The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 2 (16 page)

I lay my cheek across my arms and regarded him. “She told me she was his sister.”

“They were estranged for years, but they apparently made amends while he was in prison. When he got sick, she fought the courts to get him a compassionate release, but the nature of his crimes was not to be overcome. He died while she was still fighting.”

“She wanted revenge.”

“And she saw your uncle as the reason why her brother died—instead of the fact that he actually did commit the crimes he was convicted of or that he had an inoperable brain tumor.”

I closed my eyes, wondering how I would feel if my uncle were to die of some sort of disease while he was incarcerated. I might have been angry, too. But I’m not sure I would have resorted to kidnapping.

“Madison’s kidnapping was just her way of trying to get to me?”

“She was working with a group of radicals who believe that all technology should be available free of charge to the general public. These people had an issue with the way Cepheus normally only releases most of their products to the academic and commercial industries, and they’ve been looking for a way to mass produce them for the general public. Peggy—Janet—saw them as a means to an end.”

“But they grabbed Madison instead.”

“Their information wasn’t as accurate as it should have been. I’m guessing that this was because Peggy had pictures of you from when you were a teen, but she didn’t know what you look like now. And you and Madison bear a vague resemblance—if you don’t actually stand next to one another.”

I chuckled a little. “If we don’t stand side by side and the beholder is wearing rose-colored glasses.”

“Anyway,” Richard said, reaching over to ruffle my hair. “She came to our attention about the time Johnny died, but she was living under the radar. We had to wait until she made a move on you before we could catch her. Last week…”

“She took Madison and moved out into the open.”

“Sort of. But it alerted us to the fact that she was in the area. We knew if we waited long enough, she’d make an attempt. We just weren’t expecting it to go down quite like it did.”

“Were you waiting for her to shoot me?”

Richard made a gesture that suggested that was exactly what they were waiting for.

“Hey!” I jumped to my feet and began to pace. “Nice to know the very people who were supposed to be protecting me were hoping for me to be shot.”

“That’s not what I meant. We just needed her to reveal herself.”

I ran my fingers through my hair, the tears I was trying so hard to stave off threatening to spill once again.

“So now what? Where am I going?”

“Home.” Richard crossed to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “There are some people here who have been quite insistent on seeing you. I don’t know if you—”

“Wait. What do you mean, home?”

Richard was a large man, probably well over six foot, so he had to bend a little to put his face close to mine. He touched my cheek with a gentle caress that reminded me of the way my uncle would stroke my cheek whenever he came home late at night and thought I was sleeping.

“It’s over, Mellissa. All the people we identified as a threat to your life are either dead or in prison. This Peggy was the last of them, and I would say it’s most likely she will be going away for a very long time.”

“You mean I don’t have to leave Portland.”

“I mean that we will continue to monitor your case, but you are pretty much on your own from this point forward. You can stay here; you can go to Chicago or Mexico or wherever the hell you want to go. Though I wouldn’t suggest you try to return to New Orleans just now…”

“It’s over.”

He smiled. “It is. But you don’t have to be so relieved to see the last of me.”

I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his throat. The tears flowed, unhindered, but they were no longer tears of fear or grief. They were tears of relief.

“There’s a lot of paperwork,” Richard said a moment later as he gently extracted me from him.

“There always is.”

Another smile. I was going to miss those smiles.

“We can talk about it later. In the meantime, you better go see your friends before they break the door down.”

He opened the door, and the first face I saw was Madison’s. And then Annie and Rawn. When I didn’t see Conrad, my heart dropped into my stomach. I hadn’t thought that what I said in the car this afternoon would stick, but maybe it had. Maybe I was rougher than I had imagined.

But then Madison made a subtle gesture. I turned and saw Conrad sitting on a low bench, his face in his hands.

“Hey,” I said, kicking his shoe with the side of my foot, “are you really going to let a little tiff come between us?”

He looked up, his skin pale under that Texas tan. But that cocky smile slipped across his lips, and he leaned back, resting his head in his raised hands.

