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

by Claire Adams

  It still amused me to hear about Dean doing anything domestic. Even though I’d known him longer on the run than I did when he was still CEO of Farnsworth & Temple, he would always be the billionaire from the front of the magazines to me. “That sounds like fun, shmoopy,” I returned.

  “Oh, come on,” Luke groaned.

  “Are you still set on a vegetable garden?” Dean asked. “I was at the hardware store earlier, and the guy behind the counter was telling me tropical flowers do really well here if you’re willing to put in a little extra effort.”

  “I just think it’d be nice to have food we don’t have to test for poison every time we come home with a shopping bag,” I said. Luke sighed, so I looked back at my new husband, adding, “Snuggly bear.”

  “I’m out,” Luke said, setting his fork on his plate and leaving the room.

  “Did you notice he finished eating before he left?” I asked Dean.

  Through his laughter, Dean answered, “Yeah.”

  I knew when I agreed to go along with Dean’s plan that I was doing the single most important thing I would ever do in my life. The truth was even if we went along with what Faustina wanted us to do, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Sooner or later, me, or Dean, or Luke—probably Luke—would do something to piss those people off and we’d be right back in the line of fire. Eventually, one or all of us were going to end up dead, so we did what we had to do to give ourselves the best shot we could at survival.

  “I guess we could plant some flowers over on the south side if you want,” I said, answering Dean’s earlier question. “I still want my vegetable garden, though.”

  “You do know someone could always sneak into the backyard and get some kind of poison into your vegetables, right?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t the vegetables die, too, though?”

  “I guess it would depend on what the poison was,” he said. “Either way, it’s probably no safer getting our food from out back than it is to get it at the supermarket. In fact, the supermarket’s probably a lot safer because in order to make sure our food was poisoned, they’d probably have to poison a lot of people’s food and I haven’t heard any stories about people dropping around town, have you?”

  “Dean, if you want a flower garden, why don’t you just say that?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Fine, I want a flower garden.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I told him.

  One of the perks of our situation was that, in every way that mattered, we were all equal. The difference was, now that I was his wife, I technically outranked Dean. At least, that was my justification for teasing him.

  I had been so mad at Dean the night he came over to present his plan to my brother and me. I didn’t want him there, and honestly, I didn’t even want to see him again. The fact was that it wasn’t his fault Faustina—who’d turned out to be the don of the family—was coming after us. Well, it wasn’t his fault in a way that made sense blaming him for it. If he hadn’t come in that night with a solid plan, though, I don’t know if I ever would have forgiven him. I’m just lucky I came around.

  Still, I held onto that anger toward Dean for a long time, even after we’d jumped from city-to-city a few times. There was a lot he should have told me before he did. For that reason, he and I had a new agreement. We would never keep anything from each other ever again. It was a nice theory in principle, but impractical.

  What mattered, though, was when it came to the big things, the important things, Dean and I would talk it out until there was literally nothing left to say. Whether he was still keeping anything from me was impossible to know, but as I sat across the table from him and rubbed my foot against his calf, I trusted him enough to believe.

  The TV blared in the other room. Luke had gotten really into movies since our whole ordeal. In his house back in Queens, his television was mostly just for show. Now that he didn’t have a career path to worry about, though, he was making up for lost time. I could recognize the film by hearing it. It was Cape Fear, the Robert DeNiro version.

  I shouted, “I hope you’re knocking on wood every couple of minutes while you’re watching that movie!”

  Luke laughed in the next room, responding only with, “Right.”

  The biggest change that happened through the whole nightmare back in New York was something I didn’t expect—something I couldn’t have expected. I’d found a sense of confidence. Maybe I’d always be the big girl on the block, but after everything I’d been through, after standing up to the mafia, standing up to anyone else wasn’t a problem at all.

  I wasn’t proud of everything that I’d done or every choice I’d made, whether during that first year Dean and I knew each other or not, but I no longer needed to be. I could make mistakes without tearing myself down. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just okay with being me, I was actually proud. After all, I’d managed to snag myself a billionaire, and even though the days of mansions and thousand-dollar dinners were emphatically over, that ain’t nothing.

  For the first time in my life, I started to realize that people weren’t only nice to me when they wanted something. I’d even learned how to take a compliment without my destructive inner monologue tearing it apart before I could spit out a thank you.

  The experience had changed me in ways I was still uncovering, but apart from the near-constant feeling that things could go horrifically wrong at any moment—a feeling with which I’d learned to cope—most of that change had been for the better.

  Since we were on the lam, the three of us had to come up with new names. I was Stella Masters, Dean, of course being Mr. Masters, though his first name was now Charles. Luke wanted to start going by John Dillinger just to see people react when he introduced himself, but we managed to talk him out of it.

  This was our little family, and I couldn’t have been happier. We’d have to keep moving every few months for the rest of our lives, but those heavy suitcases in the closet held more than enough cash for us to do what we pleased.

  Not to sound too mushy, but what really mattered most was that we had each other, and that’s exactly what was going through my head when I heard the knock on the front door.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Claire Adams