Hired by the Unexpected Billionaire

by Susan Meier

  That was the thing about Mark that really rattled him.

  “What do you want, Mark?” If his voice came out gruff and angry, so be it. The simple high of having made love to the most beautiful woman he knew evaporated. “You can’t just pop into my house.”

  Even as he said that, he heard a door close behind him. He turned, saw Marnie, fully dressed, walking up the hall. She said, “Rex is asleep.” Then seeing Mark and Penny, she smiled. “Hello.”

  “Marnie, this is my biological father and his fiancée, Penny Fillion.” He motioned to tall, slender Mark with white hair now growing on his formerly bald head and short, sweet Penny, who had long yellow hair and bright blue eyes. “Mark, Penny, this is Rex’s nanny, Marnie.”

  To her credit, Marnie casually reached out and shook hands with them both.

  “I was just telling Mark that he shouldn’t just barge in.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said, turning to Marnie. “I apologize if you just got the baby to sleep, but I needed to talk to my son.”

  The easy way my son spilled from Mark’s lips sent a crackle of annoyance up Danny’s spine. He’d known this man was his father less than three months. Yet Mark behaved as if he’d been around for softball games and soccer practice.

  Much kinder than Danny, Marnie smiled. “That’s okay.”

  “Good. Glad I’m not interrupting anything.”

  Danny’s last nerve frayed. “What do you want?”

  “Well, I’d hoped to see Rex. But if your nanny put him to bed, I can wait until tomorrow.” Mark turned to Marnie. “Isn’t that baby adorable?” His brown eyes glowed. “And smart. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my grandson. The kid is special. Wonderful.” He motioned to Penny. “We’re hoping Rex will be ring bearer at our wedding. We’re getting married in September.”

  “In Paris,” Penny said dreamily.

  Marnie hugged Penny. “That’s wonderful.”

  Mark’s smile warmed. “We’re here because we decided Danny should be our best man.”

  Danny’s head about exploded. Trying to give his dad the benefit of the doubt, he told himself Mark had simply chosen his words poorly. But... Seriously? He’d decided Danny should be his best man? He didn’t ask?

  Mark glanced over at him. “Will you be our best man?”

  Danny’s anger deflated a bit. All right. He’d asked. “I don’t know, Mark. Everything’s different now that I have custody of Rex.”

  Mark grinned. “That’s the beauty of you and Rex both being in the wedding. With you as best man and Rex as ring bearer, you’ll be in the same place at the same time.”

  Danny gaped at him. “He’s two. I’m not sure he can walk down the aisle on his own yet. Unless you have a flower girl who’s willing to hold his hand and drag him to the altar, Rex being ring bearer might not be a good idea.”

  “Okay. I get that.”

  Guilt flooded Danny. Mark might be a tornado, but when Danny least expected it, he’d pull back, clearly demonstrating he was trying to get along.

  “I’m not saying no. We just have to see what he can do and what he can’t.”

  “I get that too.” Mark smiled ruefully. “We’re happy to wait for your answer about being best man.” Then he turned to Penny. “Ready for cheesecake at Junior’s?”

  She laughed and looped her arm through his. “That means we eat salads tomorrow.”

  They headed for the elevator. “You’re no fun.”

  “I’m tons of fun. I simply won’t let you eat a totally unhealthy diet.”

  Marnie wistfully watched them leave, and Danny remembered what they’d been doing before they’d been interrupted. They’d been in the middle of something life changing when Mark had simply walked in.

  All the books he’d been reading on raising children said that a person couldn’t reward inappropriate behavior. His dad might not be a child, but Danny couldn’t let him go on thinking it was okay for him to interrupt him.

  “Mark,” he called right before the pair entered the elevator.

  Mark turned. “Yeah.”

  “I’m serious about coming up to the penthouse without letting me know. You need to respect my time and call before dropping in. Otherwise, I’ll have Jace change the locks and instruct the doorman that you’re never to be let up.”

  Danny’s words came out harsher than he’d intended, but Mark laughed. “You should come work for Hinton, then I could see you at the office.”

  And wouldn’t that be peachy? Him, working for a man he wasn’t even sure he liked. Having him pop into his office when he was knee-deep in reading a contract. “I love my current job. I don’t want another.”

  Mark batted a hand. “You’ll come around.”

  * * *

  Marnie watched as Mark and Penny stepped in the plush car that would take them back to the lobby. But it wasn’t empty. The guy from the park, the one who’d rescued Wiggles from the bush, stood along the back wall, dressed in a suit with a wire coming out of his ear.

  Pretty Penny waved goodbye. Mark saluted. Danny sighed. The elevator doors closed, and the car headed down.

  “Who was the guy in the elevator?”

  Danny faced Marnie. “What guy?”

  “Blue suit, white shirt? Receiver in his ear—” Everything came together in her brain. “Like a bodyguard.”

  “Oh, you mean Bruce! That is a bodyguard. He’s one of about twenty guys who discreetly follow us around.”

  “He’s the guy who pulled Wiggles from the bush.”

  Danny shrugged and headed for the kitchen. “It must have been his day to guard Rex.”

