The Dangerous Billionaire

by Jackie Ashenden

  Yeah, like it’s about ‘human’ contact. It’s him you want, idiot.

  Okay, so it was him. And what was wrong with that? Sure, he’d only promised her a night, but that was fine. She didn’t want more than that anyway, right? He was going back to the military and she was going back to the ranch, and that would be that. One night wasn’t going to change anything.

  “Is that pizza okay?” she asked after a long moment. “I’m starving.”

  “Yeah, it’s still in the oven.” He released her and stepped back. “You want me to get you a plate?”

  “No, I can do it.” She put a brief hand on his hard, flat abdomen, just because she could, then moved past him, going into the kitchen and pulling open the oven to find a couple of slices sitting there waiting for her.

  “Did you want a slice?” she asked as she hunted around for a plate.

  “No.” He was sitting down at the table now, his attention back on his laptop again. “Try the cupboard above the sink.”

  She blinked then pulled open the cupboard like he’d said, and sure enough, there were the plates. Damn man was magic.

  Taking one down and putting it on the counter, she dumped her pizza on it then took it over to the table and sat down opposite him. The pizza smelled really good; pepperoni was her favorite.

  She lifted the slice. “Thank you for the pizza.”

  “No problem.”

  She took a bite, chewing slowly. Tasted really good too. “You remembered I liked pepperoni.”

  He glanced up from the screen. “You really expected me to forget? After your twelfth birthday?”

  Ah yes, she did remember that. He’d been back at the ranch on leave—the other two had still been on deployment, and her father, unsurprisingly, had been in New York—and had helped organize a special birthday dinner for her. Pepperoni pizza had been what she’d wanted, but they’d run out of pepperoni, so Van had taken the chopper and flown to Blaketown to get it since that was quicker than driving the twenty miles from the ranch.

  “I guess that’s pretty hard to forget.” Something in her chest went all warm and liquid and melty that he’d remembered, and she had to look away to hide her reaction. Taking another bite of pizza, she nodded at the laptop. “What are you doing?” It was a graceless change of subject, but she didn’t care.

  “Trying to stop de Santis from making that takeover bid for Tate Oil.”

  Ah yes. All of that was still happening, wasn’t it?

  Chloe shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Is it serious?”

  “Yeah. And I need to stop that shit before I can find a suitable CEO to run the company.”

  “Why? Aren’t you the heir or whatever?”

  Van gave her a glance from over the top of the laptop. “Sure. But like I told you, I’m not running his fucking company no matter how badly he wanted me to. I’m heading back to base once my leave is over.”

  Of course he was and yes, he’d told her that already. Yet something inside her missed a beat at the thought, though she refused to examine exactly what it was. “You sound like me and the ranch.”

  “It is like you and the ranch. I don’t stop being a SEAL just because Dad was stupid enough to fall off his horse and break his fucking neck.”

  A thread of anger ran through his deep voice, she heard it clear as day. Not that it was unfamiliar. She’d heard it whenever he’d talked about being Noah’s heir. Hell, whenever he’d talked about Noah, period. And if she needed further proof that he and their father hadn’t gotten on, there were the eight years he hadn’t set foot on the Tate ranch, eight years of silence …

  Carefully, she picked up the other slice of pizza and took a bite, chewing slowly. “You don’t want to run the company?” She tried to keep the question casual, even though curiosity was suddenly burning her up inside.

  “Does it look like I want to? No, of course I fucking don’t. My career is in the military, and Dad knew that.” His dark brows drew down, giving him a saturnine look that made a shiver go through her. God, he was hot when he looked like that. “Dad would have preferred me to shut up and be grateful, and do exactly what I was told, just like everyone else did. Sadly for him, I wasn’t one of his employees.”

  Now there wasn’t only anger in his voice, but bitterness too. What was his deal? Had he had the same issues as she’d had? Noah wasn’t an easy man to get close to as she knew to her cost, and she’d always thought her foster brothers had a better relationship with him than she did. But maybe they hadn’t.

