Billionaire's Best Woman - A Standalone Novel (A Billionaire Wedding Romance Love Story) (Billionaires - Book #5)

by Claire Adams

  Dean cleared his throat.

  I blinked. Okay, he was throwing me into the deep end. “I would like to change my order, please.”

  The waiter responded, “Yes, of course. Would you like to take another look at our menu, or do you know what you want?”

  “Uh,” I muttered.

  Dean was mouthing what looked like, “Take what you want,” but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Could I have—”

  Dean cleared his throat again, this time loudly enough to startle the waiter.

  “I’ll have the fugu.”

  “Very good, madam, though I should let you know the fugu will be an extra forty-five minutes for preparation. Is that acceptable?” the waiter asked.

  I glanced over at Dean, who just shrugged. “That should be fine, thank you.”

  “I’ll inform the chef immediately,” the waiter said and went on his way.

  “So,” Dean said, unfolding his cloth napkin and placing it on his lap, “squid would have been a gamble, but a dish that, if prepared improperly will likely kill you, is worth a shot?”

  “I ordered what I wanted,” I answered. “Fugu is one of those things I’ve wanted to try for a long time, but the three times in my life I’ve been to a restaurant that served it, I was always too timid to take the chance.

  “Now you’re asking me to take another chance, to start to open myself up to you in a new way. You were right with what you were saying before. It’s so easy to just let things pass you by, not wanting to risk potential catastrophe. Well, playing it safe never really worked out for me. If you’re in, I’m in, too.”

  Dean smiled. “Good for you,” he said. “Just so we’re clear, though, you’re talking about the relationship and not the fugu, right? Pufferfish scares the hell out of me.”

  Chapter Eight

  Faux Pas

  It’s funny what redefining can do to a relationship and to the people in it.

  Before Dean suggested he and I share a more traditional kind of relationship, I had shied away, at least to some degree, from looking too much into him. I glanced at a few things here and there just so I felt a bit less like I was going out with a stranger, but I didn’t spend too much time on it. If it was just going to be a fling, what would be the point?

  The day after we met in the club, he had told me not to make things out to be more than they were, and so I didn’t. Well, I tried not to. The one thing I was proud of was that I hadn’t dug too far into his past. Of course, that wasn’t for a lack of trying, but at the time, it felt like attempting to get Luke to spill something or simply asking Dean himself were the only respectable options. Now, though, we were an item.

  I’d just gotten home from work, and I swear I got on the computer to check my email and maybe watch a few mindless videos on the internet for a while. As soon as I sat down and powered up the laptop, though, I went straight for the search engine, typing, “Dean Carrick personal history.” I took my hands off the keys and stared at the screen. I hadn’t pressed enter.

  I was on the edge of doing something I knew I would regret one way or another. The ethical thing to do would be to simply get to know Dean, one-on-one, face-to-face. He hadn’t done anything to make me not trust him.

  If it weren’t for Tim, I probably would have deleted the search and gone on to other things.

  Earlier that day, I was up on the roof eating the lunch I’d brought from home. After the thing with Isabella, it had become increasingly uncomfortable being around all those people. Tim was the only one I let off the hook, but in a way, I think I blamed him, too. Blame was a favorite tool of mine.

  I hadn’t told Tim why I hadn’t been to the cafeteria in a few days because I knew he’d figure out a way to make me feel stupid enough about it to relent. I wasn’t in the mood to be put on the spot again like that, though. I’d chat with him when we ran into each other, but every day around lunchtime, I’d do my best to avoid him.

  The roof wasn’t anything special. There were no benches or fountains or five-star restaurants overlooking the city, but it had the one thing I was looking for: it was private.

  Dean had said he wanted us to remain discreet, at least until things with Italy blew over. What if I wasn’t ready for things with Italy to blow over, though? I had barely kept it together when we were just sneaking out to go see each other, but being someone who avoids the spotlight as much as possible, I dreaded the day Dean said we could openly date. I still thought it was a long shot it’d ever happen, but the possibility was enough to keep me anxious. Even if I were just a nervous caterpillar getting ready to transform into a confident butterfly, the metamorphosis was nowhere near complete.

  I was just getting my lunch unpacked onto one corner of the only concrete slab anywhere near table height and lightly cursing myself for the cheesy metaphor when I heard the metal door to the roof creak open. Tim had followed me.

  One thing about Tim was he had a different smile for every occasion. The one he gave when we were walking back to the table after making four full-grown men feel very small—that was his vindication smile. I wasn’t guessing or making it up; that’s what he told me he called it. Daniel, Tim’s husband, had apparently started writing down the list of what smile meant what.

  As Tim walked across the windy roof toward me, though, one side of his mouth half-pulled up into a grin while the other half of his mouth noticeably twitched. I didn’t know what that smile meant, but it didn’t look like one of the cheery ones.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I was just going to eat my lunch up here, take in the view,” I answered.

  “You’re not supposed to eat up here, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “I have no idea, but is this where you’ve been going the last few days? What, do you think you’re so much better than the rest of us that you need to physically be above us while you eat?”

