by Leela Ash
“You say she was pissed?” the man asked musingly, staring off into the distance.
“Yes!” Raven affirmed impatiently. If he could just find out what plane she had boarded, he could jet on his private jet and be waiting at her destination airport by the time her plane landed.
“This…wife, she wouldn’t happen to be blond, somewhat chubby, with sad brown eyes would she?” the security man asked.
“That’s her! You saw her! What plane was she on?”
“She’s right over there,” the man said, nodding toward the waiting crowd.
Raven turned slowly and felt his stomach flip upside down; Sage sat a few feet away, weeping openly into her handkerchief as though her heart was broken.
“Now, if you had anything to do with the way that poor girl’s weeping, mate, then it’s a good thing she left you,” the security man informed him huffily before swanning off with his nose in the air.
* * *
Sage was certain this was what it felt like to be a homeless hobo. She had packed up almost her entire belongings and now she just sat at the airport confused. She had wanted to go to Spain, back to where it had all started and just put things in perspective, but now… She missed her flight and she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.
Someone sank onto the seat beside her, but she kept her eyes focused on her palms, refusing to look up. She didn’t feel like chatting and if this idiot couldn’t tell then
“I’m sorry,” a familiar voice said quietly.
Sage’s shocked eyes flew to his face. Raven! Her stupid heart did a happy jig until she sternly calmed it down and glared at him with all the hatred in her heart.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she spat.
“I never meant to hurt you. I was hurting myself. I felt used and stupid and I lashed out. I was wrong.”
“Go to hell!” she spat and sprang to her feet to leave. He wouldn’t let her.
His hand clamped about her wrist like a manacle and then he dropped to his knees, his eyes trained on her face. Everyone turned to look at the pair of them, the waiting crowd giggling as they obviously waited for some romantic proposal.
“You’re embarrassing me!” she whispered furiously, trying to tug her arm from his grip. It was no use; it might as well be a handcuff for all the give it had.
“Then sit back down. Please, Sage.”
She slowly sank back onto her seat and he released her wrist, but he remained kneeling.
“Sit,” she ordered furiously, her face suffused with embarrassed color.
“I can’t. I don’t deserve to. I have been an ass. I shouldn’t have said what I did, especially because it wasn’t true. I was hurting, so I guess I just wanted to hurt you back.”
Sincerity blazed back at her from his eyes and she relaxed a little against her seat, feeling some of the hurt gradually seeping away just like that. The man had a scary power over her.
“I was wrong, Sage. I I love you,” he admitted quietly. “And I guess I just felt you took that watch to make some money, but you never sold it after two months. That alone told me it was a keepsake for you. My mother gave me that watch before she died and that’s all it was to me; of sentimental value. But now I realize I would cast a thousand of it away before I would lose you. I want to hear you laugh again and hear your soft cries as I ”
The elderly gentleman seating beside them cleared his throat loudly and ruffled his newspaper.
Sage giggled, unable to help herself at the look of exasperation on Raven’s handsome face.
“Why don’t we get out of here?” he suggested.
Sage shook her head, smiling happily at him, “You said you love me?”
“With all my heart.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re you, and because I can’t help myself,” he told her softly.
Tears sprang to her eyes again; this time, tears of such joy that her entire face glowed with it.
Seeing the tears, Raven held her fingers in his and asked quietly, “Will you make me the happiest man on earth, Sage, and be my wife?”
Now the tears were falling down her cheeks unchecked, her heart thumping in her throat as she stared at him in shock.
“Please,” he whispered when he thought she was hesitating.
She wasn’t hesitating; she was speechless.
“There is nothing I want more than to spend the rest of my life with you; to have you in my arms and to have you as the mother of my children. You do want kids, right?”
Sage nodded happily, her hand going protectively to her midriff.
“Say yes, Sage. I don’t have a ring right now, but I swear the minute we get out of here, I’m going to get you the biggest, honking diamond I can find!”
Sage dissolved into laughter and threw her arms around his neck, loving him as he slowly rose to his feet, taking her with him. She leaned back in his arms and grinned at him, “Yes I love you, and yes, I’ll marry you.”
He leaned down and took her lips in a kiss so infinitely tender that it would have melted her into a puddle right there if his powerful hands hadn’t been holding her up.
When he lifted his dark head, she smiled at him, “And about those kids, how do you feel about twins?”
He grinned happily, “Well, if it’s twins you want, I hear we have to make love at least thrice a day to get twins. I’ll be happy to oblige you, ma’am,” he said, leerily.
She laughed. He really was something else. “Slow down tiger. Before you start rotating the mattress in your mind, I’m already pregnant. Twins!”
His heart skipped a beat against her chest and then he grinned, looking happier than she had ever seen him as he said, “I must be the luckiest man alive.”
No, Sage corrected inwardly as she hugged him tightly. She was the luckiest woman alive, she decided, as her eyes shut.
THE END
Badass Billionaire
Leela Ash
Copyright ©2015 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of 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.
Thank you so much for your interest in my work
Chapter 1
Riiiiing! Riiiing!
