I didn’t care if I ever saw the stars again, as long as I could lie in that moment for the rest of my life, however long that might be.
***
“I was so afraid I would never see you again,” Rawn said moments later, as we lay wrapped in each other’s arms.
“Me too.”
Tension rolled through his body, and his hand tightened into a fist. “I could kill that man, the one who grabbed you…”
“Don’t,” I said, running my hand slowly over the side of his face, letting my thumb hesitate over his lip. “Don’t let anger turn you into someone you aren’t.”
“But what they did to you.” He touched a faint bruise that was beginning to appear under my eye from one of several blows I had endured, before his fingers moved to the lump hidden under my hair from the fall that caused me to black out and awaken to the craggy face of my rescuer. “I’ll kill anyone who hurts you.”
“It’s over now,” I said. “Now we just have to figure out who they were and what they wanted.”
“We will.”
I rolled in his arms, turning so that my back was pressed to his chest. “Why was Conrad there?” I asked, the memory of him coming into the room and pulling Mellissa into his arms burning bright in my mind.
“I asked him to watch over Mellissa when Annie told us your captor said her name. I wanted to make sure they didn’t make a second attempt to grab her.”
“Why Conrad?”
“He’s a friend. I trust him.”
That made what I needed to say next a little harder. I remembered Rawn telling me that he and Conrad went clay pigeon shooting from time to time, but I hadn’t realized their friendship went that deep. It made me feel a little sick to my stomach as I said, “There’s something that I didn’t tell you earlier because I wasn’t sure how you would want to handle it.”
“What?”
I cleared my throat, even as I drew his hands up against my chest, forcing him to hold me tighter. “You remember the sticky note I told you about, the one that said, ‘Don’t trust Conrad?’”
“I remember.”
“It was in Mellissa’s desk.”
“Yeah?”
“And she was the intended target.”
Rawn pushed himself up a little so that he could look over my shoulder at me. “Do you think that has something to do with this?”
“What if Conrad is the inside person? The one who knew who I was and told them? What if that’s why they were asking me questions someone inside the company should have already known the answer to? Because he only has access to the products that are ready to launch, not the ones that are still in development?”
Rawn was quiet for a long time. I was a little afraid that he was angry with me for accusing his friend of something so nefarious. But then he asked, “Who would have written the note and warned Mellissa?”
“Maybe he did it himself. He was sitting at Mellissa’s desk the day before Russell told me to take over for her. In fact, he thought I was Mellissa.”
“Did he ever meet Mellissa? I mean, before today?”
“I don’t know. At the launch party, maybe.”
“Then he would have been able to give the kidnappers a description.”
“Maybe he did and they’re just morons.”
Rawn chuckled. “Maybe.”
“I just…” I leaned back into him, pressing my head into his shoulder. “I heard a familiar voice, but I haven’t been able to place it. I know someone I’ve met before was there, someone who knew who I was and was able to tell them that I was your new assistant.”
“We’ll figure it out. You don’t worry about it. Let me and the security people at Cepheus take care of it.” He kissed the side of my face lightly. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”
I turned back into him and kissed him roughly.
“I know. I trust you.”
***
Rawn dropped me off at the apartment I shared with Annie, insisting on walking through the rooms before he left to make sure no one uninvited was waiting there for me. In the bright light of a fall Portland day, it seemed silly. But it set my fears to rest anyway.
“Is he going to let you go?” Annie asked, as she curled up on the couch.
“He wants us to go. He thinks I’d be safer at my parents.”
“Good. Thanksgiving at your house is always so much better than trying to do it on our own, or going to my folks’…God forbid!”
I laughed, remembering the one year Annie dragged me to her parents’ house for the holidays. Her mother, as much as she wanted to think of herself as a well-rounded woman, couldn’t boil water, let alone cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner. We all ended up with food poisoning that year. But it wasn’t any better than last year, when I took a special accelerated course that required I stay in Portland for the holidays. We bought frozen turkey dinners from the grocery store and ate them on the couch while watching horror movies. It was quite an experience.
“My mom is thrilled. She’s been baking pies for a week already.”
Annie clapped her hands. “Yeah! Your mom’s pumpkin pie is to die for.” And then she paled a little. “Sorry, Madison, I didn’t think—”
“No, you’re right,” I said, as I reached over and patted her knee. “They are to die for.”
I stood and stretched, every movement awakening another sore spot on my battered body. “I should probably start packing. Rawn’s arranged for a car to pick us up in an hour.”
Before I could leave the room, however, there was a knock on the door. A chill ran down my spine. Annie must have seen the fear on my face because she immediately jumped to her feet.
“I’ll take care of it.”
I stood back, feeling a little guilty that I so easily allowed my friend to approach the door. What if the kidnappers were back? What if they realized that I had seen three of their faces and they wanted to keep me from identifying them? What if…
Again with the what-ifs.
