Billionaire Season 3: Summer Ablaze (Billionaire Season Trilogy) (2 page)

“William,” she whispered without opening her eyes, a contented smile curving her pouty lips. Her hands played against his ridged stomach and moved up to his thick neck and then tangled in his silky hair.

“It’s me, baby,” Walden said and she opened her eyes and looked up at him with a deep stab of disappointment. She pressed her cheek to the hot pulse at his neck and he moaned and it was a desperate sound like a wounded animal as he lifted her chin and kissed her lips.

She tried to let herself go, to let William go, but it just wouldn’t happen. She twisted her face away and pushed back from the cold comfort of Walden’s chest and when their eyes met they both knew he would never dare to touch her again.

Chapter Two

“
I want you to get lost in me
….”

William woke in a cold sweat, his body twisted in the fine Frette sheets on his bed with Alaina’s words echoing inside his head. For thirty days and thirty nights he’d lived without Allie Darling and his mind and his heart hadn’t found one instant of peace.

He’d had his fill of watching his brother and Allie as they gallivanted through the streets of New Orleans over the past week. And really, he should have been pleased at the look of lighthearted abandon on Walden’s face, a look he hadn’t witnessed in more than twenty years, but he wasn’t. Maybe turn-about was fair play after all. Before William had fallen in love with Allie, he’d enjoyed being watched while he was engaged in compromising situations with women. Not that Walden and Allie were ever in a compromising situation, they held hands and leaned in close across a table at
Cafe du Monde
or
Acme Oyster House
once in a while, but that was it. Still, the hair-trigger response in his overly developed Alpha-male brain made him want to hurt his brother as surely as he’d wanted to make him happy thirty days ago.

William was sickened by his need to spy on Walden and Allie but he was a man hopelessly in love, so he couldn’t help himself. And as he stood in the shadows and caught glimpses of them together, the simple intimacy they shared caused such an eruption of jealousy that he could hardly contain his fury. More than once he had to fight the urge to go all Marlon Brando in
A Streetcar Named Desire
and stand outside in the street yelling “
ALAINA!
” at the top of his lungs.

He’d left New Orleans after that first week of living without her, he was worn down by the unfamiliar chaos in his heart, so he turned his mind to business. It was Tanya who had urged him to fly to Rotterdam and reinforce Warfield’s allegiances with the Dutch mega-shipping conglomerates.

“Listen boss,” Tanya had said as she sat on the edge of his desk one morning and shook her head sadly at the look of anguished longing in William’s eyes. “You’ve gotta pull yourself together, as the old song goes, “You fooled around and fell in love.” It happens all the time and you will survive, but as my daddy likes to say— “You need to change your thinking from ass to grass.”

“Excuse me?” William said and Tanya would’ve laughed but it was obvious that he was really hurting.

“I think the term has something to do with cows, actually, but it’s the same deal here. Get your mind off sex and love and concentrate on the menial details that make the world go round, your work, for instance. You remember
work
don’t you— multi-billion dollar companies with you at the helm? Huge ships carrying merchandise that people need to buy in order to live their everyday lives. Warfield ships that circle the globe day-in-day-out to keep a healthy bottom line which keeps you and me and a multitude of employees earning the money and benefits required for our dearly beloved livelihoods. I’ve been taking up some of the slack for you, William, but really, you need to put in an appearance with those bigwigs in the Netherlands. Like it or not, shipping is still a man’s world and they’re disgustingly more than a tiny bit old-school European. One of them came on to me just one too many times and I sort of let the proverbial pussy-cat out of the bag, I told him I’d rather sleep with his wife than with him. So, I don’t know if they have a problem with me being same-sex-oriented and honestly it’s a non-issue, but it’s time for you to get back to work. So you’re headed to Rotterdam, look up some of your relatives while you’re there, walk through world class museums. Hell, pop over to Amsterdam and smoke some dope and check out the red light district, it’s all legal you know.”

“So you think I’ve fallen that low, huh? That I need to get high and pay for sex? Fuck, what have I let happen to myself? I’m like some demented hard-dick stalker who’s brokenhearted over a twenty-one year old girl.”

