Beneath The Billionaire Brothers (BWWM Romance)

By Carmel Rio

Carrie's life is transformed when an anonymous stranger sponsors her college studies. It is clear that someone out there believes in her and wants her to succeed but just who is her anonymous benefactor and why is he so interested in helping her?

When she meets the dashing Gianni Hamilton she believes she has solved the mystery and she is pleasantly surprised to discover just how good looking he is. Gianni is equally happy to meet Carrie and he can not wait to have a piece of her curvy body.

Only problem is, Gianni has a brother called Romain who is just as handsome and he wants a piece of Carrie too....

• Language: English
• Publisher: BWWM Romance
• Release date: Feb 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524240370

Book preview

Table Of Contents

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Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

The wind kicked up something fierce the minute she stepped onto the boardwalk. Carrie wanted to spend the day throwing bread at the seagulls and drinking sweet, tart lemonade until her stomach ached. Instead, here she was at Jake’s Boardwalk Pizza, slogging through the day, cleaning greasy pepperoni and cheese off the outside tables. She wished she was trapped anywhere but at the pier on a picture-postcard sky blue day.

Her manager told her to pick up the pace before the evening hog arrived. The description wasn’t hers. The pizza staff gave different patrons all sorts of names. Carrie guessed it made the day more bearable somehow.

Five hours later, a group of bikers came into the Boardwalk Pizza’s pub. Two grimy, foul-mouthed crap-talkers started pushing one co-worker around, literally. Carrie stopped cleaning. She wished she didn’t have to do any in the first place. She needed any extra money she could get to help pay for school. Pizza and bikers be damned.

Carrie phoned the boardwalk police and by the time two authorities arrived, Jake’s was all but thrashed. No one was hurt seriously except the store owner. Jake Massey was a kind man who treated everyone the same. He’d asked Carrie if she could help out during the summer and he would match everything she earned for her college tuition. Carrie always wondered if he did it because he felt pity for her. She was always wearing the same pair of jeans. Ones that were torn around the bum area. They were comfy, damn it. It didn’t hurt to shake hers a bit when it brought in dudes who suddenly felt hungry.  

An hour later and Jake’s was shutting down for the night. Carrie knew she should head home before it got too late. She lived far but the carnival was in town and she wanted to go. It visited Portland, Oregon every summer. Carrie had to see it every day. Tonight was special because the gypsies had joined this year. Carrie overheard a couple talking how some of the gypsies were fortunetellers, gifted in the mystical arts since the 18th century.

Carrie climbed atop a boardwalk plank nestled beside one of the fortuneteller tables. A spot of a woman sat perched on a carnival crate. She turned slowly to gaze at Carrie after a couple hurried off after having heard their futures told.

Come to see your fortune, dearie? asked the woman with lightly gnarled hands. She wore a blood red scarf and a dark skirt. One hoop earring clasped her left ear. She had a ring on her right index finger that seemed to change color every few seconds.

Sure, Carrie said.

She copped a squat on one of the two crates the couple used.

The future holds something true for everyone, the woman said. Then she held out her palm. Five coins, please.

Carrie didn’t know if the coins were supposed be silver dollars, quarters, or pennies. She dug into her jeans and tossed the contents onto the checker-clothed table.

The old woman picked up one of the coins and she bit it. Her teeth were Colgate-white. The payment is fair, she said. Let me see your hand.

Carrie looked at both her palms and then shoved one at the old lady. She’d told her only one, after all.

You will meet a tall, dark, and handsome stranger...

Carrie clasped her other hand over her mouth. The old woman continued.

He will find you across the sea. You will find trouble in water before you will meet. And another will want to keep you for his own. You will find true love—for a price!

Carrie fell off the crate, laughing. The old gypsy squinted.

I’m so sorry, Carrie said. It’s just—that sounded like you got it right out of an old movie. Carrie started to giggle again.

The old woman peeked over the makeshift table at Carrie. She frowned.

Fate will find you. You will know it when you meet a man with gold-green eyes. Be warned. He is not who he seems.

Carrie got herself together and climbed back onto the crate to thank the woman but she was gone!

Carrie looked all around and saw visitors and various carny people, but the old gypsy... It was like she had vanished into thin air...

Fate will find you. Carrie heard the woman say. Be warned.

***

She could handle anything but this.

Carrie Hart dropped her leather tote onto the soaked asphalt. Bulbs of rain pelted the street. The leather bag she owned was the only thing she had to offer the figure who stood in front of her. Carrie wiped the last curls of her perm from her cheek. She’d spent her last $60 to give herself a long overdue pamper and here she was trapped in the alley in the projects of Portland. She didn’t have her phone and she was still five blocks from home.

