The Billionaire

by J. R. Ward

  “Money isn’t everything, Sean.”

  He smiled his disagreement. “Sometimes it feels that way. Sometimes I think my whole life is about chasing the stuff.”

  “I totally get that,” she said as she thought about her mom. “But come on, how much did today cost us? The two sandwiches were eight bucks. The cookies were what…four dollars? A six-pack of water was a dollar ninety…on sale, I might remind you. And the cones were nine dollars with an eleven-dollar tip. For thirty-three dollars and ninety cents, which could have been even less if you hadn’t left so much at Ben & Jerry’s, we had a perfectly lovely afternoon. After all, the sun and the Frisbee game were—”

  He swooped in and kissed her, his mouth lingering on hers before he pulled back.

  “—free,” she finished.

  Sean ran his fingertip down her cheek then took a deep breath, as if he were bracing himself for something. “So you wouldn’t think of me differently, rich or poor?”

  “I enjoyed today because of you. The fact that you’re not wealthy never even occurred to me.”

  His eyes grew shrewd as if he were assessing her down to her DNA. Then he nodded once, took out his keys and put one in the lock. When he paused, his stare shifted over to hers and the hazel in it burned.

  “Do you want to get together tonight?” he asked in a very low voice.

  Lizzie swallowed hard, knowing very well what it meant to say yes to the question. She took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “I’ll come down right after I shower.”

  He pushed the door wide and held it open for her. As she walked by him, a horrible realization hit her and she wanted to curse.

  Oh God…in the space of two days, she’d somehow become attached to this man.

  And she feared there was no going back.

  * * *

  In the shower upstairs, Sean soaped his body up and rinsed off as if he were an Indy 500 pit crew. He shaved just as fast and managed to nick himself under the chin, which necessitated tearing off a piece of Kleenex and sticking it to where he bled. After brushing his wet hair back, he did the cologne thing and inspected the razor cut.

  With relief, he ditched the little white square. Man, there was no looking good with that kind of thing on your puss.

  Boxers went on without incident as did a fresh black polo. Pants were an issue because his jeans were grass-stained, so in the end, he pulled on his suit slacks. Thank God they didn’t have any pinstripes, so he didn’t look ridiculous.

  On his way out the door, he slipped a couple of condoms in his back pocket out of necessity and picked his BlackBerry up out of habit.

  Oh…crap, he thought as he stared at the phone.

  He couldn’t believe he’d left the thing behind today. How had that happened?

  Then again, the oversight had been a blessing. Part of the reason the afternoon had been so relaxing was that the ringer hadn’t gone off constantly.

  He flipped through the screens. He had an in-box full of e-mails and seven voice messages waiting for him. He almost started checking it all, but at the last moment, he stopped. He didn’t want to know what was falling apart. All he wanted was just a little more time with Lizzie. Then he’d get back to real life.

  Shoving it into his pocket, he left the apartment and was at her door in three heartbeats. After he knocked once, he heard her call out and he went inside.

  She ducked into the living room wrapped in nothing but a towel, her hair in damp ringlets. “Hi, I’ll just get dress—”

  She didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence.

  Sean went to her in two long strides, clamped his hands on either side of her face and dropped down, fusing his mouth to hers. As he pushed her back against the wall, he was hard, hot, hungry, his hands finding the edge of the towel and stripping it away.

  With a quick move, he picked her up and carried her to her bed, laying her out flat on the comforter. He tore his shirt over his head, kicked off his shoes and covered her body with his own, all but out of control as he kissed her deep and long. He kept at it until they were both breathless, then went to work on her neck.

  “I need to…” His voice cracked as he palmed her hip and squeezed. “I need to be inside you.”

  She nodded with a jerky head bob then dug her hands into his hair and pulled him up to her mouth again. It was the perfect move because he couldn’t get enough of her lips, her scent, her crazy moaning…. The way her legs were scissoring underneath his was driving him insane.

