The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 3

by Kristina Blake

  And I…I had survived the worst pain the world could dump on me—the loss of my sister—and the uncertainty of my disease. I survived a kidnapping, the heartache of loving a man I was unsure of, the darkness of someone else’s secret.

  Individually, we were strong.

  Together we were even stronger.

  We could do this. No matter what happened, we could do this.

  That realization didn’t stop the stuttering of my heart when the doctor approached.

  “Annie Warby family?”

  Rawn stepped up beside me. “How is she?”

  “She is a very lucky girl.” The doctor touched my arm lightly, speaking directly to me. “She has multiple broken ribs and lots of bruises and scratches. The most significant injury was her arm. She broke it in several places, so we had to go in and set it surgically with a few rods. She’ll likely set off metal detectors for the rest of her life, but she’s going to be fine.”

  Relief washed through me so quickly that my body went slack. Rawn slipped his arm around me and pulled me tight against his chest as I lost it and sobbed against his chest.

  ***

  They told us we could see her a short time later. I gestured for Logan to follow, but he turned away.

  “Give us a minute, okay?”

  I nodded and watched Rawn approach Logan before I followed the nurse to Annie’s bedside.

  They had moved her out of the surgical recovery room and into a private room of her own. She had her eyes closed, her left arm in a dramatic cast with a rod that held it up at an angle from her hip. Her face was nearly unrecognizable, so swollen and bruised. There were bandages on her chest, her other arm, clearly covering the some of the many cuts the doctor had mentioned.

  It physically hurt me to look at her, but I was so grateful that she was still alive that I would have been happy to see her in almost any condition.

  “Hey, chick,” I said softly as I sat in the chair at her bedside and slipped my hand into hers.

  “Hey.” She peeked at me through one swollen eye. “You’re here.”

  “Of course I’m here.”

  She started to smile, but it must have caused her some pain because she grimaced instead.

  “You sure know how to make a dramatic exit.”

  She grunted. “I’m sorry about your car.”

  “Cars are replaceable. Best friends aren’t.”

  She peeked at me again, then her eye shifted to the door. “Logan?” she asked softly.

  I didn’t answer at first because I didn’t know how to tell her that he wouldn’t come see her. But I apparently didn’t need to say anything because she turned her head away as a single tear coursed down her face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly, lifting her hand to my face. “I never should have interfered. I should have trusted that the two of you could handle whatever came your way.”

  “It doesn’t really matter now.”

  I squeezed her hand. “You shouldn’t give up. The Annie I know, she never lets an obstacle stand in her way.”

  I smoothed my hand over the back of hers and waited for her to say something else. But she didn’t.

  “I suppose the cops have talked to you about the accident,” I said after a while.

  She peeked at me again. “They said someone ran me off the road.”

  “Did you see who it was?”

  “I didn’t even know there was someone behind me. He must have had his lights off because I don’t remember seeing headlights.”

  I nodded, swallowing my disappointment. I had hoped that she saw something that could help us figure things out. I still wanted some sort of proof before I told Rawn what I had remembered. The last time I started pointing fingers without evidence, he had Conrad arrested.

  I really didn’t want to get this wrong.

  “There was one thing.”

  I looked up at Annie. “What?”

  “After the accident, I was in the car, upside down. But I saw legs, a man’s legs. He was wearing suit pants, like he had just come from the office. And I heard a voice say, “Fuck, Madison. You must have nine lives.”

  My heart sank low in my belly, as my mind went automatically to that moment during my kidnapping, that moment when that familiar voice said my name.

  “Was he wearing wingtip shoes?”

  Annie’s swollen eye widened. “Black with a glossy shine.”

  And that was the connection.

  The door opened behind me, and Logan stuck his head in. I stood and leaned close to Annie. “Thank you,” I whispered against her cheek.

  Then, I stepped away, touching Logan’s shoulder as I passed him. I stepped out into the hallway and paused, Logan’s voice floating to me through the partially open door.

  “So, here’s the thing. I have Wilson’s disease…”

  I smiled, as I pulled the door closed and walked away.

  ***

  Rawn and I stuck around a few more hours, but there didn’t seem to be much reason for it. Logan was at Annie’s side constantly, and the doctor assured us she would be able to go home in a few days. Rawn promised to send the jet back for them, and we left, headed back to Portland and the disaster that waited for us there.

  Conrad had been working on the press release that was supposed to put pressure on Rawn’s tormentor and make him back off the resignation demand. Rawn called from the plane and updated him on everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, asking him to check in with his police contacts and find out if we could get a copy of Annie’s accident report sooner than later.

  As they talked, an idea crossed my mind and I asked Rawn for the phone.

  “Conrad, could you do a little research on the employees of Cepheus for me?”

  “What kind of research?”

