LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.

  Chapter 40

  Lynn

  I was watching them from behind the window. They couldn’t see me: the lights were off, and I was careful to stay behind the curtains. They were too busy watching Jaime, anyway.

  Why he had to include Jaime in this little deal, I had no clue. He said the idea was to keep Lucien distracted. He said that we had to keep him so busy that he wouldn’t notice what was going on right under his own nose. He said Jaime was his assistant, so she could make that happen. But I still didn’t see why we had to include so many people. The more people involved, the easier it would be for someone to figure out what was going on.

  Lucien was a smart guy. But he was so focused on that girl, that Adrienne—what kind of a name for a woman is that, anyway?—that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d stripped naked in the middle of the conference room and twerked right in front of him.

  Jacob was just being paranoid. He was so afraid that Lucien would catch on before the deal was done that he would ruin the whole thing. But we had the power of attorney. We had all the paperwork we needed to sell the patents. And Lucien still had his artificial pancreas. He could rebuild the company. He would take some hits, but Jacob was confident he could survive this little deal. And Jacob and I would be off in the Bahamas, having the time of our life on the billions we would make out of the deal.

  It was a win-win, right?

  But having Jaime here was a threat. I didn’t like it.

  She put the papers in the mailbox, as she was told. I watched her walk away and climb into her car.

  Good riddance to bad rubbish.

  And then one of Ruben Garcia’s guys walked over and grabbed the papers the moment she was gone. It was going perfectly. Now all I had to do was get out of there and go meet Jacob at—

  “Hello, Mrs. Callahan.”

  His voice was low and rough. He grabbed my arms and pulled them behind my back, snapping what felt like handcuffs on my wrists.

  “You can’t do this. You’re not a cop anymore.”

  “No. But I have a few friends on the force. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me handing over a kidnapper and blackmailer.”

  “Blackmail? Who did I blackmail?”

  “I’m sure that letter your partner left in the mailbox could be construed in that way for a judge.”

  “What? It just tells where Adrienne is!”

  “No, darlin’, it doesn’t. It asks for five thousand dollars to tell where she is.” He laughed, a deep chuckle that I could feel rumbling against my back. “Thing is, I would have paid much more than that for my daughter. Too bad she’s already safe and sound.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Who else are you working with, Mrs. Callahan? Is your husband, Jacob, involved in this?”

  I twisted against him, turned so that I could see his face. Ruben Garcia. Jacob had told me all about him, even showed me a picture, but he didn’t tell me just how intimidating the former cop could be.

  “I think I’d like a lawyer.”

  “No problem,” Ruben said. “Like I told you, my daughter has already been freed, and I believe her captor would love to tell stories on her partners. I’ll find out all I need to know very soon.”

  I just shrugged. I wasn’t worried. Jacob had promised he would get me out the moment I was arrested, should it come to that. Jacob always kept his promises to me.

  Ruben turned me away from him and began to lead the way outside. But then his cellphone rang. He yanked it out of his pocket and made some sort of grunting sound before he answered it.

  “This is he,” he mumbled, talking more like someone off the streets than the professional I was told he was. He listened a moment, and then his grip on my wrists tightened, tightened so much that I was almost afraid he was going to break my arm.

  “Is he going to live?”

  More silence. And then, “And Adrienne? She’s there with him? You stay with her, watch her. Whoever did this might come after her.”

  When he disconnected the call, the phone was still in his hand when he shoved me up against the wall so that we were standing face to face. The look on his face so frightened me that I almost couldn’t breathe for a moment.

  “Where’s Jacob?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “I know he’s the mastermind behind the whole thing. I know he’s the one who wrote those emails, the one who sent Rachel after my daughter. And I know he’s the one who just tried to kill Lucien Montgomery. So, if you don’t want to be charged as an accessory, you had better start talking.”

  My head started to spin at the word ‘kill’.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He studied my eyes for a long moment, his expression so intimidating I felt as though I’d just fallen into some sort of street thug movie. He was the deadly drug dealer, and I was the lost society dame. My heart was in my throat, and my stomach was somewhere around my knees.

  “Lucien’s insulin pump malfunctioned tonight. He’s fighting for his life in the emergency room right now. You wouldn’t know something about that, would you?”

  I’d seen Lucien have a low once. It wasn’t a pretty sight. That big, strong man made weak by his body’s malfunctioning pancreas. I’d been brought to tears. That was three years ago. The night of the first fight Jacob and I had in our short married life. The first of many.

  I shook my head. “I… Jacob would never do something like that to Lucien.”

  “He did. He left him lying there on the floor of his house, waiting to die.”

  “No,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks. “Jacob—”

  “He did, lady. The security guard saw him come and go just moments before Adrienne found Lucien half dead. And the doctors are telling her that his blood sugar fell so low that chances are real good he won’t recover. He’ll wake up one of those vegetables they’re always crying over in those made-for-TV movies.”

  “No.”

