Return Billionaire to Sender: A grumpy hero - opposites attract romantic comedy Read online

  Return Billionaire to Sender

  Annika Martin

  Copyright © 2020 by Annika Martin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Here’s to Jess, Tam, and Sandy, my original girl gang!

  Global girls FTW!!

  Contents

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  Return Billionaire to Sender

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Also by Annika Martin (aka Carolyn Crane)

  All the Annika deets!

  Let’s have some fun!

  Acknowledgments

  heart you!

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  Return Billionaire to Sender

  I may be a shy, lowly letter carrier, but when my beloved apartment building is threatened by a mysterious and reclusive billionaire, I’m willing to push the envelope.

  I’m going to march right up to Malcolm Blackberg’s fortress of fierceness and deliver a cease-and-desist notice he can’t refuse.

  Except as soon as I get inside his gilded doors, things go sideways—I’m mistaken for Malcolm’s court-ordered emotional intelligence coach—they think I’m acting out a wacky postal carrier cosplay.

  They drag me in, a sacrificial lamb for the big bad.

  Make that big, smolderingly sexy bad.

  So I make up a lesson involving a story about our building. He doesn’t seem happy. Can he tell that I have no idea what I'm doing?

  Before I know it I’m flying around the country, up close and personality testing the most devilishly exasperating man I’ve ever met.

  He’s scary for sure…but the way he sometimes looks at me turns my knees to jelly, and has me writing love letters to his gorgeous eyes, his mouthwatering smile, his impressive…package.

  Our coaching sessions are getting hot-hot-hot, but I can’t let my guard down. If he ever finds out I’m a first-class fake, I’ll lose everything I’ve ever loved in this world!

  1

  Noelle

  “Are you nervous?” my roommate, Francine, asks. “I’d be nervous.”

  I tuck a pen into one of the pen-holding slots inside the flap of my bag. I rotate it so that it’s perfectly lined up with the other pens, all nestled in their slots, then I look up and smile, putting a brave face on it. “It’s just another delivery, right?”

  She snorts. “Ummm…it’s a little more than that, I think!”

  I shrug and review my pen-alignment situation, then I snap the bag shut.

  When I look up again, she’s beaming at me. Like she thinks I’m a heroic person.

  It so helps.

  I’m not a heroic person—in fact, I’m scared out of my wits, but I’m our last hope. It would probably be better for my friends if they had somebody else for their last-ditch effort to save our home, but they have me.

  Maybe he’ll listen. Maybe he’ll rethink his wrecking ball plans. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after seven years of being a letter carrier, it’s that people sometimes surprise you, and more often than not, it’s a good surprise.

  Then again, the person we’re talking about here is business mogul Malcolm Blackberg—the ultimate big bad.

  Still.

  I unsnap my bag and do one last check. In addition to my wallet and phone, I also have my iPad, two backup iPad chargers, extra subway tokens, and my pepper spray—not that I’ll need it, but I’ve gotten used to carrying it over the years.

  I arrange my carefully curled hair in the mirror and then I clip on my favorite brown butterfly bow tie.

  Francine comes up next to me. Her silky black hair is up in her ballerina bun, all ready to take and teach classes today. She groans at my reflection.

  “Don’t even,” I say.

  Two years I’ve lived here, two years my friends have teased me for wearing a butterfly bowtie whenever I have somewhere official to go. I know they see it as a total backwoods thing to wear in the big city, but I love how practical it is, like a cross between a small neck scarf and a bowtie, and I think it’s pretty, too. Most of all, it’s what I’m used to, and today of all days I need to feel comfortable.

  Honestly, I find it unnerving to go new places alone when I’m not wearing my United States Postal Service letter carrier uniform, but I’ve figured out some non-work outfits in life that operate like my uniform, like the pantsuit and butterfly tie. I have several colors.

  I like how uniforms take the guesswork out of dressing. For going out, I have a proven-cute skirt and top set that I copied from my friend, Mia—also in different colors. For staying home, I have a specific brand of yoga pants and T-shirts.

  “Fashion-reeducation camp with armies of Tyra Banks clones working round-the-clock to break you of those weird ties! That’s what we need.”

  “We’ll see,” I say. “Maybe when this is all over…”

  Francine’s delicate features are suffused with sadness, making me wish I hadn’t said that.

  Everything we say about the future is suffused with sadness because of Malcolm Blackberg.

  He sent us all eviction notices last week. His dreaded wrecking ball is scheduled. Our beloved building will soon be rubble.

