Perfect Homecoming (Barrington Billionaires Book 10)

by Danielle Stewart

  “We’re going to look like a hot mess getting back to our room.”

  “We’re going to look like we know how to have a good time. And let them assume that we’re not done yet. I hope you’re not tired.”

  “Not tired at all. I never need to sleep again. Sleep is stupid.”

  “Good. I’m not done with you yet. Not by a long shot.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Carmen

  Reality is a bitch. And for an overthinking worrier like Carmen, it only took a few quiet minutes for trouble to set in.

  “You don’t think all of this is too much?” Carmen was suddenly self-conscious as the adrenaline started to wear off. Maybe this was why she hadn’t wanted to wait. She didn’t want a chance to ruin it.

  “I think it was not even close to being enough,” he teased.

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about us. About what we’re doing. Am I crazy? Am I wrong? Are we just getting caught up in the adrenaline of it all, and that’s why we’re fooling around?”

  “That’s a lot of questions.” He patted her leg.

  “And you’re not going to answer any of them?” She folded her hands and held them up close to her heart. Anxiety was beginning to swell in her.

  “You okay?” He eyed her closely as they took the exit back toward the hotel.

  “I’m just feeling a little—” She made a bizarre noise to imply she was out of sorts. “Maybe just ignore me.”

  “I could never.” He took her nervously wringing hands and held them in his. “I don’t think you’re crazy for wanting to take a dirtbag like Curtis off the streets. I can’t say it’s a plan I’d have come up with myself, but taking a step back and looking at how things work, I can see why you’re doing it. I’ve always felt the idea of right and wrong was a myth. It’s not that black and white. We’re operating in a hell of a lot of gray area right now.”

  “You mean with Curtis or you and me?” She felt a prickly heat crawl up her back as she braced for his answer.

  “Probably both. I’ll be honest. I’m conflicted as hell. I want to protect you. I want to help you. But I wish you weren’t putting yourself in this situation. But if you hadn’t, I don’t know that we’d be . . . spending so much time together.”

  “I appreciate the fact that you’re here. I’m realizing now, after actually starting this with Curtis, if I didn’t have some kind of backup plan I could be in real danger.”

  “You’re still in real danger. And so is he. When he took your hand in there, you don’t know how close I was to busting down the door and beating his head in. I don’t know how I’d control myself if he tried something worse. The closer you and I get, the more likely that’ll happen.”

  “It can’t.” Her voice was urgent. “You can’t touch him. It’ll undermine everything.”

  “Gray area. That’s all I’m saying. It’s a complicated situation, and we’re making it more so.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  He shrugged. He didn’t seem to have any more answers than she did. Brian would keep her safe, but his growing feelings for her would put the goal at risk. Maybe even his own freedom at risk if things really got out of hand.

  “Maybe I’m wrong.” She pushed some loose strands of hair out of her face. “Maybe he won’t come looking for me tomorrow.”

  “He’ll come.”

  “How do you know?”

  “If I woke up tomorrow and you were gone, I’d come looking for you.” They were quiet for a moment, the mood in the car changing as she knew it would when reality set in.

  He snapped his fingers. “Hey, you drank wine tonight. It’s been a while for you?”

  “Since before Italy. I will say, I missed it a little.”

  “I know it’s important for you not to drink. I didn’t even think of it until he was ordering the bottle. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “I’d thought about it earlier. I figured he was going to pull something like that, and I’d already decided I’d give in reluctantly so he thought he was in control. I definitely was starting to feel it, though. My tolerance is way down.”

  “Why did you stop drinking in the first place?”

  “I was using it to numb everything. I couldn’t seem to get through the day without at least a little buzz. Even first thing in the morning. I just wanted to take the edge off. But I became dependent on that feeling. It led me down some dark paths, and I knew I had to stop.”

  “That takes a lot of self-control.”

  “At the time, it was the only thing in my life I could control. For a while it helped, but in the end it was just making things worse.”

  “Who was he?” Brian asked, trying to pretend like it wasn’t an enormous question. He kept his eyes fixed on the road and tapped his fingers to the song on the radio.

  “Who?”

  “You ended up in Italy to save your life. Right?”

  “Yes.” Admitting that didn’t seem as daunting as she’d been imagining it would be. That basic fact would get out eventually. It seemed inevitable.

  “Who were you in danger from?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “So you’re not like Lilly? There isn’t some Curtis out there just waiting for you to surface? I assumed since you said you couldn’t see your family, maybe whoever it was still had their sights set on you.”

  “He’s in jail. He won’t be out for a very long time. There’s no ongoing threat to me. If there were, Gloria never would have pushed me to leave Verde Lago. I’d still be there.”

  “But you can’t go home? I see the way you look when my family is all around, being loud and crazy. You miss stuff like that. I’m sure your family wants to hear from you.”

  “You shouldn’t be sure of things you know nothing about. I don’t want to get into the details. If you were worried I was still in danger, you can forget about that. He’ll never see the light of day.”

  “Good.”