“Depends. Do you have to insist on calling it a tiff?”

Then, he was on his feet and I was in his arms, his mouth warm and more comforting than a bowl of gumbo on my lips.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered in a tortured voice as he pulled me tight into his arms.

“No. In fact, it looks like you’re stuck with me.”

His eyes lit up, even as his fingers discovered the growing lump on the side of my head. “I don’t know who’s stuck with whom, but I can’t imagine a better way to step into the future than with you at my side.”

And then he kissed me again, much to the pleasure of our applauding friends.

A week later.

I sat back on the Adirondack chair and pulled the blanket closer to my chin to block the cold breeze that was coming in from over the ocean. Madison handed me a glass of wine and settled in her own chair.

“I told you to wear a heavy sweater.”

“I’ll listen to you next time.”

Conrad glanced over his shoulder at us from the grill—where he was trying to teach Rawn what a proper Texas barbecue looked like. He winked before he turned back, chastising Rawn for trying to turn the heat up on the grill.

“I guess Annie’s excited about the photoshoot next week.”

Madison smiled. “You would think she’d been invited to watch the filming of
Nightmare on Elm Street
nine thousand, or something.”

“Do you really think she might have a chance with Logan?”

“I think Logan is a doll for agreeing to do these ads when he’s supposed to be in Los Angeles the next day to begin filming his next big picture. As for Annie…” She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“Well, the rest of us have had some luck in love lately. Maybe she will too.”

Madison cast a longing glance at Rawn and nodded. “Maybe.”

“Ready!” Conrad announced a moment later.

We moved into the dining room—thank goodness!—and settled down to steaks, twice-baked potatoes, and an amazing kale and spinach salad. Madison teased Rawn about avoiding his salad, suggesting an inside joke that Conrad and I weren’t privy to. But I was beginning to understand little secrets like that now that Conrad and I were spending as much time together outside of bed as in.

“So,” Rawn said as he came back to the table after getting another bottle of wine, “you said there was something the two of you wanted to talk to us about?”

I glanced at Conrad. This had been more his idea than mine.

“I started to talk to you about it last week,” Conrad said, his eyes falling on me for a long, lingering moment. “It’s about Aurora.”

“Aurora?” Madison asked, surprise clear in the tones of her voice.

“Does this have something to do with her resigning?”

“Resigning?” Madison asked, surprise mixed with confusion this time.

I slid my hand over Conrad’s knee and was rewarded by his fingers intertwining with mine a second later.

“Yes.” He leaned forward a little, a habit he often indulged in when he was nervous. “There’s something about Aurora that I’ve been helping her hide for nearly six months.” He dragged his free hand through his hair, clearing his throat and then taking a sip of wine. “I guess everyone has noticed her absentmindedness.”

“Yeah,” Madison said. “She was always forgetting where she was supposed to be and what she was supposed to be doing.”

“She was always like that,” Rawn added with a thoughtful frown. “But it was getting worse.”

I nodded at Conrad, trying to offer a little encouragement.

“Aurora has what is called familial early onset Alzheimer’s.”

Madison gasped, and Rawn’s head tilted forward just a bit, grief a heavy weight on even his massive shoulders.

“We thought—her parents and I—that the progression had been slowed and that, if she took her meds, she could keep it under control for months, maybe even years. But she refuses to take her medications and she wouldn’t let anyone help her.” Conrad squeezed my fingers again. “And then, just after Madison’s kidnapping, I went through her emails and discovered something.”

This was new information for me. I watched as he stood and retrieved a sheaf of papers from the sideboard. He handed a few to Rawn, some to Madison, and one or two to me. They were emails from Aurora to someone named Ramsey234. In them, she talked about her staff, the products her department had been working on the past several years, and one even offered a rough blueprint of an accelerator Cepheus had launched just before Madison came to work there.

“I think she thought she was corresponding with someone within the company,” Conrad said as he reached over and tapped the top of one Rawn was holding. “That’s a Cepheus email address.”

