The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (17 page)

I type,
Giving up Grant is not part of the bargain, Mailin.

Yeah, I figured… but I had to tell them SOMETHING to get them to fly over here.

Is the FBI with you right now?

You mean, are they reading over my shoulder? No. They’re not going to be privy to this conversation. This is between you and me.

“Right,” Grant seethes.

I hesitate.

I’ve trusted Mailin before with my own life… but should I trust him with Grant’s?

How exactly do you see this going down, Mailin?

You come in, you tell us that Grant kidnapped you, and you have no idea where he is. Then I take you back to the U.S.

You know he hired me, right?

Yes. We talked to your boss about it.

Didn’t Dan tell you about Epicurus?

No – he said that client confidentiality laws applied, and we’d have to get a court order to force him to comply. We’re working on that. But he DID confirm that Grant hired you. However, he hired you without telling you anything about how he steals paintings, right?

Well, that much was true…

Allegedly steals paintings,
I typed.

Grant frowns at me. “What are you doing?”

“First rule of hacking: never admit to anything,” I say. “Even when you’re caught red-handed.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Not bad.”

The paintings were in his fucking safe room, Eve.
I can almost see Mailin’s eyes rolling as he typed that.

Allegedly steals paintings, or GTFO.

Just in case you’re not up on your texting, ‘GTFO’ is the acronym for ‘Get The Fuck Out.’

Fine. ‘Allegedly’ steals paintings. But he didn’t tell you about it, right?

I didn’t know anything about any allegedly stolen paintings, no.

So you’re in the clear. As soon as you found out about it, he forced you to go with him, but you were able to escape. You tried to contact me, I got to you first, I get you out of France, bam, we’re good.

But you’re going to want me to testify against him, right? Or do SOMETHING against him, right?

You don’t have to tell them anything. If they won’t let up, you can just say that Grant took you along as a potential hostage. No one has to know the truth. I’M not even asking you for the truth.

Let me get this straight: you’re advising me to commit perjury, then?

Jesus – I’m asking you to let me help you, Eve. Just… come home.

I look at Grant.

This is it: this is the perfect out.

I could walk away from Grant and go back to my old life. Grant even
wants
me to go. Well, he wants me to get smuggled out of France on a boat, but… same difference. He wants to be rid of me.

The Devil is offering me a contract and a pen. All I have to do is sign on the dotted line.

I need to think about this, Mailin,
I type.

What the hell is there to think about?!

I’ll get back to you. Don’t go anywhere.

Before he can answer, I log off and disconnect the computer.

“Well?” Grant asks. “What are you going to do?”

I consider my options: leave on a boat, or leave on a plane?

Go to some other country and hide out until Grant
might
have a change of heart and come back to me… or return to my old life in the U.S. of A?

The answer is easy. I know what I really want.

“I’m staying with you,” I say.

Grant shakes his head. “Not happening.”

I’d like to say that we hash it all out rationally, that we discuss the pros and cons, and that we do it quickly.

Nope.

That’s
so
not what happens. In fact, pretty much the opposite.

I’ll spare you the endless bickering, the cheap shots, the moaning from JP and the smug looks from Dominique. Suffice it to say, we argue all throughout dinner (again supplied by Marcel) until we go to bed.

There are two rooms at the top of the restaurant, each with two horribly creaky twin beds. The rooms are bare-bones – not fancy at all. Maybe they’re for criminals to lie low when the ‘heat is on’? Who knows? I don’t ask. But that’s where we bunk down for the night, with me and Grant in one room, and JP and Dominique in the other.

Dominique is not happy with the arrangements, but… fuck Dominique.

Once we say goodnight to JP, Dominique, and Marcel, Grant and I retire silently to our room. Things are so tense that there’s not really a question of us sleeping in the same bed. Grant chooses the one nearest the window, and I take the other. It’s like we’re staking out territory in an endless war.

We are undressing for bed – and not in a sexy way, but in a
I cannot fucking stand being in the same room with you
kind of way – when Grant starts in on me again. “Why are you so upset about me wanting to protect you?”

We’re apart from the others for the first time, so I feel like I can finally say what my real objection is. Plus, I’m sick to death of arguing. If we’re going to end it, let’s just end it now.

“Because I think you just want to get rid of me and you can’t bear to do it to my face.”

“What?! Where did you get
that
idea?!”

“Oh, I don’t know – maybe because I really want to stay here and help you, and all you want to do is ship me off to parts unknown?”

“If I wanted to break up with you, I would.”

I give him a
Yeah, RIGHT
look.

“What?” he asks.

I hesitate.

“What?!”

“Dominique said you broke up with her by a letter. She says you left the country without even saying goodbye.”

“Ohhhhh God,” he groans as he sits down on his bed, his head in his hands. The wire bed frame squeaks under his weight.

“Did you?” I demand.

Grant looks angry. “You know she’s just trying to tear us apart, right? You
do
know that, right?”

“Did you, or didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did. Do you know why? Because I tried breaking it off in person a dozen times. I hinted gently –
that
didn’t do it. So I started talking about how I have to go back to my life in the U.S. – but that didn’t do it, either. So I broke up with her. Full-on dumped her. I went out and got sloppy drunk afterwards – ”

“Why?”

“Because, contrary to what you believe,” he says bitterly, “I don’t enjoy hurting women.”

Ouch.

“Anyway, when I got back to my apartment, she’d broken in and was waiting for me. In bed.”

My eyes open wide.

Dominique conveniently left out the
I’m a crazy-ass stalker bitch
part.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“Well… I mean…”

He raises his eyebrows and throws up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
What could I do?

I make a disgusted face. “Are you serious?”

“Come on – I was drunk, she was naked – ”

“Never mind!” I yell and close my eyes. I put my hand up, palm out. “I don’t – just, stop.”

