Billionaire Makeover, page 2
Olive knew she needed his measurements, of course, and would probably do some custom suits for his big red-carpet events, but honestly, that guy needed help ASAP, so she’d do some off-the-rack shopping.
She picked up her phone and shot him a text.
Hey, it’s Olive Hayes. I need your sizes to get some clothing options.
Uh, like what? I have some nice jeans and khakis at home.
Rolling her eyes, she called him instead of texting back.
He answered on the first ring, that deep rumble once again messing with the image of the real man. “Hey, I’m not being difficult, but I hate to waste money on clothing.”
His voice sent a warm shiver through her. Olive shook her head, forcing her thoughts back to work. She’d already guessed he didn’t spend a lot on his clothes. “I get it. But we need to have an idea of what your image will be. I just want to get some different options pulled together so once your hair and beard are done, we can move forward. If you want, I can go through your actual wardrobe and pull some things.”
He sighed. “I don’t have time to do that this morning.”
“That makes sense. Just give me some sizes and I’ll pull clothes from the shops I have accounts with until we are sure that you like it.”
“Fine. I guess if I agreed to listen to your advice, I shouldn’t be fighting you every step of the way,” he grumbled.
“Well, it would make things easier if you didn’t. But I totally get where you are coming from, Dante. I mean, you’re selling your beer, not yourself, and I do understand that. The only thing is...your voice has made people think they know you, and I think your marketing manager is totally right to capitalize on it. So I’ll do my best to keep her happy and not be too intrusive on you.”
“I appreciate it. I’ve authorized you on my Black Amex,” he said. “I’ll send you the number so you can use it to make your purchases.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do. If I’m doing this, I want to do it right. Also, while you are shopping for me, I need a new suit to do this stuff Kiki wants me to.”
“I’ll have a tailor come and take your measurements for that,” she told him.
“Great,” he said. “I’ve got to go to a meeting. But where do I need to be for the makeover?”
His voice was already conjuring up the image of him after the conversion and, for a moment, she thought she’d like to see him at her place for the makeover. She wanted to see what he looked like all trimmed up. That voice was promising a man who would rock her world. Dang, what was going on with her today? Why was Dante Russo stirring these kinds of thoughts?
“Kiki offered your conference room. I’ll have some clothes and stuff for you to try after your haircut and style.”
“Ugh. You know this sounds like those makeover shows my mom watches,” he said.
“It is exactly like that,” she replied. She, for one, couldn’t wait to see him transformed. Would he be as sexy as she was imagining? “It’ll be fun.”
“Yeah, right,” he said. “See ya later, Olive.”
“Later, Dante.”
After he hung up, she got a number of texts, including one from American Express authorizing her on Dante’s card. He also sent her his sizes, which were smaller than she thought they’d be. But the clothing he’d worn in the meeting this morning had been sort of baggy. She took him at his word and started shopping.
Olive had always loved shopping, and this was one part of her job she really enjoyed. Instead of shopping for the man she’d met that morning, she kept the image his voice had evoked in her head, the one with the whiskey-rough rasp that had been the soundtrack to her fantasies lately. She bought clothes that were fitting with that man.
“Hiya,” Delaney said as she linked her arm through Olive’s at the fragrance counter in Bloomingdale’s.
She wasn’t surprised to see her friend and business partner. They all had that friend tracker on their phones and she knew Delaney didn’t have any clients at the moment. Her friend had shoulder-length blond hair with darker roots. As heir to the Alexander dish soap fortune, the media portrayed her as preferring her jet-setting life to working, but Delaney was grounded and worked just as hard as Olive and Paisley. She made sure to be caught by the paparazzi with her society boyfriends late at night but then always showed up to work the next morning.
“Hey. What do you think of this?” she asked, holding up a fragrance card for Delaney to sniff.
“Who’s it for?”
“Inferno Brewing,” she said.
“I like it, but what about this one?” her friend asked, reaching for another fragrance that had a deeper woodsy tone.
Olive closed her eyes and thought of Dante for the first time. Remembering that spark when she’d touched his hand. Realizing that she had been turned on by him... It had to have been his voice.
“I love it. Perfect.” She purchased the cologne, aftershave and body wash and had it sent to Inferno Brewing’s offices. “What’s up?”
“I think that Malcolm is seeing someone else,” Delaney said as they walked out of the store onto Chicago’s magnificent mile.
“What? I thought he loved you,” Olive said, not really shocked. Delaney had a history of dating men who were users. For some reason, her friend was drawn to men who lied. She’d never had a healthy relationship and Olive wished there was something she could do or say to help Delaney with that. But she didn’t really know how to help.
“So he said, though I’m beginning to think he just told me that to get invited to Dad’s New Year’s Eve bash. You know how stingy he is with the invites, and Malcolm definitely doesn’t have anything that Dad wants.”
“Except your love,” Olive said.
Delaney snorted, and Olive hugged her friend. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too. But it’s okay. Do you have time for lunch?”