  People from our building have tried to get meetings with him, called him, sent emails and even letters; we’ve visited lawyers, petitioned the city.

  Nothing. Nobody seems to be able to get to Mr. Blackberg.

  I’m determined to try.

  “Forget it, you look cute,” she says. “You look like young Sissy Spacek.” She hugs me and wishes me luck.

  Two subway rides and five blocks later, the August humidity has flattened out my curls—I can see this clearly in the gleaming row of glass doors of Blackberg Plaza. I pause, looking up at the six stories of polished black marble with actual gargoyles on top.

  I belong here just as much as anyone else does, I whisper to myself, though I wish I had my uniform on. A letter carrier belongs everywhere.

  I straighten and tip my chin up and put my shoulders back—the posture I take when I’m trying to remind myself that I can face anything—and push into the lobby.

/>   It’s like a cathedral of black marble inside. The sleek and gleaming walls are caressed up and down with light from elegant black sconces, and there’s a large fountain in the middle that features a massive, jagged black boulder that’s maybe two stories tall. Is it also black marble? Did Malcolm Blackberg leave any marble for the rest of the world? How did they even get a boulder in here? Did a giant pop off the top of the building and lower it from the sky? Water streams down the sides in gleaming rivulets. Voices and footsteps create an echoing din.

  I clutch my bag and stride across polished black marble, avoiding clusters of people while trying to look purposeful, making my way into the belly of the building toward the elevators on the far side.

  Halfway in, I pause at the wall to examine the directory, just to gather my courage and to show I have business here.

  I don’t need to look at the directory, of course. This isn’t my route, but I know that this building has six floors. I know that Malcolm Blackberg’s firm, Blackberg, Inc., occupies them all. I know their zip code and their delivery office; I know they have their very own plus-four code.

  All of a sudden, the din of voices quiets. Did something happen? Did a shooter enter the building? Did the giant pop off the top of the building again, wanting his boulder back? I spin around, alarmed.

  That’s when I see him.

  I recognize his dark, elegant looks from the few photos of him that we could find, though I think I’d know him just from the way his people walk a little bit behind him, like fighter jets flanking the fiercest and most important jet.

  I stand there stupidly, heart racing.

  The photos didn’t do him justice. They didn’t prepare me for his beauty. Or let’s make that his terrifying beauty.

  His swept-back hair gleams dark as midnight, and the skin on his aerodynamically chiseled face seems to glow with health, or maybe annoyance—it’s hard to tell. His tea-colored eyes shine with gorgeous intensity, focused ferociously on the elevator he’s heading towards, as if it's not enough for him to merely reach it with his two feet as a normal mortal would. No, he must also mesmerize it with his darkly enchanting predator’s gaze.

  Onward he strolls, legs long, steps strong and purposeful. I should look away, but I can’t.

  The confidence he exudes feels like a physical thing, a phenomenon with mass and weight, the self-assurance of a man with total mastery over his environment.

  Nervously, I clutch my bag. Why did I think I could even speak with such a man, no less get him to watch something on my iPad?

  Did my butterfly tie cut off circulation to my brain like Francine always warns?

  I find myself longing to be anywhere but here. Ideally at work, my happy place.

  Unlike most of my girlfriends, I love my job. I love the routine of it—picking up my mail in the morning, planning out my route, strategizing deliveries with the boxes, settling letters and circulars into the proper boxes, tilting them just so for easy grabbing.

  My boss couldn’t believe I was actually taking a vacation day. I never take vacation days. Why would I?

  There’s an important-looking, briefcase-toting woman coming toward Malcolm from the other way. Malcolm stops her and issues a command that causes her to show him something on her phone, and then the exchange is over, and the groups proceed in opposite directions, like a businesspersons’ Ice Capades. And Malcolm is the star, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, the harsh and unforgiving god gliding among trembling masses.

  He nears.

  This is my chance—my chance to go up to him. To ask him for a few moments of his time.

  But my feet stay rooted to the ground. Malcolm Blackberg seems too big, too fierce, not of this world.

  I remind myself that we’re just two human beings, but it’s no use.

  Sweat blooms up my spine.

  This whole caper seems doomed. Who thought it up? Wait, I did.

  I remind myself of this trick that I do when I’m scared during a delivery, like if an area is super dark, or if a building looks creepy, I remind myself that people inside there are relying on me. I imagine their faces, waiting for an important letter.

  Standing there in the Blackberg lobby, I imagine my friends’ faces, waiting to hear if I’m successful.

