Billion Dollar Beast - Olivia Hayle Page 0,60

she’d rather not have. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

I reach out and put my hands on her shoulders. They feel frail under my hands, but I know they’re not. She’s stronger than she gives herself credit for.

Her eyes flick down to my chest. Right. I hadn’t put on anything but my boxers.

“Have you ever kickboxed?” I ask her.

She bursts into surprised laughter. “No.”

“Well, you’re about to.” Pulling her into her living room, I grab at the decorative pillows on her couch. I’ll finally give them a purpose.

“What?”

“You’ve worked for three years on that in there and not told anyone?”

“I’ve told Skye.”

“When?”

“Well… a few weeks ago,” she admits.

“That’s it,” I say. “Bend your knees, sink into a fighting stance… yes, like that. Left foot forward.”

Her face an adorable mix of confusion and resignation, she sinks into the stand I’m showing her. “Why are we doing this?”

“If you keep going at this rate, you’ll launch sometime in 2029,” I tell her. “You’re afraid.”

She straightens out of her fighting stance immediately. “I’m not afraid.”

“Of course you are. Your first collection went down terribly. It couldn’t possibly have gone any worse.” I hold up two of her pillows as makeshift boxing pads. “Now hit me.”

Blair looks from the brightly patterned pillow to my face, and back again, as if doubting which one she should truly hit. Only one of them has done nothing to her. “You’ve gone mad.”

“No,” I say, “you’re just not mad enough.”

She rolls her neck and bends her knees, just like I showed her. “Fine. I’ll play along, but only because I’ve wanted to hit you so many times and never had the opportunity.”

I smile at that. It widens as she punches, hitting the pillow with all the force of a mosquito.

“You can do that harder. You’re strong, you know. You have strength in your shoulders and hips that you never use. Use it now.”

Her gaze narrows with focus on the pillow I’m holding up. The punch she throws is harder this time. The flap of a hummingbird wing, perhaps. “That’s it,” I say. “Now, do all those gossip journalists make you angry? The ones who write that you have more money than fashion sense?”

Her eyes flash. For a second, I wonder if I’ve gone too far. These are words I know she’s read. But sometimes there’s a difference between knowing something and hearing it, especially from someone else’s lips.

But then she punches again, her torso twisting, and the pillow reverberates from the blow. “Yes,” she says.

“And the so-called fashion experts who thought your first collection was…” I rack my brain to find a fitting adjective. Frankly, I’d seen nothing wrong with the clothes, the few ones I’d seen. What had they said? What’s the jargon here?

Blair fills it in for me. “Derivative,” she says, voice heated. “Disjointed. Passé.”

And then she jabs. The form is off, but the power is there, as both of the pillows I hold up succumb to the incoming slaughter.

“That’s it,” I murmur. “Keep going.”

She puts more vigor into it, and as I watch, she actually starts bouncing on her toes. “Twist from the torso,” I instruct. “So what now? Are you going to let their opinions from years ago affect you, here and now?”

“No.”

“I think you are. I think you’re going to be too careful with this new launch.”

“I won’t be.” A flush creeps up her cheeks as she punches away, her breath coming faster. Her hair flows around her with every move and the robe is starting to come undone, tan skin peeking out. She looks like a vengeful, golden goddess. One with very ineffectual punches, perhaps, but a goddess regardless.

“They’ll call it a comeback,” she pants. “And even if they don’t… I’m not doing it for them.”

“That’s it,” I say. “Now use your legs.”

She looks up at me. “How?”

I twist my hands to hold the pillows horizontally. “Hold on to my shoulders and raise your knee. Over and over… Yes, like that.”

“Won’t I hurt you?”

I scoff. “Only if you insult me like that again.”

“What do you have against the pillows?” she says, but she does as I’ve instructed, raising her knee a couple of times in rapid succession. Without the pillows and my own vigilance, she’d have easily kneed me in the balls.

“They’re useless,” I say. “Frivolous and decorous.”

She gives a twisting smile. “A lot of people would say the same about me.”

“And what would you say to them?” Her smile turns wicked, and then she’s using my shoulders like a lever to pull