Redeeming the Billionaire Playboy

by Sierra Rose

  “Madison,” I said, trying my best to calm her, “you need to keep it together. Everything is going to be okay. Just take a deep breath, and we’ll go in my office and—”

  “Okay? Nothing is okay, Della!” she shrieked, ripping the tissue I gave her into a million pieces and tossing it on the floor like the unhappiest confetti of all time. “Do you have a hearing problem? Billings, Della! Billings, the man who made up a third of our entire European account.”

  I took a careful step back, looking at her the way one would look at a rogue tiger that found its way out of its cage. I wasn’t sure if she’d bolt for freedom or rip my head off, but either way, I needed to keep my distance.

  “If only I knew what I did,” she cried again, her voice crumbling to a fraction of its original volume as her tiny shoulders wilted with a sigh. “Everything was perfect before—”

  In what had to be the best timing ever, the elevator doors opened, and Caleb Hart walked out. After one look at the broken girl in the hallway, his mouth fell open in silent surprise, and he instantly dropped everything—quite literally spilling folders, clipboards, paperclips, and a wayward highlighter—then crossed the room in three swift steps. “Hey, it’s all right,” he soothed, pulling her into his arms without any sign of hesitation. He wrapped one arm tightly around her back and cupped her head gently with the other, holding her against him as he rocked her. “Just breathe, honey, and tell me what happened.”

  “Not here,” she sputtered.

  Caleb looked around at all the shocked faces, those prying eyes and ears, and he realized the show had gone on long enough. Without another word, he led her down the hall to his office.

  By the time I slipped into Caleb’s office and shut the door behind me, the two of them were already sitting side by side on the couch, very close to one another. They weren’t exactly entwined, but there was an obvious intimacy to the way they were touching, a tender reassurance that was impossible to miss.

  I pressed myself discreetly against the door and watched as Madison’s breath gradually slowed, calming to a pace normal enough for her to speak. She didn’t even seem to realize she was clutching Caleb’s hand as she said, in a voice so soft that I almost couldn’t hear it, “I lost Billings.”

  The fact that Caleb was able to so effectively rein in his reaction was a testament as to how much he secretly cared for her. His eyes widened as his lips parted in surprise, but other than that, he was a rock. “Go on,” he carefully urged.

  “I-I don’t know what happened. When I left last night, he was completely onboard, even excited to sign the contracts for the Eastern expansion. When I got here this morning, though, I found the unsigned contracts on my desk, with a short note mentioning Aegis. It didn’t explain why. It just said he’s had a change of heart.” A trembling shudder shook through her slender body, and her face fell into her hands. “I say the bastard doesn’t have a heart! I really think I’m going to be fired over this. Robert won’t let it slide, and... Shit, how could Billings do this to me? Why?”

  She broke down once more as Caleb gathered her into his arms, soothing and consoling her as he rested his chin on the top of her head, gazing out the window with a troubled frown on his face.

  “What is it?” I asked quietly. I hadn’t known him that long, but I knew it was the look of a man who was harboring a secret.

  He shot me a quick glance before pulling back slightly to look at Madison. “Babe, what time did you leave last night?”

  She sniffed miserably and bowed her head. “I don’t know. Around nine, I think. Why? What does that matter?”

  The frown on his handsome face deepened. “After I left last night, I remembered I left a client file I needed to work on, so I doubled back to the office to get it. That was around eleven, and the only person left in the building was Robert.”

  Madison’s head snapped up. “Really?” she asked.

  I peeled myself off the door, overcome with a surge of rage. “What are you saying, Caleb?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” he tempered carefully, one arm still wrapped around Madison’s back. “It’s just... Well, she said things were fine when she left, but everything was gone to hell in a handbasket this morning. If Robert was the only one here, it stands to reason that—”

  “It stands to reason that I’m gonna fucking kill him,” I interrupted, far louder than I intended.

  Chapter 15

  IN SPITE OF MY HEATED threat, I managed to regain my composure and keep it together until everyone left. I held on to the last fragments of my shredded temper until ten till seven, at which point I marched into the elevator and punched the button for the top floor.

  Madison was right: Billings was her responsibility, and there was a good chance she would be fired by the end of the week, due to the loss of the account, a strong blow for Cross Enterprises and a big boost for the competition. The most horrible part of it all was that she and I both knew she was not the one who lost him. It was someone else’s fault, the man whose office door I practically kicked down in a fit of rage.

  “What the hell is the matter with you!?” both Robert and I shouted at the same time.

  While he leaned back in surprise and slowly rose from his desk, I stormed in the door and slammed it shut behind me. “What the hell did you say to Billings?” I demanded.

  “You would do better to use your inside voice, young lady,” Robert said, infuriating me all the more.

  “I don’t give a damn how loud I’m yelling,” I said. “We’re the only two left here anyway.”

  “Not very professional of you, Delilah. I’ll be sure to add that to your review.”

  “Screw professional! We crossed that line a long time ago,” I barked.

  Robert froze in place, his face blanching in surprise. “Billings?”

  “Yes, Billings, you fucking moron. What the hell did you do?”