  “And Curtis won’t be far behind him.”

  “Are they similar?”

  “In some ways,” Carmen admitted, “but very different in other ways. All the things I know about abuse, I learned from my job in Italy, not from my personal experiences. When I was living it, I didn’t have the perspective to be sitting there learning from my mistakes. But from counseling and working with clients, I put together a much clearer picture of how someone operates and how to catch them.”

  “You’ve been thinking about this for a while then?”

  “I actually planned to stay in Italy for as long as Gloria saw fit. It’s like the whole I serve at the pleasure of the president thing. There’s no contract. No terms. When she sees fit, you move on. I think that’s why I always had this plan in the back of my mind. But Curtis wasn’t a target until about six months ago. That’s when Lilly showed up. For some reason, I had a soft spot for this girl. Curtis was so textbook I knew he’d be easy to catch in the act.”

  “Does Lilly know you planned this?”

  “No one knows. Lilly never would have wanted me to do this. She’s a wonderfully sweet girl who deserves a life. She still has work to do in Italy, getting healthy and back on track. But once she’s done, she should be able to come back home.”

  “She opened up to you about Curtis?”

  “Every detail. That was part of my job.”

  “Did it start just like this? Was it all the same stuff he’s doing with you?”

  “Mostly. Lilly was interviewing for a data entry job and Curtis spotted her in the lobby. He pulled all his usual shit, and they went out for drinks that night. All under the guise of him being so helpful and wonderful. A few days later they went out again. When she had to leave because her sister had an accident at gymnastics practice, he freaked out. He screamed at her. Demanded she stay.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She stayed. And it progressed from there. He’d apologize and explain he was only acting that way because he cared so much about her. He�
��d never felt so strongly for anyone else before. He was only figuring out how to deal with all the feelings he had for her. She’d been swept up in the glitz and the glitter of the lifestyle, and Curtis can be quite charming when he’s in control. She never saw it coming.”

  “He flipped out on her a few days into them knowing each other?” Brian’s voice was skeptical. “I’d have knocked the guy out and told him to screw himself.”

  “Most people would end things there. Curtis isn’t looking for most people. He’s looking for someone defenseless. Someone who feels insecure. Lilly is young. She was leaving home and dependent on finding a good job to pay for college. Financially and socially, she was in a very vulnerable place.”

  “I still can’t imagine hanging around when you know he’s going to hurt you.”

  “Because you’ll probably never be in that position.”

  “I’m not blaming her. I know the stats. I just wish people saw more ways to get themselves out. “

  “I wish there were more ways to get out.”

  The rest of the ride was silent. She’d officially killed the mood. Damn her mind and her endless worry-filled questions. “Sorry I was blabbering on. I feel like I ruined the mood. Now the wine has totally gone to my head and I’m queasy.”

  “You didn’t ruin it, you changed it. That’s all right. We’ll have plenty more chances to finish what we started. Tonight, you need to sleep.” He parked the car close to the valet door of the hotel and in true sturdy gentleman fashion, he supported her all the way back to the room.

  Flopping down on the bed, she covered her face with her arm. “These shoes are killing me.” He slid one off and then the other. Brian rubbed each foot gently for a moment and then placed her feet back on the bed.

  “You don’t want to sleep in that dress. Here, take this.” Pulling his T-shirt over his head, he tossed it next to her. “Need a hand?”

  “I’m not that far gone.” Luckily the zipper for her dress ran along her side and she could easily manage it herself. With very little grace, she slithered out of her dress and pulled on his T-shirt. It was soft and worn in. His cologne permeated the fabric and she couldn’t help but drown in deep breaths.

  “Thank you, Brian.” She snatched his hand up as he passed by the bed. Pulling it to her lips she kissed his fingers.

  “For what?”

  “For reminding me that a man can be great.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brian was usually up before the sun. Work began early, and his body had long since adjusted to the schedule. Even with the black-out curtains closed, he was awake. Carmen, on the other hand, seemed fully immersed in a restful slumber. By the glow of the small nightlight on the other side of the room, he watched her slow breaths rise and fall.

  Her hair, wild and unruly on her pillow, had pins poking out of it. Her eyes were smudged with makeup. The shirt he’d given her to wear was far too big and her delicate shoulder was bare, poking out from the collar. Carmen was a force and he found himself swept up in it. It was a mixture of things that had his head swirling. The way she clung to her convictions and the way she looked in that dress last night were all equal parts of his attraction.

  There was a chance his feelings for her would get him into trouble. Especially if her safety was jeopardized. That was a risk he was willing to take. But there was another new feeling he didn’t enjoy. Curiosity that was pushing him to the point of madness.

  Quietly getting out of bed, he kept his eyes on Carmen. She was out cold. If he was going to give in to his feeling, then this would be the time to do it. It felt wrong. It felt intrusive, but Brian’s desire to protect Carmen at all costs was frying his better senses.

  The name Carmen Munson was too common for his internet searches to provide anything of use. Knowing her middle name or maybe knowing what province in Canada she was from could help narrow things down. She’d told Brian the man who hurt her was in prison, yet she still couldn’t return home to her family. Something didn’t add up.

