Hard Interest: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance

by Walker, Kelli

  I was looking at a picture of him and his parents.

  A man who gave a shit about his family was hard to come by. So many people I had met over the course of my career boasted of making their millions despite their parents. Without their parents. To show their parents they could do it by themselves. But Liam seemed to have cultivated his success and his riches alongside his parents. Like I had done with mine.

  I could take a chance and jump into the deep end with a man like that.

  “Rachel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you think it is that so many real estate agents have failed with Liam?” I asked.

  She grinned at me from the bar before her eyes scanned the walls of the place.

  “Because none of them cared to come to his home,” she said.

  She cracked open another beer for the man at the end of the bar. My eyes turned and scanned the space, taking in the architecture of the building. I hadn’t paid much attention to it that first night. I hadn’t been in there conducting business. I’d been in there to forget the worst week my company had experienced since its inception. And I noticed a pervading theme throughout the décor.

  A blending of the old and the new.

  Progress was something I understood but seeing things up close changed my opinion of what Liam looked for. The entire space of the Galway Bay blended history and future together. Buildings of heritage status—like Liam’s bar—had fallen on hard times. But as the years ticked on, no one was doing anything about it. No one was doing anything to help these buildings update themselves to usher the history of Boston into the present. It was obvious a little bit of thought had gone into it. A little bit of investment on the bar’s part. The reupholstering of the chairs and painting over the walls when they got dinged up or faded.

  I ran my hand over a small dent in the wall before I drew in a deep breath.

  I had a bit of money I could throw around in the place. And the mere thought shocked me to my core. Old architecture was something I usually balked at. I looked down upon it from my conference room and used its old, rotten edifice to fuel my passion and desire for progress. But something about this bar rang true to the immigrant spirit within me.

  Especially after seeing that picture of Liam with his parents.

  And with the pictures on the wall that boasted of Liam’s connections, it would be easy to build a function so those elite could dig deep into their pockets.

  “I imagine the players come by from time to time to have a drink,” I said. “It looks like Liam has made friends with the entire team.”

  “They’ve become like brothers. He’s even invited to a few of their weddings. You wouldn’t know it from looking at him, but Liam has the voice of an angel. He insists on singing whenever he’s invited and there’s never a dry eye in the house once he’s done.”

  “He sings?” I asked.

  “And plays piano. Come over to this wall.”

  I turned around and watched Rachel point with her finger over to the far side of the bar. I picked up the pace, my eyes clamoring to see what she was talking about. And there, in the middle of the wall, was Liam sitting at a piano with his head thrown back and his mouth dropped open.

  I ran my fingertips over the glass, giving myself time to take it all in.

  I knew exactly what I was going to do. I had a few names of real estate developers, so I was going to reach out to them. The centerpiece of the fundraiser would be the Boston Bruins, and all I had to do was convince Liam to use his friendship with the team to get them to make a few concessions. Pieces for a blind auction that would help to open the pocketbooks of those attending.

  Liam could use the money to replace whatever had been taken from him. And judging from his tense reaction to the subject earlier that day, a lot had been ripped away from him during that break-in.

  Why would he hide something like that from his agent? It wouldn’t have been the first time I serviced someone looking to move after a traumatic incident.

  Something sweet in the air caught my nose, and for a split second I thought Rachel was cooking something. But before I could turn around, I began to choke. A feeling of dizziness and weakness took over my limbs. My purse dropped from my shoulder and I hit my knees, my body wavering as the sweetness swirled around my head. I looked over to the bar to see that Rachel and the old man had dropped like flies. Hunched over the bar-top as my eyes began to flutter closed. I fell to my hands, crawling across the floor of the bar as I made my way for the door.

  Just a few more feet before I could open it.

  I grabbed the handle, but it wouldn’t open. I pressed my shoulder against it, my knees digging into the wooden flooring of Galway Bay. I put my hand to the glass, trying to gasp for breath as my vision faded at the corners of my eyes.

  “Liam,” I choked out. “Help.”

  The last thing I remembered before my body gave out was a smile looking back at me through the glass. A smile that shivered my spine and made me fear for my life.

  A life I was unable to keep a stronghold on as I fell limp against the door that wouldn’t budge.

  Liam

  “I’m not supposed to be meeting with you until Friday,” I said.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Walsh. I have no idea when they’re going to get back. They said they had a pressing emergency and that they tried to get in contact with you. I told them I’d be here to receive you, and if you wanted to engage our session today, I’d go ahead and make it happen.”

  “You said they tried to contact me?” I asked. “I don’t remember any phone calls coming through my phone.”

  “Did you check your email?” she asked.

  I hadn’t, but I’d make sure I did the second I walked out of the police precinct.

  “So, shall we start our session?” the doctor asked.

  “I’m here. I have the time blocked off. So we might as well,” I said.

  “Good. Then take a seat. I’ll make sure our session for Friday gets scratched off the calendar.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” I said as I sat down.

