‘Hey you, I wasn’t expecting to see you until later. You playing hooky again?’
‘Yep. You’re a terrible influence.’ He grinned and bopped her nose with the flower. Your corsage, ma’am.’ He stuck the flower in her hair. She laughed.
‘You want coffee?’
‘Always.’ He sat down and studied her as she grabbed the coffee pot. He’d been away on a business for the last two days and now he drank in the sight of her. ‘Is it possible you got more beautiful than ever since I last saw you?’
She made a face and made him laugh.
He reached over to take her hand. ‘I missed you,’ he said, grinning at her, ‘this working thing is really inconvenient. What are you up to later?’
‘I have to drop some paperwork off at George’s place. He still refuses to join the technology age and get a computer so I had to print some stuff off for him. After that, I’m free for whatever you want.’ She grinned lasciviously and he smiled.
An hour later, Isaac nodded and turned the car around, heading out of town. He glanced over at her. ‘So what do you feel like doing after?’
‘You.’
‘Damn, you keep talking like that, we’re never going to get to George’s place. Hey, not to ruin the moment, but any new letters or anything weird?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Maybe Caroline’s finally got the message. Finn must have threatened her with arrest for stealing the crime scene photos to get her to stop. I think she’s done, the stupid idiot.’
Isaac sighed. ‘She has definitely lived up my first impression of her.’ He looked over at her and smiled. ‘Remember that? Our first date at George’s restaurant?’
Her eyes were soft. ‘Of course, I do. God, was there ever a time when I didn’t know and love you?’
He pulled her hand up to his mouth and kissed it. ‘I know what you mean, sweetheart.’
They drove in silence and a few minutes later Isaac drew the car up to the sidewalk outside George’s house. Sarah started to open the door but Isaac stopped her.
‘Are you mine forever?’ He whispered.
‘For all time.’ She answered simply and when she looked up at him, he could see the love in her eyes. He smiled.
‘Guess I better go make nice with my future father-in-law.’
She laughed slightly as she got out of the car. ‘One thing at a time, buddy. Besides,’ she gave him a sly smile, ‘I need to be wooed first.’
He laughed out loud. ‘Wooed?’
‘Hell yes.’ She rummaged in her purse for the key and opened the door. As she was stepping into the house, Isaac’s phone buzzed.
‘I’ll be right behind you, darling.’
The downstairs was in darkness, the drapes pulled. In the hallway, she thought she smelled cooking, or food and wondered if George had prepared something for them.
‘Hey pops,’ she called. No answer.
She went into the kitchen and stopped. The blinds were down and the room in absolute darkness but the smell of…something… was strong in here. She felt her gag reflex kick in. Jesus…Her heart began to thump unpleasantly. She felt her way over to the window, almost slipping in something wet on the floor. She pulled the blinds up, letting the sun stream into the room, and turned.
Everything in her world stopped. Everything in her world ended.
Her knees gave way, and every bone in her body went soft. A sound, a scream, a howl ripped its way from the center of her being. Her knees hit the floor, splashing still warm blood over her clothes, her face. She sat there, panting, all human thought gone. Unthinking she crawled through the blood to the front door and somehow managed to get it open. Still on all-fours, she managed to make it to the middle of the front lawn before collapsing. Isaac’s face was a mask of horror as he took in her blood-covered form. She curled into a fetal position, her mind shut down. Catatonic.
‘Christ, Sarah….what? What happened?’ Isaac’s voice, frantic sounded hollow to her, an echo in an empty hall. She didn’t even feel it when Isaac lifted her into his arms and took her to the car.
***
Finn came out of the house, his face white, shocked. He pulled Isaac away from the ambulance as he argued with the paramedics. Sarah was refusing to be taken to the hospital and the paramedics were trying to persuade her otherwise.
‘Isaac, let them look after her. You need to see this.’
He followed Finn into the house, the smell of the blood, of flesh starting to decompose hitting him. He balked at the entrance of the kitchen, and when he did take a step into the room, he clamped a hand over his nose. George was laid out on the kitchen table, his eyes open and staring, his face contorted in unimaginable agony. His torso was split from his throat down to his groin and his organs, his intestines spilled out over his body, his blood covered the floor, congealing, the stench of iron and death There were stab marks all over his body, his face, his head.
Isaac gagged. ‘Jesus.’
Finn nodded. ‘I know. But that’s not what I need you to see. The killer left a message for Sarah.’ He nodded to the far wall. From his position Isaac couldn’t see what he was indicating. He moved into the room a little more, wincing as his shoes squeaked in the blood, looked up at where Finn was pointing and his heart stopped.
