Broken: A Billionaire Love Story (16 page)

A deep, sudden pit formed in Shane’s stomach.

“Who are you?” asked Shane.

“Heck Parsons.” The man held out a hand. “You’re more at my service than I at yours, but we can pretend about it anyway that makes you feel good.”

Shane had heard that name somewhere before—but he couldn’t quite place where. He shook his head at the hand, refusing to shake it. Why shake the hand of someone who had invaded his entire right to privacy?

Olivia had straightened up entirely, very tense. “Who
are
you and what are you doing here?”

“I am Heck Parsons, like I said. I’m a reporter. Shane is part of the story I’m working on. A very, very large part.”

Olivia looked up at Shane, those big, beautiful eyes full of questions. He just smiled and sort of shrugged, all nervousness.

“I don’t...I don’t understand, Mr. Parsons,” said Olivia. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he said. “As a matter of fact. I really don’t want or need anything. I’ve got all I need, now. I just wondered if Shane wanted to give me a statement, now that he’s back from hiding. Maybe he wants to explain how he hurt his face?”

“Hiding?” asked Olivia. “What do you mean, hiding?”

“Well, I suppose his hiding ended a bit ago when he checked into rehab, huh? But still, this place is pretty isolated.”

Everything Shane felt told him to run away, to hide, to obfuscate the truth. Only barely had he been able to come to terms with the truth about his addiction. For the world to know...it was too much, too soon.

“Checked into rehab?” Shane smiled. “No, no way.” He tugged Olivia close to him, hand around her waist. “This is my girlfriend. I was just...just visiting.”

It was a gamble, putting Olivia on the spot like that. There was so much she didn’t know about him. But if she would just go along with this...

“I’ll explain,” he hissed to her as quietly as he could manage.

“You were visiting your girlfriend,” said Parsons. “Is that right?”

Olivia, without blinking, just nodded.

Good girl, thought Shane. Now, if they could just get away...

“A billionaire playboy is the boyfriend of a part-time counselor? That’s hard to believe.”

He needed her, here. There was a lot being thrown at her all at once. How would she react?

Shane's eyes remained locked on her, not daring to look at Parsons. For some reason, she was digging in her coat pocket, fingering at something.

“Of course you shouldn’t believe I’m his girlfriend.” She held up her hand, and there was a ring shining on it. “I’m his fiancée. He just proposed a few minutes ago. Now, would you mind leaving us alone? This is our moment.”

And then she kissed Shane, as hot and deep as she ever had.

Chapter 23:

Almost immediately after the incident with Heck Parsons, Olivia and Shane had driven away from Edgemont, not knowing what else to do. They couldn’t just go back inside, after all, with Parsons watching them, and Shane was supposed to be driving to and from work with her in the story they had made up.

Shane grabbed her phone and called his uncle. Less than twenty minutes later, they had sat down at a small diner on the side of the road, down the way from Spark’s.

Shane and Olivia sat on one side of the table, and Arthur on the other. It was an uncomfortable booth, the corner kind that crowded everyone’s legs together. Olivia pressed against Shane’s body, half because she wanted to and could get away with it, and half out of stress. Her hand rested on his thigh, squeezing and unsqueezing. Her ring was still fixed there on her hand—the same ring that her mother had left for her, that she had slipped on in her big improvisation.

What had she gotten herself into?

It was hard to explain why she had said what she did. She didn’t think of Shane as a boyfriend, or a billionaire, or even someone she was desperately attracted to. No, all she saw was a dear friend and patient in a lot of need.

She was almost certainly fired from Edgemont. She couldn’t just
leave
with a patient and expect not to be fired. But maybe...maybe she could talk them out of it. Lie, somehow.

Or just tell the truth. She was trying to protect Shane, she could say. Yes.

After the initial incident with Arthur, she had surmised that Shane was connected to some wealth, but she hadn’t known how much—Arthur’s boasts about paying her salary had come off to her as just that: boasts.

Then, Shane explained to her on the ride to the diner, with some uncomfortable shame, that he in fact came the richest and oldest family in the Midwest. Billions, he said. He was worth billions. The numbers still barely made sense to her. That this tattooed poet could be the heir-apparent for an enormous corporation blew her away. She had only barely ever heard of what the Conway Corporation actually did. They were quiet, Shane explained, and made almost nothing but investments in other corporations, taking shares and dividing them among even more people.