“I’m not even going to touch that statement because you are the instigator of your own misery where Alaina is concerned. I might have told you to get together with Abigail and have a big old pity party except that my sister has found a new playmate. Yep, Brodie Maguire gave up on Allie Darling and found his way into my sister’s needy arms. Who knew? Abigail does a one-eighty from the wacko world of Walden Warfield to Brodie-the-straight-laced-neo-preppy-budding-lawyer-in-a-cheap suit. Go figure.”

So William had gone to Rotterdam (for business) and Amsterdam (for the beauty of its canals, not its prostitutes) and The Hague (for its superb collection of Rembrandts and Vermeers). He sat down at meetings and went for drinks and dinner with men like himself who controlled the global shipping industry, men who were unapologetically rich and powerful; men who were masters of the universe. His trip lasted two weeks and ended when he stood gazing at the evocative painting
Girl with a Pearl Earring
at the Mauritshuis. The subtle beauty and innocence in that famous face forced him to flee the museum and the country and return to New Orleans to reclaim the girl he loved.

He’d made a terrible mistake letting Allie and Walden find their way to each other and it wasn’t just white-hot jealously that tormented him. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what he felt for Allie was the truest love he would ever know. So he would face Allie and beg her to forgive him for his deceitful words when he swore he didn’t love her. And he would tell Walden to move on with his life, to find happiness somewhere else, any place other than with the one woman who held William’s heart in the palm of her hand.

*

“Where’s my brother and where is Alaina?” William asked after he’d pounded on the door of The Cathedral and then brushed past a pissed-off looking Eleanor Selig. He stood in the foyer and his dark eyes narrowed as they swept over the formerly uptight psychiatrist. “I see you’ve updated your wardrobe, Dr. Selig. Leather does suit you and… what can I say except— wow, great fucking legs. I assume my brother is upstairs in one of his playrooms? Don’t bother to announce me, I’ll just find him myself.” William shook his head in disbelief at the change in Dr. Selig before he bounded upstairs to his brother’s office.

“Hell yeah, come right in bro, good thing I don’t have my cock in my hand or some coed on my face, right? Hey, hey, hey, hold up asshole! Before you get into your famous ‘beat the shit out of Walden’ mode— Alaina is not here.” Walden said, scrubbing a fist across the coarse stubble on his jaw and the happy-go-lucky smile he’d worn in the last month was no longer in sight.

William sank into a chair across from his brother, covered his eyes with his fingers for a moment and let out a long sigh. “Look, we both know why I told Allie I didn’t love her. I did it for you, Walden, surely you understand that. I’m sorry but I can’t let you have her, I can’t be that selfless this time. I wanted to be, I sincerely want you to be alright, to live a somewhat normal life. But I should never have hurt Allie just because you and I have this fucking fucked up codependent relationship that we can’t break free of.”

“You know big brother, you’re right about that— it’s high time you and I cut the cord of brotherly guilt.” Walden said as he relaxed into his desk chair and lifted a Cuban cigar out of a wooden humidor. “But the thing is, Alaina isn’t your toy to play with, her life doesn’t revolve around your whims. I do understand that you gave her up to help me and I appreciate it more than you know. Not just because you think you ‘gave me the girl’ but because you loved me enough to put my wellbeing above your own. The thing is, Wills, as crazy as I am, I’ve always been aware of the sacrifices you’ve made for me. Now, here’s the awful truth— Alaina can’t love me. She loves you way too much, and if you want her back you’ll have to work damn hard— harder than you’ve ever worked in your life. You’ll have to make her fall in love with you all over again and I’m not even sure you can do that or that she’ll ever let her guard down enough to let you back in.”

“I asked you where she is, Walden. What the fuck, I’ve seen the two of you together, have you used her and tossed her aside already?
WHERE IS ALLIE
? I swear I’ll fucking….”

“Man, you need to control that psycho temper of yours, Wills. I love that girl as much as you do, but maybe not in exactly the same way. Sit down and take a deep breath, bro, you’re making me nuts with all the dirty looks and the fucking fist clenching and pacing the floor.”

“Listen to me asshole,” William said, wiping a drop of sweat from his normally untroubled brow. “I made a grave mistake by putting you first, as usual. But I intend to fix that, now, I want to know about Alaina. I already talked to that stranger-than-strange Remy Lesairre at the
You Wish
book shop and she said I would find Allie here. Walden, I don’t think I can hold it together if you tell me you’ve turned her into one of your bizarre sex slaves or whatever the fuck,” he said, running both his hands through his short, dark hair to keep from smashing his brother in the face— again.
Fuck!
He seriously had to get his emotions and his life in order and the only way he could do that was to make Allie see how much she meant to him and that he had no intention of living without her.