  “What I keep coming back to with these crime scene photos is the fact that everything is done with such emotional fervor,” she said as she thumbed through my file.

  “Imagine what it was like walking into the place.”

  “I mean, they didn’t pick your lock or bust down your door. They took an axe to it. They didn’t take your possessions, they made sure to leave some of them smashed for you to see. They ripped up your mattress with a knife, but it doesn’t seem as if they were looking for anything. Just attempting to destroy it. Mr. Walsh, given my expertise, I would say someone isn’t out for your stuff, but out for you.”

  Dr. Julie Wilson had been assigned permanently to the police force in Boston, and I felt at ease talking to her. She had a reputation in the community for being a solid ear and a lockbox of secrets. The detectives on my case told me it was a requirement to meet with her if I wanted to hire them. That they trusted her psychological profiles and relied on them heavily to wrap up their cases and give them insight into what they were working with. And while I didn’t enjoy the idea of a shrink poking around in my head, I figured it was a small thing to ask when it came to figuring out who was out to destroy my world.

  What I didn’t like was my schedule being shuffled around last-minute without my knowledge.

  Supposedly without my knowledge, at least.

  Everyone knew of her expertise in psychological profiling of criminals and their crime scenes, and I was glad to have her on my side. Though sometimes, her professional musings dug into parts of my life I didn’t want to talk about. Things I kept locked away and close. Things she was curious about that didn’t strike me as the kind of thing detectives needed to know when it came to a robbery.

  “I thought it was a random act of violence,” I said, “but after hearing you say what you just did, it confirms my fears.”

  “What fears?” she asked.

 
; “Things keep happening to me. Like a couple of nights ago. I was walking home from the bar and a car hopped the curb at me. Had I not ducked into an alleyway just outside of my place, they would’ve run me down. And a few nights before that, the tires on my car were slashed outside of a restaurant in broad daylight.”

  “Did you report those incidents?” she asked.

  “I didn’t. Though I probably should have.”

  “From now on, you report everything,” she said. “As for the immediate issue, can you think of anyone from your past that might harbor harsh feelings toward you?”

  “None I can think of, no.”

  “Take your time with that answer, Mr. Walsh. The human mind is a complex organ, and there’s no telling what might make someone feel slighted. It could be as simple as someone that still carries a torch for you. Someone who feels jilted. Possibly an ex-lover, or someone who might’ve had an issue with your father.”

  “My parents haven’t been back to Boston since they left years ago. I don’t think this has anything to do with them,” I said.

  “I have to consider all sides. That’s my job,” she said as she scribbled something down.

  “What are you writing?” I asked.

  “Just things to keep my memory jogged of our conversations. Now the last time we spoke, you mentioned that some of your past relationships didn’t leave an impression on you. Can you say the same thing for those on the other side of that conversation?”

  “I never promised anything to those women, and we always ended things amicably,” I said.

  “What is your definition of ‘amicably’? There are many ways someone can take that word. Tell me what happens once you determine it’s not going anywhere for you. Do you take the band-aid off slowly or do you rip it off?”

  “I rip it off,” I said.

  “Has anybody said anything off-color that would lead you to believe they didn’t like having that band-aid ripped off?”

  “Honestly? I try to drown them out when they start yelling. I’m not proud of it, but I’m in the business of making people happy. That’s what bars do. But making everybody happy outside of a bar atmosphere isn’t easy. I didn’t want to give those women any kind of false hope, so I tried to be as blunt as I could so I didn’t lead them on.”

  She didn’t seem pleased with my answers, and that worried me. This was my first time in any sort of therapy-like situation. All of our meetings up until this point had been geared towards the robbery and my account of what happened. And I didn’t enjoy the way she made me feel. The slight glares at me from above her glasses. The twitch of her eyebrows at my answers.

  “Did Detective Harold and Detective Charlotte say when they were going to be back?” I asked. “I can always come back later.”

  I was doing my best to graciously extract myself from an awkward situation I hadn’t been prepared to have for another three days.

  “It sounds to me from what you’ve told me that you don’t take these woman’s feelings into consideration after you have had fun with them. Put yourself in their shoes for a second. Imagine what it’s like to be rejected.”

  “So you’re going to completely ignore my question?” I asked.

  She leaned back into her seat, like she was wholly unamused with how uncomfortable she was making me.

  “How will any of this help the detectives come to the conclusion of who tore my home apart and tried to run me down in my own street?” I asked.

  Her eyes hooked with mine and something rushed up my spine. I was no longer comfortable sitting and talking with this woman. I needed to get up. To leave. If the detectives didn’t want to make their meeting with me, then that was fine. I’d contact them myself and let them know that my time was just as precious as theirs.

  I would also be informing them that Dr. Julie Wilson would no longer be seeing me on a regular basis unless the two of them were present.

  “The only thing that I can do is promise to be better in the future,” I said as I stood.