“You think she was the inside person,” Madison said.

“I think it’s very likely. It would explain a lot about your kidnapping and why they made so many mistakes. Their informant was just as confused as they were.”

Rawn nodded slowly, even as he stole a glance at Madison. “It explains a lot. Especially how they confused you and Mellissa and how they thought either of you would have some of the information they were after.”

Silence fell over them for a long few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts. It was Madison who finally asked, “So what happens to Aurora now?”

Conrad nodded toward me. “Mellissa arranged for a nurse to become her companion and to make sure she takes her meds and follows the doctor’s orders. And she’s decided to become a consultant, working with some of the same companies Cepheus has dealt with for years to help them determine the technologies they need and how to inspire scientists at companies like Cepheus to produce them.”

“Good,” Rawn said. “The best way to combat something like Alzheimer’s is to keep the mind active.”

“Agreed,” Conrad said.

A minute later, Madison held up her glass. “To Aurora and the hope that someone manages to find a cure for things like Alzheimer’s and MS and Lou Gehrig’s and all those other neurological disorders that baffle the current crop of scientists.”

“Here, here!”

***

I wanted this. I had to keep reminding myself of that fact before the butterflies in my stomach caused me to turn around and rush back to the lobby and Conrad’s waiting arms.

The guard gestured toward a table in the center of a room that could have been a cafeteria in any high school across America.

“Someone will bring him out in a minute.”

I sat down, tugging at the hem of my blouse. I don’t know why I cared what I looked like. He hadn’t seen me in six years. He probably wouldn’t have cared if I showed up in a potato sack.

The idea came into my mind a few days after my ordeal with Janet—Peggy, whatever—while I was signing the papers that essentially released me from the majority of my agreement with WITSEC—including the fact that in six months’ time I had to have a job that paid well enough to cover both my own rent and Memaw’s costs at Summer Oak. I had realized that the ban on my visiting Uncle Mike had been lifted.

“I can see him.”

“Anytime.”

Richard must have heard the hope in my voice because he followed that with, “I’ll arrange it as soon as possible.”

So here I was.

“Baby girl.”

I turned and there he was, the same Uncle Mike I had last seen being led out of a New Orleans courtroom. He was a little thinner, much grayer, but he was still the same man.

I didn’t know if I was allowed to touch him until he held out his arms and said, “Come here.”

I pressed my face into his chest, and I was suddenly the little girl who once believed that there was a man living in the moon.

He wanted to know about everything, about our time in WITSEC, the moves, my college degree, and my friends in Portland. I told him about the kidnappings and about Memaw’s condition and saw the burden of guilt in his eyes. But then he washed it all away by taking my hand and telling me the one thing I had so desperately needed to hear:

“You’ve done good, baby girl.”

Tears filled my eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand all those years ago, Uncle Mike. I’m sorry I was so angry at you for so long.”

He shook his head. “You had every right.”

“You did it for us. I understand that now.”

He kissed my fingers lightly. “I would have done anything for you. You are my baby girl, always was.”

And, this time when he said it, I believed him.

The guard came over and told us our time was about up. Uncle Mike stood and held his arms out again. As I moved into his arms, he slipped a piece of paper into my hand.

“I couldn’t tell you about it before,” he whispered into my ear, “because if the Feds found out about it, they would have seized it. But there was a settlement with the tour company that owned the plane that killed your folks. All the money is in an account I set up in your name.”

“But—”

The guard took Uncle Mike’s arm and pulled him away.

“Don’t be a stranger, baby girl.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

***

A few days later, in the safety of Conrad’s office, we used the numbers on the slip of paper my uncle had slipped me to look up the account. It was an offshore account that contained more than five million dollars.

“Why?” I whispered, tears forming in my eyes once again. “This money could have rebuilt the bar and more. Why didn’t he use it instead of taking money from Johnny and putting all of this in motion?”

“Because it was meant for you. And, like you keep telling me, your uncle is a good man.”