Photographs of Sarah. Hundreds, maybe thousands, layer upon layer of them. In most of them, she wasn’t looking at the camera, some obviously taken from a distance, some from awkward angles. She was smiling in most, oblivious to the camera, or talking to someone else. Photos of Isaac and Sarah together. In one they were holding hands, laughing at one of their silly jokes, aprons on, lording it over the barbecue as if they were cordon bleu chefs. That one was at the house, her house. He tried to figure out the angle the picture was taken from. It wasn’t hard. The photographer must have been in the tree line. Photos where he could see members of his own family in the background.
Then he saw the photos in the center of the collage and his heart began to thump, a wave of nausea rising in his throat. Sarah. Dead. Murdered. Stabbed, shot, strangled. They were obviously photo-shopped images of her head on the bodies of murdered women but it didn’t lessen the horror of imagining her like that. It would have been clear what the threat was even without the most damning evidence.
In George’s blood, smeared in dark gobs across the wall.
You are next…
End of Part One
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Billionaire’s Quarry
A Billionaire, Bad Boy, Romance
Preview of the Story
Books 1-5
By Michelle Love
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Billionaire’s Quarry
A Billionaire, Bad Boy, Romance
Book 1
The Prey
By Michelle Love
Description
Intrigue. Indifference. In Denial.
Mercy Noland is a twenty-six-year-old luxury spa manager with a couple of secrets she keeps from most people. She inherited her young niece and nephew after a car accident took their parents. Her life revolves around her job and her kids, and nothing else.
Jude Hurst is thirty and a spoiled oil billionaire. Born into money, he’s never worked a day in his life for anything. Other than when he learned to hunt with his maternal grandfather. He meets Mercy and sets his sights on her from the beginning.
Mercy has no room in her life for any man, much less a man who is not only out of her league but also on the dangerous side. With the loss of not only her sister but her parents, as well, to a tragic auto accident, Jude’s careless behavior isn’t a thing she sees working in her little family.
Can Jude make her see life is more
than work and responsibilities? Or will Mercy make Jude see she isn’t up to the task of being with any man? Find out how their story begins in the first book of, ‘The Billionaire’s Quarry.’
Chapter 1
MERCY
When a two and a half-year-old little girl gets pissed everyone knows it. She makes sure of it. I inherited my niece and nephew two years ago when their parents, their mom was my sister, and my parents were going out for a night on the town while I stayed home to babysit the two little ones. A terrible auto accident claimed all four lives that were in my father’s car that night. The accident changed me from the fun aunt to the responsible mother in the blink of an eye.
I’ve taken to it well, I think. It made me hurry up and figure out what’s real in this life. I was twenty-four when that happened. Still young and free, single and alone. With the responsibility of the kids, I grew up overnight.
It became apparent that I needed to start making money. I had my business degree and had done nothing with it at that time. With a few interviews I managed to gain a managerial position at a Dallas luxury spa and I’ve done well in that position.
I have to say the hardest part of being a parent is dropping the kids off at daycare. They just never seem to want to go. I suppose because it’s so early and they’d much rather be sleeping. I know I would.
I have to get up an extra hour early every day to get them to their daycare so I can get to work. At times I do wish I had help. A man to even out some of the chores that come along with taking care of a feisty four-year-old boy and a two and a half-year-old girl might be nice. But then again he might just get in my way.
Mia holds on tight to the car door as Carter stands in a sleepy daze, waiting for me to drag his sister away from the car and into the little building which they call home every Monday through Friday, from six in the morning until six at night.
I wish there was another way but so far I haven’t found it.
“Mia, Baby, please come on. Let go of the door, Honey. You’re going to have fun. You always do,” I beg her.
“No! I want to go with you!” she screams at the top of her lungs.
Another mother passes by as she takes her sleeping kids past us as quickly as she can. One crying kid can set off a chain reaction. No one wants that!
She gives me the stink eye and I duck my head with feelings of inadequacy and continue to beg my niece to stop being a drama queen. “Mia, how about we make a deal? I promise to take you kids to the pizza place when I pick you up. You can play in the ball pit and I’ll give you all the tokens you want. Please!”
“Do it, Mia,” Carter says with an air of authority in his four-year-old southern drawl with a slight lisp.
Miraculously, she stops crying and screaming and says, “K.” Her hands release the car door and she turns to hang onto me, slipping her arms around my neck. “I wuv you, Aunt Mercy.”
Running my hand over her disheveled blonde locks, I try to tame them a little. With her tantrum, one would never know I not only brushed her hair but ran my straightener through it too to calm her unruly curls into some type of submission. Now they’re everywhere like a wild child’s.
Carter slips his hand into mine as we finally make our way up the sidewalk to the front door of the yellow building with a red roof. That’s how I initially got the kids to come inside of the building when we first came here, two years ago. It resembled a McDonald’s, and they didn’t cry one bit. Until I left them here that is.
