The Dirty Series: The Complete Bad Boy Billionaire Boxed Set

by Amelia Wilde

  My heart hasn’t felt this light and free in months, maybe years. Now that there’s nothing holding me back in Colorado, it’s like a massive weight has been lifted.

  The house is a total loss, and so Thursday is eaten up with strategic planning for Christian’s next wave of public appearances and phone call after phone call from my insurance company. It seems like they’re calling every hour on the hour to confirm various details with me—how much furniture was left in the house, the accuracy of my home inventory list, how much I have left to pay on the mortgage.

  “Ms. Campbell?”

  I answer the phone for the twentieth time. It’s never joyful to deal with an insurance company, but I’m over the moon—and not just because of the house.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Michael Deacon, calling from Mountainside.”

  “Hi, Michael.”

  “I wanted to call and give you an update on your claim.”

  “It’s—” I break off when I realize he hasn’t asked me for another list, another confirmation. “Really?”

  “Yes. Could you just confirm some identifying details for me for security purposes?”

  “Of course.” I rattle off my mother’s maiden name, my birthdate, and my social security number for hopefully the last time today.

  “Thank you, Ms. Campbell. I’m calling to inform you that the preliminary decision on your claim is that the mortgage company will be reimbursed according to…”

  I’m so swept away by what happened last night, and so worn down by the constant phone calls, that Michael’s voice becomes a blur. I snap back into awareness as he says:

  “…of course, this is pending a final walkthrough of the site by one of our inspectors. Someone has already been out to visit the property today, but you should see resolution in the next thirty to sixty days.”

  Perfect. All of this means they’ll be sending paperwork, and then I can read the fine print on my own time, when my head isn’t swimming with love and lust.

  “Thanks for the update, Michael. Is there anything else you need from me?”

  “Nope. Thanks for choosing Mountainside for your home insurance needs.”

  “No problem. Goodbye.”

  I hang up the call and slide my phone back into my purse, and then I lean back against my seat, relief flooding my body.

  From what I understand, most of the payout will go to my mortgage holder, with a small amount left over for me. I wouldn’t care if I got nothing—the sweet unburdening I feel from not having to deal with this house and all its attendant problems anymore is nearly overwhelming. I can always wait to sell the property. Or just have Sherrie list it for such an absurdly cheap price that developers won’t be able to resist. They never stay away forever, even after a wildfire.

  But the thing that has my heart singing, bursting, soaring is Christian’s words last night.

  My own declaration to him slipped out fucking unbidden as I was on the edge of sleep and basking in the unbelievable comfort of being held in his arms, under a cascade of relief from hearing the news about my house. At first, when he whispered, “what?” I thought I might be dreaming, and Dream Quinn had no reservations about telling a man she’s only known for a month or so that she loved him.

  When the words were out of my mouth a second time, less garbled and sleepy, something in me froze. It was real.

  I felt him take a deep, quick breath. I didn’t open my eyes.

  Then he ran a hand over my hair and said, so softly, “I love you, too, Quinn.”

  Heat screams across my cheeks whenever I think about it.

  There’s nothing holding me back in Colorado, no reason I should ever have to return there, and everything is beginning here in New York City.

  It’s enough to make any girl giddy, but I resolve to play it cool. It was late at night, when we said those things to each other, and nearly asleep. People say things late at night. You can’t always hold them to it the next morning.

  A smile plays across my face. Those words had the ring of truth, though. So even if we don’t speak them again for a while, I know they’re waiting in the wings.

  I’m sure they are.

  I leave the office that night still floating on cloud nine and spend the ride home texting Christian flirty messages. He’s at some kind of event with his father on behalf of Pierce Industries, and I have plans with Carolyn.

  She’s waiting when I get back to the apartment.

  “Hey!” she says from the kitchen. Something smells wonderful.

  “Hey! Are you cooking?”

  “Baking,” she answers, laughing. “Your house burning down calls for cake.”

  “You can’t go wrong with cake,” I say, and go to open a bottle of wine.

  Over takeout and chocolate cake, Carolyn considers me. “You’re in an awfully good mood for someone whose house was destroyed. Weren’t you trying to sell it?”

  I groan a little. “It was an unbelievable pain in the ass, Care. It would have been nice to have the money, but to not have to think about it…it’s priceless.”

  “Is that all that’s going on with you? You’re practically glowing.”

  It’s hard to get anything past Carolyn.

  “Christian and I…might be taking things to the next level.”

  “Might be?” she says, her voice rising in pitch.

  I can’t help but laugh. I love that about her. “Things got a little weird for a couple of weeks, but he came over last night…”

  “Wait. Christian was here, and neither of you told me?”

  “It was late.”

  Understanding dawns in her eyes. “You little minx.”

  My abs are sore from laughing, but the words out of Carolyn’s mouth send me into another fit of giggles. “Yeah…what do you want from me?” I take a sip of wine and smile at her. “I think we’re going to date.”

  Concern crosses her face. “What about your job?”

  “It’ll have to be secret.”

  “That won’t be easy. Christian’s pretty high-profile.”