  Chloe put her slice back down on the plate and looked at him. “What did he do, Van? What did he do to make you so angry?”

  Something flickered in his gaze. “He was a lousy father. But then you know that already.”

  It was true, she did.

  She glanced down at her plate. “I always thought he liked you guys the best. You got to go places, do things, while I just had to stay on the ranch and keep quiet, like a good girl.”

  There was a brief silence.

  Then Van sighed. “He didn’t like us best, pretty. We just all had specific roles and he made sure we stuck to them. Mine was to be the heir, and everything I did had to be about that and there was no room for anything else.”

  She looked up again, studying him from beneath her lashes. “But why didn’t you want to be the heir?”

  “I did at first.” He hit a button on the keypad then closed the lid of the laptop, sitting back in his chair and meeting her gaze. “But you know Dad. His standards were impossible to meet and he was pretty fucking unforgiving when you didn’t meet them. I just got sick of being expected to live up to some goddamn ideal.”

  She hadn’t known that. Noah certainly hadn’t ever had any expectations of her, and when she’d been younger, she’d found that was just another example of how much he didn’t care. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she asked carefully, “What kind of ideal?”

  Van tilted his head, his arms crossed over his broad chest. “He wanted someone who never made mistakes, basically. The perfect figurehead for his perfect legacy.” Again, there was that thread of bitterness running through his voice. “But it doesn’t matter. He’s dead and he can’t do a fucking thing about it now.”

  It did matter though. It was there in that note of bitterness, that note of anger. And she wanted to ask him what had happened to make him feel like that, because obviously somewhere along the line he’d failed to meet one of those impossible standards of Noah’s and hadn’t been forgiven.

  She couldn’t imagine what that was. She couldn’t imagine Van failing to live up to anyone’s standards. He was so strong and straight up. Protective. Patient. He cared, too. She’d felt it every time he touched her.

  Chloe stared at him, holding his gaze. “Whatever ideal he wanted you to live up to, whatever standard you thought you failed, you didn’t, Van. If he didn’t forgive you, he was wrong.”

  Van had gone very still, his expression unreadable. Then it softened somewhat. “Thanks, pretty. But there’s a whole lot of stuff that happened that you don’t know about. And I don’t want to go into it now, okay?”

  It wasn’t okay though, and somehow she knew it.

  She looked back down at her plate, not quite sure why the gentle way he’d warned her off the topic should have hurt. Yet it had. She felt the ache of it nag at her like a splinter.

  Trying to ignore it, she picked up her slice and took a large bite instead, letting the silence sit there for a bit. Then she asked, in another awkward change of subject, “So what are we going to do with de Santis?” No way would she call him her father, no freaking way.

  Van let out a breath. “I need to head off this takeover first, figure out what the asshole wants. Whether it’s you or the company, or maybe both. Dad wasn’t real clear on any of this, so we’re flying blind, unfortunately.”

  “That was unhelpful of Dad,” she muttered. “How do we go about finding that out then?”

  Van lifted his hands and put them behind his head, and
she got briefly distracted by the play of all that sculpted muscle flexing and releasing in response to his movements. “It’s difficult. Thought about hacking into his private network, finding emails, that kind of thing. But DS Corp’s electronic security is stronger than the goddamn FBI’s. Hell, they sold that security to the FBI, which means hacking in is going to be fucking impossible.”

  “So that’s it? We can’t do anything? Might as well just ask him straight out then.”

  Van inhaled sharply, his chest expanding, his dog tags slipping to one side and distracting her again. “No, I didn’t say we can’t do anything. I said it was difficult. But now you’ve given me an idea.”

  She blinked. “I did?”

  “Yeah.” The flash of his smile was blinding as he straightened suddenly and reached for his laptop, opening it up again. “I might just keep you on. You’re a valuable asset.”

  “I am?”

  He had his attention on the laptop screen, typing something out, his fingers moving fast on the keys. “I’d finish up that pizza if I were you, because in one more minute I’m going to be showing you just how valuable an asset you are.”