The kids suffer a bit from separation anxiety. We’ve been in counseling to help with that. When one’s parents walk out the door with a kiss and a hug and a promise to return but never do, it can leave a scar on your brain and your soul.
Since I lost my mother, father, and only other sibling in the accident, I can empathize with the kids. It’s not easy to take each day as it comes. Sometimes you just want to kick something or someone because life doesn’t seem fair.
Life is hard and you have to become hard to deal with it. I try not to let that philosophy of mine rub off on the kids. Mostly because our therapist told me not to. She’s pretty strict with me. She lets me know that I can grieve and feel somewhat sorry for myself now and then, but my main responsibility to the children my sister left behind is bigger than anything else.
She’s right and I know that. My sister, Hope, and I were only two years apart. She was the oldest, and I was the baby, though not treated very much like one. We were treated like twins. She and I looked a lot alike. And we wore the same size. I inherited her wardrobe as well as her kids so that was a plus as her husband kept her in the latest styles, a thing I couldn’t afford on a part-time salary as a waitress at that time.
I spot the teacher for my niece’s room and hand her over. Mia is all smiles now as she goes to the older woman. “Hi, Mrs. Jensen. Guess what?”
The woman smiles and tweaks her nose as she holds her on her hip. “What do you have to tell me, Mia?”
With a huge grin, she says, “Aunt Mercy is taking us to get pizza and play games after school today.”
“How nice of her,” she says then puts Mia down and sends her off to put her little backpack, filled with her things, away. “So, being a Friday, have you made any fun weekend plans?”
I shake my head as I watch Carter go to his room down the hallway. “Bye, Carter. See you at six,” I call out after him.
Just before he goes into the door he looks back at me and waves. My heart melts a little as I see he’s smiling as I guess he’s thinking about tonight and how much fun he’s going to have playing the games at the restaurant.
Such little things can make them so happy, it’s amazing!
Mrs. Jensen takes my attention as she says, “You know, Mia, my daughter is taking some childhood development courses. She could use the practice and would babysit for free if you’d like to make some plans anytime. She’s free most every night. It would actually be a help to her as she has to clock a lot of hours with one-on-one time with children of various ages. It would help her a lot if you let her babysit even a couple of weekends a month.”
“The kids already have to spend so much time away from me because of work. I hate to do that to them,” I say as I turn to leave. “But thanks for telling me, anyway.”
“Mia, you need a life, young lady,” she calls out after me.
I wave back at her and walk away. No one knows what it’s like to have so much on your shoulders and be all alone with it. My life is with those kids. I am their life now and there’s really no room for anyone else, anyway.
I suppose this is how spinsters are made!
Chapter 2
JUDE
The shrill sound of Ariel’s voice as she yells at the woman doing her pedicure has me flinching. I look at the phone in my hand as I sit in the chair across from her and try to act as if she’s not with me.
“You’re a fucking moron!” she shouts.
Briefly, I glance up and see the poor woman who has the misfortune of getting Ariel as her client today seems to be upset. Her hands are shaking and her face is pale. I should say something to Ariel about not treating people so harshly but then she might turn that nasty temper on me and I’d rather not deal with that.
Ariel is from a wealthy family just like I am. Rich from birth has us a little less tolerable of people. I can’t explain it. It just is that way.
I’m not as bad as she is, but then again I’m from Texas and she’s from New York. The south demands a certain amount of hospitality and manners whereas the New York socialites don’t seem to care too much about such things.
I live in a monstrous mansion my grandfather had built when they discovered oil on his ranch. Since that time, some sixty years ago, he managed to buy several more properties where oil was discovered and now we are rolling in the dough.
I’ve lived a carefree life full of the things which come along with an endless supply of money. I’ve been to the best schools for reasons I do not know. College is where I met my occasional gal-pal,
Ariel, she was an Art major. She nor I do anything with the degrees we’ve earned. I’m never going to do anything but live off the money that goes straight into accounts for me.
My degree is nearly useless. To me it is, anyway. I hold a Masters in Kinesiology. I know every muscle and every way to get them in the best possible shape they can be in. I use the information I have acquired for myself and that’s about it.
I’ve built a home gym others can only dream about. I also have a body most others can only dream about.
Some might call me arrogant, but I think I’m just being honest about my fantastic attributes. I do work hard on making my body this buff after all. Why not be proud of basically the only achievement I’ve ever really made?
I’m the oldest in my family of six. Mom and Dad are still together by some miracle and they had the four of us each three years apart. I just turned thirty a couple of months ago and we all went to Greece for the occasion.
The Billionaire Bad Boy Club: A Bad Boy BDSM Holiday Romance Page 63