  Gobsmacked, she fell into one of the paisley chairs. “Guard Rex? There’s someone been guarding Rex the whole time I’ve worked for you and you didn’t tell me?”

  He pulled the fixings for a sandwich out of the refrigerator. “Of course, I told you.”

  “No! You didn’t! Dear God, Danny, I would have remembered something like that.”

  “Marnie, when I interviewed you, I said something about how my life was different. I know I mentioned bodyguards.”

  “You dropped it into the conversation. You didn’t explain that I’d actually have one. You didn’t tell me to look for one or how to deal with one.”

  “Because there’s nothing for you to do. They are in the background, discreet. They’re not supposed to be a part of your world. They’re only watching.”

  Disbelief trembled through her. “For weeks I’ve had someone following me around?” It might not have been as bad as a boyfriend taking naked pictures, but it felt like an intrusion, a betrayal, that she hadn’t been told.

  “No. If you’d taken the limo to your mom’s, you would have had someone following you around. Or shopping the other Saturday. The bodyguard is the driver. When you have the baby outside for a walk, Rex has someone following him.” He took a breath. “My dad is a couple billion away from being a trillionaire. His grandson could easily be snatched for ransom.”

  She shook her head, confusion hardening her voice. “It still feels like a betrayal. If I look at this the right way, I could think you were spying on me.”

  He dropped his sandwich to the island. “How can you think that?”

  “How do I know you’re not getting a report every night?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what I did that day.”

  “They never come into the penthouse unless I ask them to. Most are drivers. When they aren’t taking Rex somewhere or following Rex on a walk, they sit in the car, watching the building. They know who comes and goes. Know the postmen.”

  She stared at him. “That sounds a hell of a lot like a prison.”

  * * *

  He combed his fingers through his hair. It had taken him weeks to get accustomed to all this, to find his footing, to accept it. And with a few words, s
he threatened to undermine it.

  “It’s all in how you look at it. I do exactly as I want. They are the ones who scramble to keep up with me.”

  Her eyebrows rose.

  “I’m not sure what your beef is. You should be glad Rex is being protected. You are his nanny. His caregiver.”

  She rose. “Yeah. I guess that’s true. As Rex’s nanny I don’t have rights. I don’t have a say in the big picture.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know what got into me thinking I was more.”

  She turned and headed down the hall to her room, and Danny groaned. “Marnie...wait! I’m sorry. It’s like we’re arguing two different things.”

  She stopped. Faced him. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t be like one of your families fighting over an estate. I won’t dig in my heels and try to get something I don’t deserve. I know I have no rights.”

  With that, she turned and walked back to her room. Part of Danny ached to follow her. But it was getting Rex that had made him see the necessity of high security and bodyguards—

  Though bodyguards really weren’t the issue. It was that he hadn’t told her. Meeting her dad in the park, he realized she had trust issues and why. And she was justifiably angry tonight. He’d thought he’d told her about the bodyguards and assumed she’d know that included Rex. But he didn’t want to argue and end up making concessions he shouldn’t make because of what had happened in his bedroom.

  He thought about making love. How passionate and happy they were. How all that perfection had disappeared because she had issues too. His trust issues might be fresher, but hers had had time to fester.

  He sank to the sofa and put his forehead in his hands, refusing to panic. Tomorrow they’d both be in a better frame of mind. A little sleep and some distance would put it all into focus and they could talk like normal people.

  But tonight, he wouldn’t have the pleasure of holding her until they both fell asleep. They wouldn’t make love again, slowly. He wouldn’t get to leisurely explore her curves or sink into her soft skin.

  He shook his head, forced his brain to stop. He’d thought he and Leni had talked out his suspicions, but the thing he hadn’t mentioned was his feelings for Marnie. Too fast. Too deep. Too much.

  Maybe it was good they were stepping back?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MARNIE HAD REX in the highchair when Danny came into the kitchen the next morning. Their gazes met and she quickly looked away. She knew he didn’t understand why she’d gotten so angry the night before.

  He walked to the coffeemaker. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  He busied himself with closing a pod in the holder and putting a cup under the drip. “If you go out today, a bodyguard will be watching Rex.”

  She shook her head. “I know. I’m sorry. I thought about it last night and realized a kid with a near trillionaire for a granddad would need security.”

  “But that really wasn’t the issue, was it? It was trust. I thought you understood what I meant when I talked about bodyguards in your interview, and you didn’t fully get it. So you felt like I’d kept something from you.”

  “I’m not sure what I felt.”

  “Marnie, your dad is a louse. Not to mention that you probably had some bad times when you were a kid, before your mom went to A.A.”

  She licked her lips.

  “I get it.”

  “You shouldn’t have to get it. I’m a professional. Our...personal stuff is making me act differently than I normally would.”

  “I get that too.”

  She dragged in a breath. Every second of what they’d done the day before played through her brain. The wonderful pleasure. The closeness she’d never had. Her realization that she couldn’t have it. She couldn’t drag him into her craziness. Not when he had his own things to deal with.

  “Please, stop being so understanding. I’m a mess. Not someone a smart man has a relationship with.”

