Criminal Love
A Billionaire Romance
Part 1
By Monique Hodge
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or places is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Monique Hodge
All rights reserved
Cover designed by Monique Hodge. Image by Yuliya Yafimik. Fonts used are League Gothic and Existence.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form except as excerpts or quotations less than 250 words. Parodies, derivatives, and fan media adaptations for personal, but not commercial use are permitted.
First Edition: January 2016
Criminal Love
Part 1
Hadley West checked her gun, making sure that the blanks were in place rather than the actual bullets her older sister had given her before they boarded the cruise ship. The weapon felt like a dead weight in her hand. She should have been taking finals at college, but instead she was sitting in a small cabin in the Gulf of Mexico as her criminal family prepared for the biggest heist of their lives.
“Cheer up,” her sister Piper said, cracking her knuckles. “Just imagine the cash we’ll be swimming in after this. You’ll be able to afford med school no problem.”
Unlike the mild-mannered Hadley, Piper and the rest of Hadley’s family reveled in their life of crime. Hadley looked around. Her mother and father were standing over a schematic of the boat, no doubt stolen from one of the emergency evacuation maps in the hallways of the ship. She hoped it would not be needed, but then again, her family had a way of inviting disaster wherever they went. That was why Hadley had decided to come along, and she had managed to keep them in check for the first five days of the cruise.
Tucker, her younger teen brother, stood at the door waiting for his twin Tanner to come back from scouting out their target. Tucker stood on his toes and peered out the window. Everyone in Hadley’s family was eager for the night ahead. Eager to take on Jackson Ward, the billionaire oil tycoon whom the West family were going to extort a small fortune from.
But all Hadley wanted to do was curl up on the bed and pretend that she was back in New York. The last thing she wanted to do was threaten to kill a man who was wealthier than some third world countries. If she was being honest, and Hadley usually was when she could, she was scared of what Jackson could do.
She thought of the last five days and the reconnaissance she had done for her family. She had followed Jackson from a distance. It wasn’t difficult to spot him; he was handsome. Almost six feet tall, blonde tidy hair, deep blue eyes, and a perfectly tailored suit. He was every woman’s fantasy.
But the moment Hadley saw Jackson she knew they were making a gamble.
Hadley still remembered the way he moved from bar to bar on the ship, playing as hard as he worked, but that wasn’t what set off her inner alarm. Nor was it the two trained bodyguards that trailed him everywhere he went.
Jackson knew he was being followed.
The twenty-one-year-old college junior ran her finger across the barrel of her pistol. It was cold and metallic. Cruel. And that is what she saw in Jackson’s keen gaze as he scoped out each room he entered.
As well as the number of times his gaze fell on Hadley, questioning what a nerdy looking woman in denim shorts and a tee shirt was doing in the shadows of everywhere he went. She wasn’t sure if he had seen the other members of her family, but she knew he had seen her. Really seen her.
Hadley hadn’t told her family, but it had been a challenge to not meet him. As much as Hadley had followed him, he seemed to have followed her. When Hadley was free from reconnaissance and spent time on the lower decks, normally populated only by middle-class tourists, not the VIP passengers from the upper deck, she found him peering down at her from the balcony.
It wasn’t subtle. It was predatory.
And Hadley had no idea what he wanted.
Does he know what we plan to do? Hadley wondered. Or does he know I want something from him?
No man went from being the son of an impoverished ranch-hand to the CEO of an oil company without knowing a thing or two about the world. Even if he had made his fortune sincerely (and Hadley doubted it), he would know when he was in the midst of a con.
But if Hadley was being even more honest, what she was most scared of was what she could do to him. The weight of the gun was a weight on her heart, but it wasn’t the only one. She was scared of what she wanted to do with him.
She liked the way he looked at her. It was the same way men looked at her older and prettier sister. She loved it.
Hadley was already compromised by Jackson, and they hadn’t even met. She swept her short red hair away from her face and took a deep breath.
The door to the cabin opened and Tanner walked in with a frown.
“I found the target, but… well. I don’t think we’re going to get very close,” he said. Hadley’s twin brothers were young, and they hadn’t completed too many high profile heists at their age. Still, they were good in their assessments, and she trusted them. Tanner looked down at his phone which held his reconnaissance data. “His bodyguards? Totally armed.”
This was unexpected.
It was almost impossible to get guns on this ship, and there is no way they would have made an exception for Jackson, Hadley thought. She wondered why he felt the need to have armed bodyguards. Even if he has seen me on the ship, he didn’t know before we boarded.
Hadley’s mother swore.
“But,” Tanner continued, smiling down at his cellphone. “I have a plan. Or at least an idea. He spends a lot of time in the Cabana bar, chatting up girls. It looks like he is trying to get a girl for the night. I think Piper could seduce him.”
