The Substitute Millionaire

Julie lay on her bed, her eyes closed, her long, blond hair spread out on the pillow. Ryan Bennett twisted a strand around his index finger, enjoying the softness of her hair and the way it caught the light. Her breathing was slow and steady, as if she were about to fall sleep, but the slight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth told him she might have something else on her mind.

Something he would find very appealing.

He didn’t want to go. That surprised him nearly as much as anything. Normally he was a get-out-of-town-fast kind of guy, the morning after. He frequently avoided the problem by not staying at all. But he’d wanted to wake up in Julie’s bed and make love with her again. He’d wanted a lot of things.

“Julie,” he murmured.

She opened her eyes. Her irises were a blue with tiny flecks of green. She had freckles and a wicked smile, and she smelled like vanilla and sex and temptation.

How could she be like that and be a scheming liar? Was this all a game to her? A twisted, win-at-any-cost game?

He’d pretended not to know about Ruth’s offer of a million dollars to see if she would mention it. She had, though, and in such a way that he wanted to believe it didn’t matter to her. But if she didn’t care about the money, why go on the date at all?

She reached up and stroked his face. “You’re far too good-looking,” she told him.

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“It could be. Handsome men don’t have to try so hard.”

“So you’d rather I was a troll?”

“I’d like to think you had to put a little effort into getting women into your bed. Instead, I have a feeling I’m simply one of the masses.”

“I didn’t get you into my bed,” he said as he leaned close. “I got you into your bed.”

“That’s a subtlety that does nothing to weaken my point.”

He rolled onto his side and supported his head with his hand. “Why do you get away with saying bad things about men, but if I were to make a crack about beautiful women, you’d accuse me of being misogynistic?”

“Because it would be true. We have centuries of inequity between the sexes to overcome. I think a little head start for the ladies is perfectly acceptable.”

“So speaks the lady.”

She raised her eyebrows. “We’ve already had the ‘do you want me to be a man’ conversation. Yet here we are, flirting with it again. Is there something you want to tell me?”

He rolled onto his back. “You’re driving me crazy.”

“It’s one of my best qualities. I’ve turned it into an art form.”

She laughed, then bent over him and brushed his mouth with hers. Her hair stroked his chest and it was all he could do not to reach out and touch her, take her, be inside of her.

Who was she, really? He’d come on the date because Todd was his cousin and he, Ryan, had been in the mood to exact a little revenge on money-hungry women, whomever they might be. He hadn’t cared about Julie; in fact, he’d been prepared to dislike her on sight.

But she’d won him over and somehow made him want to believe in her.

“Tell me about your family,” he said.

She raised her head. “Interesting change in topic.”

“I’m curious about your grandmother. How could you not know her all these years?”

Julie curled up next to him and put her head on his shoulder. Involuntarily, he reached for her hand and laced their fingers together.

“Ruth’s first husband died unexpectedly, while she was pregnant with my mom. Ruth remarried a few months after the birth to Fraser Jamison, your great-uncle. Naomi, my mom, looked on him as her father. When she was seventeen, she met Jack Nelson, my dad, and fell madly in love with him. He didn’t come from money—in fact he was a bit of a loser, but charming and she couldn’t help herself. She ran off and married him, and Ruth and Fraser turned their backs on her.”

The story matched what Ryan had been told, although his uncle Fraser hadn’t been that generous in the telling. He’d painted Naomi as an ungrateful slut who’d defied him at every turn and her husband as a money-grabbing bastard who’d been out for what he could get.

“My mom was pregnant, of course. I was born six months after the wedding. My two sisters followed very quickly. Mom got a job, Dad tried, but he wasn’t the type to enjoy real work. Although he always had a scam going. Some of them even paid off. He took off for the first time when I was about eight. He’d be gone for months at a time, then show up. He’d bring us gifts and her money, then he’d leave again.”

There was anger in her voice, and maybe a little pain. Was either emotion real? “That must have been hard for you,” he said.

She sighed. “I wanted her to divorce him and move on, but she wouldn’t. She said he was the love of her life. I thought he was a jerk who couldn’t stand to take responsibility for his family. But that’s a fascinating discussion for another time. Years passed, we all grew up. Then about three months ago, Ruth appeared on our doorstep. She said that she’d been wanting to reconcile with her daughter for a long time, but Fraser had stood in the way. With him gone, she was free to do as she wanted and have her family back. So now we have a grandmother.”

And a potential inheritance, he thought cynically. “She came to you?”

“That’s what I heard. Mom called and asked us all to join her for dinner. We walked in and there was Ruth.” She raised her head and looked at him. “It’s weird to suddenly find out about relatives this long after the fact.”

That he could agree with. “What do you think about her?”

“She’s crusty,” Julie said as she wrinkled her nose. “Very elegant, but distant and…I don’t know. I don’t really know her. I guess I’m mad because she turned her only daughter away. Okay, sure, she didn’t approve of what my mom did, but there’s a whole lot of space between not approving and never seeing her again. She turned her back on all of us. Now she says she’s sorry and we’re supposed to just forgive her? Pretend all those years without her didn’t matter?”