The Billionaire's Son

by Sharon Hartley

  “I made plans to take you and Jason out on the Drop Shot tomorrow. My boat.”

  A smile tugged at her mouth. “Of course you have a boat.”

  “I wanted you to enjoy your day off.”

  Once again he couldn’t read her reaction, but at least she was smiling.

  “Since you won’t let me do anything else for you,” he said.

  She threw up her arms. “At least you aren’t trying to give me a boat.”

  “Do you want one?”

  Her eyes went so wide he had to laugh.

  “No!” she said. “Stop it.”

  “Never.” He liked seeing this playful side of Kelly. He longed to see it more often. In fact, he wanted to know everything about her. What was her favorite movie, book? What type of music did she like? He picked up her hand and linked their fingers. She didn’t pull away.

  “So you’re up for a little cruise tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Sure. Why not. So give Maria some task to do in the morning, and I’ll sneak in her room while she’s occupied.”

  Trey shook his head. Kelly was unlike any woman he’d known. Instead of looking forward to a relaxing day on the water, her thoughts remained focused on her investigation of his staff. She was more excited about searching Maria’s room than any pleasure he’d planned for her. Did Kelly even know how to have fun? Had she ever enjoyed a day without worrying about what needed to be done?

  “Your quest will have to take place later in the day,” Trey said. “We’re leaving the dock early, and it makes more sense for me to ask Maria to help clean Drop Shot after we get back.”

  A buzz of static came over the intercom. “Mr. Wentworth,” a voice said.

  Trey moved to the monitors. “What’s your status?” he demanded.

  “All clear, sir. The boat belonged to a guest of a resident. You can come out now.”

  * * *

  STRETCHED OUT ON a lounge chair on the deck of Drop Shot, which was anchored off the coast of Elliott Key, Kelly closed her eyes and relaxed into the warmth of the afternoon sun, wearing the bikini Trey had given her a week ago.

  She could so get used to this life.

  Get over yourself, Jenkins. You’re not some pampered princess, and this is the last day of your little vacay.

  She opened her eyes and gazed far across the glistening waters of Biscayne Bay to where another boat had anchored soon after the Drop Shot.

  Trey’s “boat” had turned out to be a sixty-something-foot yacht, one she was certain could easily make a trip across the Atlantic. The yacht came with a captain to keep them out of trouble and a mate to serve her every whim, including a gourmet lunch that was actually healthy, making her think Trey had paid attention to her complaints about the fattening food.

  The weather was perfect. Not too hot, not too cool, a pleasant wind, and the Drop Shot cruised like a dream. Jason hadn’t been bratty. He’d even agreed to wear a life jacket on deck without complaint. Right now Trey was putting him down for a nap. Amazingly, the kid hadn’t objected to that, either.

  She couldn’t remember ever having a nicer day. Even the constant presence of Jason’s bodyguards didn’t spoil the outing.

  Although something was definitely up with the little dude. Not only had he been a perfect gentleman, she’d caught him looking at her in a new way at lunch, a confused expression wrinkling his nose. Was he remembering his real mother?

  And of course that would be an excellent development. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. More good news on an already perfect day.

  She’d made up her mind to go home. It was time, in fact past time. Leaving was the best decision for her and the Wentworths. Especially Jason. She wasn’t his mother, and it was wrong to keep up the pretense that she was. Even more so now if he had remembered the truth.

  And why was that thought making her so sad?

  “Hey, pretty lady.”

  Trey appeared beside her, holding two margaritas. “Thanks.” She accepted hers and took a taste. Yep. Definitely tequila.

  “Is Jason asleep?” she asked.

  Trey nodded. “All the excitement wore him out.”

  “Bodyguards standing by?”

  “One by the cabin, one at the bow keeping an eye out.”

  Kelly smiled at Trey as he sat in a lounge next to hers, but his gaze wasn’t on her face. It zeroed in on the burn mark on her shoulder. Without thinking she raised her hand to cover the mark, her fingers icy from the drink.

  He shifted his gaze to the same horizon she’d just pondered. Trey was curious about the burn. She knew he wanted her to tell him what had happened. But not now. She didn’t want memories from the worst day of her life to interfere with one of the best.

  “It’s been a lovely day,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Have you noticed anything different about Jason?” Trey asked.

  Surprised, she cut him a look. Of course Trey would have noticed. “Yes. Has he said anything to you?”

  “No. But I’ve caught him studying you.”

  “Do you think he’s regaining his memory of his mother?”

  Trey released a breath. “God, I hope so.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to figure out who the hell I am. Should we ask him about it?”

  “I don’t know. If we say the wrong thing...” Trey took a sip of his drink. “That’s something we can discuss with Dr. Barth tomorrow night.”

  “Dr. Barth,” Kelly said. “Tomorrow night?”

  “Jason’s new therapist, remember?”

  “Right, but I told you I had to go home. Do you remember that?” The noise from an approaching boat made her raise her voice.

  “What’s one more night, Kelly?”

  “Do you know how many times you’ve asked me for one more night?”