  A shiver went through her at the rough heat in his voice. “Okay. And do I get to know why I’m a valuable asset?”

  Van hit a key, waited a moment, then pushed the laptop screen shut. Shoving back his chair, he stalked around the table and before she could move, she found herself gathered up into his arms and held tightly against the hot wall of his chest.

  “Van,” she said firmly. “Tell me what you’re doing. Also, I didn’t get to finish my pizza.”

  “You said why not ask him straight up, so I did.” He flashed her another of the those brilliant, blinding smiles as he stalked down the hallway. “Also, you can have your pizza later.”

  She placed her hand on his chest, frowning up at him. “What do you mean you asked him straight up?”

  “I just sent him an email organizing a meeting tomorrow.” Van’s smile took on a menacing edge. “He’ll come. And then I’ll ask him what he wants.”

  “Is that really such a good idea?” Something she didn’t want to admit was fear fluttered inside her. Fear for him. “He’s dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry, pretty.” The sharp edge in Van’s smile turned lethal as he stepped into the bedroom, making her shiver. “So am I.”

  * * *

  Van paced the length of his father’s office, came to the wall opposite, then turned around.

  In front of him stood the ancient desk his father had brought from Wyoming, claiming it was some kind of family heirloom. It was ridiculous to have a rolltop desk in a modern office, but his father had been adamant it had to be there. On the wall behind it was a huge painting of the Tate ranch, Shadow Peak looming behind it.

  The ranch that his father had bought for some pittance back when he’d been barely in his twenties. Noah had worked like a dog on it, trying to rescue the place from an almost derelict state, building it up into a good, solid working ranch, and that’s where he might have stayed if he hadn’t been looking to expand. If he hadn’t unexpectedly struck oil on one of the more distant pastures.

  That had been the start of the business that had grown from a small oil rig into a major petroleum company, adding gas fields and oil exploration to its portfolio as it grew. The company was massive now, brought in billions, and it had been his father’s baby for as long as Van could remember.

  “Fuck you,” Van muttered at the desk, the simmering anger that had been dogging him all day threatening to spill over.

  He’d come into Tate Oil that morning for yet another round of meetings—aka the ongoing fight with the board. The de Santis takeover bid in addition to the fact that the board wasn’t happy about Van and his brothers being the replacement directors, had not made things easy and Van wasn’t in the mood to deal with them. He’d had to leave Lucas’s apartment before dawn to get back to the Tate mansion so it looked like he was still there, and all without drawing attention to himself and giving away to de Santis where he’d been. Because he suspected de Santis would now be on his tail trying to figure out where Chloe was.

  Sure enough, he’d been followed from the mansion to Tate Oil that morning and he had no doubt at all that he’d be followed home too. Which was going to make getting back to Chloe somewhat problematic.

  Ah well, he’d know more once de Santis turned up for the meeting. If de Santis turned up for the meeting. Van had made sure to frame it as a “discussion about mutual interests” to keep it intriguing, and he was pretty sure the asshole would come. De Santis wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see how the land lay after his enemy’s death, to get a look at who he was up against now.

  Van bared his teeth at the painting on the wall behind the desk.

  Yeah and hopefully the knowledge that de Santis was up against three SEAL brothers with not inconsiderable skills, might give the bastard pause for thought.

  Van began to pace back toward the desk only to stop short at the soft tap on the office door.

  “Yeah, what?” he demanded gracelessly, in no mood for politeness.

  The door opened and Margery, his father’s secretary, put her head around it. “There’s someone to see you, Mr. Tate.”

  “So? Do they have an appointment?” As soon as he’d said it he knew it was a stupid question. Of course they didn’t have an appointment. If they had, Margery wouldn’t be here asking him about it, she’d simply be telling them to wait until he was ready or she’d be showing them in.

  “No,” Margery said carefully. “But apparently you asked him to come.”