She remembered now, of course, that little blip in the news a few years ago. Most of the tabloid news, she only kept up with by reading whatever was on magazine covers as she checked out at the grocery store. So knew the name Shane Conway—and could even recognize his profile from her recollection of those pictures, now that she knew who he was.

He had changed so much, though—shorter hair, a beard, more ink, and over the past several days, a good dose of healthy living to put a little more meat on his wiry frame.

They were all good changes, in her mind. He looked undeniably sexy, even sitting uncomfortably across from his uncle.

“What happened to your face?” Arthur asked, , shifting uncomfortably on the plastic covered seat of the diner.

“Nothing,” said Shane. “I got into...I had a disagreement with another patient.”

“Did you? And how did your fists agree with his face? Similarly, I hope?”

Shane shook his head. “It’s done now. Don’t worry about it.”

Moving his head very deliberately, Arthur shifted his attention over to Olivia. His gaze moved like a wrecking ball.

“So,” said Arthur, “You’re going to marry my nephew.”

“No. Not at all.” Olivia shook her head. “I just said that so that we could get away from the reporter.”

“And now he, being a reporter,” said Arthur, “has reported to several news stations—yes, he’s done that already—that my nephew is going to get married. To you.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean I
have
to marry him, does it?”

“Let’s follow that train of thought, shall we?” Arthur cleared his throat. “The whole world knows now where Shane is, thanks to your carelessness. Because they know that, they will want news. A wedding is very big news. A wedding broken off is even bigger news. If it is broken off, you will be investigated, your story will be found out. They will find out where Shane was. His anonymity in seeking rehabilitation for his problems will be shattered. I imagine his recovery, on the whole, will be ruined, or at least tainted. What do you think of his chances, with his recovery under the microscope?”

Olivia said nothing. She knew such cases were the hardest to manage for those trying to make themselves better. There was a kind of a bell curve, in which a certain number of people knowing about recovery made it stronger—but too many, and it was doomed to failure. She had seen it a thousand times.

“On the other hand,” said Arthur, “if you were to follow through with the marriage...”

“All they’ll be focusing on is the marriage,” said Olivia. “Plans for it. What he’s wearing. What I’m wearing. Who I am, what I’ve done. No digging about Shane, since they think they already know a lot about him.”

Arthur nodded. “You’re smarter than you have previously indicated. That’s good. And yes, that would be my estimation of events. I imagine we’ll need to give them something of Shane’s problem. He had a reliance, and your presence solved it. You ‘straightened out the bad boy.’”

Shane harrumphed. “I didn’t do any work on it, huh?”

The implication of that obviously bothered him—understandably, in Olivia’s estimation.

“I don’t like that either,” said Olivia. “He’s been working really hard on himself.”

“I am sure he has been trying. You’re a professional in this area, I expect you would know. But, we are crafting a story for the public. That is not the truth. That is just what little bits of truth that they can handle. So. You two met...I don’t know, some place harmless.”

Olivia thought for a moment, hand on her chin.

“I vacation in the mountains, sometimes?”

“Perfect. You met in a cabin retreat. Very romantic. You fall in love, immediately. Shane has a wild side, you calm him down. A triumph for feminism, changing the life of the wild man.”

Olivia frowned. “That’s not what feminism is.”

“A triumph, regardless.” Arthur spread his hands. “You use your professional capacity to show him the error of his ways. He accepts, and decides to start pitching in at the rehab center, which is why he was there so often—and without a car. He came and went with you every day. You two are practically inseparable.”

“And we have to get married,” said Shane, his voice a little flat.

“That is correct.”

Shane sighed, looking over at Olivia with those beautiful blue eyes. “You couldn’t have mentioned some other kind of story to that guy? I’m visiting to donate money, or I’m volunteering, or anything like that?”

“I didn’t exactly know you were worth billions of dollars until...” she checked her watch, “...half an hour ago. So, no.”

Shane shifted in his seat. “The volunteering story might have worked.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” said Arthur. “Other stories don’t matter. There are no maybes and mights anymore. This is what we have. Now, we have two choices, as I see it.”