  But I knew it was possible. And, suddenly, it all began to make sense. Everything Jacob was doing, everything he’d told me. What it would do to Lucien. He’d gotten angry when I’d asked if Lucien would be able to recover from all this. He got mad when I said it was cruel. He said… Why didn’t I see it?

  Jacob hated Lucien. I saw it, but I didn’t want to see it.

  “He’s trying to steal the patents from the company. He’s selling them to this company out of Europe. Everything. He tricked Lucien into signing a power of attorney.”

  “What about the company? Won’t Jacob be responsible for the fallout?”

  “He signed everything over to Lucien. Told him it was to protect them both with the loans they had to take out to cover operating costs. It’ll all fall on Lucien’s head. I thought he was leaving him with the patent to the artificial pancreas, but now I think that’s the main thing the other company wanted. He was going to ruin Lucien.”

  “So why hack his insulin pump?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I…I didn’t think Jacob was capable…”

  Chapter 41

  Lucien

  My mouth was dry. It felt like I hadn’t had a thing to drink in days. And my muscles hurt. Everywhere. I felt like I needed to move, but it was such an effort just to lift a finger.

  I opened my eyes, but the room was too bright. I closed them again, trying to lick my lips, but it was like trying to moisten the desert with the water in a mug of beer. My tongue felt like sandpaper that was covered in a gummy film.

  “Don’t try to move too much.”

  It was my mother’s voice. It was always my mother’s voice when I woke in the hospital.

  “How long?” I croaked.

  “Three days.”

  I tried to nod, but any little movement seemed like too much effort. I lay still for a moment even as I felt a soft hand touch the back of mine. A wet washrag brushed my lips. It felt like heaven.

&nbs
p; “Thanks,” I muttered.

  “Anytime,” a new voice said.

  And it all just came rushing back on me. A bar. A beautiful woman. A kiss like heaven. A hotel room, a missing shirt. Beautiful eyes staring into mine. A woman like none I’d ever known before.

  “Adrienne?”

  “I’m here,” she said close to my ear, her voice cracking on the last syllable.

  I opened my eyes again. This time the room wasn’t too bright. This time I could focus. And what I saw was like a Rembrandt to an art enthusiast. It was like a lily to Monet. It was love to a broken heart.

  “Adrienne,” I whispered, reaching up to touch the side of her face.

  Tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.

  “Don’t ever do that to me again,” she whispered.

  “I promise.”

  Epilogue

  Adrienne

  Lynn told my dad everything.

  Jacob had hated Lucien since the day his father asked Lucien’s mother to marry him. His hatred only grew over the years, pushed over the top when his father forced Jacob to invite Lucien into his business, unbeknownst to Lucien. So when he saw an opportunity to not only make a lot of money, but to ruin Lucien in the process, he snatched it.

  A month or so before separating from Lynn—a separation that was orchestrated to get Lucien to allow Jacob to move in with him so that he could keep a close eye on him—Jacob was approached by a representative of a company out of Europe. They had heard rumors about the artificial pancreas, and they wanted to know what it would take to buy the patent. Jacob brushed them off at first, but then they made an offer. He couldn’t pass up the money.

  As Lucien had known from the beginning, the artificial pancreas would change the way in which diabetes is treated worldwide. Whoever held the patent to the first practical artificial pancreas would have the world in his hand. The Europeans knew that, too. And they were willing to pay anything to get it.

  It was just the scheme Jacob had been waiting for to get his back on Lucien and everyone else in the family who’d always put Lucien first. He was going to screw them all.

  Jacob tipped off the reporter who contacted Lucien and sent him running to my daddy’s private investigation firm. And to me.

  Then Jacob sent the emails to keep us busy while he made the deal.

  And then there was Jaime. She went through Lucien’s emails and his snail mail, kept track of anything that could get in the way of Jacob’s plan. She also happened to be having an affair with Jacob.

  The split with Lynn might have been pretend, but that didn’t mean that Jacob felt any loyalty to her. He’d never really been faithful. But Lynn overlooked his infidelities because, well, because she loved him.

  We all make stupid mistakes for love.

  And then Rachel. Jacob spun stories and got a friend to pose as a lawyer to get Rachel on his side. He really had thought Rachel would flub the attempted kidnapping, keeping me and Lucien in San Antonio while the deal went down. He’d never thought she’d actually be successful at it.

  I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

  My dad’s friends found Jacob at a hotel in downtown Houston the night Lucien went into the hospital. He was waiting until the deal was signed and sealed the next morning. Then he was on the first flight to Switzerland. Alone.

  Jaime was arrested at the bed and breakfast. Lynn turned herself in after coming to the hospital to see Lucien in the ICU.

  Rachel wasn’t charged. I told the cops that she’d told me about the plan and I’d gone willingly with her so that we could set up Jacob. She came clean with her family. Lucien showed her the patent on the artificial pancreas that had her name on it and then offered her a job with his tech team at the company.