Amy sat at her desk finishing a report to give to a judge when the rather annoying sound of her telephone interrupted her. She was careful to minimize the word processing program before she turned to the beat up telephone that sat on the desk in her cramped office.
“Here For You, Amy Delaney speaking,” she answered, taking the receiver off the cradle.
“Miss Delaney, this is Tabitha again,” came the static distorted voice on the other end of the line.
“Yes, Tabitha, I was just working on your report,” Amy said, placing her forehead in the palm of her left hand, elbows on the desk.
“Yes, I just wanted to make sure that you were going to recommend that he stay in jail…you can’t let him get out.”
“Tabitha, as I have told you, the contents of my report to the judge are concealed until the date of the hearing,” Amy said gently, “If I told you what I am recommending, then I would lose my job and could go to jail, myself. You don’t want me to go to jail, do you?”
“No, no…I don’t want that! I don’t know if I could keep going without you, Miss Delaney!”
“Tabitha, it’s not me that has helped you move on, you’re helping yourself. Now please, if I’m going to finish my report and have it faxed to the courthouse in time for the hearing, I’ll need to get off the phone. Can we talk some more at your appointment on Tuesday?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I’ll talk to you on Tuesday, Miss Delaney,” Tabitha said, quickly disconnecting from the call.
Shaking her head as she replaced the telephone receiver on the cradle, Amy caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror that hangs on the back of the off
ice door. She stood up, and walked over to it, examining her reflection.
She had always known she was attractive, with her long dark and hair and chestnut eyes, but she was a little insecure around the midline at times. She thought she looked great, but it was annoying when everyone seemed to be chasing the bean poles. Oh well, she thought, her ship would come in. Her sometime boyfriend, Todd, didn’t help matters. He was seeing other girls every chance he got. He had even had the audacity to come right out and tell her that her weight “kind of bugged him”, and that he didn’t know if he could see himself in a “real” relationship with her. God, what an asshole.
Sadness overwhelmed her as she thought over her last “steady” relationship she had had. That would be Justin. He had joined the Marine Corps immediately after high-school, and proposed to her on his last night in Black Rock before he shipped out for Iraq in 2005. He was dead by 2006.
This had been the trigger that led to her eating more than anything. But Amy had never been one to hide. So, rather than not fit in at all, she began to compensate for her perceived lack of physical appeal with “fat” jokes…usually at her own expense. She wasn’t even that big. She was just curvy, but she found her place making the jokes nonetheless. Sure, she had plenty of friends all through her college career at the University of California at Berkeley, but between grief over Justin’s death and her subsequent weight gain, her sex life had consisted primarily of one night stands ever since.
“Whatever,” she thought, “I am who I am, after all.” The older she got, the less she could constantly worry about it. She had a plan to start hitting the gym soon, but in the meantime, if guys didn’t appreciate her as she was, well screw ‘em…they weren’t worth her time anyhow. Of course she still had her insecurities, but she was beginning to feel better and better about herself. She was actually beginning to sort of revel in her curves. The guys didn’t know what they were missing.
“Oh my! Is that the time?” Amy said to herself, coming out of her mental wanderings. She had glanced at the clock on the bottom, right hand side of her ancient PC after typing in her password. “No wonder I’m so hungry!”
It was very nearly 1:45 p.m.
She got up from her desk, grabbed her purse, and began walking toward the door.
“Alice! I’ll be back! I’m getting lunch!” she hollered to her supervisor, the lead at the grief counseling agency that she worked in. Entering the hallway and turning to the right, she shouted out “Hey! Hold the elevator!” just in time to see the arm of a tailored suit ending in a deeply tanned hand extend itself to hold the elevator doors open.
Houston Storm was feeling hungry as well, and so decided to go to Giglio’s for lunch. He quickly placed a phone call to his valet, asking him to bring a car around.
“Which car, Mr. Storm?”
“I think I’ll take the Viper, Steven,” he answered. Hanging up the telephone hotline to his garage, he walked out of his 1,000 square foot personal office, and across the floor of offices inhabited by the rest of his staff, who handled all of the “nuts and bolts” of his company, Larger-Than-Life-Love Inc. The company controlled seven of the top ten niche dating websites in North America. Their premier website, “largerthanlifelove.com,” was deemed the most profitable web based dating site for the previous three years. Nowhere was this fact more obvious than in the lifestyle choices of the company’s founder, Houston Storm.
Having been named the “San Francisco Bay Area’s Most Eligible Bachelor” for each of the previous four years was likely a byproduct of being named one of California’s “Top Ten Richest Men” for the previous five years by The Californian magazine. Whether it was the actual rankings, or just who he was, the fact was that he found woman falling at his feet seemingly everywhere he went. He had absolutely no problem taking full advantage of this fact either. As a result, and probably coupled with the fact that he still had not even reached the tender age of thirty five, the paparazzi had already branded him as a “bad boy”. They seemed to have no more favored task than proving their label by keeping the tabloids supplied with an endless series of shots of him and his many female guests inside his Los Gatos mansion compound.