  This time, his surprise gave way to an anger almost as fierce as mine and an ego that did not know how to back down. As the words echoed between us, he stormed around the desk, till he was face to face with me in the center of the room. “Listen, Della,” he said, “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but under no circumstance do you have the right to burst into my office and speak to me in that tone, in those words. You’re worried about your friend, but it is you who should be sacked!” He shouted every word just an inch from my face, all six feet, two inches bearing down on me.

  On most days, I would have found him intimidating, but that was not the case on this day. “So you admit it then?” I screamed back. “You’re going to fire her?”

  Robert stiffened and leaned away with the hint of a sneer. “It was quite irresponsible of her to lose the Billings account. We cannot afford to keep staff who—”

  “You lost Billings, you unmitigated asshole! Sack yourself!”

  “I’m the arse?” he said with a look of sheer fury on his face. “You led me on for months, only to blow me off, and not in the good, fun way either. Then, to rub salt in the wound, you screwed my fucking brother, and you call me the asshole? No, Della, I don’t think so.”

  I tried to rip myself away from his grip, but it was no use. That was lucky for him, because in spite of his size, I would have torn him apart with my bare hands. “Is that seriously what this is about?” I shrieked, looking at him with pure disgust. “Because I refused to have sex with you, you’re firing my partner? Now who’s being childish and unprofessional?”

  “You do read English, don’t you? Did you not when you came in, the one with my name on it?” he said. “In no possible dimension would you ever have leverage here. You don’t have the privilege of telling me where to get off, Della, and you certainly didn’t help me do it, did you? I’m the fucking CEO. You cannot come in here and—”

  A swinging fist came out of nowhere and knocked him right in the jaw. There was a blur of color as I dropped back to the floor, and the next thing I knew, James was flying between us, tackling his twin brother to the
ground.

  “James, don’t!” I cried, but it was too late. The two men were already ripping into each other like a pair of wild dogs, and there was nothing I could say or do to stop them.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Robert?” James cried, throwing his brother into the wall while angling his body between us to protect me. “She’s an employee, someone who fucking works here. How dare you touch her like that?”

  Robert hit the plaster with enough force to crack it but pulled himself quickly to his feet as a trio of pictures fell off the wall. “You can’t be serious, James,” he said, then flew at his twin like an out-of-control eighteen-wheeler, body-slamming him into the desk. “You have no right to lecture me about being appropriate with my employees.”

  “They’re Dad’s employees, you power-hungry little fuck!” James’s eyes flashed pure loathing as he wrenched himself free, then hit Robert again in the face for good measure. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  “And why not?” Robert fired back, rearing back to kick his brother in the stomach. “You’re always swooping in to take everything—my job, my title... Of course you’d also take my girl.”

  His girl? Our violent confrontation back in the penthouse wasn’t enough to convince him that I will, in no way, ever be his. And what’s this about James being after his position in the company? Why, because he made that one Japanese phone call to save his brother’s ass?

  James took a step back, panting silently, a stream of blood dripping into his eyes. “That isn’t true, and you know it.”

  “She’s a lovely kisser, isn’t she?”

  “Stop it!”

  “She brought me gifts and flirted with me constantly. And the time we got all hot and heavy, let me tell you, she was all over me, wanted to fuck my brains out.”

  “Is that right? Then why did she leave in the middle of your heated kiss?”

  “What can I say? She’s a head case.”

  “That’s enough!” James stepped back again, lifting his hands slightly in a gesture of peace. “If this is really about Della and me, then you should take it up with me, not her and certainly not heaped upon Madison. You’re just mad you never had a woman reject you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Robert’s eyes lit dangerously as he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. “Is that what you want, to fight it out right here?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing, but I was powerless to put an end to it. With a look of both terror and disbelief on my face, I backed to the door, trembling involuntarily as James placed his body between us once more.

  “No, I don’t want to fight it out,” he replied in a quiet voice that seemed as dangerous as his brother’s. “I want to go home and fuck the girl you like so much, but if you’d like to do this first—”

  There was a mighty cry as Robert launched himself off the wall to collide with his brother in the middle of the floor. Furniture shattered, papers scattered, and the coat rack in the corner went crashing to the floor.

  With a muted shriek, I reached for my phone to call security downstairs.

  A series of sharp cries punctured the air, and the carpeted floorboards literally trembled beneath their feet as they crashed into each other again and again. They were moving so fast that it was actually hard to see who was who; only their clothes differentiated the two, and in that whirlwind of combat, they were nothing more than a blur of color.

  It wasn’t until James threw Robert all the way across the room that the fight came to an abrupt halt, ending with a deafening crash, followed by a loud cry.

  “Enough!” James shouted, his chest heaving as he raked his fingers through his hair. “This is... Shit, this is crazy, Rob. I won’t fight you.”

  The room quieted suddenly as the most reasonable and sane of the players hung up his gloves for good.

  James stared across the room a second more, a look of profound sorrow tightening every corner of his perfect, bleeding face. Then he turned to me. “Come, Della,” he muttered on his way to the door. “Let’s go.”