If the day got any worse, Carrie knew she wouldn’t have to worry about paying her family’s bills. She stepped back from her tote bag and backed to an alley wall. The tall, dark figure crouched in the downpour and thrust his hand into Carrie’s purse. He slogged his hand through the bag’s contents and turned his head to Carrie.

Where is it? the thief said. Where’s your stuff!

Carrie stepped off from the alley wall and stared at the robber dressed in back with a masked face.

"My stuff?"

Carrie knew right then the guy wasn’t from around here. She could pick out a poser from the burbs faster than her bank could charge her an overdraft fee for insufficient funds.

She had walked all the way from the University to get home and she was grabbed by her collar and dragged into this alley. It was pouring rain and this white boy had the short-hairs to try and swipe her bag? Was he thinking he was serious? Carrie stepped over the rain-slick hair brush, notebook and class papers that laid in a rain puddle in a pothole. The wannabe thief had dumped everything from the tote onto the alleyway. She didn’t care. Carrie gripped the guy by his forearm and drug him close.

"You come on my side of town, drag me into this piss-stank alley, threaten me and then the best you got is, you want me to give you my stuff? How old are you?" Carrie said as she reached for the thug’s skull cap.

The thief grabbed at her hands but she was swift. Carrie yanked the thick, wet cap off the robber’s head. The Anglo guy froze like a doe caught off guard by the glare of headlights. The guy looked kind of familiar. Give that back, he whined.

The rain soaked Carrie and the wannabe robber to the bone. That was the best part of living in Portland, Carrie mused. After 9 pm there wasn’t a store to run to for safety. The sky could open up and let loose at any moment. Like she would on this, what was he, 15? She wiped rain from her unmade face and stuck her head up against the thug. He was chestnut-haired and dark-eyed and he had a mole on his left check. He wasn’t tall but he wasn’t short either. If Carrie hadn’t known any better she’d have sworn she’d seen this guy somewhere before. Carrie had just found out she was going to have to take a second job to pay for the tuition hike the University passed this fall. She was late going home because she had to work at the campus library to get any cash she could make.

Carrie would have taken the bus if the piece of crap hadn’t busted three miles out of downtown. She had to get home to take care of her step aunt’s house. So she took a short cut to get there. Now she wound up getting freaking mugged. Maybe this was the kind of story some dongles would love to tell the kids after they were old and gray. Carrie preferred to take life into her own hands.

What do you think you’re fucking doing?

Carrie pressed her arm against the thief’s neck and reached into his hip pocket. The thug reached for Carrie but her forearm cut off most of his air supply. She fished out his wallet and flipped it open. The guy’s ID popped out and flopped up and down as it was pelted by the icy rain.

She read the name on the card. Julian Madoff. That was just great. A thug who was likely to follow a life of white collar crime. And she was the one trying to put herself through a post education and struggling to make ends meet. Worse, she lived with an aunt by marriage. Carrie doubted she had a fairy godmother but if she did she doubted Fairy Godmother would think she was a Cinderella in charge. Storming the castle and winning the hand of the fairytale prince so she could live happily ever after.

Like that was going to happen, Carrie thought. She was black and alone in the city. She had her wits and smoking hot body. Carrie decided she’d use the former first and she was determined to never use the latter unless she must. Carrie wanted a life. She decided she was going to get one, right now.

Carrie reached into the thug’s front pants pocket this time. His hips bucked reflexively and his body leaned into Carrie. Carrie had been trying to find tried a cell phone so she could call her step aunt. Phoning the police wouldn’t do any good. They came down to the sticks when it was daylight. The thug looked at Carrie’s hip-hugging jeans. She stopped.

Do whatever you want to me, baby, he said under the rain. He had the gall to roll his tongue over his bottom lip.

She stared at the young dude amazed.

What you want? I’ll give you a good time, the guy said.

I want something all right.

Carrie shoved a jeans-soaked knee into the thief’s gut. He doubled over and groaned.

What are you doing? the thief ground between gritted teeth.

I’m teachin’ you what happens when you try to mug a sistah, Carrie said.

She spun the guy by his black t-shirt and picked up her tote. She swung at him and he pitched forward and landed on the ground. She lifted the bag high, ready to strike.

Okay, okay, I got it. Quit– the young thug said as he tried to fend off Carrie.

You stupid, sonafa – and if you ever come to the sticks again, that’s what’s going to happen to you. Next time it’ll be my foot in your ass, Carrie yelled.

She looked at her tote. The hand-woven material was drenched from the rain. Its stitching had worn soggy. Carrie touched a seam that ran along the underside of the bag. The tote split and hung open into two drippy halves.