Piper smiled, because if there was one thing Piper loved more than stealing, it was sleeping with men. Although Hadley knew her older sister had a good heart – outside of family business that is – and most of the money she stole from their targets went to her two daughters, Hadley’s sweet little nieces, who would one day follow their crooked mother’s footsteps. It was something that broke Hadley’s heart, and a future she didn’t want any future children of her own if she had any.
But Hadley paused at Tanner’s words.
Chatting up girls?
It went against the profile they had made the last few days on the ship. Jackson wasn’t against flirtation, Hadley observed, but it seemed like a sudden change to try taking a woman back to his cabin suite on the final night before the ship arrived to port. She wanted to say something, that clearly something was off about their plan, but Piper had set aside her pistol and had dove into her bag looking for a slinky dress.
I can’t believe this is my family, Hadley thought.
“It’s good I packed my cocktail dress,” Piper said, reaching into her suitcase and pulling out a red, strapless body con dress. Their mother made a tsk sound, but she was practical enough not to forbid it. “He seemed way out of my league before, but I’m certain I can trick him for the night.”
Hadley was never volunteered for seduction ploys. Unlike her sister, Hadley was plain and studious, and if she weren’t wearing contacts she’d look even more dowdy in her pink blouse and frayed denim shorts than she already did.
But as she thought of Jackson – the target she corrected herself, since he was clearly a threat – Hadley couldn’t help but think of the twenty-nine-year-old society heartthrob. She had seen him in the glossy pages of her roommate’s gossip tabloids for the last year. Everyone
wanted to be around him, and because of that he was frequently trailed by his bodyguards.
Never in those articles was there any mention of one night stands.
There is no way we are getting away with this, Hadley thought. She imagined him in his crisp, navy suit standing over her fallen body, her gun just out of reach of her hand. We’re missing something. There is no way we are going to survive this!
But of course the family that extorted together stayed together, and though Hadley didn’t enjoy the family business, she would do anything for her family. In return, her parents had sent her off to college so she could one day study medicine, though they thought it was amusing she would choose such a poorly paid profession.
Hadley had only agreed to join her family on this heist to make sure they came home. It was supposed to be their last hurrah (though she sincerely doubted they could do without the rush). If Hadley had any say in it she wanted to make sure this was their last heist because they succeeded past their wildest expectations, not because they were arrested or killed.
She thought of her nieces. She thought of them having to visit their mother behind bars. She thought of her twin brothers, still being home schooled but forgoing homework in favor of petty crime. Even if she couldn’t save her parents and sister, she thought she might still be able to save them.
Only now Hadley had doubts this heist would succeed, and they were still barreling towards the end as if it were any other heist. If the last five days had taught Hadley anything, it was that they had finally met their match.
Her dad stood in front of the cabin door. “Let’s get going,” he said. “Piper will pursue the target directly; Tanner and Tucker will make sure she isn’t followed; your mom, Hadley, and me will tail Piper and the target to his cabin and sneak in when he’s distracted.”
Everyone in Hadley’s family gave an affirmative. They were a unit, except for Hadley, who followed her family out the door reluctantly. Piper winked at her sister as the door shut behind Hadley, holding the dress in hand, ready to steal some time with Jackson before she had to hold a gun to his head.
Hadley didn’t like how jealous she was that Piper was the one to be able to seduce him. That she would even be able to do it.
But she was also glad.
I don’t know if I could handle the way he looked at me, Hadley thought.
She made her way to the upper deck to situate herself in one of the hallways. Because she was a good shot, and she looked less suspicious than her hardened parents, she was to be Piper’s primary backup. As it was, she could see the door to Jackson’s suite from where she stood. She could almost imagine herself walking through those doors…
Hadley absently-mindedly read her family’s chatter in their group message on her phone. She saw Piper’s eagerness as she wrote of her approach to Jackson. Her brother’s observations of the two as they spoke.
She wanted to be down there in the slinky dress, even though Hadley knew she hadn’t worn a dress in her entire life.
A passenger in a tulle gown passed by, likely heading to the same Cabana bar that Jackson and Piper were probably dancing away in. Hadley frowned at the woman’s perfect kinky curls and dark skin. She was the sort of woman Jackson probably went for. The woman gave Hadley an unimpressed roll of the eyes as she passed.
Hadley knew she stood out, and not just amongst the intricately carved wooden walls of the upper deck. Nor just on the cruise ship. Hadley didn’t belong anywhere, even in her own family. She picked at her denim shorts. At college she was just a normal girl studying for the MCAT, but college was temporary. Her real world was entirely different.
Her gun was strapped to her holster and it was rubbing the skin underneath her blouse. Hadley scratched at her side, wanting to remove it from her body. The gun was hidden from view, but she worried that someone on the ship, maybe one of the two bodyguards or Jackson himself, would realize she was packing heat.
Hadley read about Piper’s ongoing seduction with a pang in her heart on her cellphone’s screen. It was almost time. Everything could change in an instant, and they all had to be ready… including Hadley.