  I was more than willing to slip into the protective safety of his arm. We hurried into the hall, then the elevator, and I pressed the button frantically, so many times I feared I might break it.

  Had we been lucky, the unpleasant part of the night would have ended there. We would have walked out the door and escaped with nothing more than a quick trip to a medical facility for a few stitches and a bandage, then a decade of therapy. Sadly, the one thing James and I never seemed to have was luck.

  I saw Robert’s reflection in the metal doors before I even heard him coming up behind us, felt the vibrations in the floor before I even saw his face. James’s arm tightened around me, and he pushed me out of the way. He then turned in slow motion and raised one hand instinctively to protect his face, but that wasn’t where Robert was aiming.

  Robert smashed his foot down into James’s leg, driving every bit of strength into that tragic little scar.

  The look of genuine surprise that flashed across James’s face as he fell backward into the door, staring into his brother’s eyes the whole time was also unforgettable, as was the quiet gasp that escaped his lips as he bowed his head to his chest and was left pale and trembling, bearing unspeakable pain. Most of all, I would never, ever forget the terrible look on Robert’s face when the dirty deed was done. It was as if a flip had switched, as if a fire had been put out. In the blink of an eye, the game changed entirely, descended to a level neither opponent was willing to play.

  “James...” It was half-whisper, half-gasp, as if Robert himself was astounded by what happened. He took a step forward, as if to help, then stopped, fearing he had no right. He lifted his hands helplessly in the air between them. “James, I didn’t...” There was a green pallor to his face, and for a second, I thought he might actually upchuck right there in the hall. “I can’t believe I just...” He moved his hands up slowly and placed them over his mouth as he stared down in horror at what he’d done. “Jamie, I’m so sorry!”

  James said nothing, for it was much too late for sorry. In fact, it was too late for a lot of things. The damage was already done, and none of us were sure it could be undone.

  Security rushed over and I explained the story.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” I said.

  “No!” James replied.

  “Yes, you need help.”

  “I’ll take him,” Robert said.

  “Like hell you will,” I roared.

  James looked up at me. “Listen, he won’t hurt me. We get into spats like this all the time. Sometimes, we take it too far. It’s no big deal.”

  “James,” I pleaded.

  “Listen, Robert can take me. And I’m sure these gentlemen can help me into the car,” he said looking at the security guards.

  “Yes sir,” one answered.

  Once we were downstairs, Robert’s driver bolted toward us the second we staggered into view; the ashen tint to his lovely face as he clenched his teeth together, determined not to make a sound. James driver also arrived because I called him.

  “Are you...okay?” James asked me.

  “Am I okay?” I repeated in a daze, hardly understanding the question.

  There was a ringing in my ears, the same one that had started the second James hit the floor. No matter how hard I tried to shake it, I felt like my body was only partially there; the other half of me was still up on that sixty-fifth floor, reliving that awful moment again and again.

  “What are you... I mean, what are you talking about? I’m fine! James, he... I can’t believe he...” I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. My lips were tingling and no matter how many times I replanted my feet, it felt like my legs were about to give way beneath me, as if they were made of wet spaghetti. “It happened so fast. I didn’t... I mean, I couldn’t... How did you...”

  James took one look at me, then turned and offered his own driver a remarkably calm smile. “Take her home.”

  “What? No, I’m going to the hospital wit
h you.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m a big boy.”

  “Please let me come.”

  “You don’t need to be sitting around for hours waiting for me.”

  “But I want to.”

  “It’d be embarrassing to have you watch me get a shot in the ass or something. Listen, I’d love to keep my dignity. I’ll keep you up to date, okay?”

  I bit my lip. He didn’t want me to come. I had to respect that. “Okay, I’ll go home. But please keep me informed. I need to know if you’re okay.”

  “Okay.”

  The second I thought the word, it was echoed instantly by his driver.

  “What? Mr. Cross, James, please be reasonable,” Frank said, keeping a firm grip on James’s shoulder, no matter how hard he tried to pull away. “Miss Jones is fine. It’s you who needs to be looked at.”

  “Frank, that’s not what I—”

  “He’s right!” I cried in a voice much higher and shriller than my own. “James, you’re in no condition to—”

  Frank followed his gaze, studied my face, then bowed his head and let out a sigh.

  “Take her home,” James said again, much more gently this time. “My brother can take me to the hospital in his car.”

  Robert nodded. “Yes. So let’s go!”

  James turned to me with a tired sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, his skin paling even more as he braced himself against the pain. “I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

  “What are you talking about?” I whispered again, shaking like a leaf in the wind. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I walked in there and yelled my head off like a maniac. I started it. It was all my fault.”

  Much to my extreme astonishment, James’s lips twitched up in a fleeting smile in the wake of that admission. “A bit of a martyr complex, have you?”

  I blinked, unable to believe he could possibly make a joke at that moment. “I’m sorry. What—”

  “Surely you know you are not even remotely to blame for any of this,” he continued gently, his dark hair spilling into his face, courtesy of the evening breeze. “My...sibling rivalry dates back a lot further than you, Della. You just got caught in the middle tonight.”