  Somehow, his pants disappeared along with his boxers. He wasn’t sure how and didn’t care; maybe the damn things walked off his legs by their own volition. What mattered was that he and Lizzie were both wild and naked and he was pressing into the soft space between her thighs with razor-edged desperation.

  He needed this so badly. He needed her so badly.

  * * *

  Sean was all carnal demand and Lizzie loved it. Especially when his fully naked body came down on hers and his thighs split her open to him. His skin burned as if he had a fever and his hands were rough and his mouth was hungry and he was going to take her hard just the way she wanted him to. It was the kind of full-tilt sex she’d only heard about and had assumed was wildly exaggerated.

  And yet as she cried out, he went still. “Lizzie…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m going too f—”

  She locked her legs around his hips and went for his mouth, frantic for more of him. As her tongue pierced his lips, he groaned wildly and his arms shot around her, his hips falling into a grinding rhythm that blinded her. Everything was fast, fast and edgy and just a little reckless, nothing she was used to and everything she wanted.

  “Lizzie…can I—”

  “Yes.”

  He reared back and rose off her, his arousal jutting out from his hips, proud and ready. He ripped a condom wrapper open with his sharp white teeth, spit out the corner, then he sheathed himself with quick, sure hands. His heavy weight came back down on her and she trembled, ready, but bracing herself for a powerful thrust.

  Instead, he eased into her. As they slowly came together, his head dropped down beside hers so they were ear to ear.

  “Are you okay?” he asked hoarsely. “This okay?”

  His ragged breath and the sweat on his skin gave her an idea how much his self-control was costing him.

  She dug her nails into the small of his back and arched. “More.”

  With one smooth push, he locked his hips against hers and they both moaned as their pelvises merged. Their bodies took over, meeting and retreating, his advancing, hers receiving. As he moved inside of her, his muscles bunched and relaxed in his shoulders and his legs, and his slick skin slid over hers. The rhythm of it all intensified until she was nothing but sensation and instinct.

  “Lizzie…Lizzie, I’m about to—”

  A phone started ringing right by the bed, but it wasn’t one of hers.

  As it went off again, Sean froze then cursed and squeezed his eyes shut.

  She cleared her throat. “Ah…do you want to get that?”

  His answer was a straight, to the point expletive followed by the word no.

  As the ringer kept going off, he resumed pumping, falling into a driving, primal pace that took her right over the edge. As she soared beneath him, he fell over the brink himself, his head tilting back, his neck straining. He roared, more beast than man in the beautiful moment that he gave himself to her.

  When he stopped bucking against her, he collapsed, his heart pounding so hard she could feel every beat in her own chest.

  With the phone now silent, the only sound in the room was their breathing.

  As passion’s heat faded from their bodies, her chest ached although she wasn’t sure why.

  * * *

  Sean was utterly sated as he rolled to the side and took Lizzie with him. Looking into her face, her eyes were so clear and guileless he wondered how he could have ever thought she was calculating, and he loved that she was so transparent.

>   What he didn’t like was the fact that she seemed a little rattled.

  “Lizzie…” He kissed her softly. “You okay there?”

  She ran her hand up the back of his arm and nodded.

  “Lizzie? Did I hurt you?”

  “Oh…no…it’s not that.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “I…ah, I didn’t know…” Her eyes dropped. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”

  Sean went utterly still; he didn’t even breathe. Time became a meaningless measure of nothing important. “Lizzie—”

  His cell phone went off again, the soft tone landing like a bomb.

  With a curse, he shot out of bed and grabbed his boxers, holding them in front of his hips as he headed for his pants.

  “What?” he snapped as he answered the damn thing.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Ah yes, Mick Rhodes. Lawyer. Friend. And when in that tone of voice, bearer of bad news.

  “Just spit it,” Sean muttered. “What’s on fire?”