“I’m in position,” she typed. “Nobody but passengers on my end.”
Her father gave an affirmative and she read the rest of her family’s final messages as they started to prepare for the ambush. It all appeared to be going according to plan until Piper’s new message arrived on the screen.
“He doesn’t like me,” Piper wrote. “He said he was hoping for someone else.”
Hadley’s brothers responded with an ill-timed LOL, and she felt a great burden lift off from her shoulders. Although she couldn’t help but wonder who Jackson was waiting for.
Me? She thought hopefully, but turned it down just as quickly.
Maybe we can just go home now. Maybe we all lucked out. Jackson’s too smart and too well guarded to fall for us.
Or to fall for me…
But the mission had changed. Hadley had been gone for so long that she almost thought her family really would abandon the heist, knowing it was too risky, especially on a crowded cruise ship, but then her father gave the order to continue with normal protocol, violent protocol, if needed.
Hadley bit her lip, mentally preparing herself for the inevitable gun draw. She thought back to that dark fantasy she had of Jackson standing over her fallen body, her gun just out of reach. She stepped away from the wall.
Only, she found herself colliding with a tall, well-built man.
Jackson Ward.
He was solid and real… not at all part of Hadley’s dreams or nightmares. She wanted to reach out and confirm if it was reality, but she frozen.
Hadley remembered briefly reading that he had stepped away from the Cabana Bar, but her family had been so distracted that he must have slipped right past Piper and the twins. Without his bodyguards.
Now Hadley was the only one in her family who knew where he was.
“I… I…” Hadley stuttered, not sure what to do. She knew that her parents would be rounding the corner at any moment. But seeing him standing in front of her in his tailored suit and set frown changed everything. It was at that moment Hadley knew she could make a decision that would change the course of the night. She had a few minutes until her family found their target and continued with their heist. And with that heist, Hadley and her family would be risking their entire futures.
I don’t want to take risks anymore, she thought. And I don’t want my family to get in trouble.
Hadley must have been so lost inside herself that Jackson had thought she had been hurt, because she felt his large hands press into her shoulders. His body heat radiated off his skin, and Hadley felt strangely comforted by his touch. He leaned down, coming face to face with her, and asked:
“Are you okay?”
Jackson’s rough, Texas accent sounded genuinely concerned, and when Hadley looking into his piercing blue eyes she couldn’t help but think, I can’t shoot him. I don’t even want to threaten to shoot him!
Her dark fantasy turned into something else… something more sensual. She blushed, imagining them together in an entirely different situation.
“I’m sorry,” is what Hadley should have said. Or, “I should have watched where I was going.”
The close proximity would have been the perfect opportunity to draw her gun and press it into Jackson’s side, ordering him into his cabin suite so the West family could extort the money they came for. But instead Hadley did the only thing she could think of to get him safely away.
Hadley closed her eyes and let herself fall to the floor. Only, she didn’t fall, because she felt Jackson’s strong arms catch her and hold her to him. She heard Jackson call for her.
The con played her faint like a proper swoon, mindful to stay out of it only long enough for him to grow concerned and not call for help on the emergency line. But… long enough to enjoy the way she felt in his arms.
I could stay like this forever, Hadley thought sadly. But I c
an’t.
“W-what happened?” she asked, opening her eyes slowly. She felt a little silly being in the arms of a perfectly dressed man when she was in her denim shorts, but she couldn’t help but think that it all looked right somehow.
Jackson helped her to stand, his large hand guiding the small of her back as he feat steadied to the floor. However, his touch was electric, and Hadley felt her knees buckle and she started to fall again. Jackson caught her once more.
“Sea sick?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Hadley replied, and then thought that might not be severe enough, and worried that he might walk away from her, said “I need to lie down, but I don’t… everything is dizzy.”
Jackson frowned, but then he steadied Hadley on her feet. His hands remained on her shoulders, and Hadley never wanted him to let go.
“I’m going to my cabin to get something. You could lay down until I leave,” he said.
It was a kind offer. Unreasonably generous, even. Hadley knew that her family would have wanted her to be cautious, and even though Hadley believed he had been suspicious of her family this entire time she wanted to think that she was the one he had been waiting for. It was silly, of course.
Think of what is most important right now, Hadley reminded herself. This was the last night before the cruise ship docked in the Bahamas. Her family planned to extort Jackson and keep him hostage in his room all night until morning, where they would leave the ship following a wire transfer overseas and disappear.
Of course, Hadley would still have to disappear herself, and that would mean never seeing Jackson again. No matter what. She felt a pang in her heart. That dark fantasy… that sensual fantasy had evolved into something else. Instead of a stolen kiss in the hallway, she imagined him taking her on his bed.
Stop dreaming! she thought.
But Hadley had to keep Jackson locked up in his room where he would be safe without endangering her family. Her mind was so full of these deviant thoughts that the only idea she had was to tempt him all night long.
Criminal Love: A Billionaire Romance Page 1