When Annie squealed, I thought it was a scream, and I nearly ran for the bedroom. But then she threw open the door and the actor, Logan Mitchell, stepped into sight. He flashed that famous smile that had gotten him a part in the space movie that won an Oscar last year and asked, “Is Madison here?”
“Hey, Logan,” I said, reluctantly approaching the open door.
His smile changed, becoming something a little more genuine. “Hey. I read about your ordeal in the paper this morning, and I wanted to come by and make sure you were okay.”
“That’s really nice of you.”
He shrugged. “My mother raised me to be a gentleman.”
I could feel Annie shiver, as I moved up close against her. She had a crush on Logan that became something more like an obsession when Conrad was able to convince him and his co-stars to attend the launch party last week—had it really only been a week?—and they had a moment from across the room.
“She did a good job.”
He seemed to blush a little, as he inclined his head to acknowledge my statement. “I’ll let her know you think so.”
“Come in,” Annie suddenly said, her voice a little loud. “Can we get you something? A Coke or something?”
“I only have a minute,” he said, his gaze dropping to Annie for a second. Was something there? Maybe. Maybe she hadn’t been so crazy after all. “I’m supposed to be downtown in a meeting with my agent and the PR people for Cepheus. They want me to star in a couple of ads for the Alessa 3D X100.”
“Really. I hadn’t heard that.”
“Yeah. They approached me at the party.” His eyes moved to me again. “Not sure they know their boss nearly decked me before the star party.”
“What?” Annie asked, turning toward me.
“He wouldn’t have hit you.” I blushed a little, not sure if it was embarrassment or some sort of twisted pride in Rawn. “He just thought you were making moves on me. He didn’t realize I was ill ‘til I passed out on him.”
“I
saw that,” Logan admitted. “But it looked like he had the situation under control.”
“He usually does,” Annie said.
Logan’s eyes fell on her again, and I suddenly felt like a third wheel or something. Then, he cleared his throat, and it was like I had imagined the whole thing.
“I should go. Glad to see you’re well, Madison.”
“Thank you for coming by.”
He nodded, lifting his hand in a casual wave as he walked away, disappearing around the corner of the stairwell.
“Logan Mitchell was at my apartment,” Annie said, her voice dreamier than I think I had ever heard it.
“He was.”
“And he’s going to do ads for your company? You so have to let me be at that photoshoot.”
I smiled. That was my Annie.
Chapter Seven
Mellissa
I spent most of Saturday curled up in bed with my grandmother, watching her television shows with my cellphone in my hand. Madison’s kidnapping was in all the newspapers, on all the television news shows, and scattered all across the internet, from Yahoo! News to Google to Scientific America’s website.
Conrad and his team had done a good job keeping the reporters focused on the kidnapping as an attempt at corporate espionage rather than anything that might have led the reporters to my doorstep, or to Rawn’s.
I should have felt safe.
I didn’t.
Every time a car drove a little too slowly past the house, every time the phone rang or a door slammed, my heart stuttered in my chest. What if it wasn’t over? What if they came looking for me? Or worse, what if someone connected all of this to my past and it came back to bite me?
I didn’t want to leave Portland. I was tired of running.
Now I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom, adjusting the low v-neck of my sweater, tugging at the clingy material of my skirt. I wasn’t sure if it was such a good idea to go out to lunch with Conrad. What if something happened while I was out? Or some reporter saw us together—again—and began to put things together? What if someone got a picture of me the other day? If it went public—
My heart was pounding.
I thought I would get used to the uncertainty. The fear. But it had been six years and I still hadn’t.
The doorbell rang and my heart jumped into my throat.
“Who’s that?” my grandmother called. “Who’s at the door?”
“It’s for me, Memaw!”
“Are you going out?”
I walked over to her bedroom door as the doorbell rang a second time. “I told you, I have a lunch date. But I won’t be gone long.”
“Is Christy coming?”
“No, Memaw. I won’t be gone that long.”
She nodded as she turned her attention back to the television. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
I went downstairs and yanked open the door at the same time I snatched my bag off the hook on the wall. I was all business until I looked up and found myself staring into Conrad’s beautiful green eyes. How could I be expected to think straight when he looked at me like that?
“For you,” he said, holding up a single, long-stemmed red rose.
“Thanks.”
No one had ever brought me a flower before. I stood there, probably looking like an idiot, staring at the rose that had somehow ended up in my hand. I knew I should be doing something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was until one of the perfectly shaped leaves shivered and fell to the floor.
“Should probably put it in water.”
I back tracked and headed to the kitchen, aware of him walking behind me. I wanted to reach back and make sure the waist of my skirt wasn’t crooked or that my blouse wasn’t caught in my thin belt. But that would tell him how nervous I was to have him behind me, and I really didn’t want that.
I didn’t want him to know he had any power over me at all.
I grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. After I plopped the rose inside, I left it in the middle of the counter.
“Are you ready?” I asked, as I turned toward him.
