Billion Dollar Mistake by K.C. Crowne

Chapter 1

ABBY

Just thinking about what happened was enough to make me want to crunch my paper latte cup in my hand.

“I know that look,” said Melanie, the barista I’d become fast friends with who worked at Rocky Roasters, a coffee shop I liked to frequent, especially after frustrating discussions with my parents. “It means they tried it again, right?”

She leaned forward on the counter, her chin resting in the crook of her pressed-together palms, her big brown eyes glistening with interest. Melanie happened to be the barista I vented to the most, and she was clearly getting to know my temperaments.

I sighed, not even knowing where to begin. My glance flicked toward the glass front of the shop, the tall windows looking out onto Cherry Creek, the ritzy, affluent neighborhood south of downtown where my parents lived. It was a beautiful day out, and part of me was frustrated as all hell that I was spending the afternoon in emergency cool-down mode after yet another brunch ambush with my parents.

“You sure you want to hear about it?” I asked. “I always feel so bad that you’re the dumping ground for me whenever I have a bad day with them.”

“You kidding?” she asked as she pulled the portafilter from the espresso machine and banged the grounds out into the nearby metal container. “Look at this place.” She swept her hand toward the empty coffee shop. “It’s the post-brunch crowd; we’re dead until early evening. So, it’s either sit behind the counter and refresh Instagram over and over or hear about all the amazing drama of the well-to-do.”

I snorted, smiling wryly as I shook my head. “I don’t know about well-to-do. We’re more like…upper-middle-class.”

“Come on,” she said with a grin as she reached over the counter and gave my shoulder a playful shove. “You showed me the house where your parents live. Upper-middle-class people don’t have three-story homes and Porsche collections.”

I guess she had me there. But I never liked to consider myself rich, despite it being true. It made me feel disconnected from other people. And it didn’t help that my parents liked to keep me tied up with their purse strings, always holding the fact that they covered my tuition over my head whenever they wanted me to fall in line, which just so happened to be the reason for the pain-in-the-ass brunch I’d just left.

“Let’s hear it,” she said, her mouth spread in a smile, her eyes still wide. “And I want all the details.”

One more sigh out of me as I pulled the plastic top off my latte for a sip. Part of me hated dumping all my dirty laundry on some poor barista’s lap. But Melanie did seem to have a taste for hearing about my life. Not to mention, it did feel good to get it off my chest.

“Alright, here goes. So, I was out with my parents having brunch…”

“No, no, no,” Melanie stopped me. “Haven’t you ever told a story before? You can’t just be like,” she lowered her voice, “’So, I was eating brunch with my parents…’ You’ve got to set the scene. Where was it? What were you eating? That kind of thing.”

“Wait, why did you lower you voice like that? You made me sound like Darth Vader or something.”

“Sorry, that’s just my go-to impersonation voice. But you know what I mean.” When she finished, a chime sounded from the cash register iPad. “OK, I just got a pickup order. I’ll start that, and you start the story. And this time give me all the details!”

I chuckled. “Alright, alright. OK, so my parents and I were at Olive & Finch. I was having the, um, Eggs Benedict. And my mom was having a salad, as usual. I swear, that woman eats nothing but salads. Dad was having a Bloody Mary and Wagyu steak and eggs.”

Olive and Finch, the immaculate interior of the place packed full of wealthy clientele like my parents. And, well, I guess technically I could be considered wealthy, too. Though it wasn’t my money that made me rich as my parents liked to remind me over and over.

“Oooh, a Bloody Mary? Was it one of those fancy ones with, like, tiny hamburgers stuck through the skewer?”

“Please, as if my parents would ever have anything as fun as that. I’ve told you about them before – they’re totally humorless. They care about money, their social standing in town, and, more recently, getting me out of school and into a marriage with a wealthy, approved man. And that’s what this conversation was all about.”

“I still think it’s ridiculous that you’re living on campus,” my father said. Dad was dressed in his usual outfit of a crisp, white dress shirt and fitted, charcoal gray slacks, a pair of shiny tassel loafers handmade in Italy for his feet and his feet alone. Dad was trim but fit, his face long, somber, and clean-shaven, his silver hair just long enough to be neatly parted.

“Why?” I asked. “Because you can’t keep an eye on me twenty-four-seven if I live on campus?”