  “Employees are required to register an email address with human resources for company correspondence that might be sent out before their company email account can be set up. I was wondering if you could check out the male employees in the development department, see if any of them ever registered an email address that has the words sun or dial or both in it.”

  “I can do that. But do you really think it’ll be that easy?”

  “Probably not. But it’s worth a try.”

  “Okay. I’ll take a look. And tell Rawn to let me know if anything comes up on the security video outside his parents’ house.”

  “I will.”

  I ended the call and handed the phone back to Rawn. “Has the security video arrived yet?”

  “I don’t know. I was about to check.”

  He tugged his laptop out of its case and booted it up. I moved closer to him, my body still aching all over from my little episode last night, the effects of the muscle relaxer still making my eyes droop like I hadn’t slept in months. I even dozed off a little until I heard Rawn’s grunt of satisfaction.

  “It’s here. But there’s so much of it, it might take days to get through it all.”

  “Start with three days ago. Didn’t the doctor say it would take at least that long for the medication to build up like it did?”

  “Good idea.”

  Rawn sifted through the electronic file and clicked on the one he wanted. The screen of his computer was immediately filled with the view of his parents’ front porch and the face of their mailman.

  I settled back against his shoulder again, drifting off once more as he occupied himself with the video.

  By the time we arrived in Portland he hadn’t made much progress. He continued to look at it on the drive to Conrad’s office, pausing the playback each time a strange face appeared in the frame. None of them were familiar, and we had no way of knowing which might have poisoned his father since he didn’t exactly hold up a sign saying, ‘I’m here to sabotage your father’s pills.’

  We walked into Conrad’s office, and I expected to find Mellissa sitting behind his desk, as she had been so many times in the past few weeks. But she wasn’t there, and Conrad looked like he h
adn’t gotten much sleep these past few days.

  “How did you know?” he asked, as I walked past him into the office.

  I looked sharply at him. “What do you mean? Did you find a match?”

  He nodded. “It is so obvious, I should have seen it from the start.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. The same thought had crossed my mind the moment I realized the truth.

  Some people just knew how to hide their true natures.

  “Fuck!” Rawn suddenly cried out. He was standing at Conrad’s desk, his computer still open, still running through the security footage.

  “Did you find something?”

  He looked at the two of us. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  He grabbed a cord out of the back of Conrad’s computer and stuck it into his. An image flickered on the flat screen monitor that hung on the wall behind us. I turned just as Russell’s face filled the screen.

  “He did it personally,” I said quietly.

  “Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is,” Rawn said. “Please tell me that Aurora’s assistant is not the mastermind behind this whole nightmare.”

  But I couldn’t, because I knew the opposite to be true.

  The man who identified me to my kidnappers, the man with the glasses, the one Peggy called the nerd her boss had sent over.

  The man whose wingtip shoes Annie saw after her accident.

  The man whose face was on the security tapes outside the home of Rawn’s parents.

  The man who took me under his wing and taught me the ropes in Aurora’s office.

  The man who would have access to Aurora’s emails, who could fake a trail that connected her to my kidnapping.

  The man whose aunt was the CEO of this company, the same CEO who was making him work his way up the ranks instead of giving him a plumb job like she did for seventeen-year-old Rawn.

  The man who was obsessed with sundials—who never failed to tell anyone and everyone who would listen how they were the greatest scientific breakthrough ever made—had allowed that obsession to be his downfall.

  That and his signature wingtip shoes.

  “It was him,” I said, conviction strong in my voice. “It all makes sense.”

  No one said anything for a long time.

  ***

  The police came the moment Rawn called them. The detective seemed a little disinterested when we first began to talk, but as the details piled up, the evidence building, he became more interested. And then he dropped a bomb.

  “We were actually opening an investigation on Mr. Wallace. We arrested one of the gentlemen involved in your kidnapping, Miss Miller, and he pointed us in Mr. Wallace’s direction. We had just begun, so we didn’t have enough to arrest him, but what you’ve given us is enough to take to a judge.”

  I felt like high-fiving everyone, but I kept my response in check as Rawn thanked the man and walked him out of the office.

  Conrad walked over to his small bar and poured himself a stiff drink. “Want something?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “No.”

  I walked over to him and touched the place between his shoulder blades.

  “Have you talked to Mellissa since your fight?”

  He glanced at me. “She told you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head, as he downed the liquid in his glass. “She wants space. I’m trying to give it to her.”

  “For a man who’s been married before, you sure are oblivious when it comes to women. Don’t you realize the last thing she wants is space?”

  “She specifically said—”

  “She was angry and hurt. Come on, Conrad, you have to realize you’ve been a little blind when it comes to her these last few weeks.

  “I mean, I realize that all this stuff with Rawn and Russell has been time consuming, but surely you’ve noticed how odd Mellissa’s been acting. I mean, even I noticed and I’m not always the most observant person in the room.”

  He set his glass down, shoving it hard against the others so that they all rattled on the glass shelf.