“Hey, you need to take a Xanax or a shot of Pappy Van Winkle’s,” Walden said, crossing the room to pour William a glass of the legendary bourbon from a crystal decanter. “Our daddy has good taste in whiskey, he gave me a full case last week and you gotta hand it to him, this bourbon is older than Alaina and harder to get. I’m off the stuff myself, off the meds and booze, that shit is history in my life. Alaina helped me with that, you know, kinda showed me how self-destructive and.… Whoa, settle down brother! There is nothing romantic between me and Alaina Darling and it causes me a major amount of pain to admit to that, but it’s the truth. She loves you, Wills, but right now, she’s doesn’t want anything to do with you or me as far as romance goes. You and I are equally to blame for letting her get caught in the middle of our weird family shit and I’m sorry about that.”

William took the glass Walden handed him and drank the pale golden liquid so fast his eyes watered.
Great, great, fucking great
. Walden looked as fit and un-crazy as William had ever seen him and all it had taken was a month spent with Allie. Of course now she was done with William and would never trust him again and maybe that was the price that had to be paid to give Walden his life back. But if the price meant an entire existence without Alaina, it was too high even for a billionaire to pay.   

“Just tell me where I can find her, Walden, because I realize I
can’t
lose her… she’s the one thing I can’t live without. I thought she would be here today so I could begin to explain everything to her. Now we have to deal with Father and Hannah and this entire scam bullshit with that lame-ass lawyer, Mr. Warren.”

“Alaina’s gone to Rosemary Beach with her dad for a week. Don’t worry, Wills, you can hop on the company jet and be there in an hour. And what scam are you talking about? All I have to do is tell Father what a greedy cocksucking whore Hannah is… literally, and he’ll send her packing.”

“Rosemary Beach? That tiny village in the Florida panhandle? With her father? She doesn’t even like the man, why would she do that? Okay, fine, good, I’ll fly out there and set things right with Allie as soon as I’m done here. And no, we’re not going to disrespect our father by telling him about your sexual indiscretions with his soon-to-be-bride. There’s no need for that, let Hannah go ahead and become the new Mrs. Warfield, the laws protecting inherited assets in Louisiana are ironclad. Father no longer has access to money that isn’t in a sheltered trust, the most Hannah-the-gold-digger can hope for is to own Greenlea Plantation. The house and acreage is the only purchase Father made with earned income, it’s worth about thirty million but I doubt that Hannah could afford to pay the electric bill. I suppose if she goes through with the wedding she’ll sell Greenlea about a minute after Father… is gone.”

“I kinda hate that, losing the house we grew up in. I always thought you’d have a kids one day, Wills, and they would have the run of the place with Mae spoiling them rotten,” Walden said and he truly meant it. “But yeah, for sure Hannah will sell it and live well off the thirty mil. That kinda chaps my ass to see her succeed with her money grubbing scheme.”

“You honestly have affection for our childhood home? It
was
a good place to be a kid, I suppose. Remember how we used to ride our horses bare-back out to that ramshackle fort we built in the woods? We’d come home at dusk scratched to pieces from all the thorny vines and itching like hell from stinging nettle and mosquito bites. Mae would slather us with calamine lotion and threaten to skin us alive if we weren’t more careful. Don’t know what we would’ve done without old Mae, she’s was the one solid thing we could depend on. But no matter, take my word for it— thirty million is a drop in the bucket, a very small price to pay for Father’s latest bit of insanity,” William said but he realized he actually did have good memories of his childhood, memories that centered around adventures with Walden. They had been a team, the two of them were ignored by their parents for the most part, cared for by a string of indifferent governess and loved thoroughly by Mae who had been with the Warfield family since she was barely in her teens.

William and Walden locked eyes then as the good memories washed over them and they smiled and nodded in unison.

“So, little brother, if you and Allie are just friends who’ve you been sleeping with because you do not have my will power, there’s no way you’ve taken a vow of abstinence,” William asked, squaring his shoulders as he shook off the misty feeling of nostalgia.