“That’s not it at all,” my mother countered as she set down her mimosa glass. Mom was dressed in a cream-colored cable knit sweater with the collar pulled down, her slender neck rising from it. Mom was pretty, with water-blue eyes and auburn hair swept behind her ears. Everything about her outfit, from her diamond earrings to her gold tennis bracelet, screamed affluence. “It’s because a young woman like you, of your stature, has no business living in some dorm. What, does your roommate sleep in a bed just a few feet away on the other side of the room?” She said the word “dorm” as if it were the most distasteful thing she could imagine.

“It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s not a dorm. It’s a duplex.”

“I’m sure it’s awful either way,” Mom scoffed. “You’ve got a perfectly good bedroom at home where you can stay. Hell, the entire third floor is pretty much yours.”

“Well, there’s the little matter of it being a forty-minute drive to campus.”

“Small price to pay,” Dad said. “Especially seeing as you’re not…” He trailed off, and I knew right away what he was getting at.

“What?” I asked. “Not dating?” I waggled my fingers and said the tone in a spooky voice.

“Precisely,” Dad confirmed. “I know how college is these days – they let anyone in. I can’t think of anything more horrible than you getting swept off your feet by some philosophy major going a hundred-K into debt in preparation for a career at a coffee shop.”

“Ugh,” Melanie said back in the real world.

“I know, snobby as hell, right? That’s how my parents have always been. It’s like, if you make less than six figures you might as well not exist to them.”

“And the coffee shop crack is even worse. I swear, why is being a barista the default insult for failing in life? I like my job, believe it or not. Free coffee, and I don’t have to work in a stupid office. Anyway, go on.”

I chuckled, then went back into it.

“You keeping me from dating someone you don’t approve of is not a good enough reason to make me live at home. And you don’t need to worry about that, anyway. I’m going to med school for oncology. If I wanted to date, I picked about the worst path to allow me any sort of social life.”

Mom shuddered. “I don’t care how many times you say it, I’ll never get used to the fact that you’re going to school to have a job. Why would you even want to work?”

“Because that’s how you earn money?” I replied sarcastically.

“We earned money so you don’t have to,” Dad said before popping a succulent slice of steak into his mouth. “There’s no reason for you to bother with a career.”

“What if I want to do some good in the world?” I asked. “You know, not just be some kept woman who buys handbags and shoes all day. And besides, why did you even send me off to Penn State if you didn’t want me going to school?”

“School is fine,” Mom said. “Schools expected for people in our milieu, in fact. Hell, if you wanted to go to grad school and pick up a history or art degree, that would be another matter. It’s this wanting to be a doctor thing that really makes us uneasy.”

“Women shouldn’t be working,” Dad added. “They should be looking for the right man to start a family with. Trust us – having children and raising them right will be far more satisfying to you than any career could ever be.”

“And there’s the casual misogyny again. Actually, it’s not really even casual – more like, insanely aggressive.”

“’Casual misogyny,” Dad repeated, shaking his head as if I were a kid telling him about some fun fact about dinosaurs I learned in elementary school. “Another one of the drawbacks of college these days – you send your little girl off to school and she comes back using words like that.”

I opened my mouth to dispute what he’d just said, but I’d been in enough arguments with my parents about that subject that I knew better than to respond.

“But that doesn’t matter,” Mom continued. “If you want to live on campus, fine. If you want to study some silly medical books about cancer that take up all your time, then fine. If you want to entertain these big ideas about a career, then fine.”

It was all sounding good so far, but with my parents, this setup meant that they were going to drop a bomb.

“But you are going to let us find a man for you.”

“A suitable one,” Dad added. “One that you’d do us proud to see you marry.”

And there it was.

“Wait,” Melanie interrupted. “They want to set up an arranged marriage? What is this, medieval Europe?”

“That’s how things are done when you run in these circles,” I replied. Other people marry for love, but in the world my family runs in, you marry to keep money in the family. It’s insane. The worst thing you could do is marry some random guy who doesn’t have the breeding your family has.” I continued on with the story.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” I said. “I’m not going to date, let alone marry, some random guy because he’s a friend of a friend of the family. It’s weird.”

“We had a feeling you would sa2y something like that,” Mom said. “Which is why we took the liberty of inviting him to brunch with us.”

“Wait, you what?”

Dad rose from his seat slightly, smiling and waving to someone over my shoulder. My stomach dropped to my feet as I turned to see who was there. When I did, I wanted to scream.

“Josh,” Mom cooed. “So good to see you.”

There stood Josh Bramble, of the oh-so-well-known Bramble family, another rich clan who’d made their money in finance. I’d met Josh before at the various social events my parents had dragged me to over the years. He’d always struck me as one of the most arrogant, full-of-himself jackasses I’d ever encountered. He checked every box on the rich kid stereotype list.

