Jennifer Greene - The Billionaire’s Handler

The call only lasted a minute. By that time, he’d managed to shoot to the other side of the room, with a massive old medieval table between them, which had to weigh five hundred pounds. Not that he was afraid of her. The waif? How could he possibly be afraid of the waif? He just felt more…secure…with a little distance between them. At least until he recovered from the words she’d blurted out. Especially that one word. The four-letter one.

“We can talk seriously. And nonseriously. About a lot of things.” That was a promise. “But right now, there are some people coming up here.”

“Wait a minute. What people? Why?”

Thank God they got here. Initially he’d been wary of setting up the Shoe Project, wary that Carolina wasn’t ready for any commotion yet. But “Italian shoes” had been high on her wish list, and rather than spend time actually shopping in Rome or Milan-not his favorite pastime, for sure-he figured it’d be more time efficient to bring the products to her. It wasn’t as if her shoe size had been hard to find out ahead of time.

He sprang up when he heard the first knock on the door, and then the parade began. Almost all the vendors were men, carrying boxes and carts, with labels like JP Tod, Miu Miu, Fendi, Versace, Casadei.

Carolina-the precariously fragile woman he’d found curled in a hospital bed in a fetal position-started shrieking like a child on a playground.

The scene deteriorated from awful to worse. Maguire hiked to the bar, grabbed a malt liquor and hastily retreated to a corner, out of harm’s way. It only took minutes for their serene living space to turn into Armageddon. Boxes were opened, splayed. Carolina was fitted, argued over, and encouraged to walk up and down the room in various shoes.

He had no idea that shoes had their own language, but he kept hearing terms he’d never heard before, like “Dorsay pumps” and “kidskin with a Swarovski buckle” and “burgundy strapper.” One Miu Miu was defined as a “feather shoe,” which is exactly what it looked like-a bunch of silly feathers-so Maguire was confounded how the pair could cost five thousand bucks. A lavender sandal from Versace almost made Carolina drool-she was groaning like a woman in the throes of orgasm-and then came something identified as a red patent-leather lace-up. One look at that pair and she started giggling. And dancing around the room with the swagger of a goofy drunk.

En route, he accidentally noticed that he’d vastly underestimated her legs before. Maybe she was generally built on the scrappy side, but her ankles and calves and thighs… there was nothing wrong with those legs. They were toned, shaped perfectly, an erotic dream for a guy who had a leg fetish.

When his thoughts strayed in that direction, Maguire pulled those reins tight. This wasn’t about him. In fact, Carolina acting like a giddy, happy schoolgirl highlighted exactly what the real issues were about. She had a serious character flaw. That flaw was that she was a serious, hard-core, possibly unfixable softie. As far as he could tell, she was forever giving, always thinking of others, always looking to help others.

The world was going to kill her-particularly now that she had money-unless Maguire found ways to toughen her up. Her guileless warning that she could fall in love with him only echoed his own conscience. She had no defenses, not against feelings of the heart.

Only a manipulative user of a man would take advantage of that. He had to keep his hands off her.

Which was, temporarily, relatively easy.

“Maguire!” she shrieked. “What do you think?”

She paraded closer, lifting her robe to knee length so he had a better view of her right foot-in a purple crocodile heel-and her left foot, in a shiny red sandal thing.

“I think you’re gonna kill yourself,” he said gruffly. Both heels were four inches high or more. No one could walk in those things and live.

“Don’t you think they’re beautiful?”

“Oh, yeah.” Maybe he hadn’t seen it in the beginning, but now it was so obvious. When she smiled, she had an aura that lit up a whole room, a radiance that glowed from the inside out. He kept getting glimpses of how Carolina had been before the crippling inheritance-a happy-on-the-inside woman, a giggler, a joyful, uninhibited fun lover. He’d bet the bank she sang at the top of her lungs when she was alone in a car.

She teetered back to the shoe gurus, and tried on another pair…when something abruptly went wrong. He couldn’t hear what was said over the commotion, but she abruptly put down a shoe and her face went blank. He crossed the room at a breakneck pace, asked casually, “Did some kind of problem come up?”

Her eyes shot to his. “That pair of suede pumps…” She motioned.

“The purple ones?”

“Yeah. Maguire.” She put a hand on her heart. “I asked how much they were-$843! Holy kamoly. Holy moly. Holy smokes. Holy-”

He got it. Apparently she’d originally thought of Italian shoes as a luxury, but she never expected them to be this much of a luxury. “You can afford it,” he said.

“That’s not the point. I-”

He swiftly hooked an arm around her, so they could at least have the privacy of a conversation away from the hot-eyed vendors. Good grief, she was trembling. Flushed.

“One pair would pay for two months of groceries. That’s ridiculous, Maguire. It’s a stupid use of money. Especially for something this…selfish. Something I don’t remotely need. Look, when I put Italian shoes on the list, it was because I tried on these flats that a friend had-they were Italian, and they fit like a soft glove, and I never forgot how wonderful they felt. But that’s all it was. A fantasy. And I’d never actually priced them before, because-”

Easy enough to guess the end of that line. “Because it never occurred to you to spend money on yourself.”

“Well, of course I spend money on myself. But a ten-buck pair of earrings on sale at Kohl’s is just a whole different world than this-”

He could feel the warmth of her skin, under his arm, the surge of protective instincts of a man for his mate, the instant strike of an erection just from being this close. Damn it. He said firmly, “Carolina. Buy one pair.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I dare you. Prove to yourself that the world will not end if you have a frivolous moment-”

“But-”

“I’ll buy you two pairs-if you don’t stand up for what you want yourself. That’s wasting double the money.”

Her jaw dropped in alarm. “Don’t do that, Maguire! Don’t buy me anything. There’s no reason-”

He gestured back to the numerous shoe boxes. “Well, then pick a pair yourself. Or two. You can do it. I promise, it won’t kill you.”

“But, Maguire-”

“Go. Be strong. Be tough. Be mean.”

“But Maguire-”

“The cost of two pairs of shoes is not going to solve world hunger. You’re going to have lots of chances to do serious things with your money. But that has to start with you, giving yourself permission to make choices. That includes permission to smile, to have some fun. Permission to make choices that have nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I hate it when you handle me. You’re exhausting, Maguire.”

Yeah, yeah. Getting that woman to do something selfish was like getting a nun to try mud wrestling. It took bullying and cheerleading and taunting and threats.

And after that, the whole situation only got worse.

Sipping on a pineapple-mango cocktail-minus the alcohol-Carolina looked out the jet window and reflected that she’d learned tons about Maguire in the last twenty-four hours. She already knew his flaws. He could be dictatorial, manipulative, pushy. When the man got an idea in his head, nothing could make the blockhead back down.