  “Condi-Foods. Name ring a bell? Damn it, I called you five times this afternoon. Where have you been? You know the deal is shaky—”

  “Skip the lecture and give me details.”

  Mick swore a couple of times then launched into a news flash that set Sean’s teeth on edge. “The revised tender offer from the acquirer is coming in two hours from now. Condi-Foods’ board chair wants you and only you to render the opinion and he wants to hear it in person. So you need to drop whatever you’re doing and get your ass into Manhattan now.”

  Sean cursed and reached back down for his trousers. Then realized he wasn’t getting dressed unless he made a quick trip to the bathroom. “I’m on my way.”

  “Hey, there’s an idea—”

  “I’ll call you from the plane.” Sean hung up. Dropped his arm. Looked over his shoulder. “I have to go.”

  “Was that your boss?”

  “Basically.” Actually, he was Mick’s boss, as he’d hired the guy to work on the legal aspects of these deals. But his pal was right to goose him. He’d left a two-billion-dollar negotiation hanging in the breeze today. So he could play Frisbee for God’s sake.

  Not a smart career move. Or a responsible one.

  Sean went into the bathroom, snapped off the condom and washed up. Without looking at himself in the mirror, he put on his boxers and his pants and headed back to the bedroom.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” he said, picking up his shirt from the floor. He pulled it over his head and shoved his feet into his running shoes. “I’ll call you.”

  Lizzie’s eyes grew remote. “Have a safe trip.”

  “Lizzie, I’ll call you. I promise.”

  She smiled slowly. “Okay…I’d like that. I’d really like that.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Four nights later, in a conference room high above Wall Street, Sean lost it. Just lost it. And not in a calculated way intended to impact difficult negotiations.

  He simply hit the wall. Then plowed right through it. “To hell with this.” He planted his big hands on the glossy mahogany table and rose from his seat. Leaning into his arms, he glared good and hard at the idiots who were wasting his and Condi-Foods’ time. “Get out.”

  The head of the acquirer’s investment team blinked like a bad lightbulb in his Brooks Brothers suit. “Excuse me?”

  “Get. Out.” This meeting had been a bad idea to begin with, but as the deal was at a standstill, Sean had agreed to the request for some face-to-face. He was not surprised they remained deadlocked, but it sure as hell didn’t put him in a good mood.

  Then again, since he’d left Lizzie’s Saturday night, nothing had given him a jolly.

  “Our share price is fair!” the man across the table hollered.

  “No, it isn’t, and it’s backed up by air. You find yourself some better financing and come up on your number, then we’ll talk.”

  “Damn it, O’Banyon! We’ve been working on this for the last four days—”

  “And time has not improved your offer. Get. Out.”

  There was a long pause and then they just started yammering on again about their low-ball valuation of Condi-Foods’ assets. One of them even had the nerve to push a spreadsheet at him.

  Sean balled the thing up and tossed it into a wastepaper basket across the room.

  Which effectively ended the meeting.

  All six guys across the table stood up and, amid much huffing and offense, funneled out of the room as if the door were a drain. Before he left, the team leader glanced back at Sean. The man’s eyes were shrewd and that was when Sean knew. What had just transpired was a test of his resolve by the opposing side, not any kind of genuine stalemate.

  They were going to meet his demands. He could feel it. And as Mick Rhodes chuckled a little in the seat next to him, it was clear his buddy knew it, too.

  In the aftermath of the drama bomb, Sean eased down into his chair.

  As silence reigned, the two young guys he’d picked up from that gala, Freddie Wilcox and Andrew Frick, were frozen-statue speechless.

  “Do we leave now?” Freddie asked.

  “Nope,” Mick replied. The lawyer’s sardonic grin, which was as sharp as his Brioni suit, made a quick appearance. “Twenty-seven, SOB. Don’t you think?”

  Sean rubbed his face and played along out of habit, not because he was interested in the game. “Thirty-nine. Because I balled their—what did I throw?”