I kept my eyes down at the table, as if I might be able to somehow ignore him. No such luck, of course, he came over and hugged my mom then shook my dad’s hand.

“A pleasure, Mr. and Mrs. Whittington,” he said in his nasally, snobby voice.

Josh was skinny and tall, with a dishonest face. He was dressed in an obviously expensive suit that fit him poorly – like he was a teenager wearing his dad’s clothes. He wore a gold watch, a gold signet ring, and a gold bracelet and – not even joking about this one - a gold earring, just one. I could only guess it was his faint awareness of the bounds of good taste that prevented him from going for a gold tooth.

But it wasn’t his gaudy clothes that made me sick to see him. No, it was the fact that Josh had always had a thing for me, and he’d made that clear over and over throughout the years despite me telling him at every turn that I wasn’t interested. He was a total, full-of-himself prick - one of those rich kids who was sure he’d always get what he wanted, in time.

Including me.

“Joshua,” Dad began when he reached over to shake his hand. “Such a pleasure, as always.”

“Such a pleasure,” Mom added, as if we were meeting the Queen of England and not some twerp who coasted through life on his daddy’s credit card.

“And Abigail,” Josh said, turning his narrowed eyes to me. “I can’t begin to say how good it is to see you.”

The feeling was not mutual, not in the slightest. But what was I supposed to do, smash one of my eggs Benedict on his forehead, splattering some Hollandaise sauce on his ugly Hermes tie? As satisfying as that sounded in the moment, it simply wasn’t an option.

My parents’ eyes burned into me as I faced Josh. Holding back a sigh, I offered my hand, and he eagerly took it. His palm was sweaty, as if he were far too excited to see me.

I felt horrible. My parents, despite knowing that I wasn’t interested in Josh, and never would be, had set me up on a blind meeting with him.

“And that wasn’t even the worst 2part.”

“What was?” Melanie asked, totally transfixed in the story as she put her to-go orders in a paper tray. “Did they want to force you to marry him on the spot, right there in front of the brunch crowd?”

“Nope.”

“Well,” Dad said as he dabbed the corners of his mouth and set the napkin down on his plate. “We’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Wait,” I spoke a little too loud. “What?”

Mom smiled. “This is a date, dear. You think we’re going to intrude upon you two? We wouldn’t dream of it.”

“A date?” Melanie asked. “They seriously sprang a date on you right then and there?”

“That’s right,” I replied, my blood boiling at just the thought of it. “And the worst part is they surprised me with it because they knew I wouldn’t have gone along with it otherwise.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I came up with the flimsiest excuse of all time, told them that there was no way I could give Josh the time, I had a million things to study – you know, the typical stuff.”

“Did they buy it?”

“Yes and no. They got the hint that I wasn’t going to go for it then. But after Josh left, they told me in no uncertain terms that this date was going to happen, and that unless I wanted to be left living off student loans for the rest of my college education, with no help after that, I’d better start being more amenableto what they wanted from me.”

“Sheesh. But what’s wrong with loans? I know plenty of people in school who take them out.”

“This is med school we’re talking about. That means hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time this is all said and done. And there’s no way I have the time to get a job and make the extra money I’d need to support myself. Plus, there’s the little matter of me only being able to afford my apartment because of my parents’ help. I know I shouldn’t have gotten into a situation like this, but…”

“I get it,” Melanie said. “Totally frustrating situation. But what are you going to do? It sounds like you either tell your parents you’re fine going it on your own, or…”

“Or settle for a life of being married to one rich guy or another who’s obsessed with money and views me as nothing but a trophy to show off while he diddles his secretary. Not the kind of life I had in mind when I started med school.”

“Well,” Melanie spoke as she gave the to-go order one last look over. “I’m sure it’ll all work itself out. I mean, you’re totally smart! They don’t let dummies become oncologists, right? You’ll figure something out and —”

She didn’t get a chance to finish. The door chimed and Melanie’s gaze flicked up to the person who’d just walked in. Her jaw dropped, and her eyes went wide.

“Wow…”

“What?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

The moment I glanced over my shoulder I understood her reaction. The customer who’d entered had to have been about the best-looking man I’d ever seen in my life.

He was tall, well over six feet, with striking, icy blue eyes surrounded by black lashes, his tanned skin setting off the incredible, piercing blue of his eyes even more so. His cheekbones were strong, his jaw square, his lips full and kissable and one corner of his mouth curled just slightly, as if he were in on something that you weren’t. His hair was a dark brown and long enough to swoop back, thick and full, just a bit of greying at his temples.