  If he was determined to really help Carmen, wasn’t this part of it? What kind of man would he be if he looked the other way every time she got that look in her eye? He knew she was hurting and had convinced herself there was no road that would lead back home. Maybe he could help make one.

  As much as he tried to convince himself he was being admirable, when he reached for her purse he still felt sick to his stomach. Fishing out her passport, he held it under the light of his cell phone. Danika. Her middle name was Danika. Surely that would help him narrow things down. Her place of birth was listed as Ontario.

  Closing the passport, he tucked it away and kept his eyes on Carmen. Her soft breaths were rhythmic and slow. Her eyes were shut tightly. As he pried into her life, she didn’t stir.

  The knot in his stomach tightened as he got back into bed. What had happened to Carmen? Who was she really? Typing the new information into the search engine on his phone gave him results. Rather than being general social media accounts of people sharing the same name, there were news articles and even arrest records. Social media accounts that had not been updated in ages. Everything was now at his fingertips, and it was up to him to either dig deeper or toss his phone to the side and try to fall asleep.

  The headline that grabbed him first was Student, 21, Assaulted on Campus. Suspect Still at Large.

  Clicking on the article, he scanned until he found her name. The story was brief but there was enough there to shake him to the core. Carmen was named as the victim. She’d been jumped by a man on her way back from the library on a dark Friday night in October. Suffering a broken rib and various cuts and bruises, she was treated and released from a local hospital. Calling her brave, the police stated Carmen had furiously fought for her life. The campus was on high alert as the suspect, a white male with a large muscular build but no other distinguishing features, was still at large.

  Was it a random act of violence that had caused Carmen to be in peril? Some kind of obsessed stalker who wouldn’t leave her alone after the attack? Brian looked through more articles that detailed the hysteria on campus. People were buying mace and other weapons. A curfew had been put in place and no one was to be walking on campus alone. Many other students were interviewed and expressed their sheer terror that someone could be lurking on campus with the intention of hurting them.

  It wasn’t until he read the fifth article that he felt his chest tighten to the point of hardly being able to breathe. The headline read Campus Attack Ruled a Hoax. Accuser Suspended Indefinitely.

  Brian read the article with an urgency he couldn’t explain. Nothing in the pages would change history, but the pieces didn’t fit together. Apparently, after the police investigated further, they found multiple holes in Carmen’s story. She hadn’t been at the library. Cameras, though not able to capture where the incident happened, were able to rule out anyone but her coming or going from that area in the timeframe she mentioned. According to a police statement, none of the details provided could be substantiated or corroborated by either witnesses or video evidence. During further interviews, the accuser admitted she was not attacked. Students on campus were relieved to know they were not in danger but reportedly frustrated that the accuser made the false statements, causing so much drama.

  He could only imagine the fallout. He didn’t know the true circumstances of Carmen’s injuries, but he was certain the aftermath of these articles had caused her enormous pain. There was no further information available about the case or what happened to Carmen in the aftermath. Searching her social media during that time resulted only in sad platitudes about mistakes and redemption. The comments below were people attacking her for being desperate for attention and a troublemaker. After that, there were very few posts from her. They stopped completely five years ago.

  Sleuthing his way through her profiles, he found that she had graduated but from a different university. Likely she’d had to transfer after the incident. She had a job as a manager of a call center for a digita
l marketing firm during college. She’d been working there at the time of the supposed attack, but there was no indication of how it affected her work.

  Running out of articles associated solely with her name, he tried to dig deeper into her family connections. There were photographs of her with people who resembled her. From the comments, he could tell these were her parents and siblings at Christmas years ago. There were photographs of the farm they owned. Pets she’d had. And an interesting one in high school where the ends of her silver white hair were dyed purple.

  She was dressed in goth and her face was painfully serious. But the next photo showed her in the same attire but laughing so hard she doubled over. There was a series of those pictures with friends, all dressed in a similar fashion, where Carmen looked genuinely happy.

  Wracking his brain for something else to search, he tried putting in the company name and her name but nothing came up. Then he tried just the company name and the word attack and allegations. Maybe there would be some crossover between the articles posted about the on-campus attack and her job.

  To his surprise, one article popped up that he hadn’t expected. CFO of Digital Master Class Inc. Accused by Multiple Employees of Harassment. Brian clicked to find a short article with hardly any information. Much less than he assumed for something so potentially scandalous.

  The article simply read, “Donald Love, the CFO and founding partner of Digital Master Class of Ontario is under investigation after three female employees accused him of misconduct and harassment. No charges have been filed and Mr. Love strongly denies any wrongdoing. The company has launched an internal investigation. Law enforcement in the area would not comment on the case.”

  That was it. There was no other information on any site about the accusations. No follow-up and no police reports or charges. Upon searching Donald Love, the most Brian could find were profiles on various business networking sites and a few articles about his role in the growth of the company over the years. Not another whisper about the accusations.