  Van stilled. There could be no doubt who it was since he’d sent out only one meeting request in the past day or so. Cesare de Santis. Though it looked like the bastard had turned up early, and probably to make a point.

  Van gave Margery a feral smile that made her eyes widen. “Show him in, Margery, please.”

  She gave him a slightly wary look before nodding then disappearing back behind the door, shutting it after her.

  Van strode quickly over to his father’s desk and sat down in the big black leather chair behind it. Then he pulled open the top right drawer and grabbed his Glock, shoving it into the waistband of his pants at his back. He didn’t think de Santis would be stupid enough to try anything, but it always paid to be a good Boy Scout.

  A minute later the door opened again to admit Margery—this time with a pleasant, professional smile on her face—and a tall, older man in a perfectly tailored, custom navy blue suit. He looked to be in his late sixties, with iron gray hair and a kind of heavy, Mediterranean handsomeness. The famous de Santis blue eyes were piercing as he swept his gaze over Noah Tate’s office, before coming to rest on Van.

  “Mr. de Santis to see you, Mr. Tate,” Margery said calmly.

  Cesare de Santis smiled and it would have been friendly if the smile had reached his eyes. But it didn’t. That blue gaze was cold, watchful, and not a little calculating. The guy definitely had presence too, the kind of forceful charisma that a great many powerful men possessed.

  Men like his father.

  “Mr. Tate,” Cesare de Santis’s voice was all pleasantness as he moved toward the desk, his hand held out. “Please forgive me being early, but your meeting request came late and this was the only gap in my schedule. Good to finally meet you at last.”

  Van made no move to stand and take the proffered hand, staying exactly where he was. “Thank you, Margery,” he said, his voice devoid of expression. “That will be all.”

  As Margery nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her, Van briefly debated how he was going to play this, whether to join in the facade of politeness, play the game. Yet a part of him, brought up on Noah’s tales of de Santis perfidy, wasn’t interested in pretense. This man had been Noah’s nemesis for a good twenty years, starting right from when he’d tried to claim the oil strike as his own. Then there was the fact that he was on the brink of gaining control of Noah’s company, not to m
ention threatening Noah’s daughter. And yes, he was going to continue to think of Chloe as Noah’s because as far as Van was concerned, this asshole wasn’t her father.

  “What do you want?” Van demanded, deciding he may as well start as he meant to continue—aggressively. He could, of course, have acted like the bastard wasn’t a problem, but there was no point pretending that particular elephant wasn’t in the room.

  They both knew what was going on.

  De Santis’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared, his hand dropping back to his side. “Isn’t that my line? You were the one who asked me to be here.”

  “Yeah and that’s my question. What do you want?”

  The older man put his hands in his pockets and turned toward the windows that overlooked Broadway, strolling over to them. “Hope you don’t mind if I don’t sit down,” he commented casually. “I’m not going to take up too much of your valuable time. You’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment, or so I hear.”

  Van’s fingers itched to grab the gun he could feel resting reassuringly at his back. Christ, he hated this kind of bullshit. He preferred a straight-up fight to verbal sparring, always had. And he definitely wasn’t a fan of empty posturing. If you wanted to prove yourself the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the room, you simply went ahead and did it. You didn’t make snide remarks or drop subtle allusions to the fact that you were engineering a hostile takeover.

  Van stared hard at the other man. “Like I said, what do you want?”

  De Santis turned, his sharp blue eyes meeting Van’s. “You get straight to the point, Mr. Tate. I like that in a businessman.”

  “I’m not a fucking businessman.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re a soldier, aren’t you?”

  Van allowed himself a slight smile. “I’m a motherfucking SEAL, asshole. Get your facts straight.”

  De Santis’s gaze narrowed a moment, then his expression relaxed. “You’re very similar to your father, did you know that?”

  The comment took Van by surprise, making him feel slightly off-balance, which he did not appreciate one bit. Sure, he could be autocratic, maybe, but as for the rest? Reserved, cold, and emotionless? If any of them were like Noah, it was Lucas.