The Thing About My Secret Billionaire (The Boston Commoners #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

MILLER

The cuteness of this small town is almost stifling. Like you could choke on the aroma of the bakery’s pink doughnuts, the rose-petal air wafting from the florist, and the salty tang of greasy french fries from the diner.

How people can live in these places where everyone knows everyone’s business, I’ll never understand. Guess it takes a certain type of mentality. One I’ll never have. Give me the anonymity of the beautiful city of Boston where I was born and raised, any day.

I do like two things about this place, though—the sweet scent of freshly sawn wood from the hardware store, and the mouthwatering aroma of roasting coffee beans that draws me toward the café. Well, that and a touch of restlessness from the almost four-hour drive from Boston.

I enter the Bearded Bean—the logo on the door features the outline of a man’s face with extravagant facial hair—and am almost run over by a clearly hassled older woman.

I’m guessing she’s the grandmother of the two small kids she’s trying to wrangle.

One child is in a stroller, banging a toy that sounds like dried beans in a tin can, while the second clings to the woman’s hand, crying.

That explains the bucket-sized vessel of something presumably highly caffeinated in the stroller’s cup holder.

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” she says, starting to reverse back into the coffee shop to let me in.

“No, no, not at all.” I flatten my back against the door to simultaneously hold it open and let them by.

“Oh, and there you go.” I stoop to pick up a stuffed donkey toy that’s fallen from the storage tray under the stroller and shove it back in.

Me saving a donkey. How ironic.

The kid in the stroller stops bashing her maraca for just long enough to grin at me, and I find myself waggling my fingers at her in a little wave.

“Thanks,” hassled granny says as she passes. “You’re very kind.”

“Not something I’m often accused of,” I tell her with all honesty. “But you’re welcome.”

The clatter of plastic toy-on-stroller fades as I step out of the chilly November air and into the warmth of the coffee shop.

As the door swings closed behind me, I’m transported from the quaint, sleepy town of Warm Springs, Upstate New York, back home to the most hipsterish of hipster hangouts in my Brookline neighborhood.

This place comes fully kitted out with two bearded guys behind the counter.

They’re almost identical except that their coiffed hairstyles are parted on opposite sides, which makes them look like a mirror image of each other.

Matching black T-shirts and brown waxed canvas barista aprons complete the effect.

The patrons, on the other hand, look like they’re extras in a folksy small-town tourism ad.

Anyway, I’m not here to admire the scenery or become acquainted with the locals.

I’m here to get an old man to sell his land to me.

Land that I know that Wade Skinner wants to snag even more than he wants to take his next scheming cutthroat breath.

It would be the dickbag’s first venture outside the Boston area, the first time he’s extended his tendrils into New York state.

But I intend to beat him to it and make it the first time I’ve ever bested him on a deal.

He hates losing out to anyone. But losing out to me—well, that would fill him with a rage akin to a volcano right before it erupts.

And I cannot wait to see him pop his lid.

It’s taken me seventeen years to find the opportunity to get him back for what he did to us. And today, sweet, sweet revenge shall finally be mine.

But first, coffee.

“What can I get y—” The bearded guy on the left, whose name tag reads Aramis, stops mid-word when his eyes dart to something behind me.

I turn to see what’s distracted him and, frankly, don’t blame him.

The woman is thirtyish, fresh-faced, the tip of her nose pink from the cold, her brown hair pulled back into a low ponytail that hangs forward over one shoulder of a boxy gray, mud-stained jacket.

A jacket that’s doing a good job of hiding the fine female form I’d bet my next hundred-million-dollar condo development is under there.

I turn back to Aramis. “Americano, please. Bla—”

Now it’s my turn to stop mid-word as he ignores me and walks away, rounding the end of the counter with his arms wide.

“Frankie!” he says, like he’s just seen a long-lost relative, before grabbing the hot muddy chick in the type of hug that suggests they’ve known each other since they were about five.

Frankie stands on the tiptoes of her rubber boots to hug him back.

I turn to the counter to try to engage the other bearded bean, whose name is apparently Atticus—dear God, what were their parents thinking?—but he’s engrossed in demonstrating to a customer how to draw a flower with milk foam.

This would never happen in Boston. You get in, you get out. Maybe someone shouts at someone else about something, probably with a couple of profanities thrown in, and we all get on with our coffee-drinking business. There’s no hugging or latte art lessons while a customer is waiting.