  I remind myself that I’m our last hope; if I don’t stop Malcolm Blackberg from destroying our building, my girlfriends and I will have to move away from each other to lord knows where. Sure, we’ll make an effort to see each other, it just won’t be the same as being able to pop down the hall and unload about the minutiae of our days, knowing there’s always somebody to commiserate with you about the man spreader you had to sit next to on the train or watch Bachelor with you.

  The little community that we’ve built up and down the hallways of our seven-story brick building is like a family. Especially to me. And poor old Maisey—she’ll lose the rent-controlled apartment she’s been in for five decades. Same with John, always in his platoon hat, leaning on his cane, and first-floor Kara—who will watch her baby when she has to suddenly run out?

  None of us will ever find a community like the one at 341 West 45th Street.

  Cued up on my iPad is a video that Jada put together as a digital keepsake for all of us to remember the place by. It’s mostly us telling the camera our favorite things about living in our building and talking about how much we love it, and love each other. She strung together footage she dug up of parties, building meetings, historical footage, all kinds of things. She screened it to the group of us the other night, and it made everybody weepy. There may have been bubbly beverages involved.

  But it really was so emotional, this sweet video of everything that we’ll be losing when our beloved building is knocked down. I’ve only been there two years, and even I can’t imagine losing it.

  And then at one point during the night, I stood up in front of the whole group and declared that if Malcolm Blackberg were to see the video, like if we made him watch the whole entire thing, he would never, ever, ever tear down the building.

  “You are soooo cute,” Vicky said. Mia declared that I definitely needed to live in the city a while longer. Tabatha and Francine just thought it was sweet and sad.

  I didn’t think it was sweet or sad or cute at all. I was dead serious and definitely on a freaking roll. In fact, I stood up there like Winston Churchill addressing the House of Lords. “When people know each other’s stories, their hearts change. And Malcolm Blackberg is no different. And I’m serious, you guys—if we made him watch the video, his heart would change, guaranteed.”

  They all scoffed, but I felt so sure. Who could see it and not be moved?

  “Didn’t Rex even say that there were other ways for him to execute his plan without demolishing this building?” I asked. “If Malcolm Blackberg knew what this building meant to us, I know he would rethink his plan. I would bet any amount of money.”

  “Okay, Professor Higgins,” Francine had said, throwing popcorn at me.

  “It has to happen,” I’d continued. “In fact, I’m going to make him do it.”

  Lizzie joked that the only way he’d watch it would be if I tied him up and propped his eyes open with toothpicks. People laughed at the idea of me doing that.

  “I don’t know how I’ll get him to watch it,” I told them, “but no way are you going to see me standing across that street watching the wrecking ball fly without having done everything humanly possible to stop it. The worst he could do is say no, right?” And I made a big show of having Jada send me a copy to put on my iPad. I would make him watch Jada’s commemorative video right on my iPad.

  I unsnap my bag. There’s a little notecard in there where I wrote down my impassioned speech that would get him to watch Jada’s movie, but as Malcolm nears, the words on the card feel irrelevant as alien hieroglyphics.

  “Can I help you?”

  I turn and find myself face to face with a bushy-bearded security guard. Can he tell that I don’t belong here? “No, thank you,” I say
.

  “Do you have business in this building?” he asks.

  “I…I’m here to meet with somebody,” I say.

  The security guard motions toward the elevator area. “Visitor reception’s on two,” he says, seeming suspicious of me. “You’ll check in there and get a visitor’s lanyard.”

  I back up. “Thank you,” I say.

  “Miss!” He gets this alarmed look on his face. “Watch your—”

  I don’t hear the rest, because I run smack into somebody.

  I spin around. Stuff dumps from my open bag. “Oh my god, I’m so—” The apology dies on my tongue as I find myself face to face with the obsidian glare of Malcolm Blackberg himself. “S-sorry,” I say. “I didn’t see where I was going—”

  “To be expected when one walks backwards,” he bites out in a cut-glass British accent, reminding me that I read somewhere he’s from England. The accent adds to his strange viciousness, and also to the rate of my banging pulse.

  Malcolm Blackberg is beautiful from afar, but up close he’s heart-splittingly hot, full of dark allure with his regal, bird-of-prey nose and dark-rimmed eyes the color of iced tea.

  I squat down to gather my things.

  Much to my surprise, he squats down and helps. I’m nearly hyperventilating from what a larger-than-life presence he is—and madly muscular, too, judging from the way his pants tighten around his thighs.