen drawer. Obviously she’d spent most of the day going through his things because she had to open only one before she found what she wanted. She pulled out the sketchpad and one of his mechanical pencils.

“Then go ahead and sketch something.” She held them out. “The coffeemaker. The light fixture. Me.” She flapped the sketchpad. “Draw anything.”

Just looking at the sketchpad and pencil made cold sweat bead up on his forehead. And it pissed him off to no end that she knew exactly how terrified he was.

“Fuck you.” He pushed past her and walked out of the room. He took the stairs two at a time and got real satisfaction from slamming his bedroom door. He stripped off his shirt and dropped it to the floor, kicked his shoes at the closet, then took off his pants and left them puddled by the bed. He had just jerked the neatly made covers back when the door opened and Chloe walked in with his bowl of soup.