  “It doesn’t have to be secret forever.”

  “Well,” she says, brightening, “as long as you’re okay with it. You’re not afraid to get fired?”

  “Oh, I’m totally afraid to get fired.” I feel myself turn serious. “But Car—I have to see where this goes. I have to. I know he’s a womanizer and a playboy, but there’s something…there’s something else there. I can’t give up the chance to find out what it is, where it may lead. You know?”

  “I know,” my roommate says, her eyes sparkling. “I’ve never heard of him going to a woman’s place before,” she comments, a note of wonder in her voice. “You could really be the one.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Christian

  I feel so fucking good as I’m tiptoeing out of Carolyn’s apartment in the early hours of Thursday morning that I almost forget that this thing with Quinn—this mind-blowing, heart-stopping thing with Quinn—is bound to crash and burn. We’re speeding toward the inevitable fallout the moment I tell her the truth about what happened that fateful night.

  I walk a block and a half before Louis pulls up to the curb. I didn’t give him much advance warning, but the guy’s a fucking professional. He doesn’t so much as rub—or roll—his eyes.

  I collapse into the back seat and let everything wash over me.

  It felt so damned perfect to lie there with Quinn resting gently against my chest, my arms wrapped around her lithe body. In that moment, there was nothing standing between us. She was mine to protect, although I’m learning every day that she doesn’t need protection. I’ve never met a woman who can bounce back like she can.

  And she was willing to jump in with both feet, despite the way things have been going the past couple of weeks.

  The truth is that I just needed time to make the shift.

  Nobody’s going to think anything of it.

  I’ve taken a few weeks off from my nightly trips to the Swan, only
going there once or twice every week, and never with a date. At least, not one that I take home at the end of the night. Sooner or later someone’s going to ask what happened to the Christian Pierce who gleefully adds notches to his belt without a second thought. I’ve long since lost count of the women who have sat by my side at the Swan for three dates and then never seen there again.

  At least this way, it won’t be a sudden shock. At least this way, when word gets out that I’m seeing someone—and it will get out—they’ll look back and see that I wasn’t quite so active at the Club, and they’ll chalk it up to a new obsession, maybe even real love.

  Real love.

  That’s what I confessed to Quinn last night, consequences be damned, and now, as Louis steers the car through the pre-dawn gray of the morning, I don’t regret a word of it. Instead, my heart pounds with a kind of electric thrill. It’s the kind you only feel when you stumble upon something so true, so deep, that to lie about it would be unthinkable.

  I rub at my forehead.

  Here I am, back at the thorn in my side. The one thing that’s going to bring us crashing back to earth.

  Don’t tell her.

  It’s the obvious solution, right? I could just keep my secret buried deep inside, like I have for the past decade. I could just let it fade away into memory, take it to the grave with me, just like I was planning to do before Quinn came along and changed everything.

  Louis hits the gas and I flash back to that party.

  I was drunk, but not that drunk—and definitely not high, like my brother. Cheap beer, a shot or two—I paced myself, like I always did. I was always the responsible one. Always the one who held back, just a little, just in case.

  The music was loud, just not so loud that it would draw any attention. Not that the police ever stopped by this building anyway. Too many wealthy apartment owners stacked one on top of the other, all the way up to the penthouse—it was always a waste of time to investigate, a waste of time to prosecute.

  I don’t know how late it was by the time everyone filtered out, stumbling off in high heels and short skirts. My brother had invited the best of the best from our class, children of investment bankers and owners of corporations rivaling Pierce Industries. Some of them were far more adventurous than I ever was, going to underground parties that routinely got busted by the cops. It didn’t matter. Money could buy you out of anything.

  Maybe that’s what I was thinking when I realized how silent it was in the apartment, realized my brother was nowhere in sight, not anywhere in the cavernous living room.

  Where had he gone?

  My mind in a haze from the alcohol, I tried to remember if he had been with a girl that evening. He’d been talking to several, his arm around one girl’s shoulders, whispering in her ears, that signature grin on his face—but had he taken her into one of the bedrooms? The last thing I wanted was to walk in on him while they were in the middle of the goddamn act.

  At first I tried to dismiss the heavy silence as nothing, but it pounded at my ears until I forced myself up from the sofa and went to find him, straining to hear anything that might clue me in to his whereabouts.

  The first bedroom was empty.

  The second bedroom was playing host to a couple sprawled out on the bed, passed out, but neither person was my brother.

  Dread settled into the pit of my stomach as I made the long walk to the master bedroom at the end of the hall.

  My first thought when I pushed the door open was that the room was empty. It was that quiet.

  I stepped inside, heart hammering against my rib cage, and glanced around. The lamp atop the dresser was on, and the comforter on the bed was rumpled.

  Nobody there.

  I crossed to turn off the lamp, and with my hand on the switch, started to turn back toward the door.

  That’s when I saw his hand, limp and white on the carpet. It was all I could see of him until I stepped around to the other side of the bed, where his body was crumpled against the box spring…

  “Mr. Pierce?”