Olive glanced at her watch. “I can do a quick one. I have to be back at Inferno by two.”
* * *
Olive’s humiliating rejection of him as a college junior had been life changing. He’d made up his mind to stop trying to be anything other than himself. But he’d also decided to stop lying. Not that he’d been conning everyone he met, but he had spent a lot of time deluding himself about the man he was. After Olive, he’d stopped trying so hard to force himself to be someone he wasn’t. So, as he waited for her hair and beard guy to show up, he debated if he should just tell her who he was.
Would his name even matter to her? Would she even remember?
And was this about him or her? He blew out a breath. Was there any advantage to telling Olive that she’d said rude things to him in college? His dad, a science fiction writer, always said “do no harm.” The man liked to talk about life in credos like that. Yet the older Dante got, the more sense it made.
Telling Olive might give him a bit of an edge over her. But in no way would it be helpful to their working relationship. He had no time to ponder that, however, because Kiki burst into his office without knocking, as she was prone to do when she was excited about something.
“Boss! We just got a request to sponsor the main tent at Milwaukee’s beer fest in a few weeks. I was tempted to turn them down after they were so jerky to us five years ago—”
“But we are bigger than that kind of pettiness,” he deadpanned.
“Yeah, and it will be perfect to introduce the world to the hottie CEO whose voice they’ve already fallen in love with.”
His jaw twitched. “I don’t know about the hottie CEO bit, but yes, it will be nice to have my new image and all that. Do they have a music act for the tent yet?”
“Affirmative! And it’s your favorite, After Dark. I mean, it’s pretty much like fate wants us to do this,” Kiki said.
“Fate seems to be very busy today,” he mused. That might explain Olive Hayes walking back into his life.
His marketing manager quirked her brow. “What have I missed?”
“Nothing,” he said, not about to discuss anything pre-Dante’s Inferno with Kiki. She was a great person but also worked for him, and he didn’t want to talk about those years. Ever. “Just the band, the timing and the festival. I think that the hair person is supposed to be here soon, will you check on that?”
“Sure thing, boss. Everything’s coming up Inferno!” she said in a singsong way as she left his office.
He’d needed someone with her cheery optimism when he’d started marketing the beer, and Kiki was still a gem. He walked over to his desk to pick up his phone and noticed that Olive had sent him several images of clothing options via text.
Dante wasn’t sure about any of them, but Kiki was right, he wasn’t a microbrewer anymore and it was time to look the part. He’d moved out of his tiny flat into a large mansion when he’d made his first million. Despite his current look, for a while he’d hit the club scene and been wearing trendy clothes and making sure he looked the part as he dated his way through the well-heeled society, but that had soured quickly.
Money might have made him more desirable to the Olive Hayeses of the world, but it hadn’t felt satisfying to Dante. He’d kept sleeping with women, trying to get some kind of revenge against Olive, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that he wasn’t moving forward. So he’d dropped out of the dating scene for a few years to try and find himself. The radio ads that everyone had fallen for had started out as reflections he’d been having on his morning runs. Words that had pulled him out of the dark place he’d started heading toward when he’d gotten what he thought he’d wanted and found it to be hollow.
There was a rap on the door frame and he glanced up.
“Dante? Kiki told me you were expecting me,” a man said.
He turned to face him. “Yes. You are?”
“Pietro Savarino. I can see we have a lot to work with,” he said. “Do you have an idea of what you want?”
“I think I’m supposed to just put myself in your hands,” he replied. “But I would like to keep some of my facial hair.”
“Not a problem. Let’s get started.”
Pietro was as friendly as most hairdressers were. It had been a long time since Dante had cut his hair—not since his party days. So he was surprised when Pietro finished and he looked at himself in the mirror. Not bad. Pietro had kept the length on the top of his head, which allowed his curls to just look thick instead of untamed. The beard trim defined his jawline and gave him a serious air.
He walked out of the bathroom. “I like it. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Pietro said.
“Wow,” Olive said, striding into his office. “We might not need to worry about your wardrobe, Dante.”
Their eyes met and he felt something go through him, something electric and sexual. Something that wasn’t happening, he told his body firmly. He wasn’t going to fall into the Olive spell again. This time he was old enough and wise enough to know better. But seeing her reaction...it did make him wonder if his revenge with society babes hadn’t worked because it hadn’t been with her.
Dante could still remember the first time he’d met Olive. They’d had a psych class together and had been assigned the same group. She’d smiled at everyone and kind of taken the leadership role. Looking back, he realized he’d been fooled by her easy smile. Dante had always been smart and Olive had used that to her advantage, bringing him coffees when they met and thanking him for doing her part of the project.
He’d been so smitten with her smiles and the coffees, it hadn’t occurred to him that she was just being nice to him so he’d do the bulk of the work. After that semester...he’d made her into his fantasy woman. And their interactions from his point of view had always seemed like she felt the same way about him. In retrospect, he suspected she had only been kind to him when she’d needed him to pick up the slack on a group project or to donate to her sorority charity.