  “No!” I objected, still not sure if I should take him seriously. “That’s not it at all. Why would you think that?”

  “You need to get laid more than any person I know,” he said. That’s when the other half of his mouth rose to complete the smile. I knew that smile. The beady look in the eyes, the corners of the mouth pulled all the way up, but also back a little, the way he almost had to grit his teeth completely to contain himself. This was his “I have a surprise that you’re probably not going to be all that thrilled about” smile. I knew that smile all too well. He used it a lot. “And I have got just the guy for you.”

  “Seriously? You followed me up here to try to hook me up on a date?”

  “I wouldn’t have had to follow you up here if you weren’t so obviously dodging me.”

  “I’m not dodging you.”

  “She said dodgingly,” he replied.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not a word.”

  “Of course it’s a word. It’s English!” He thought about the statement for a moment. “I mean, it’s used in England more than it is here. It’s a British thing.”

  “I think you’re thinking of the word ‘dodgy,’ which means shady or—”

  “Yeah, whatever, shut up. Anyway, so I have this friend—well, it’s actually Daniel’s friend, but not the kind of friend we see each other all the time. He’s kind of more the long-time friend that you only see a few times every year, and that’s if you’re planning it. Anyway, he’s got this boat and he invited Daniel and me to go out on the ocean with him. We got to talking a little bit, and it turned out he’s still single. So I told him all about you—”

  “You—”

  “Hold on, I’m in the middle of something. Anyway, so I told him all about you, and I’m pretty sure you were just about to say something like, ‘But Tim, you don’t really know me well enough to be able to tell anyone all about me,’ right?”

  I went to answer, but the question was rhetorical.

  “Well, I don’t know if you know this about me or not, but I have a great sense about people. Like with Daniel, I kn
ew five seconds into meeting him that I was going to be with him for the rest of my life. Either that or I’d lose interest partway through the date and end up going home with the guy who brought us our drinks at the restaurant—he had a great personality.”

  “Tim.”

  “I know, I know, here I am going off about my husband and a waiter, but you’re not going to believe this: the waiter is the guy I’m setting you up with. Only, he’s not a waiter anymore. They moved him to the kitchen, but that’s because he’s a creative type, not because he’s a little weird around people or anything.”

  “Why would I think they moved him from the dining room to the kitchen because he was weird with people?”

  “You wouldn’t, and that’s the whole point.”

  I squinted at Tim. Turning my head to one side, I said, “What’s the whole point.”

  “So can you go?”

  Tim had decided that I needed a date, but apparently not a very good one. From what I knew of Tim, he was a very intelligent, very capable man who seemed to have a natural ability with just about anything. Lying was the exception. He was terrible at it. “Just how weird are we talking?” I asked.

  “Weird?” he asked, his face flushing a little. “Who said anything about him being weird?”

  “Well you did, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m kind of seeing someone at the moment.”

  He gasped melodramatically. “Well, then you and I are going to have to schedule a sit down so you can tell me all about it. I’m free now.”

  “I don’t know. It’s still really new. I don’t want to jinx it or anything.”

  “Oh, don’t be like that. I want to hear all about it.”

  “I thought you were all geared up for me to date your friend.”

  “Not if you’ve got someone on the line. Dante’s not exactly the first-string quarterback, if you get my meaning.”

  “Hold on, if you were planning on going home with the waiter if it didn’t work out with Daniel—”

  “He’s open-minded, but you’re deflecting and we both know I’m not a very patient man.”

  “Just how much coffee have you had today?”

  “I don’t drink coffee,” he answered quickly, his eyes unaccountably darting back and forth as he did.

  “How much, Tim?”

  “Okay, so I had a couple cups about an hour ago because I was starting to drag.”

  Another thing about Tim is he has a very low tolerance for caffeine. Most of the time, he’s thoughtful, even quiet. The first time I’d seen him on caffeine, I thought he’d replaced himself with an identical twin I’d never heard about, but who had some sort of stimulant addiction. Daniel got Tim to swear off caffeine a few years ago, from what Tim had told me, but every once in a while, usually when the two of them were fighting, he would give in to temptation.

  “I don’t know. I’m really not all that comfortable talking about it just yet.”

  “Oh,” he said, winking. “It’s one of those relationships. Say no more, but I do want details. I’m feeling a little lightheaded. That’s normal, right? I shouldn’t be worried about having a heart attack.”

  “You’re fine,” I answered, though I couldn’t be entirely sure. Tim was starting to sweat. “Are things okay at home? You usually don’t do the whole caffeine thing unless something’s going on.”

  “Oh, I really don’t want to talk about that right now. Come on, though, let’s get off this roof. It’s depressing up here.”

  “How is it depressing?”

  “You look out over all those buildings and you think, ‘Wow, there are millions of people out there, working jobs they can’t stand because that’s what people are supposed to do,’ and it kind of makes you want to move to Montana or something. You know, somewhere you don’t have to think about that kind of thing so much. The thing everyone loves about nature is they can pretend like what we call the real world doesn’t exist. It’s used more like a drug than for inspiration, though. If people really wanted to live a different kind of life, they’d make a change, you know? Anyway, let’s get down to the cafeteria.”