  Before Trey could answer, a sleek black speedboat raced too close along the side of Drop Shot, creating a huge wake that rocked the boat. The bodyguards appeared, but these weren’t kidnappers, just people out for a joy ride.

  Three people on the bow, a man and two young women, held up cell phones to snap photos of them. Another man stood behind the wheel. All four waved as the boat roared out of sight.

  “That should be illegal,” Kelly muttered.

  “I think it is,” Trey said. “But of course there’s never a cop around when you need one.”

  “Very funny. Do you think they recognized your boat?”

  Trey nodded. “I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. We’ve been lucky today.”

  They lapsed into silence as the motion of the boat steadied. Kelly stared after the vanishing boat. Trey lived in a fishbowl. God, she’d hate people constantly poking their nose into her business.

  “I know I’ve asked a lot of you, Kelly,” Trey said softly, “but has your time with me really been so horrible?”

  “Well, I didn’t enjoy the visit from your father.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “What’s the deal with you two?” she asked.

  “It’s complicated,” Trey said.

  “Yeah, I get that. Where’s your mother? You never talk about her.”

  “We all have scars, Kelly.” Trey shifted his gaze to the boat off in the distance, a muscle working in his jaw. “Some are less obvious than others.”

  Kelly swallowed. She shouldn’t be surprised Trey had wounds. Everyone did. Life was crazy hard most of the time.

  “Is your mom still alive?”

  He shot her a look, then nodded.

  Kelly bit her lip, wildly curious now. He hadn’t shut her questions down yet. “Are your parents divorced?”

  “No, but they haven’t lived together for twenty years. She’s in a private treatment center. The Wentworth machine chewed her up and spit he
r out. She can barely function.”

  “Are you saying she had some sort of a breakdown?”

  “She was—is fragile. Life with my father destroyed her.” Trey ran a hand through his thick hair. “Part of the problem was he’s twenty-five years her senior. I think she got to a point where she couldn’t take his bullying anymore and went somewhere deep inside herself. I make certain she has everything she wants or needs.”

  Kelly wanted—no, needed—to know more about Trey’s mom, but wasn’t sure if she should keep pressing.

  “Do you visit her?”

  “Not often. Seeing me can agitate her. As long as my father stays away from her, she remains calm. That’s the deal I made with him, one that unfortunately now has to be altered.”

  “Deal?”

  Trey turned toward her. “Did you ever wonder why I don’t go to work, why I don’t participate in Wentworth Industries?”

  Kelly shrugged. Of course she’d wondered about that strange fact.

  “We struck a deal that if Senior left my mother alone, I’d let him run things. I’d be a hands-off face of the company.”

  Kelly laughed. “You were a face?” Well, he did have a gorgeous face.

  “You know. I go to parties, benefits, charity events to promote Wentworth Industries. The idea is to keep the name out there. My father is obsessed with good PR.”

  Kelly nodded, remembering Trey had left wearing black tie her first night at the villa. And how disgusted she’d been that he’d abandoned Jason mere hours after the kid had returned home.

  “I had been groomed to take over, but Father refused any loosening of the reins.”

  “I get that,” Kelly muttered.

  “So to protect my mother, I agreed to wait. At first I was fine with the arrangement because of my new marriage,” Trey continued. “And soon I had my hands full with an unraveling wife and an injured son.”

  “What is going to change?”

  “My father doesn’t know it yet, but the board wants me to step in. He’s made some costly mistakes lately.”

  “So you’ll begin working full time?”

  Trey glanced toward the closed bedroom door. “As soon as Jason is stable.”

  Kelly wondered if Jason’s delusions weren’t just from physical and emotional trauma. Maybe he had some kind of genetic predisposition for mental illness.

  “Has your mother met Jason?” she asked.

  Trey shook his head. “She doesn’t even know my son exists.”

  That meant Jason didn’t know his grandmother. Trey’s mother sounded like a sweet gentle soul who couldn’t stand up to the steamroller also known as Grandpa Mean Bull. Kelly flashed to a sudden and delightful image of giving the hateful old man a good kick in the butt.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kelly murmured.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  A warm glow spread through her center. Trey had trusted her with personal information she intuitively knew he didn’t share with many people.

  But she’d already allowed herself to care too much about both Trey Wentworth and his son. They weren’t a real family, although it was easy to play along with that lie on a day as dreamlike as this one. And as appealing as that dream might be, it would never work between her and Trey. Their worlds were too different.

  She tried to picture him at Moe’s and Joe’s tossing back the cheap beer with Dale or Lana, listening to sick cop humor. Yeah, right.

  What a joke to even fantasize about a relationship with him. He only wanted her around because of Jason, and proximity had turned her into a convenient bed partner.

  Her own foolishness was about to set her up for a whole bucketful of life’s harshest pain. She needed to go home.

  Why couldn’t she manage to do that?

  “For Jason’s sake, will you stay and meet Dr. Barth?” Trey asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, hating herself for her weakness. “One more day, Trey. That’s all.”

  “Thanks,” Trey said and came to his feet. “We need to get back. I’ll have the captain pull up anchor.”