Carrie picked up her brush and a few items she could. She headed home and hoped her step aunt wasn’t the next thing she had to deal with. Once there, Carrie pressed her head into her pillow. In one hand she held a letter from the University. Her tuition was due in the morning. Carrie sighed.

How the hell am I supposed to deal with being broke and getting kicked out of college? she moaned. Why the heck have I been taking diction classes?

Carrie’s bedroom phone rang.

What... was all Carrie could muster.

Girl, it’s Tulah, the voice at the other end said.

Tulah I can’t talk right now. I just got home and I’ve got like 50 lecture papers to grade. I’ve got to sleep.

You got to get down here to the East Central Club, Tulah replied.

Carrie’s propped her head up from her pillow. The East Central? What are you doing on the other side of town? Carrie asked.

They're having auditions for that music video. You’re a dancer. You gotta come...

She knew had to sleep. Carrie sat up on her bed. She looked around her room and realized she couldn’t see the floor. She needed to do some serious laundering. Another reason to have a casting director look up my legs? Hell no – and no, Carrie said.

They’re paying –

Carrie stood. How much? Carrie reached for her leather jacket and her tightest jeans. She thought maybe finally she was getting a break. If she could knock the wannabes she could maybe earn some dough that she could front on her tuition.

She tore an end of her tuition bill and grabbed a pen. What’s the address?

Carrie made it to the main drag. She stuck out her thumb and rolled a hip to the side. A car pulled over the next second.

She said she’d do what she had to. Carrie just hoped she’d make it to the late night casting call in time. If she did, maybe she could get out of the sticks and start the life she’d always dreamed.

If she did, maybe she’d start believing there was a God...

***

Apparently there was a god. He just wasn’t what Carrie had expected.

She flipped her backpack over her shoulder and looked at the stretch of students desks in the main auditorium. Carrie sat in her usual spot and lopped her red Hello Kitty sweater over her chair. She twisted her face to look out into the large amphitheater. She picked up her scuffed laptop and bee-lined to the ground level emergency exit when she realized who was barreling at her.

Carrie thought she really could handle anything. Except a cattle call for professional street dancers that turned out to be a grope and tickle fest. She had walked onto the audition stage ready to break, crump, and B-boy dance until she was asked to get comfortable. Carrie walked out on the audition when she realized the only stepping the producer wanted her to do was slide up and down a stripper pole. Carrie’s friend Tulah tried to stop her and Carrie just smiled. Tulah gave her a wide berth. Which was good. Carrie would have hated to slam her up against the wall for making her come to shake her tits for some sleazoid Cat Daddy. Now she had to deal with another trifler she didn’t need.

She snuck under the arm that reached for her and slung Hello Kitty over her back. Carrie swung her backpack around and around like a pair of bola balls. Hell if she was going to take any more crap this week. She’d had it.

Come on, baby. Why you pulling away from me? A gangly sophomore about a foot taller than she was grabbed her shoulder.

I told you I don’t want to see you anymore, Carrie’s jaw stiffened. Just like a man, Carrie thought. All bone, no action, she mulled. 

Why you acting this way– DeVaughn Michaels, college radio jockey said. I been callin’ you three weeks. You ain’t said nothing.

You should’ve taken the hint, said Carrie as she brushed by him.

DeVaughn grabbed Hello Kitty.

Give me my sweater you a-hole.

Not until you go out with me, DeVaughn said. He was 5-foot-7 if he was a day over 20. He had long skinny legs and a thick neck. When Carrie went out with him a couple of times, he always seemed to be going through some sort of drama. Either didn’t have his car or he ran out of money.

The more Carrie thought about how he had treated her, the more she realized he always had his hand out. Hell, Carrie had problems, too. No cash for school and an offer to dance and take her clothes off. She wondered why she hadn’t taken the stripper job the Cat Daddy had offered her.

Skinflint DeVaughn pulled her into his arms and gave her a sloppy, spit-soaked kiss. Carrie shrugged back and coughed. Lord, don’t you ever clean your mouth?

Is this young man bothering you? A male timbre echoed through the amphitheater. Carrie spun around and knocked into a wall of solid flesh. She gazed up at a man who had to be about the hottest hunk she’d seen. She thought the man was near her age until he smiled. He crossed in front of her and Carrie swore she noticed a light greying at the man’s temples.

As the man stepped to DeVaughn, he held out his hand. The sophomore coiled and spilled over a collapsible folding chair. Carrie shook her head. She seemed to pick the biggest dongle-head creation had to offer. I’m Mac. The impressively tall man helped DeVaughn to his feet.

Get off me stupid mutha,’–

DeVaughn, show some respect, Carrie countered.

To hell with you, DeVaughn said. He looked at Carrie and stormed up the amphitheater steps. She hardly noticed DeVaughn leave. She was much more interested in the hunky man