“Whenever you are.”
He was closer to me than I had expected, standing just a bit behind me. If I raised my hand, I could press it to his chest and feel his warmth and the pounding of his heart. If he leaned over just a little, our lips might brush together. If…
I had to get my mind out of the gutter.
“You seem a little nervous,” Conrad said. “Do I make you nervous?”
I pulled myself up to my whole five feet and raised my chin so that I could almost look in his eyes. “Not at all.”
“Not even a little.”
“Nope.”
“Too bad.” He touched his finger to my chin. “If I made you a little nervous, it might suggest that you actually like hanging out with me. And if you like hanging out with me…”
“What?”
He tilted his head slightly, his finger moving up to my bottom lip. “Then we might have a little fun together.”
“We can’t have fun together if I’m not nervous around you?”
“Sure. It just wouldn’t mean the same.”
“How does my level of nervousness change things?”
He dropped his finger. “If you have to ask…” And he turned and walked away, leaving me to chase after him.
***
He took me to a nice restaurant in the center of town, one of those ones where you have to know someone to get a reservation without a month’s notice. Everyone seemed to know Conrad. The maître d greeted him by name, and the waiter asked him if he wanted his usual. It made me wonder how many times he had brought a woman there.
And then I reminded myself that I had no right to be jealous. Conrad could see whoever he wanted. It was none of my business.
So why did I care so much?
“I come here for business a lot,” he said as though he could read my mind. “They know me pretty well because of that.”
I inclined my head slightly. “You must have a lot of business lunches.”
“Reporters are like your mother probably told you men are: the way to their byline is through their stomachs.”
“Not quite the old saying, but close enough.”
Conrad smiled. “I try.”
“Do you like what you do?”
“Yes.” He studied me from across the table, his eyes taking in everything all at once. “My mother always told me I would either end up in sales, or I would end up in jail. PR is a lot like sales, but instead of selling a product, I sell the whole caboodle: the product, the company, and the brand.”
“You sell an ideal.”
“I sell a lot of things, depending on what the client wants. Besides Cepheus, I have dozens of clients, some who do some pretty nasty things, but my crew and I have the world convinced they could never do any wrong.”
“Like what?”
“Like the lawyer who represented that serial killer last fall? His client list dwindled after the trial until my crew and I were able to convince people that he was a humanitarian who took the case because of his deep Christian beliefs instead of the fact that the guy’s family had deep pockets and he thought he could make a fortune off of writing a book afterward.”
“He’s not a Christian?”
Conrad shrugged. “He goes to church every weekend now.”
I shook my head. “But how is that not perpetuating a lie?”
“Nothing is black and white, Mellissa.”
The waiter brought our food. I picked up a fry and popped it into my mouth while Conrad cut into his steak. The waiter seemed pleased that Conrad was pleased with the cook, promising to inform the chef of his satisfaction.
“They really like you here.”
“I helped them out last year when someone claimed on one of those websites that the food caused him food poisoning. I spun it for them, for free, and they’ve been really gracious ever since.”
“Free P
R. Can’t beat that.”
Conrad shrugged. “I didn’t do it for my company. I did it because I like this place and I didn’t want to see it close like so many other places have done recently.”
“A PR prince with a heart. That must be rare.”
“Unique. You will find that a lot of things about me are unique.”
“Yeah? What else?”
Conrad looked up at the ceiling as though he were searching for the answer there. And then he said, “Well,” drawing it out long and slow, “I don’t like long walks on the beach or walking in the rain. In fact, I don’t particularly like anything that has to do with water unless I’m bathing or swimming.”
I laughed. Wasn’t Annie just complaining the other day about guys who all say that on their online dating profiles? And I agreed with her, wholeheartedly.
“And I don’t like piña coladas, but I like a good margarita when I have fajitas.”
“What about strawberry daiquiris? I really like strawberry daiquiris.”
“Yeah?” He picked up a piece of his steak and considered it for a minute. “Don’t really like fruity drinks. But I like a good wine.”
“Me too. But I guess you already know that.”
His eyes met mine, and I could almost read his thoughts. I could tell that he was remembering what happened when I drank a few too many glasses of wine during our poker game. I felt the blush that threatened to spread from my scalp to my toes. I turned my attention back to my baby back ribs, the meat so tender it fell from the bones when I pressed my finger against it.
“Do you like long walks on the beach?”
I shook my head. “All that sand in my shoes? No thanks.”
“Then what is your idea of a romantic date?”
I hesitated, picking at my food as I thought about it. “A good book?”
“That’s kind of a solitary act.”
“Most of my nights have been pretty solitary lately.”
“And if you met a man you were interested in? Where would you want him to take you?”
I picked up my napkin and wiped my fingers before taking a sip of my water. “I don’t know,” I said, the ice in my glass rattling as I set it down. “My last date, we went to a movie and stopped at a local diner for cheese fries on the way home.”
The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 2 Page 6
