The Billionaire Player (In Too Deep)

CHAPTER26

LARISA

He gave me a key to his place.It’d been two days since our lunch meeting, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that fun little fact. I have a key to Tanner Harris’s house.

A key that now hung on my keyring next to the one to my own apartment. I knew it didn’t mean anything, but I couldn’t deny the thrill it gave me to see it there. Or the thrill I’d gotten when he’d told me I was welcome to go there any time.

I had no idea how he could trust me that much. For all he knew, I was still pissed at him and crazy enough to burn the freaking place to the ground because of it, yet he hadn’t seemed worried about it at all.

Maybe he’s just a bit eccentric.He was a billionaire, after all. Aren’t rich people known for being a little odd?

Whatever it was, he was definitely a weird client. I’d worked with tons of people who weren’t too particular. It was my job to guide them to what they wanted even if they couldn’t envision it for themselves, but none of them had been like him. He genuinely seemed to think that he would be happy with anything.

It was actually kind of annoying, since I’d have preferred to have more to go on before I started working on the design, but no matter what I showed him or said, it always seemed to come back to me having free rein.

As a result, it was very tempting to do the house up as if it were mine—or to go in the complete opposite direction and really make it all pink and fluffy just to see his reaction—but I cared about my work too much to actually do it.

Even though Tanner wasn’t exactly my average client, I wanted him to be happy with the services I rendered, which meant designing the house in a way that was perfect for him regardless of his lack of assistance in letting me know what that might be.

My head had been racking up the ideas since the minute I’d driven through those gates the first time, but I still wanted it to feel like his place when I was done with it. Our talk over lunch had given me some tentative indications of how to make that happen, but the fact of it was that I was still mostly in the dark.

The things I knew about him just didn’t seem to want to gel together in my head. On the one hand, he seemed casual and easygoing, but he wore a watch that cost as much as my apartment and his car was flashy as hell. Those things clashed with the fact that he seemed mostly down to earth whenever I spoke to him.

He wore expensive clothes, and judging by the price tag of the wine he’d bought that weekend at the lake house, he had a taste for the finer things in life. On the other hand, he’d demolished his cheap sandwich with the same gusto as he had that fifteen-dollar hamburger he’d called one of the best things he’d ever eaten. He didn’t brag about what he’d done or bought with the money, and he hadn’t insisted on unnecessarily fancy or expensive brands for the house.

The more I thought about it, the more he became an enigma in terms of what he might like. All I knew with absolute certainty was that he didn’t want sleek and modern. He wanted the place to be comfortable but nice enough to host events at, and he wouldn’t be living there permanently but might move there in the future.

It wasn’t a lot to go on, especially considering how many ways there were to achieve those things. That was why I was so incredibly relieved I was meeting with Jeremiah today. Hopefully, he would give me something I could actually go on as a starting point.

The few times we’d spoken on the phone over the last couple of days, he’d seemed a lot more clued up than his friend. He hadn’t given me any concrete ideas just yet, but he had said he’d had a few thoughts to clear up any confusion I might have about his friend’s style.

Since all I had was confusion, I sincerely hoped he was right. I was meeting with him at an address he’d sent me, which I was assuming was his apartment. The building was nice, renovated within the last decade or so with modern touches, but it wasn’t exactly where I’d thought someone of Jeremiah’s wealth would be living.

A few seconds after I knocked on the door of the apartment number he’d provided, the man himself opened the door. He really was good-looking, more so in person and up close than I’d realized before.

Dark casually styled hair, a handsome chiseled face with a hint of five o’clock shadow on his sharply cut jaw, and a welcoming smile that seemed to come easily to him. He had nothing on Tanner, but I could definitely see why he used to be a firm favorite of the tabloids back in the day.

According to Brit, that had all been before he’d met his current girlfriend. From the bit of research I’d done on him before the auction, he’d certainly been a man about town for a while there. Cool, suave, charming, rich, and with looks to kill, it was no surprise that he’d had something of a reputation. All that seemed to have changed, though. I wonder if his girlfriend ever expected that to happen or if she was also worried about what a playboy he used to be.

He grinned and stepped aside after opening the door. “Finally, I get to meet the famous Larisa Ford in person. It’s a pleasure. Come on in.”

Those same butterflies as before took flight in my stomach because I wasn’t famous at all. If he knew enough about me to call me that, it’d all come from Tanner and it definitely meant he’d mentioned me more than just in passing.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. “Thanks for letting us use the lake house for the weekend away. It really is a gorgeous place. It was lovely.”

Laughing as he waved me off, he shut the door behind us. “Thank Steph for suggesting it and Tanner for paying for it. I didn’t have much to do with it, I’m afraid, but I’m glad you liked it. It’s a nice property.”

I nearly choked on nothing but thin air. “Nice? It’s incredible.”

He laughed again, and since the sound seemed to come as easily as his smile, it seemed like something he did often. In fact, he wasn’t nearly as stuck up as I thought he might be. If anything, he seemed almost as easygoing as his friend.

“Yeah, okay,” he said once his laughter subsided. “I guess it is pretty incredible. I just haven’t been out there for a while. Now that I’m really thinking about it, it’s definitely more than nice. Hey, you don’t happen to know a good wedding planner, do you?”

“Uh, no?” My head spun from the sudden change in conversation, but I was distracted as he led me farther into the apartment.

It was a beautiful place, with large open living areas and floor-to-ceiling windows. Unlike so many other bachelor pads I’d seen, this one didn’t feel overtly masculine or impersonal. Everything about it seemed warm and inviting. There was even the faint scent of vanilla in the air and it was easy to imagine dropping into one of the brown leather sofas and kicking back with a drink while playing one of the many boardgames stacked on a cabinet next to the huge TV.

As I looked around, though, I noticed that the things I’d seen in Jeremiah’s apartment while we’d been on the phone the other day weren’t here. We kept walking while we talked, and he was giving me a tour while also explaining the wedding-planner thing.