His shoulders were broad, his hips slim, and his stride one of pure, self-assured confidence. He was dressed in a gray Henley, the buttons undone just enough to show off the lines of his pecs, the sleeves straining against his thick arms. A pair of dark blue jeans, worn brown boots, and a silver watch completed his effortless casual look.

He was older – no mistaking that. I couldn’t tell his exact age but had the sense it was no younger than late thirties, no older than mid-forties.

“Um, I’m going to, uh, drink my thing,” I said, raising my latte and grabbing my MacBook Air, hurrying away from the counter.

I caught his eyes on the way to my table, and however striking those icy blues were from afar, having them locked onto my own eyes close up was enough to make my blood run hot and my panties to instantly become wet.

I found my usual spot near the window and sat down, opening my computer and pretending to check my email as I watched the man approach the counter, Melanie all smiles.

“Hey, there,” he said, his voice low and perfect. “What’s good?” There was something to his voice – an accent I couldn’t quite place. It sounded Australian, but not quite.

“Um, everything!” Melanie answered through a big smile. “I can make anything you want.”

She began explaining the menu, telling him her favorites. Another chime announced someone entering the shop, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the way the man’s jeans clung to his ass long enough to turn and see who’d entered.

In the middle of my staring, a figure approached the table and came to a stop right in front of me.

“Well, look who it is.”

I glanced up to see who it was and, to my horror, saw that it was Josh. The combination of the effect the older man at the counter had on me, with seeing the guy I’d just fled from brunch to get away from, was almost too much. I nearly knocked my latte over trying to get ahold of myself.

“Uh, hi Josh.”

I wasn’t happy to see him in the slightest, but there he was. All smiles too, as if I’d been waiting for him to show up.

I regained my composure as quickly as I could, clearing my throat and squaring my shoulders.

“What are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “Your parents cut brunch short with you taking off to get to your…studies.” He glanced down at my laptop as if he didn’t quite believe me when I said I’d gone to study. “I figured I’d grab something to drink on the way home. But seeing that you’re here, I might just stay for a bit longer...”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I wouldn’t be very good company right now. I’m right in the middle of some very intensive lymph node studying and that waits for no one, unfortunately.”

“I’m sure you can spare a few minutes. I carved out time from my busy schedule to come meet with you and your parents. It’s the least you could do.”

I didn’t take kindly to his snotty attitude. But before I could retort, he pulled out the chair across from me and slid into it.

At that point, I was seething. But if there was one thing my parents taught me, to my detriment, at times, it was maintaining a polite veneer in public under all circumstances.

“Let me get something to drink, first,” he said. Josh raised his hand and got Melanie’s attention, who was still in the middle of chatting with the other guy. “One cappuccino, please? With extra foam?”

“It’s not a restaurant,” I said. “You want something, you go to the counter and order it.”

“She got the message,” he replied, quickly turning his eyes back to me, his terse tone suggesting he didn’t want to discuss the matter further. “And besides, now that I’ve got some time with you, I’m not about to lose a second of it. This can be a shortened version of the date I was promised.”

“This isn’t a date,” I said, growing more impatient by the second. “This is you sitting down in the middle of my studying.”

Another shrug. “It’s a formality is what it is.”

“Huh?” I was genuinely confused.

“Come on, Abby. You know that there’s been heat between us for years. You’re all about school these days, but I’ve got a damn good feeling that all it would take for the heat to turn to fire would be you giving me a chance.”

“Are you serious?”

He laughed, as if I were making a joke. “Of course, I am. And come on, you’d have to be blind not to see that there’s something between us. More than that, I’m a nice guy. All I want is the chance to prove it to you.”

“A nice guy, huh?” I wasn’t the most experienced girl in the world, but I knew enough about men to understand that the guys who made a big show out of being nice guys were usually anything but.

“Yep. But I can’t wait to show you that I can be very naughty when I want to be.”

I was confused, and a little grossed out. Something about a guy describing himself as naughty didn’t sit well with me. But before I could say a word, I felt something on my thigh.

I looked down to see a hand.

I gasped, my eyes going wide as it moved up and up, coming to a stop right in the middle. My hand tingled – it was ready to dish out a slap. Anger boiled in me, and I was two seconds away from making the scene to end all scenes.

But I didn’t get the chance. Another figure appeared at the table. With his hand still on my thigh, Josh turned to look up at the same time I did.

The handsome-as-eff guy with the sexy accent was towering over my table.

What was he doing here?

“There a reason you’re touching my girlfriend like that?”