  His eyes softened. “Marnie...”

  “Stop. Really. This is why I don’t date a lot. I’m not crazy. I just had some things happen to me that make me so paranoid that I react oddly about normal things. Get suspicious over things I shouldn’t.”

  He sniffed a laughed. “I just had this same conversation with my sister Leni yesterday while you were gone. She’d made cookies for Rex, and I ended up telling her that I had worried that you’d only wanted to work for me to get access to your dad.”

  Surprise poured through her. She didn’t know why she’d thought he’d fallen into their relationship without thinking. The fact that he hadn’t made her feel the tiniest bit better.

  “No. I’m not exactly a fan of my dad. Seeing him threw me.” She laughed unexpectedly. “Had I known I had a bodyguard I might have confronted him myself, sooner.”

  “Good. See? We’re at the stage where we can laugh about the bodyguard.”

  She rolled her eyes. When she’d woken that morning, she’d been so sure they’d made a mistake. Now, calmer, she didn’t know what to think.

  “My point, though, is that I’ve got some unusual stuff in my life too. I love my parents with every fiber of my being, but the fact that they never told me I was adopted broke trust.”

  “I can see how that would happen.”

  “Then my biological dad storms into my life because he’s found out I have a child.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  “A private investigator apparently took note of new people in my life and occasionally checked on them. He found Rex, did some math and confronted Alisha.”

  “Wow.”

  “In one big swoop, I discovered I was adopted, had a child and had a dad who’d literally been spying on me my whole life.”

  “Makes a bodyguard look insignificant.”

  “Yes, it does.” He added cream to his coffee and walked it to the center island. “Still, that doesn’t make what happened to you insignificant.”

  She sniffed. She loved that he was so understanding, but he didn’t know her real pain. She hadn’t told him her secret.

  Her past came back in a wave of memories. She wanted to tell him. Longed to tell him. But the humiliation of it froze the words in her throat.

  “Marnie?”

  Her gaze jumped to his.

  “Come on. We’re both coming clean. Our circumstance is unique. If we really want to have something, we can’t have secrets.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “We can’t have something.”

  “Because of a little misstep about a bodyguard?”

  She shook her head. “I was bullied at school. I erased my social media profiles, changed schools, took my mother’s maiden name and in a weird kind of way, disappeared. If you search me, it’s like the beginning part of my life didn’t exist.”

  His mouth dropped open and he snapped it shut, thinking for a few seconds before he said, “You must have been bullied pretty badly.”

  “I was.” She took a breath, surprised at the sense of a weight being lifted off her shoulders. “Actually, it’s sort of a relief to tell you. Now I don’t have to look like an idiot walking away from something good. Something I want.”

  His eyes darkened. “Why does being bullied at school make you feel you have to walk away?”

  “I was bullied because my mother called the police on a jock who’d taken pictures of me after...we...” She closed her eyes, sucked in a breath. “My first years in high school, I was kind of a tease. The boys had this bet going about who’d get my virginity. I didn’t know anything about it. I fell for the jock, and after we’d done it, he took pictures as proof. He showed them around to the boys at school, then offered them for sale.”

  “Oh my God.” Danny looked so shocked that she almost felt sorry for him.

  “When I found out, I raced home and told my mom. She called the police, who came
to the school. They made him delete the pictures from his phone.” She stopped, caught his gaze. “But I don’t really know that they were destroyed. He could have them somewhere, like an old thumb drive.” She sucked in a breath. “I can’t date you. I shouldn’t even be seen in public with you. Someday somebody’s going to get interested or curious and a good reporter will do a thorough search and piece it all together. Then it’ll come out—my association with someone so newsworthy will make it a headline instead of an article buried in the newspaper. And I’ll go through it all again. The humiliation. The feeling that I’m worthless. Nothing. Just someone to be abused.”

  He held her gaze for a few minutes. His sympathy for her right there in his dark orbs. She hated it. All she’d ever wanted was to be normal and it seemed life couldn’t let her have that.

  He set his coffee on the island. “Let me look up the law, see if there’s anything we can do... Times have changed, Marnie. And the statute might not have run out.”

  She put her hand on his forearm, her heart in her throat. The memories of the episode that had destroyed her life riffled through her brain. Humiliation rose and cut deep. Typical fears for her future raced through her.

  “Oh my God. Don’t you see? That’s what I don’t want. I don’t want one of the richest men in the world going after him. The press would have a field day. And I’d be front and center in every newspaper in the country.” She sucked in a breath. “I just want to be left alone. And maybe someday start a little company and live a quiet life.”

  * * *

  She caught his gaze, her eyes filled with a misery that somehow held a glimmer of hope, and Danny’s heart shattered. All these weeks he’d been feeling sorry for himself for discovering his parents weren’t his biological parents and his actual dad was an eccentric billionaire. While Marnie had real troubles. Real problems. A real ache from her past that could explode into her present.

  He wanted to kick himself for being so selfish. So self-absorbed.

  He reached for her hand. “How does a person come back from something like that?” He wanted to say, “How does a kid come back from something like that,” because she couldn’t have been more than a teenager when it happened, but he thought better of it.