The Billionaire's Gamble Read Online Free PDF Page B

after his non-level tape-laying nightmare had turned that dream to ashes. “I’m glad you’re not upset.”
    She cocked her head and looked at him. “Why would I be?”
    Her trust in him moved something powerful in his chest. For a moment, it was hard to breathe. Most of the rich people he knew didn’t have patience for excuses when things weren’t done correctly. For years, he’d watched the people around him cuss out everyone from car valets to hotel maids for taking their sweet time or making a negligible error.
    This attitude of entitlement had always bothered Evan, even more so when he found himself acting the same way. One time, a supermodel he was seeing complained about a valet, saying he’d scratched the door of her Porsche. The young man was insistent the scratch had already been there, but Evan took his companion’s side. In the middle of dressing the guy down, he had realized what he was doing…and the fact that the valet seemed to be shrinking before his eyes. It was the way he had felt years and years ago when his dad would yell at him for some imagined offense.
    He immediately stopped, told the supermodel he’d pay for the scratch, and tipped the man a couple hundred euros as an apology. He’d never done it again.
    “I don’t know,” he finally said, not meeting Margie’s eyes. “I didn’t want you to think I was making this take longer because I needed the money. Or that I was incompetent.”
    “I would never think that.” A soft hand settled on his shoulder, making him jump. “And if you need me to pay you more than fifteen dollars an hour, Evan, tell me. I could probably make it eighteen if you made sure to clean the rollers and brushes really well so I don’t have to buy more.”
    His ears burned. She thought he needed the money? Even if his deal with Jane had required him to live in Dare Valley for two months on a single month’s salary, he still wouldn’t have accepted her generous raise. “I would never take money away from your dream. Fifteen dollars is fine. I want you to succeed, Margie.”
    For a moment, her mouth pursed like she was fighting strong emotion, and with her hand still resting on his shoulder, he felt a new connection grow between them. This one was beyond their undeniable attraction for each other. This one was about them becoming something like friends and supporting each other. He hadn’t experienced this strong of an instant connection with someone since meeting the man who now ran his company.
    Chase Parker had been raised on a ranch outside of Laramie, Wyoming, before attending Harvard on a scholarship. After wrapping up his M.B.A., he’d started a venture capital firm, the one Evan had approached with his first invention. After securing the financing, Evan had managed to lure Chase away so he could spend all his time in research and development. Besides being excellent at his job, Chase was everything Evan had always wanted to be—handsome, dashing, a ladies’ man without trying too hard, and comfortable in his own skin.
    Thank God, he’d taken Evan under his wing and helped him throw aside his cloak of nerdiness. It had been embarrassing to ask for that kind of help from a man who was a decade his elder, but Chase hadn’t so much as blinked. The makeover program Chase had created for him had involved copious amounts of gym workouts, which had given him muscles and the six-pack the paparazzi loved to photograph when he dove off The Spell Caster, his yacht, into the Mediterranean. And of course, an excellent team of stylists, tailors, and makeover artists had tamed his wild hair and cleared up his skin.
    Still, money couldn’t buy an inside fix. Sometimes he still felt like the geeky kid who could name the full value of pi to 10,000 digits.
    Right now, he felt like a fraud for a completely different reason. A sable-haired woman with a heart of pure gold was willing to put a dent in her bank account because she thought he needed the