After his humiliation at her hands, he’d vowed to never be anyone’s pawn again. He’d turned into the male version of Olive for a while, using women and breaking hearts. Something he hadn’t liked in himself. But this was Olive...
What if he let this thing between them develop? What if he let her fall for him and then did to her what she’d done to him? What if he finally got closure with her?
But he’d have to be more like her and the woman she’d been than the man he had built himself into, and he wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or not.
* * *
Olive couldn’t believe the difference in Dante. Just a haircut and beard trim, and everything that she’d felt from that tingle when their hands brushed was confirmed. Of course, she knew that reaction was shallow and one of the things she’d been trying to change about herself over the last eight years.
Yet if she was being totally honest with herself, she’d been attracted to him even before the haircut. He’d been a bit shaggy, but he’d also been nice and direct, and they’d had that combustible moment. But she knew herself. She tended to build men into what she wanted them to be.
“Let’s go and look at the clothes I selected. Kiki caught me up on the beer fest, which will be great for a first outing. I think we can look at getting you some media training before that. Though you might not need it,” she said as they left his office, and he followed her down the hall to the conference room where she’d set up the wardrobe options.
Olive squared her shoulders. She’d just be professional and totally ignore the fact that he’d turned into the hot fantasy man she’d imagined when she’d first heard his voice on the radio. She could do that. But that didn’t stop her from thinking about how much she’d like to kiss him. Just put her hands on that masculine jaw of his with the neatly trimmed beard to see if there was any truth to what her hormones were telling her.
“I’d like that,” he said.
Startled, she stopped to look over her shoulder at him. He put his hand out to steady her as he’d been closer than she’d expected and had stumbled.
“What?”
“The media training,” he clarified. “I’d like that. I do okay when we record for the marketing campaign, but that’s scripted. I’m not sure what to say when it’s more informal.”
She was pretty sure he was just saying that. There was nothing about Dante Russo that wasn’t confident. Even with his long hair and beard, he’d exuded a sense of strength and authority that had made her notice him.
“You’ll do great,” she said, trying not to keep staring at him, though it was hard to look away. She’d thought that he’d be hot just from the image in her head, but this was something else. Almost as if Dante had become that faceless man she’d always dreamed of meeting. He was the embodiment of everything she’d always wanted to find in a man.
“Was there something else? You stopped so quickly before, like you’d forgotten something,” he said.
She blushed then tried to cover it by looking away. “Not really. I was just making sure you were still behind me.”
He arched one eyebrow at her but didn’t comment further. “Of course. So what should I expect in here?”
She nodded and cleared her throat. “I have styled some mannequins so we can get an idea of what you like and would feel comfortable in. I mean, there is a black-tie ensemble that you’re going to need, but the other stuff for your festivals and everyday appearances will be more up to you.”
“Black tie?”
“You said VIP event. I think you want to go in there looking like you belong there, and women will die when they see you in a tux,” she said.
“They’ll die?” he teased.
She smiled at that. Was it her imagination or was he being flirty? “Yes. Probably men too. Everyone loves a sharp-dressed man.”
“ZZ Top?”
“I’m originally from Texas,” she said as if that explained why she loved the band. But the truth was that her mama had loved it and she’d grown up with them. “You?”
He winked. “Northwesterner through and through. But I’m told I have great taste in music.”
So he was flirting with her. Olive could see it in his eyes, and she couldn’t resist him. She wanted to flirt back but then, as soon as that debutante training kicked in, she shook her head and turned to start walking again.
That woman wasn’t who she wanted to be. No matter that this thing with Dante hadn’t felt calculated or like she was trying to lure him in to find a wealthy husband—which had been her main goal until college. Finding herself had revealed that she’d relied too heavily on those old behaviors when she wasn’t sure of herself. And she needed to be her most confident to meet Dante’s fire with her own.
That meant not flirting with him just because he was handsome and she loved his voice. She deserved better from herself...and so did he.
“So this is it,” she said. “These mannequins are the casual everyday looks I thought might work best for you.”
She’d also brought along Sam and Ted, who had worked in the fashion industry before coming to work for her. “Just look over the outfits and pick the one that sort of suits your style.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and she looked up at him. “Yes?”
“Sorry if I crossed a line out there,” he said. “It’s been a while since I’ve left the brewery.”
She licked her suddenly dry lips and turned closer to him so that her colleagues wouldn’t overhear. “You didn’t. I like you, Dante, but you’re a client, so I think maybe just keeping it professional would be best.”
“Agreed.” He dropped his hand and moved past her.
Releasing a quavering breath, she stood there, watching him talk and joke with Sam and Ted. They were switching some things on the mannequins, but she was hardly paying attention. Had she been the one to cross a line? Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything, but the truth was, she did like him, and that warning had been more for herself than for him.
