Billionaire Benefactor Daddy: A Single Dad & Virgin Romance Boxset

by Natalia Banks

The lights of New York stretched out beyond and beneath the little round window. It was vast and impressive—the very embodiment of the power of human will and determination. Harden Steele was such a man, Kerri knew, and Manhattan, the boroughs, and every great city in the world was built by such men: men of wealth and power and vision and grit.

  But that only led Kerri to the bewildering conclusion that, as unique and singular a man as Harden was, there were others like him. There are men with even more money and more power, Kerri had to admit to herself, and lacking in Harden’s strength of character and gentlemanly manner. Instead there are small-minded men and women, brutal and vindictive and murderous.

  * * *

  But Kerri knew that in that sea of lights lurked gliding monsters, always on the hunt for their next prey. Only the sharpest teeth survived. Luckily, Harden’s own teeth were more than formidable, and the greatest dangers either of them were likely to face were well behind them. They were in New York to recover a peaceable past and a favorable future. Kerri thought about the nutritional supplements. They were her best hope of avenging her first husband’s death—her last, best shot at stopping anyone else from sharing his tragic, early fate, and her greatest chance to contribute something truly worthwhile to the human race.

  New Jersey. It may not be Manhattan, she had to say to herself, but it’ll be something—something amazing.

  * * *

  After a landing and a quick trip in a limo Harden had waiting at the airport, the Steeles were soon enough gliding down Fifth Avenue, the glitzy shops shimmering in the clear summer night. Lights flashed, white and delicate and not the gaudy digital billboards and scrolling headlines of Times Square.

  Harden turned to Kerri. “Ever been?”

  Kerri shrugged. “In spots.”

  “See? There are things I still don’t know about you.”

  Kerri chuckled. “I went to school at California State University, Northridge. When we get back, I’ll take you out for a couple of Pink’s chili dogs.”

  Harden gave it a little thought. “Sounds pretty good, actually.”

  The limo dropped them off; Harden tipped the driver and the bellboys who unpacked the trunk and put their luggage onto a cart and wheeled it in ahead of them.

  Harden and Kerri stepped into the lobby composed of various shades of white, gray, and black, with clean lines, modern art, and gorgeous marble floors. They crossed toward the reception desk, while gorgeous and well-dressed patrons crossed toward the elevators, the vestibule, and the bar.

  “Excuse me.” Kerri and Harden turned, but it was too late. A brown-haired young man in his early twenties approached Kerri, holding an autograph book, opened, and a pen in the other. He held both out with a hopeful smile. “Would you?”

  Kerri relaxed, her smile as welcoming to him as it was chiding herself. “Who shall I make it to?”

  “Oh, um, nobody,” the young man said, “just, y’know, sign it.”

  Harden stood rigid, eyeing down the adoring fan. “You one of those eBay trolls who resell autographs?” he grilled the autograph seeker.

  “Me? No, um, no, I just, y’know, just lookin’ for an autograph.”

  Kerri smiled and took the book and pen and scribbled her name. “It’s okay.” She finished and handed the book back to him. “There ya go.”

  The young man read the autograph with an eager smile, but Harden said, “All right, that’s enough; move it along, pal.”

  He did, backing away sheepishly. Harden turned toward the registration desk, but somebody at the bar caught Kerri’s eye.

  She muttered, “Bertram?” Harden looked over, and she repeated, “I think that’s Bertram Quinn over there. I wanna go say hi.”

  “I’ll see to the registration.”

  The two parted company, Kerri headed alone into the bar. She turned, but Harden was already lost in the crowd.

  “Bert!” Bertram Quinn looked up, slouching over his drink. He offered a tired smile, the bartender already putting another Scotch on the rocks in front of him. His receding brown hair, normally combed back, was hanging over his extended forehead.

  “There she is,” Bertram said, pushing himself out of his barstool but wavering as they hugged. He wreaked of Scotch and stale cologne.

  “Bert, are you okay?”

  “Great, awesome, never been goddamned better!”

  But one look told Kerri that it was the furthest thing from the truth. “What brings you to the Big Apple?”

  “See? That’s why you’re so good—you’re such a good writer. None of those tired old clichés for you!”

