Christine Rimmer - The Bravo Billionaire

“Well, Pixie. I’d like to speak with Emma Lynn.”

The black brows inched closer together on the wide forehead. “Wadeaminute. I know who you are. Blythe’s son. The one they call the Bravo Billionaire.”

“Call me Jonas. Please.”

Pixie beamed in pleasure. “All right. I’ll do that. Jonas.”

“May I speak with Emma Lynn?”

Pixie heaved a huge sigh and her rather close-set eyes grew scarily moist. “I’m so sorry—about Blythe. She was the greatest.”

“Yes. There was no one quite like her. Now…would you get me Emma Lynn?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” Pixie got up from her chair and went to a black door on her side of the counter. “I’ll tell her you’re here. Won’t be a sec.”

Pixie was gone for more than a sec.

Approximately two minutes after she disappeared, another woman in a pink smock came through the black door and took Pixie’s place behind the counter. Jonas continued to wait, moving to the side every time a client approached to pick up a pet or drop one off.

It occurred to him after he’d been standing there for about five minutes, listening to twittering birds and the Dixie Chicks and then after the Dixie Chicks, to Sheryl Crow, that he felt like a salesman. Someone in pet supplies, briefcase in hand, waiting for the owner to come out and grant him a few minutes of her precious time.

Waiting.

His least favorite activity.

And he’d been doing it a lot lately. Way too much.

Because Emma Lynn Hewitt wouldn’t make up her damn mind.

There was another black door on his side of the counter, on the same wall as the one behind it. A third woman in a pink smock came out of that door twice to take pets from the people at the counter. It didn’t take a Mensa candidate to figure out that the two doors led to the same hallway.

When the second hand on the big wall clock behind the counter had gone around for the seventh time since Pixie had left him, Jonas decided he’d had enough. He turned around and went through the door on his side of the counter.

“Uh. Excuse me,” the woman behind the counter called after him. “You can’t go back there….”

He ignored her and pushed the door shut behind him.

He was in a long, pink hallway, with three black doors on either side, and one at each end. Sheryl Crow and the birds continued to serenade him.

He stepped across the hall and pushed open a door. It was some kind of lounge, with counters and a refrigerator, a coffeemaker, a couple of couches against the wall, a round table and several chairs. Yet another pink-smocked woman sat at the table sipping coffee and reading a paperback novel. She looked up and frowned at him.

“Excuse me,” he said, and pulled the door shut again.

He tried the door next to it.

An office, with a desk and a big pink swivel chair. Lots of plants, just as in the reception room. Pictures on the bookcases—one of his mother, his sister and the Yorkies out by the pool at Angel’s Crest.

Her office, he thought. But where the hell was she? He ducked out of that room and shut that door, too.

Before he could open another one, Pixie emerged from the door at the far end of the hall.

She frowned at him reproachfully. “Jonas. I said I’d be right back.”

He walked toward her. “Where is she, Pixie?”

Pixie stopped looking reproachful and started looking nervous. She backed up against the door she’d just come through. “Uh. I’m sorry. Right now, she can’t be disturbed.”

“She can’t.”

“No.”

Jonas halted about two feet from where Pixie stood blocking the door at the end of the hall. “Why not?”

“She, uh, she’s working with an especially sensitive client at the moment. She told me to tell you she’ll be getting in touch with you real soon.”

“Real soon?”

“That’s right.”

Jonas flexed his fingers around the handle of his briefcase. “Pixie.”

“Uh. Yeah?”

“I want you to move away from that door.”

Pixie’s plump chin quivered and the rhinestone in her nose seemed to be blinking at him. “No, I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. And I think you should.” He took the three steps that were necessary to bring him right up close to her.

She looked at him and he looked at her.

“I’m not a very nice man, Pixie. Do you understand?”

Slowly, she nodded.

“Get out of my way.”

Pixie maintained the stare-down for another ten seconds. That was all she could take. Then, with a small moan, she sidled to the right.

“Thank you.” Jonas opened the door.

Beyond it, the walls were cobalt blue with white trim and the floor was black-and-white linoleum, a classic checkerboard pattern. A pink-smocked Emma Lynn Hewitt stood by a metal-topped table with some sort of adjustable pole attached to it, a noose at the end of the pole. On the table, below the dangling noose, sat a dog. A very small dog—perhaps seven inches tall and six pounds, max. The dog had long, soft-looking caramel-colored fur and bright, slightly bulging eyes.

Jonas registered these details in the first second or two after he entered the room, right before the dog attacked him.

The dog leapt at him, yapping.

Emma Lynn Hewitt came after it, emitting firm and totally ineffective commands. “Hitchcock, stay! Hitchcock, sit!”

Jonas lifted his briefcase, positioning it as a makeshift shield. The little dog slammed against it and dropped to the floor, where it lay stunned for perhaps a count of three.

And then it was up again, grabbing onto the end of Jonas’s left trouser leg with its sharp, white teeth.

“Oh, please don’t kick him,” begged Emma.

The dog growled and wriggled and ripped at his pant leg. Jonas stood absolutely still. “Then I’d suggest you get him away from me. Now.”

“Hitch. Here, Hitch…”

The dog paused, blinked, and then picked up where it had left off, nails clicking fiercely on the linoleum as it yanked backwards, making a rag of the fine lightweight wool.

Emma knelt. “Hitchcock. Front.”

The dog froze. Growled.

“Front, Hitch. Front.”

The dog gave another growl, then let go.

She scooped the animal into her arms, stood, and backed up. “Good boy. Such a very, very good boy.” The dog whined and licked her chin. She glanced at Jonas. So did the dog, which immediately started growling again. “Wait outside in the hall. I’ll be right there.”

Jonas advised, “Don’t disappoint me, Emma.”

“I won’t. I promise. I’ll be right out.”

He turned for the door.

“Send Pixie in,” she said, as he opened the door.

Since Pixie was standing on the other side wearing the guilty expression of someone caught eavesdropping, there was no need to relay the message. Pixie went in as soon as he got out.

For once, the dog groomer didn’t make him wait.

In under a minute, she came out of the blue room, closing the door and then slumping against it, pale head bowed. She was wearing leopard-skin patterned pants beneath the pink smock, the kind that fit like a second skin and came to just below her knees. There were black platform thongs on her feet. Her toenails were metallic gold. Right then, she reminded him of a very young, very vulnerable Marilyn Monroe.

“I am sorry,” she said, still looking down. “Hitch hates the noose, so I don’t use it. After a little conversation and a lot of praise, he’s usually real good for me. But you surprised him, bursting in the room like that. Pomeranians don’t like surprises.”

“No kidding.”

One of the pink-smocked women—this one skinny as a rail with short, spiky red hair—came out of a door at the opposite end of the hall, leading a fine-looking collie on a leash. The woman paused. “Em? You okay?”