  Andrew spoke up. “I believe it was their financial projections for the coming fiscal year.”

  “Ah, then I put them in the right place.” Sean leaned back in his chair and rolled his Montblanc between his thumb and forefinger. The fountain pen was one of his signature props, a big black cigar of a writing instrument known on Wall Street as the Club for all the damage he’d done with it.

  Usually at this point, when he knew in his gut he was going to get what he wanted, he’d feel a simmering triumph. After all, making the other side break and submit was the goal, and sure as hell, those highfliers who’d just fluffed out of here were going to call back within the hour with a reasonable offer that he could recommend to the Condi-Foods board.

  He’d been through this countless times. It was the cycle of challenge that had kept him juiced for years.

  But the problem was, on this particular walk through the minefield, he really had lost his temper. Unlike the other side, his anger hadn’t been for show. His frustration level had been on hard-boil since he’d come back to the city and now he was stretched as thin as a hair. The three-ring circus of these negotiations, coupled with that grossly inadequate offer, had just pushed him over the edge.

  And there was nothing more dangerous in a multibillion-dollar negotiation than one of the principals getting truly emotional.

  He told himself he was just strung out. Hell, he’d been working until three in the morning every night since he’d come back, and although that wasn’t unprecedented, it certainly didn’t put him in his happy place. Plus the fact that these negotiations had been going so slowly made it all worse—

  Oh, who was he kidding. It wasn’t business that was razoring him up.

  His conscience was wearing on him. Badly.

  Lizzie Bond was wearing on him.

  He got to his feet and started to pack up his briefcase.

  “You’re leaving?” Mick said.

  “I already know what they’re going to do.” Sean slipped the Club into his breast pocket then text messaged his limo driver. “They’re going to come up twenty-five cents a share and get real on the interest payments before the balloon five years out of closing. And I will accept that. Call me when the new offer comes through.”

  Andrew cleared his throat. “But how do you know that’s what they’re going to counter with?”

  Sean picked up his leather document holder. “Because it’s the only move they have. If they back out after getting this close, everyone on the Street will think it’s because they don’t have the corp
orate will to be a player and that lack of confidence would be bad news for their stock. As usual it all comes down to pride and math.”

  The hero worship that flared in the kid’s eyes was hard to bear so Sean looked around the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been real. Mick, I’ll be hearing from you shortly.”

  On his way out, he checked in with his assistants and picked up a stack of phone messages as well as the schedule for the next week and the so-called social file. When he told his staff he was going home, they looked relieved, as if they needed a break from him.

  He didn’t blame them in the slightest.

  He hit the elevators and exited the building. His limousine was waiting out front in the sweltering heat and he slid into the air-conditioned backseat with relief. As the Lincoln eased into traffic, he opened the social file with no enthusiasm. The thing was stuffed with invitations to galas and messages from women and favors he was being asked. Typically he would run through the morass in about ten minutes, turf the RSVPs to his assistants and call back a couple of the ladies.

  Instead, he closed the cover and took out his BlackBerry.

  Lizzie’s face came to him, as it had on a regular basis, and he rubbed the center of his chest.

  He’d wanted to talk to her since landing in Manhattan, but he’d been dealing with one problem after another in the Condi-Foods negotiations. The way things had been going, the only time he had to himself was either well after midnight or just around noontime. Neither of which were good times to reach her.

  He’d tried to leave messages, but had just ended up deleting them halfway through. Even though he’d spoken thousands of sentences since getting back to the city, he somehow couldn’t find the words to let her know how much he was thinking about her. And the longer he went, the worse he choked.

  He checked his watch. Nine o’clock at night.

  Damn it, he had to call. Considering all the crap that was going down with Condi-Foods, he wasn’t going to get back to Boston for another week. And that was assuming the acquirer’s offer finally did make sense.

  As his limo slowly progressed down Wall Street, he dialed his BlackBerry, put the thing up to his ear and loosened his tie.