  I liked Tim. He seemed like a decent guy. Tim on caffeine was a different story. He reminded me way too much of Luke when he was younger. Of course, when Luke got that chatty, it was usually because he’d dropped some E with some friends he’d made at a party he crashed. We had very different experiences of high school. In another hour or so, the caffeine would start to ease off and Tim would be a bit easier to bear, but that was a bit long for me.

  “Did you bring lunch or were you going to get something in the cafeteria?” I asked him. I’d deal with my admittedly overblown anger at everyone in that room if I didn’t have to endure a caffeinated Tim alone.

  “Cafeteria,” he said. “I’m really not too hungry, though.”

  “Trust me, you should eat.”

  We got inside and were almost to the cafeteria. Tim had been jabbering on, and I was doing my best to ignore him. When he said, “So, Isabella was actually kind of right, at least,” though, I wished I’d been paying closer attention.

  “Wait, Isabella was actually kind of right about what?” I asked, stopping about twenty feet from the cafeteria doors.

  Tim stopped and groaned. “You weren’t listening, were you?”

  There was nothing else I could say and still have him repeat the first part of the story. “I kind of tuned out there for a minute. What was she right about?”

  “Oh, you know how she was going on about Mr. Carrick? You were right that he never went to college, but I guess there were some rumors going around when he was coming out of Yonkers that he did have some sort of connection to organized crime up there.”

  “But they were just rumors.”

  “There’s a newspaper article from back then that said something about how he helped some guy walk on an aggravated assault charge by saying the suspect was with him at the time it happened. Nobody else could back up the story, but Mr. Carrick was already getting noticed for the business and stuff, so they took his word for it,” he said.

  “I don’t get how that connects him to the mafia, though. Even if the guy had something to do with that sort of thing, that doesn’t mean Dean was lying.”

  “Dean?”

  I quickly turned my head. “It feels weird calling him Mr. Carrick when you’re accusing him of something like that. It sounds like you’re trying to make him out to be James Dean or something, and his first name is Dean, so….”

  Tim furrowed his brow. “You’re kind of a weird person, Marcy, you know that?”

  It didn’t make sense to me, either, but being “weird” was an acceptable cost given the situation. “I’m not the one who starts seeing colors that aren’t there when he has half a can of diet cola.”

  He shrugged. “I’m probably not explaining the whole thing right. If you’re really that interested, look up the article. It was called something like… I don’t remember what it was called. Just type in something like Dean Carrick personal history, and I’m sure you’ll find the right one eventually.”

  It was so outlandish, but there I was, sitting at the computer, my hands just a few inches above the keyboard. I couldn’t imagine it could be true.

  Mobsters weren’t billionaires, or if they were, they weren’t sitting at the head of multinational corporations. It’d be too much scrutiny. When you start making that kind of money, everyone assumes you’re lying on your taxes or that you stash your money illegally in offshore bank accounts so you can avoid taxes altogether. If there was some kind of money laundering scheme, which was the only possibility that even made remote sense, someone would have caught onto it already.

  I pressed enter.

  The next hour and a half was spent going through article after article from old newspapers and more than a few grocery store tabloids. Nobody ever came right out and said it, but Dean’s name did come up quite a bit in stories about organized crime.

  None of the major news sites seemed to have anything
about it—none of the respectable ones anyway. Still, a few local rags mentioned his name, and he always seemed to provide some convenient reason why a suspected mobster couldn’t have been the one who committed the crime.

  For the most part, the people who had written with their own conclusions were so over the top with their accusations and so thin with their evidence that I didn’t take them seriously. There were three short articles that I couldn’t get past, though.

  The first one was probably the one Tim was talking about. Sure enough, according to a local paper, Dean stepped in after a guy named Marty Scholl was charged with breaking both wrists and ankles of some drug dealer in the area. The dealer was arrested when he got to the hospital, largely because Marty Scholl, or whoever committed the crime, turned the guy’s pockets out just enough so the cops or paramedics or whoever got there first could see he was carrying way more than a felony amount of cocaine.

  The drug dealer gave Marty Scholl’s name, saying he was the one who was responsible for the whole thing, but within eight hours of his arrest, Dean had talked to the police and convinced them to have Scholl released. Marty Scholl had been suspected in a number of violent crimes, the article said, but nobody could ever get enough to charge him.

  The article didn’t say what Dean had said to the police, only that he had given them some kind of information that cleared Scholl. The other two were about the same thing, written in two different newspapers. There was a minor scandal when a photo turned up of Dean and James Iozzo—Izzy the Monster—having dinner together in what looked like a private gathering. The first article was about the picture’s discovery and some minor speculation as to what it might mean.

  The second article came out a day later had the reporter’s paraphrased version of Dean’s response to the speculation the two might have some sort of connection. Izzy, unlike Marty Scholl, hadn’t always gotten away with everything. By the time the picture was taken, he’d already done some time for assault and battery and carrying a handgun without a permit. They dropped the charge on the silencer they found in his jacket pocket, the article read.