  Kelly closed her eyes as an unexpected wave of melancholy washed over her. Time to return to reality.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  KELLY PUSHED OPEN the door to Maria’s room, hurried inside and took a quick look around. The room was neat, as expected. Interestingly, no photographs on the chest of drawers or nightstand. Did Maria have a life outside of Wentworth Villa?

  The view out the window was to a driveway. Ocean views were reserved for the rooms of guests, not staff.

  Kelly took a deep breath and moved into the bathroom, the most likely place to find meds. She had plenty of time for a thorough search. Maria was with Trey on the Drop Shot, and he would call her cell to warn her when they were done there.

  Would the prescription bottles be hidden? Trey claimed to have never visited Maria’s quarters, but there were other staff members and all kinds of security personnel roaming the villa, including Hans, so the housekeeper might be cautious. Secretive about a nasty habit.

  Kelly opened the medicine cabinet and her gaze immediately zeroed in on a package of birth control pills halfway through a cycle. The prescription, dated two weeks ago, was for Maria Navarre. Interesting. So Maria was sexually active. According to Trey, she got one day a week off and usually took a late ferry to Miami after dinner the night before, returning the following evening about the same time. She hadn’t taken a day off since the abduction, but under normal conditions did she meet a lover once a week?

  No other meds, either marked or unmarked, were in the cabinet. Plenty of skin creams, though, hairbrush, comb, mouthwash, toothpaste and brush. Kelly shut the door and squatted to look underneath the vanity where she found clean towels and a large plastic container of multivitamins, the type you get at a warehouse club. She opened the cap and sniffed. Definitely that familiar vitamin smell, but she pocketed a tablet for possible testing.

  Finding nothing else of interest or suspicious in the bathroom, Kelly moved back into the bedroom. A search of the closet, including the pockets of clothing, revealed nothing. The drawer in the nightstand contained magazines and books printed in Spanish.

  She began a search of the six-drawer dresser. In the bottom drawer on the right, beneath a neatly folded stack of T-shirts, she discovered a plastic shopping bag from a well-known department store stuffed with orange prescription bottles. She removed one of the containers to read the label, and the pills rattled inside.

  Oxycodone. One hell of a lot of oxycodone. Trey paid Maria a good wage, but perhaps not enough to keep up with her habit. Sorry that her suspicions had proved correct, Kelly shook her head and set an empty container aside.

  So much for her perfect peaceful day.

  Continuing to search beneath the clothing, she found a frame face down and flipped it over.

  The face of Jason’s kidnapper sneered back at her. Adam looked younger, less gaunt, but no question she was staring at the man who had blown up her car.

  * * *

  TREY STARED AT the photograph Kelly placed on his desk. She’d discovered this frame hidden in Maria’s room and insisted this was one of the men who had kidnapped Jason.

  “You’re certain?” he asked. But he knew. Kelly was too smart, too competent to make a mistake on something as important as this.

  “Yes.”

  He picked up a plastic bag she’d also found. “That’s a lot of pills.”

  “The bottles are empty.”

  Trey met Kelly’s gaze. “You were right.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In her room. I told Hans to keep an eye on her.”

  “That’s one good thing about this island,” Kelly said. “She can’t run, at least not very fast.”

  “How could she do this?” Trey
demanded. A terrible rage ignited in his gut, pulling him out of the shock Kelly’s words and their meaning had created. A woman he had trusted to run his home and care for his son, a woman he’d treated like family, had betrayed him. Maria had caused Jason’s regression. Would his son ever be right again? He picked up the photograph again and stared at it.

  “This man could have killed Jason.”

  “She’s sick, Trey. Addiction is a disease.”

  “I don’t care. I want her out of my home.”

  She nodded. “Agent Ballard will be here in about two minutes. He’s flying in on a Bureau chopper.”

  “You called the FBI?”

  “I had no choice. I actually got worried he’d arrive before you two returned from the boat. I didn’t want him to show up without you knowing what was going down.”

  “Will he arrest her?”

  “He’ll read Maria her rights and question her first, but, yes. I have no doubt she’ll be cuffed and arrested. She’s just as guilty as the two men.”

  Trey collapsed into his chair. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Focus on the fact that with Maria’s help, Jason’s kidnappers should be off the street soon.”

  “What if she doesn’t help?”

  “She will. Especially when she can’t get her meds in jail. She’ll do anything to help herself.”

  Trey shook his head. “I never doubted her loyalty for a second. She had a black eye, for God’s sake.”

  “No doubt they slugged her to make it look good,” Kelly said. “Jason might be a child, but he could tell what happened.”

  “Jason.” Trey closed his eyes and sat back in his chair. Losing Maria would be another blow to his son. On top of Kelly leaving tomorrow.

  “I know,” she said softly.

  “What can we tell him?”

  Kelly bit her bottom lip. “Maybe we can ask the new shrink how to handle it.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Do you want to be present for the questioning?” Kelly asked.

  “Yes,” Trey said, staring at the photo again. “I want to hear her explanation.”

  He looked up at a knock on the door. Agent Ballard entered the office and went directly to Kelly to shake her hand. “Good work, Officer Jenkins.”