“Well, look who’s blown in from the Windy City,” Aramis says to Frankie.

“Only been here two days,” she says. “I’m here for a couple of months, though. Covering things at the sanctuary while Grandpa recovers.”

My ears prick up at the word sanctuary.

It takes a moment for me to realize the impromptu barista craft seminar is over and Atticus is staring at me.

“Are you waiting?” he asks. Now, that’s more like the Boston snippiness I’m used to.

“Americano. Black. Thanks.”

He rings it up and I tap my credit card while eavesdropping on the conversation behind me.

“Ah, yes,” Aramis says. “I’d wondered how Sam was going to cope with the donkeys with both knees out of action.”

Donkeys.

The chance of there being two Samuels who run donkey sanctuaries in Warm Springs has to be zero.

“Yup,” Frankie says.

The brightness in just that one word makes me turn to look at her again, attracting my attention like a sparkly object.

But then it dawns on me that I’d be at an advantage if she didn’t see me, so I refocus my eyes on my coffee being made and keep my ears on her.

“There’s no way he’d take it easy and get help around the place.

” Her words dance in the air, standing out from the general buzz of the café, even though they’re no louder than anything else.

“So I got an eight-week sabbatical from work and talked him into taking a temporary spot in a rehab unit at Senior Central by promising to look after the animals and everything for him.”

“There you go,” Atticus says, sliding my coffee across the counter.

“Thanks.” I wander over to the side of the shop and am about to perch on a stool at a high-top table when I spot two large cake crumbs on it. I flick them off, grab a napkin from the holder on the table and wipe down the seat.

Once settled on the crumb-free stool I get out my phone and scroll randomly to make it look like I’m absorbed in something other than the conversation taking place about ten feet away.

“Yeah,” Aramis says, “Sam’s a real I Can Do It All By Myself kinda guy. Can’t imagine where you got it from.”

My head might be bowed over my phone and my thumb might be scrolling, but my gaze is one hundred percent on Frankie.

She rolls her eyes. I think they might be blue. “And I’m sure he’s more stressed than he’s been letting on about the developer guy who wants to buy the land.”

Well, if I had any remaining doubts that she’s who I thought she was, I don’t anymore. That’s definitive.

The phone buzzes in my hand with a call from my assistant, Brooke. For the first time that I can recall, I send her to voicemail and open the browser instead.

“Oh, yeah. I heard about that,” Aramis says. “Sam could cash in and make a fortune. Well. you both could.” He pauses for a second. “You guys do both own it, right?”

She nods while pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear and tugging on her bottom lip with her teeth.

Fuck.

They both own it? So I’ll need them both to agree to sell it.

Fuck.

I look for her left hand. No ring.

If this woman is the owner’s granddaughter, there’s a fifty-fifty chance her last name is also Channing. I type in “Frankie Channing Chicago.”

Up comes Carol Channing’s wiki, an article about the Chicago Fire TV show, and a video of Channing Tatum dancing without his shirt on.

Then there’s a Linkedin page for a Frankie Channing who’s marketing director for the Crimson Finch home furnishings company. I think my stager has used their stuff to dress the penthouses for sale in some of my buildings.

I rest my elbow on the table to subtly hold up the phone so the profile photo is level with the attractive face in the middle of the shop.

Her hair’s longer in the picture, and she’s wearing a business blouse. She’s turned slightly away from the camera with one hand on her hip and her butt resting against a desk.

It’s definitely her. The smile in the photo is a little one-sided, just like the one on the face in front of me. Except the one in front of me is clearly genuine, whereas the one in the picture doesn’t reach her eyes. I zoom in—yes, they’re blue—and her smile is way less natural, more corporate.

It’s like I’m looking at the two different sides of a coin.

The same person. And yet also not.

The one in reality is a fresh-faced country girl concerned about her grandpa and donkeys.

The one in my hand has changed employers every two years since she graduated from college, to a bigger and better company each time, progressing to director level by the age of—I scroll down to her graduation date—maybe thirty, thirty-one.

That’s an ambitious, career-driven individual who probably has the boardroom and an executive salary in her sights.

The coffee shop version is an unexpected obstacle I could do without—one whose wonky smile is hard to tear my eyes away from.

But which one is she?