  “I just thought she was feeling out of sorts because of everything that happened last month.”

  “Stress doesn’t cause nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, a lack of appetite, and exhaustion. Well, maybe the exhaustion, but not the other symptoms.”

  He turned to me, his brow creased with concern. “Do you think she’s sick?”

  I groaned. Really, how blind could he be?

  “Conrad, Mellissa is pregnant. And I think she was going to tell you over dinner the other night, the dinner that you brushed off to help your ex-wife.”

  Color drained from his face. “Are you sure?”

  “I didn’t ask, but all the signs are there.”

  He stood stone still for the longest moment, and then he brushed past me and grabbed his jacket off the back of his office chair. Then, he was gone, and I was hoping I had done the right thing.

  I picked up my own bag and headed for the door. I grabbed a passing secretary and said, “Could you tell Mr. Jackman that I went to our room and I’ll be waiting for him there?”

  She nodded, a funny quirk to her eyebrow as she watched me walk away.

  ***

  I was sitting in the center of the bed, wearing a bright orange corset that left little to the imagination. My hands were bound to the headboard, a blindfold over my eyes. It had been a trick getting it all accomplished by myself, but I hoped it struck the right cord when Rawn walked into the room.

  By the audible gasp I heard, I think I hit my mark.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m seducing my boyfriend.”

  He came to the bed, his weight causing it to shift. His hand brushed the blindfold, but I twisted away before he could take it off.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I want to do this.”

  “Madison, I don’t want to push you. I don’t want to make you do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t scare me anymore.” I shifted slightly, turning toward the place where I thought his face was. “Remembering that it was Russell’s voice I heard during my ordeal, knowing that the police are about to arrest—”

  “Have arrested.”

  “—have arrested him has given me back a measure of security that I lost after it happened. I’ve got my life back, and I want to share everything, all we’ve done and all we’re going to do, with you.”

  His breath was hot as he sighed close to my throat. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  He pushed me down against the mattress and grabbed my ankles, securing them to the footboard. Then, he disappeared, not making enough sound so that I could trace his movements. But it didn’t frighten me. I knew he was still there, that he would never abandon me.

  Then, I heard the telltale sounds of a whip and my belly tightened.

  It wasn’t fear. It was an excitement I was pretty sure I would never have known if I had not met Rawn Jackman.

  And later, as he lay satiated beside me, he slipped a simple diamond on my finger.

  “I had this whole speech planned out,” he said quietly. “But you, as always, outshone me and proved once again why I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

  Chapter 10

  Six months later

  Madison

  I stood in front of the mirror as my mother carefully positioned the veil over my thickly hair sprayed and pinned hair. It fell perfectly over the sides of my face and down over my arms, covering what the dress didn’t. She began to cry again, and I smiled, handing her a tissue.

  “I’m the one who’s supposed to be crying.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” my mother said. “I just can’t believe this day has come. I was so afraid…” She stopped, reluctant to mention the darkness of our past on such a happy day.

  “Allison would be crying right next to you if she was here.”

  “She would, wou
ldn’t she?”

  I laughed. “And she would complain about the bride’s maids’ dresses I picked out, even if they were the most glamourous, most amazing dresses ever made.”

  Mother laughed too. “She would definitely do that. Allison found fault with every formal dress ever made.”

  “I don’t know, I kind of like these,” Mellissa said from her place on the couch.

  She was as round as a beach ball, but she had that amazing glow that people were always talking about when it came to pregnant women. Seven months and she was still going like a firecracker, refusing to let anyone stop her from performing all the duties expected of a co-maid of honor.

  Annie, perched on the couch arm beside her, nodded. “And the color is awesome.”

  They were red, a bright, amazing red, like the deep color of the roses in my bouquet. The color of love. Annie had a special affinity for red these days. I suspected it had something to do with Logan, but I was afraid to ask. She might actually tell me.

  My mother had insisted that my four cousins be bride’s maids, but I couldn’t decide between Annie and Mellissa as my maid of honor. So I gave them both the honor and sat back, watching as they were able to bring everything together with amazingly few disagreements. It was almost as if they were meant to partner up and plan their best friend’s wedding.

  Annie and I had done the same for Mellissa, though her wedding four months ago had been a quieter, simpler affair than this. Just like she and Conrad. Despite his Texas roots, they didn’t do things in a big way. It was two weeks before we even knew they were engaged.

  But that might have had more to do with the fact that Conrad selfishly kept Mellissa all to himself during that time than anything else. He had a lot to make up for.

  It was her chest infection, Mellissa was careful to tell everyone she thought might judge her. She was on antibiotics for a long time during and after the infection, it was that bad. And the doctor warned her to use another form of birth control because it might interfere with the pill. But she wasn’t seeing anyone when he told her, and then everything that was going on when Conrad came into her life was a little distracting.