  Lucien has decided to continue the good work he’s been doing with the biochemical company. After all, it’s all his now. He’s hired a scientist to run the drug division, and he’s pushing forward with his artificial pancreas. They go into trials next week.

  Jacob’s trial is next month.

  Lucien’s going to testify against him. Not because he bodes him ill will, but because it’s the right thing to do. Lucien’s always been about the right thing.

  And me? I still work for my daddy, but I don’t do undercover work anymore. I spend most of my time in the office in my comfortable jeans, running background checks and hacking the bad guys’ computers. It’s where I’m most comfortable.

  Besides, my husband doesn’t like the idea of me kissing strangers in bars anymore. And I figure once in a lifetime is more than enough for me.

  ~ END of LUCIEN ~

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  HIS

  BEAUTY and the BILLIONAIRE

  THORN

  BLINDSIDED

  ADDICTED TO YOU

  HIS

  Chapter 1

  What do you say when you see your nemesis standing right outside your door?

  “Hi,” I croaked and wrapped my arms around my middle.

  I didn’t want to croak. Croaking was the last thing I needed to do when I faced this man. So I tried again. “What are you doing here?”

  Oh, God! Was that my voice? That breathless ‘I’m about to swoon’ version?

  This was too much.

  “You knew I was going to find you,” he said quite flatly.

  “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

  That was better. Still croaking, but not as bad. Instead of sounding like a geriatric toad, I sounded more like a teenage toad. That was better, right? That gave me some confidence.

  I straightened up and pushed my chest out. His eyes immediately dropped to my boobs, and it felt as though some high voltage laser had singed them. My brain was a little muddled, and I could feel my nipples hardening to pebbles right before his eyes. This was crazy.

  “Maybe because of that.”

  He flicked his hand toward my chest in reply to the question I had forgotten I’d asked. But then, as his eyes widened a little, I realized he wasn’t pointing to my chest. He was actually gesturing toward the small, round bump that my belly had become over the last few weeks.

  I was fifteen weeks pregnant. And he was the father.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “You’re here because of the baby.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What else? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? That I’d let you walk away with my flesh and blood?” There was no amusement in his eyes. They were chilly and staring at me quite dispassionately.

  So he was angry. I got that.

  But he was being unreasonable.

  “I did what I thought I had to do. Can’t you see that?” I asked him, trying to appeal to his better nature. I hadn’t seen any evidence of it, but it had to be there. Any man who wanted a child as fiercely as this man wanted the baby in my womb has to have a better nature, right? I had to believe that.

  “All I can see is that we are not going to have this conversation on your doorstep.”

  His tone said it was not up for debate. Yet, I hovered there, trying to look for a way to stall him. I did not want him in my apartment. I did not want him in my space. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt me or anything. Nicolas Costa was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the kind of man who went around hurting women. I wouldn’t have agreed to this insane arrangement if he was.

  I couldn’t believe I was here, standing with Nicolas Costa, about to have his baby. I put myself in a difficult situation, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  Dear God…if only my mom were here, she would tell me everything would be alright. Actually, no. First, she would chew my ass out and tell me what an irresponsible, thoughtless thing it was I’d done, and then she would wrap her arms around
me and tell me she understood why I’d done it and that she loved me.

  I felt my throat grow tight and scratchy, and I had to blink really hard to push back the tears. My chest hurt. I rubbed it absently…not like it did any good. I missed my mother so much. It had only been three months since she’d died, and I’d not yet gotten used to being without her.

  I sighed again and stepped back.

  “Come in Mr. Costa.” I kept my voice cool and polite, hoping if I projected that image, I would actually begin to feel it.

  It was time I stopped running away from the facts—no matter how much I disliked them. The truth was, I was pregnant with this man’s baby and I had signed some legal documents saying that I would give him the baby when it came. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, and I even collected a partial payment.

  God, that really does sound bad, like I sold the baby in my womb. But it was nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. The baby wasn’t really mine…not really.

  The fertilized egg was not mine. I was merely a carrier, a human incubator. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like I was this baby’s mother in every sense that mattered. And that was the crux of my problem. I loved it with a fierceness that amazed me. And I didn’t care what this huge hulk of a man said. He would have to go over my dead body to get to the baby, and I intended to let him know that.

  Chapter 2

  It all began fairly innocuously.

  My mom was a maid in Los Angeles, working for a couple of well-known actors, some politicians, and a few rich, but not so famous, business moguls. She’d done it for as long as I could remember in an attempt to keep us off the streets. Her best friend, Constance, was in the same line of work. In fact, they used to work for the same agency. But then Constance got a full-time position with Nicolas Costa, who just happened to be one the hottest Hollywood directors the world had seen since Frank Capra or Alfred Hitchcock. She talked about him constantly those first ten years or so. Sometimes I felt like I knew him just from the things Constance said about him. He seemed human. Kind. That is, of course, until he got married. Constance didn’t have much to say about his wife, actress Aurora Parker, or him, really, after their wedding five years ago. It was like her kindly, honest employer had disappeared and was replaced with something out of that old movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.