He stops.

I take a moment to try to erase the image out of my mind – unsuccessfully – then sigh. “What happened then? I mean, AFTER that night.”

“I tried breaking up with her two more times, but she was relentless. So, yeah, I wrote her a letter and left the country, and then I kept moving for the next three months, just to be safe. That was the only way to get the point across. She’s fucking obsessed.”

“Yet she was the first person you contacted when we got back in France.”

“No, I contacted JP – ”

“
Close enough.
So tell me why.”

“She’s a great thief. She’s as good at parkour as I am. She can handle a gun. She was on board 100% from the second she walked in the door. And she’s one of a handful of people in the entire world I knew I could trust. Are those enough reasons for you?”

Actually… when he puts it like that…

But there was still one other thing Dominique said that’s bugging me.

It takes me a while to come out with it, though.

“…she said you told her you loved her the first week you were together.”

He looks pained. “Yeah. I did.”

“Did you? Love her, I mean?”

“I thought I did at the time. She was a lot like me, in the thrill-seeking department at least. I’d never met somebody like her before. So alive, so free…”

Every word is like a dagger in my stomach. “Then why did you break up with her?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but – she’s kind of clingy?”

I’m suddenly feeling a little bit better.

“And if she doesn’t get her way, she’s kind of… bitchy?”

Feeling even better now…

“Then there’s the stalking, and her being obsessed and delusional… plus she’s kind of self-destructive…”

I feel
great.

“Not to mention that, once you get beyond the thrill-seeking, there just wasn’t much there. There was no real substance to build a relationship on. It was like two addicts helping each other shoot up.”

This is the best I’ve felt since Grant walked in the door after the catacombs and I threw myself in his arms.

I finally feel like there’s hope.

Grant looks at me in confusion. “Why did you think I want to break up with you?”

“Because you told me you love me.”

As soon as I say it, I know how crazy it sounds.

The look he gives me confirms it. “Just a hint for the future: when a guy tells a woman that he loves her, most women see that as a
good
sign.”

I laugh. God, it feels good to laugh again. “She told me you said you loved her, and then you broke up with her a few months later. I just… I thought you were doing the same thing with me.”

He smiles, happy that the tension has been dialed down about eight notches. “Okay – so you
do
see how crazy that is, right?”

Hold on there, pardner.

When I was a little kid, our family had a really ugly dog. I used to love that dog, but I was under no illusions; it was butt-ugly. I knew it was ugly, and I would call it ugly, and my parents and I would joke all the time about how ugly it was.

But none of the neighborhood kids were allowed to call it ugly. If they did, I was liable to start a fight.

Let’s name it the
I can call my dog ugly, but YOU can’t
rule.

I can call
myself
crazy… but YOU better not. Especially when YOU were the one causing all the crazy in the first place.

I get frosty again. “I don’t think it’s crazy when you basically try to buy me off like a prostitute.”

He winces, and his teeth set on edge. He was
sooo
close… but he blew it. And he knows it.

“Look, I only offered to pay you to leave because…” He sighs. “Jesus Christ, I don’t even know why I said that.”

Now that I’m thinking about it again, I’m pissed. “Yes you do. Because you think that little of me.”

“No… there’s a reason I said it, but it’s not because I think less of you.”

“Oh? What was it, then?”

He comes over  and sits on my bed – one leg wrapped behind me, the other dangling off the mattress, so his entire upper body can face me as he speaks. The wire coils squeak and creak beneath us as he sits. “Because I was trying to make you so angry you’d leave me.”

I gawk in surprise and indignation. “You were trying to do the whole ‘I’m not going to break up with you, but I’m going to be an asshole so you’ll break up with me’ thing? That’s
pathetic.
”

He laughs. “Well, you’re so goddamn stubborn.”

I’m back to feeling terrible. “Look, if you don’t love me – if that was just something you were saying – ”

He grabs my shoulders and stares into my eyes. “I do love you. I
do
. But that just makes me more afraid of losing you.”

I melt.

What he’s saying… it’s so sweet… so romantic…

But then I remember his actions from earlier, and the hurt comes back. “Why didn’t you just tell me you wanted me to be safe because you loved me, then?”

“If I said I loved you, would there have been ANY chance you’d have left France without me?”

Ah. Okay. Makes sense now.

“…no…” I admit.

“There you go.”

I look at him wistfully – and with hope. “…you
do
love me?”

“I fucking adore you. And it scares the hell out of me, because for the first time in forever, I have something to lose.”

Wait – that doesn’t compute at all. “But you just lost your entire life. Your career, your wealth – ”

“And look how much they meant to me, seeing how willing I was to gamble with them on being a cat burglar. But I’m not willing to gamble with you.”

Oh my God…

I’m so overwhelmed with love, and relief, and happiness that I start to cry.

Grant leans over and kisses me.

And then we make love.

He begins by kissing me gently on the lips. After a few seconds of that, he pulls back to smile at me. I smile, too, despite the tears in my eyes. He wipes away the drops that have spilled down my cheeks, his thumb caressing my skin. Then he reaches behind me and pulls me into a hug. I shift my entire body so I can face him, and we just stay like that for a moment – our arms wrapped around each other, our heads resting on each other’s shoulders.

He strokes my hair, gliding across it in a calming way before his fingers continue past my bra strap and down my back, where his touch tickles against my skin.

The way we are sitting, my legs rest between his. The side of my knee touches the fabric of his underwear, and I can feel his cock, flaccid but still very large, draped off to one side of the seam in his boxers.

After about ten seconds of holding me, I can feel the pressure against my leg of his cock starting to grow. Not quite hard yet, but thicker… firmer.

He doesn’t do anything, though, besides comfort me.