The truth was, however, that he had created his first website in his second year of junior college—Larger Than Life Love—in order to actually find that perfect woman. The only problem was, instead of drawing to him the kind of small town girl he really desired, his being rich and powerful brought all kinds of disingenuous women to his door instead.
After he walked to the elevator and punched the ground floor button, he had expected an uninterrupted journey down the seventeen floors of the Yuanfen Building, which was normally quiet by this time of day, but he was wrong. On the sixth floor, his elevator car picked up a young intern from the law offices on that floor She rode down to four before getting off. The door was just closing when Houston heard the voice of a young woman, calling for him to hold the door. Extending his expensively clothed arm through the door, he beheld the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.
Chapter 2
Immediately in awe of the breathtaking sight of the man wearing the suit, Amy found herself momentarily breathless. Everything about him—his custom tailored suit, his piercingly dark eyes, his deep tan, and the way his black hair carelessly waved to the right side of his perfect head—was simply … perfect. His eyes, a deep chocolate, were focused intently on her own.
His nose sat dead center of his perfect face, with a very deeply indented bridge sitting equidistant from both of his eyes. His black eyebrows, which arched down from the outside in, gave him a shrewd look, in addition to making him appear darkly mysterious. He had a very thin chin and pronounced cheekbones in addition to a black and well-groomed goatee. His neck was very muscular, with a well-defined Adam’s apple, with just the uppermost tip of a tribal style tattoo sneaking up behind his left ear.
His shoulders were broad, and betrayed a sense of careless athleticism, making it evident that he was once a formidable force in whatever athletic pursuit he participated in. The suit was made of the finest black fabric, and shined in the dim light of the elevator, betraying the presence of silk. Under the sporty suit coat, the dark man wore a simple beige button up shirt; with the top two buttons undone, the man looked as if he was intentionally displaying a tuft of his dark chest hair.
Amy was a sucker for chest hair.
For pants and shoes, the godlike man wore simple, dark blue jeans and pristine, gunmetal colored Testoni dress shoes.
Amy stepped inside, and the doors closed behind her. She immediately felt as if every molecule of air in the enclosed space had been consumed, leaving her in a vacuum, with only the well-dressed and gorgeous stranger as company. Time seemed to freeze, as she was suspended in the elevator, which seemed hell-bent on staying still. Finally, the stranger broke the thick silence, and asked,
“Which floor, darlin’?”
“Ground,” she said, sharply taking in a lungful of air.
“Where are you going this time of day?”
“I lost track of time, and didn’t get lunch,” Amy answered. Her chest was heaving with the stress of trying to swallow the suddenly thin air in the elevator.
“I am too, oddly enough. How would you feel about accompanying me to Giglio’s? It is rare that I get to have such a ravishing a meal-time guest as yourself.”
“Giglio’s?” Amy asked, shocked. The restaurant had been rated as five stars by no less than seven different renowned food critics. Tables were notoriously difficult to get, and were worth over $150 per seat. “I’d love to, but I don’t have that kind of money…”
“Baby, I don’t think I asked if you could afford Giglio’s, I asked if you would join me.”
“Uh…” Amy said, completely unsure of whether she should accompany the stranger to lunch. When she left her hometown of Black Rock, Arkansas to attend college at Berkeley, her father had warned her to be careful to avoid strange men…but this was no normal strange man.
>
“What?” the man asked, “Afraid to accompany a stranger to lunch?” he shrewdly asked.
“Um…yes, actually,” she answered, blushing a brilliant shade of scarlet.
“Fine,” the man said, holding out a hand, “My name is Houston Storm.”
“Amy Delaney,” she answered him as she took his hand.
“There…now we aren’t strangers,” Houston Storm told her as the elevator doors opened, displaying the magnificent marble of the Yuanfen Building’s foyer. “Now, will you accompany me? There’s my car at the door…I can drive us.”
Amy looked outside the glass façade of the building and saw a completely gorgeous, blue Dodge Viper. “Uh, yeah…I mean, yes, I’d love to.”
“Excellent!” Houston exclaimed, flashing a smile which betrayed a perfect set of completely straight and brilliantly white teeth. “Here, let me get the door for you,” Houston said, opening the passenger side door of the Viper. “Thank you, Steven,” he said to the valet, handing the young man a $50 bill in exchange for the keys.
When Houston cranked the car, and pulled away from the curb, Amy said “Wait…lunch service stops at two o’clock at Giglio’s. How are we going to eat?”
The car’s clock and Amy’s cell-phone showed it as 2:02 p.m.
“Don’t worry,” Houston said with a laugh and another smile. “I own a third of the business.”
Houston could not believe his good fortune as he pulled the Viper away from the curb in front of the Yuanfen Building. His day had been going exceedingly badly until the gorgeous Amy Delaney agreed to accompany him to lunch. To start, he had received no less than four letters attempting to blackmail him. Apparently, there had been paparazzi near his pool house the previous week, and had captured the entire business between he and rising Japanese starlet, Willow Saito. The young woman had been in a very public dating relationship with a popular minor league baseball pitcher for the local Giants affiliate. There had been a lot of talk about the boy going across the country to play AA ball for the Richmond Flying Squirrels in Virginia.