His Princess - Stacy Gail Page 0,4
that we ditched that puckered-up idiot, tell me everything there is to know about Joelle Fielding,” Gus murmured, the hand holding hers squeezing. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could almost feel the possessive claiming of it through every nerve ending. “Start with your birth and go from there.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover.” She started to laugh, then shook her head in wonder when she realized he was serious. “Um, okay. Twenty-five years ago, I became the firstborn child of Margaret and Frederick Fielding, of the Chicago Fieldings. Ours was once a fabulously wealthy family, whose name had been synonymous with shipping in the Great Lakes area. But due to the advent of cheaper air freight, as well as ever-changing environmental laws in the Great Lakes region, the family fortunes dwindled while each successive generation failed to change with the times. Included in that failure to adapt was my father, Frederick, who died pretty much penniless about four years ago, and my mother followed soon after—”
“Joelle.” The arm around her waist tightened, and she could feel his breath feather across her lips as he spoke her name. “None of that shit has to do with you. Tell me who you are.”
“I work for a living,” she blurted, honestly stunned. How could she be anything else? Emerson, the puckered-up idiot, had dropped her the moment he’d discovered she wasn’t swimming in generations of glittery loot like Scrooge McDuck. “I’m one of three fashion reporters for the digital news mag, Buzzword Online. I’ve got a burning ambition to become Buzzword’s fashion Editor-in-Chief, because I’d freaking slay at it. I went to Northwestern, as has every Fielding since Northwestern University began, and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Communications. I work three days a week from Buzzword’s offices, two days from home, and while I might be a trust fund baby, everything I have in my life right now has been bought and paid for by my hard-earned paycheck, and I’m more proud of that than I can possibly express.” She took a breath, then let it out slowly. “And I didn’t know I had all those feelings about that particular subject bottled up until I just spewed them at you. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all good.” A smile played around his mouth, and she couldn’t stop herself from watching it. It was a good mouth, with lips that were exactly how she liked them in a man—not too thin, with a slightly fuller lower lip that just begged a woman to nip at it. “I get what it’s like, being proud of climbing those personal mountains. I’ve climbed a few myself, though none of them had anything to do with going to college. I never went, but I’m hoping you won’t hold that against me.”
She blinked. “Of course not. Someone as brash as you probably wouldn’t have flourished in that kind of environment. You’re the kind of man who likes to be in charge of things, and professors usually don’t like that in their students.”
“See? Look how you’re getting to know me.” The music changed to something peppier, and he gave the band a dirty look. “You should know when I was a kid, I didn’t go to any candy-ass finishing schools or cotillions or whatever, so if you’re expecting a fancy foxtrot or some kind of shit like that out of me, it ain’t gonna happen.”
“Thank God.” She chuckled, delighted at the dry humor in his eyes. She could definitely get into a dry sense of humor. “I did go to cotillions when I was a debutante, as well as finishing school in Switzerland, so I can tell you firsthand that you didn’t miss a damn thing. In fact, you probably had more fun than I did living your best life out here in the real world.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it my best life. More like kicking ass and cutting throats to earn my coin. Then again, considering that’s what I still do, who knows? Maybe it was my best life.”
“What do you do, exactly?” To have enough dough to buy Gilded Swan, his job had to be something extreme, like robbing banks or lobbying in Washington.
He made a dismissive sound. “Most people call it day-trading, though I do a lot more than that.”
“I’ve heard of day-trading, but I’m not exactly sure what it is. How did you start out?”
“I was still a teenager when I finally dipped my toe into the stock market. I’d