  “Yes?” Louis must have said my name more than once.

  “We’re here.”

  “Thanks.”

  I slide out of the car and shake it off, force away the cold, sick feeling that I get when that memory overtakes me. Immediately, Quinn’s face swims up before my eyes, and a burst of warmth and love fills my chest.

  In this moment, I make a decision.

  I’m going to start by showing her the way I really live, not just that stripped-down apartment I use for hookups.

  She’s so much more than that to me now.

  I’m going to do this even though the thought sends a wave of cold fear through my body.

  I’m deep into making plans by the time I walk through the door of my building.

  I’m going to start with my place in the Hamptons.

  This is where our love story really begins.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Quinn

  Friday is another dry spell, by which I mean I don’t have a single meeting with Christian scheduled.

  On the one hand, it makes it easier to build out my plans for him since he’s not here to distract me with those eyes and that body.

  On the other hand, even though he’s not here in person, all I can think of are his eyes—the way the black of his pupil is ringed by a lightning strike of blue so light that it’s almost pure white. It reminds me of the way the ocean waves exploded outward from the shore in various shades of blue, ringing around a tropical island I once visited with my parents when I was a teenager. Christian’s eyes are a different color of blue, changing from moment to moment, depending on the light, his mood…

  Now that I’m intimately acquainted with his body, that’s hard to forget, too. I’m as professional as they come, but when he’s sitting across from me, his ripped abs hidden by a crisp white shirt and topped by a slim-cut jacket that does nothing but emphasize the hard line of his waist…

  I shake my head and loosen my grip on the computer mouse. It’s one thing to realize you’ve unconsciously been rubbing your thighs against one another underneath your desk at work. It’s another to completely abandon your job to go masturbate in the bathroom.

  My heart thunders in my chest. It’s so dangerous to be with Christian. I could lose my job if anyone were to find out. I definitely don’t want to get fired from HRM—not now that I have no safety net back in Colorado, and not when I’m finally making big strides in my career. A ruined reputation is no joke.

  But how can I stay away from him?

  I bite my lip as I maneuver some of the events around on his calendar.

  The answer is that I can’t.

  I can’t.

  I don’t want to.

  And I won’t.

  We’re just going to have to proceed cautiously, and not just because of my job. It seems like a long time ago now, but in reality it hasn’t been long since I had my heart shattered and then stomped on and spat on by that bastard Derek. Christian might have a tenderhearted side, but there’s no guarantee he’s good right to the core.

  My body heats up at the thought of him. I’m trying to be rational, but what I’m feeling isn’t a rational emotion. I just know we’re right together—at least right now.

  Day by day, Quinn. Day by day.

  It’s just after 5:00, and I’m making the last few changes to next week’s schedule when my phone vibrates in my purse.

  When I pick it up, the sight of Christian’s name sends my heart rate skyrocketing.

  Head over heels, for sure.

  Run away with me.

  Right now???

  I want to show you the real me.

  Haven’t I met you before??

  I’m waiting outside in the car. You’re not working late on a Friday

  Is that a question? :)

  It’s an order ;)

  A shiver runs down my spine. He might be joking, but just imagining the kind of orders a man like Christian could give fucking
turns me on. Even if I’m the kind of woman who’s not the sweet, submissive type. Sex is like a battle between us, and that’s just how I like it.

  I’ll get my things together…

  Don’t linger, my love

  I stop dead at the words on the screen, my breath hitching in my throat. It’s not quite an I love you, but it’s pretty damn close.

  I leave the office at a measured pace, because it’s not very seemly for a senior reputation manager to sprint out of the room, fling herself into a waiting Town Car, all while tearing off her clothes in the process, which is exactly what I’d like to do right now.

  I stand calmly in the elevator as it whisks me down to the lobby, and I even take the time to tuck my access badge into my purse and put on my sunglasses before exiting the building.

  The Town Car is parked right in front of the HRM headquarters. Louis stands outside the back door, waiting to open it for me. After a quick glance to the left and right to make sure no one is watching, I’m striding across the hot pavement. With a nod to Louis, I slip into the cool, leather-filled interior of the Town Car.

  Christian’s hands are on me in an instant, and he only takes them off to punch a button on the side of the car.

  “What—” I start to say, and then his mouth is on mine, and I’m lost in his kiss, drowning in desire as a partition goes up between us and Louis. It’s the first time Christian has ever used it.

  We’re pulling away from the curb before he breaks the kiss and smiles broadly at me, his eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun.

  “Wow,” I say breathlessly.

  “Run away with me.” He repeats the words from the text message as if I hadn’t already agreed to come.

  “I am—aren’t I?”

  “I can still drop you off at home.”

  “Don’t do that. Wait—where are we going? Shouldn’t I get clothes?”

  “You don’t need clothes.” He gives me a wicked look.

  I want to bite at his lip, kiss him harder, and so I do. When we come up for air, I continue the conversation. “I’ll need clothes at some point.”

  “What I meant was,” he replies, his voice smooth and sexy and confident, “I have clothes for you where we’re going.”