  Kerri tried to chuckle, but it wasn’t easy. “My entire career was a cliché!”

  “You can say that again. Anyway, I’m here making my new movie about vampires in New York, fighting the CHUDS or some stupid shit. What are you doing in the Big, Rotten, Festering, Stinking Apple?” But before she could answer, Bertram drunkenly raised his finger. “See? That’s how you do it; you put a twist on the cliché; that’s what makes shit writing great!”

  “Harden and I have business in town.”

  “Ah yes, Hard-on. And how is Hard-on lately?”

  “He’ll be a lot better if he doesn’t hear you call him that.” Kerri looked around nervously. “Where’s Melody?”

  Bertram sneered. “No need to twist the knife… Jesus.”

  “Twist the—? What are you talking about, Bertram? Is Melody all right? What happened?”

  Bertram looked Kerri up and down. “Oh, right. You’re not in the Biz; you’re not up on the trades, the gossip.”

  “I go out of my way to avoid all that,” Kerri said.

  “Well, bully for you.” He finished his drink, set it down, and picked up the fresh one. “Anyway, she left me—pffffft, gone forever.”

  “Oh, Bert, I’m so sorry. Can I ask…what happened?”

  “You happened.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  Bertram smiled, but there was no joy in it. “You won that award, you didn’t give her that role in your own movie—“

  “And I paid the price, as you know. That movie ruined my career; she should be grateful!”

  “She was insulted, and frankly, so was I.”

  Kerri took a step back, shoulders back, posture straight. “All right, well, I’m sorry if I offended you. I still don’t see why she’d leave you if you were both so offended by me.”

  “She thought I was in love with you, blamed me for all of it.”

  “Oh, Bert, you…I…look, a person like that, she’s going to make her own assumptions, y’know? Some people just can’t face their own frailty, their own weakness. It’s always about blaming somebody else, y’know? That awful Angela la Blanca, with her fake Britany bullshit, blamed me for what her husband did, and for what happened to him. But she wasn’t anymore in the right than your Melody. There’s something else I’ve learned from personal experience…very personal. It’s easy to get all mixed up, imagine things that aren’t there.”

  Bert shook his head, a sad half-smile on his reddening face.

  “What if it was there?”

  A tense and awkward silence passed before Kerri said, “I’m sorry?”

  “Never mind, forget it.”

  “Bertram, no, what are you saying?”

  Bert pushed himself up and away from the bar, turning drunkenly, barely on his feet. “I ain’t sayin’ shit. I gotta go—early day on the set tomorrow.” He pulled out several big bills and dropped them down onto the bar.

  “Bert—“

  “See ya ‘round, Ker.” He stumbled off, leaving Kerri stunned as Harden stepped up behind her.

  “How’s he doin’ these days?”

  “Not great,” was all Kerri could think to say, before adding, “Let’s get up to our room.”

  Chapter 4

  Brooklyn was just as Kerri expected, but nothing like Harden remembered. Kerri walked with him, her arm in his, while he pointed out various corners and points of interest. He was in a light mood, ea
sily smiling, leaving his hardened Harden personality behind. As if he was recovering some part of his childhood self—a whiff of innocence he’d somehow lost, somewhere along the way.

  “No, I never played stickball for Christ’s sake,” Harden said while both of them chuckled. “I didn’t grow up in a bad movie from the 1930s! Who am I, Leo Gorcey?”

  “Who?”

  “Exactly.”

  They walked on, glancing around at the hipsters, with man-buns and scraggily beards, writing screenplays on laptops at outdoor cafés—smartphones everywhere, sedans on the streets. “Place sure has changed since I was here last,” Harden said.

  “Must be weird, huh?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, weird, but, y’know, great. Property values are up; there’s life and vitality here. It used to be a real shit hole. But this…this is progress, this is life…for as long as it lasts.” Kerri took a closer look at his new melancholy, rising to the surface more and more. But she didn’t need to ask. He said, “I mean, nothing lasts forever, as you can see.” He turned to face a small cellphone store, glass windows plastered with posters for their slick wares.

  “Take this place,” Harden said, his attention fixed on the little shop. “My father owned a shop here once—this very shop. It was a video store. Can you imagine that? A video store.”

  “Must have been a million years ago.”