The waitress came by and delivered their drinks. Shane and Arthur had ordered coffee. Olivia had a water. Arthur looked at his coffee slowly, raising an eyebrow. Olivia almost expected him to take out a stick and poke the cup with it. Instead, he took a small sip, and a big smile rose up on his face.

“This is wonderful,” he said.

“Great,” said Shane. “Can you tell us the options you’re thinking?”

“No, this is really a delicious cup of coffee. I was suspicious, given its...environs. But it’s quite good. Try yours.”

“Later,” said Shane. “Please, keep going.”

With a bit of regret, Arthur put his coffee down. “All right. Two options. The first is that we abandon the whole thing. It’s a lie, you both panicked, we cut ties with the whole story and lay out the truth for the reporter. We offer the entire story and an exclusive, let’s say, in return for his not repeating the lies that you said.”

“I don’t like that,” said Shane. “I don’t really want everyone knowing what’s up with me. That’s my business.”

“Maybe it would be for the best?” said Olivia. “I mean, I
did
panic back there. I was just trying to help. But if it’s all going to precipitate more lies...I don’t think that’s healthy.”

“My addiction is
my
business,” Shane said. “Not anyone else’s. I don’t need the whole world knowing that I’m a biological fuck-up.”

“My wording would not be the same, but my sentiment is, to an extent,” said Arthur. “Shane is still the heir to the fortune of one of the oldest companies in America, and will have the controlling shares if and when his mother passes. If he is thought to be an addict, it would be...bad.”

Stock prices rising and falling, Olivia guessed. Probably Arthur’s entire universe. She wondered if he actually saw two people sitting in front of him, or some gestalt of plus signs and minus signs and percent signs that somehow took the form of giant talking numbers. A seven for the wiry, broad Shane, perhaps, and a nine for the buxom Olivia? It was hard to say what number-shapes a person might have.

Arthur took another sip of his coffee. “On the other hand, we could continue the lie, for a short time. Perhaps six to eight weeks? A whirlwind romance and marriage and then inevitable divorce. These sorts of things happen to the young rich all the time. You thought you were in love, you were really in lust, and it all falls apart. In the meantime, Shane is able to receive direct help from you. You would be rewarded handsomely for your efforts—as you will be helping him rehabilitate, I will consider you employed—and you will walk away with this with a wonderful story to tell to your grandchildren someday. Something like that.”

There was a third option, of course. Olivia could just wash her hands of all of this—run away, not be involved, take back her life and never come back. What they were proposing meant her time at Edgemont was done for the foreseeable future. They might never want her back. Who would want someone like her back, knowing what she did? How would she ever get a reference?

How would she ever get another kind of job?

But it was very hard to bring up such concerns with Shane right there. The need on his face—he didn’t like all of this either, but he needed her right now. And she didn’t feel like she had a choice but to support him.

“You should know,” said Arthur, sensing her hesitation, “that your participation is paramount to our cause, Olivia. If you were to...break the story, or run off somehow, I would be very disappointed. It would be difficult for me to hide my disappointment to the people I know. People in government, people in medicine, people in universities. I know a great deal of people, and all of them are sympathetic...empathetic, you could say, to my cause.”

Olivia—already overwhelmed with the dismal prospects for her professional future—felt even more threatened now. She leaned into Shane—her only source of protection, now.

“That’s crass, Arthur,” said Shane, voice rising a bit. “And unnecessary. Olivia is as firm a friend as I’ve ever found. You don’t have to talk like that to her. I would prefer if you didn’t, in fact. And,” he added, “if you do it again, I’ll go find that reporter and tell him the whole truth myself.”

Chapter 24:

The Conway mansion was one of the oldest homes in the state. It was located deep in the county west of St. Louis, and at one point had been an enormous farmhouse. Over the years, it had grown and evolved into its present awe-inspiring state. It had the full rich regalia—gated entrance, two mile long cobblestone driveway, a two-story garage that was three times the size of Olivia’s house, and of course the house itself which Olivia could hardly even scale. It had long swooping roofs (multiple roofs!—Olivia felt dumbstruck by that), tall windows, everything crafted expertly from brick and wood.