My Billionaire Husband

The girl seemed to get the message and followed him to the couch. She knelt down on the carpet beside him. She looked up to his face to see his reaction. Her eyes were like two clear ponds without ripples, faintly tantalizing.

Tristan pulled his tie to loosen it and asked impassively, "What can you do?"

The girl blushed and asked softly, "What do you like?"

Tristan didn't reply but just looked at her and gave no hint.

The long silence made the air solid, and the tension increased. The girl sighed lightly and reached her hand to his belt but didn't loosen it. Her hand moved down across the smooth fabric.

She had very nice hands. They were suitable for playing the piano. Of course, they were suitable for doing what she was doing now too.

When her hand moved to one place, it covered and massaged softly. At the same time, she raised her head. Her nervous eyes now relaxed and had some expectations, like the eyes of a cat, animated and mysterious.

Tristan felt his vision get blurry, and the girl's face seemed to coincide with another one. He trembled a little, but the feeling soon disappeared. He looked closer and felt the same cat-like temptation. He heard himself asking, "What is your name?"

The girl opened her tender lips and said softly, "Bonnie." And she replaced her hand with her lips and kissed it.

Max was a doer. The next day he started to look for a job online. With a letter of college admission and his persuasive introduction, he got a part-time job as an assistant teacher in a school.

After one week's work, he got paid and used the money to buy a royal blue colored dress for Kate in the shopping mall close to the school he worked at. Kate was touched to get this "expensive" gift, but she could not help blaming him for being extravagant.

The hard-earned money turned into an impractical dress. But Max didn't think much of it. He thought if he liked, he could take one more job or tutor some high school students on the side. But Max felt that his sister should wear nicer clothes at her age.

Jimmy called Kate and asked about her brother. He wanted to have dinner with them but then had to cancel their appointments twice for emergency tasks. It was not until school started and Max went to college that they finally could meet.

A few months had passed since Kate had last seen him. Jimmy had changed quite a lot. His face was tanned, and his eyes seemed sharper as if he could identify bad guys from a crowd with just a scan of his eyes.

Max was curious about his new profession and asked him a lot of questions. Jimmy replied to him with patience and added a couple of jokes his team made when handling the cases. Seeing him talking in high spirits, laughing heartily, Kate thought it was so good and that he was still the same with no difference.

When Jimmy went out to take a call during their dinner, Max said to his sister, "Jimmy is so much better than John. I agree 100% if he wants to be my brother-in-law."

Kate gave a glance to the direction of the door and chastised him in a low voice. "What did you say! John has a girlfriend."

"Then how about Jimmy?"

"I don't know."

"That is good then. You have a chance." Max said.

"Stop it." Kate looked depressed. "It is not possible."

Max knew his sister and stopped smiling. "Sister, don't belittle yourself. Anyone who gets you will see the good in you."

Kate didn't say anything. She thought her brother was young and full of dreams.

Jimmy came back after the call to see siblings exchanging a strange expression. He asked amusedly, "What are you talking about. You look mysterious."

Max said, "Jimmy, can I ask you a question. Do you have…"

Before he could finish his words, Kate gave a hard stamp on his foot under the table, and the latter half of the sentence was replaced by an "ouch." Jimmy was holding a fork in the air and asked, "Have what?"

Max rolled his eyes to Kate and continued, "…have ever killed a person?"

Jimmy was startled but soon understood and said, "Not so far, but probably could in the future. Who can tell? Being a criminal police, there is always a possibility for that."

Kate showed concern, "Isn't your job very dangerous?"

Jimmy smiled lightly and said, "I think it is OK. That is decided by the property of the job. I had prepared for this since the day when I decided to be criminal police."

Max looked to his sister, and she gave him a warning stare, so he had to bend down and attend to his food.

Kate was in a trance for a few seconds. She seemed to see a scene of a gangster film and the face in front of her was among the shootouts and fights… the food on the table became tasteless.

After dinner, Jimmy sent Max back to school and then sent Kate to her house. John said his relative had no plan to come back to this city in the near future and didn't need the house for the time being.

It was good to have someone to take care of the house. And as his relative was rich, giving him rent would be an insult. So Kate kept staying in that house after Jimmy moved to his school dorm.