  “I really think you should sit down, Mr. Walsh. We still have forty minutes in our session.”

  “Then write this down in your notepad. I’m thinking about starting a new chapter in my life with a woman. She’s strong, and she calls me on my shit. She’s currently my real estate agent, but I’m no longer interested in finding a home without her in it.”

  Saying it out loud with my heart slamming against my chest lifted the veil from my eyes. That was why none of the properties Philomena showed me were good enough.

  Because none of them had her in it.

  “If you want my honest opinion-“

  “I don’t,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “I’m not sure you’re capable of a healthy relationship, Mr. Walsh. There’s a lot of work to do before you consider anything along the lines of a commitment. I want you to take my card and call my office for an appointment. We need to get to the bottom of the reason why you feel it’s necessary to keep women at arm’s length.”

  “No offense,” I said, “but I don’t believe in therapy. I believe it’s up to the individual to pick themselves up.”

  “It’s obvious you still want to talk, since you’re standing but not walking out that door. Why don’t you take a seat and give me thirty more minutes of your time?”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket with a pattern that made my stomach sink. I ripped it out and saw the red alert crawl across the screen. It was an alert from a fire alarm that was connected to my phone in case of emergencies. But the message scrolling underneath the flashing red warning forced panic to rise to the surface.

  The message wasn’t about a fire.

  It was about a propane leak.

  “You have some real issues you need to deal with. I implore you to reconsider your theories on therapy. I can see how someone might feel you’ve rubbed them the wrong way, by the way. If you don’t get help, then you’re doomed to make the same mistakes. In the meantime, you need to give some serious thought into who you could’ve angered. Because from where I’m sitting? It’s more than you think.”

  Her counsel was illuminating, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was none of her fucking business. I strode away from her desk, almost bumping into two officers that were coming up the stairs. I turned my phone up so it would ring out at me, and before I took my finger off the volume control another alert came in. The fire department was on their way to the scene, but I was only a few blocks away.

  I could jump into my car and get there before they would.

  I raced through a red light, hitting the gas to narrowly miss a collision with a minivan. I heard the sirens and glanced up to the rearview mirror to see that I was being pursued by a patrolman doing his job. But I figured I could smooth things over when I got to my destination. They might even show some sympathy and let me off with a warning.

  It was wishful thinking, but his lights and his sirens wouldn’t stop me from racing to the one place in this damn city I still considered home.

  But one thing in my mind was for certain.

  None of these were coincidences.

  I screeched to a halt in front of the bar, my tires leaving a trail of burnt rubber in my wake. Despite the sirens in the distance, my focus was on those who could be inside. The place wasn’t open yet, but I knew Rachel was in there. She would’ve been doing inventory and getting things ready for the day.

  I put both hands on the glass window at the side of the front door and peeked in. At first, I didn’t see anything to warrant concern. But my mind went into overdrive when I ran over to the other window and looked in. Rachel and an old man crumpled in a heap over the bar as a dirty rag hung off her shoulder.

  I tried the door with the key that I had in my possession, but something was blocking my entrance. Fuck. Had someone locked the damn doors from the inside? I felt my blood boiling as my mind spun into overdrive. I started thinking about all the ways I could get in from the side entryway while I tried to figure out what was in my way. But
once I crouched down I saw there was someone else. Someone slumped against the glass door on the floor.

  Holy shit.

  Philomena was in my bar.

  Without thinking, I ran to the side and picked up a trash can. And before the sirens got any closer, I heaved it with everything I had into the window next to the door. The resounding crash and explosion of glass had me leaping into the fray with a handkerchief over my mouth and my heart thundering a thousand miles a second.

  The old man was stirring, but his arms twitched. Like he didn’t have control of his body. My instinct to go after Philomena first was fighting against my good sense and judgment. I took a deep breath and decided the old man was likely in the most danger, but everything in my mind screamed to run to her first.

  To scoop her in my arms first.

  I looked around to figure out what the fuck was going on, and that was when I saw it. Philomena’s body wasn’t the only thing blocking my path. There was something wrapped around the handles of the damn door. A thick, wrought iron chain with a massive padlock to keep the doors from budging even a fucking inch.

  Whoever did this had been out to kill.

  I picked up the man’s frail body and put it over my shoulder. But I kept my eye on Philomena. Her body slumped against the glass door with her hand pressed against it. Like she had been calling out to someone. Trying to get out the second she knew something was wrong.

  It shattered my heart, seeing her that way.

  I climbed through the window with the old man and passed him off to the paramedics. I saw police officers at the window looking confused and holding the butt of their guns. I ran back up to the window and went to hop inside, but a man put his hand on my shoulder and wrenched me away.

  Like he thought he could keep me from my damn bar.

  “There’s a gas leak,” I said. “The fire department is on their way, but I’m not sure they’re going to get here in time to save everybody. Take that man and get him as far away from this place as you can. I’m going back in for the others. I could really use some help when you guys stop fondling the ass of your guns.”