Kate had not seen Jimmy for a long time and had quite a lot to say to him, but when they were alone in the car, she felt the words just jammed in her throat like the traffic on the road.

The ticking of rain broke the silence. Looking at the swaying windshield wiper, Kate wished the rain could be harder, and the road could be longer. But the longest road would end somewhere, let alone the road to her house was not long at all.

Jimmy didn't have an umbrella in his car, and so he pulled a uniform coat from the back seat and covered her head, "Cover with this, don't catch a cold."

Kate was wearing the sleeveless dress her brother brought for her, and her arms were a little chilly. She wanted to decline with thanks, but Jimmy made fun of her that the new dress was expensive and could not be stained. His uniform had to roll on the dirt very often anyway.

So Kate had to accept it.

When they said goodbye, she hesitated a second and said, "Be safe."

Jimmy smiled. "Don't worry about me. My grandma said she asked the psychic when I was a child and the psychic said I could always fall on my legs. Thus my mother agreed I could be the police."

He grinned at Kate, and his eyes sparkled with pride. Maybe he was just making jokes to ease Kate, but it worked.

***

Jimmy was busy again with his job. A few days later, when Kate called him and wanted to return his uniform, he said he was out of town and didn't need it, for now, to just keep it. He didn't have a very good signal and hung up soon.

Kate folded Jimmy's uniform and put it into a paper bag, but she changed her mind and took it out, smoothed the fold mark, and hung it in the wardrobe among her colorful summer clothes. It was much longer and stood there like a pine among flowers. The uniform was like its owner, straight and spirited.

She thought of him asking her jokingly if she liked him in uniform.

Kate said yes in a low voice to herself.

Time flew, and the summer was over in the blink of an eye.

In the meantime, Jimmy and his teammates cracked down a major case and were awarded by the highest authority. He boasted himself that he was a rising star with promising prospects in the criminal police department.

John and Sarah broke up because Sarah's first love came back for her. So this reliable "affordable class man" was knocked out of the game by a worthless punk. John thus drew the conclusion all women were m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic.

Max had gotten used to his college life. In fact, he had more efficiency than the college required. Besides his work at school, he squeezed his time to take part-time jobs. Kate guessed that these environments might stimulate him.

Max was from a small place with a poor family, but his classmates mostly came from much wealthier families, and some were children of senior officials or CEOs or even billionaires.

Besides, the financial pressure from their family wasn't much lighter than before their father got sick.

Half a month earlier, their mother had fallen on the street on a rainy day while running some errands. She broke her shank and spent more than two thousand dollars in the hospital and on medicine.

Their father was getting better, but he had to take very expensive prescription medication all the time. When Kate wired money to her parents last week, Max also gave her one thousand dollars to send. She felt upset, but Max said he should help the family too, as he was now a grown man.

Kate was upset, but not just because Max had to share the burden of the family. She also had the indistinct worry that Max was too smart and too s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e, and his keen focus on money might affect his schoolwork.

And she was right. Things were developing exactly the way she had feared.

One month later, when it happened to be Columbus Day, she received a call from Max's classmate. "Kate, something happened to Max."

It was a bolt from the blue to Kate, and she took a long moment to resume calmness so that she could listen to his classmate tell the story.

It turned out there was a senior student in Max's department who was quite a genius in business. Max became a big fan of him and started to work with him. This senior student got a project of installing digital advertising screens in public places like canteens on the campus.

So they promoted their business in other universities and got into competition with other groups of people who were doing the same kind of business. They had some conflict, and it escalated from verbal battle to physical fights. Seven people ambushed Max and two of his teammates on their way back to school.

And in the fight, Max hurt one of them quite seriously. He was sent to the hospital and was told he had an injury on his brain. The guy was still in a coma, and even if he woke up, he might be paralyzed all his life, the doctor said.

Max and his classmates freaked out. The other side wanted to sue them or require a whopping fee for medical treatment and living expenses. Now they asked for two hundred thousand dollars.

Two hundred thousand dollars, this astronomical figure for her again. Kate felt her head was going to explore.

Max's classmate said that Max was now in their hands, and they let him and another classmate came out to collect the money. They were students and didn't have much money, and they had begged everyone they could and only collected two thousand dollars so far.

They were only given one week's time to get the money ready. And the other classmate had run back home because of the great pressure.