  “Seems like it—back in the late eighties, early nineties. Anyway, that gave me the seed money to invest in the tech stocks—Apple, Microsoft—that’s how I started my…our fortune.” Harden smiled and Kerri was grateful to be able to smile along with them. She knew it wasn’t going to last.

  “That gave you the money, not your dad?”

  Harden only shook his head, staring at the little shop. “Things were going pretty well. This was the only video shop in the borough, and laser discs were just about to die. But there was a lot of cash in the shop around closing, and some people knew that, people who… It was one of my father’s former employees who put the job together, actually. My father’d caught him stealing, had to let him go a few weeks before.”

  Kerri looked on, knowing her growing sorrow and sympathy were plain on her face but unable to disguise them.

  Harden went on, “But my father, he was a regimented guy, y’know? Same thing, every night. Discipline, he called it. And he was right, to an extent. He never should have gone back to this damn shop that night; I was never even told why he did go back. Cops told my mother he may have had a hunch something was wrong—that can happen. Anyway, he went back.”

  After a long, sad silence, with Kerri leaning against Harden for loving support, she had to say for him, “And he never came home.”

  Harden shook his head, a slow blink and a faint, bittersweet smile on his lips. “He struggled like hell, cops said. But there were two guys, and one of them had a knife, so…”

  Kerri stood in her sorrowful quiet, unable to relieve the pain she knew her man was enduring, and not for the last time. Searching for some silver lining to the dark cloud that hung over Harden every day of his life, Kerri asked, “Did they ever catch them?”

  “Yeah, they served their time—twenty years in Southport. One died in a prison riot, one’s a car salesman or something.”

  “And you don’t want to find him?”

  “Yes, I do,” Harden said. “I want to find him, look him dead in the eyes, and tear the living, breathing heart out of his chest. I want it to be the last thing he sees before he dies.”

  Fear returned to the pit of Kerri’s stomach. She nervously said, “But you won’t.”

  Harden turned to her, eyes steely and cold. “I haven’t.”

  Finally, Harden turned and they walked on, leaving the memories of that tragedy behind them, though certainly not forever.

  They walked a bit farther, the congested city blocks unfolding around them. When Harden pointed out another street corner, where perhaps one of the last newspaper and magazine stands in the country stood, Kerri was almost afraid to ask.

  “This is where I met Don Paulie Santori. Of course then he was just Paulie from the block. He was a tough little bastard though—didn’t take any shit from anybody.”

  “Reminds me of you.”

  “Funny, I was going to say he reminded me of you. Anyway, I was on my way from school to the shop back there, and I see Paulie surrounded by these big guys. We were both about ten, but these kids had to be thirteen, fourteen easy. They had him dead to rights, Ker, but he wasn’t backing down…” Harden trailed off.

  “And you jumped in to bail him out and you chased the other kids away.”

  “Sort of,” Harden said with a wry smile. “At first, I didn’t do a thing. You don’t just go sticking your nose into other people’s business, not out on the streets. But once they started throwing punches, once Paulie hit the curb, I knew I had to do something.”

  Kerri could imagine young Harding Stone, much smaller and younger, racing in to deliver the punishing blows of justice, and a blinding blur of punches and kicks, sending the bigger boys fleeing for their very lives.

  “And…and?”

  “And they kicked both our asses, up and down the sidewalk.”

  “Oh, Harden—”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t pleasant, I can’t lie t’ya. I woke up in Brooklyn Methodist Hospital.”

  “Harden! Were you hurt?”

  “Slight concussion, no big deal. But after that, Paulie and I were friends for life.”

  Kerri didn’t have to reflect very long on what she’d seen this man do for Harden, and for her, with a simple phone call. And she’d witnessed Harden’s loyalty to him, saving his old friend’s life and empire just in the past year.

  “We should pop by,” Harden suggested, “pay him a visit.”

  “Who, your mafia friend?”

  “Don Paulie Santori. We don’t want to be disrespectful, Kerri.”

  “Well, um, no, of course not, but…a mafia don? Should we?”

  “He’s an old friend. You’ll like him. And he’ll love you.”

  Kerri tried to smile, but it was suddenly a lot more difficult.

  Chapter 5

  Kerri and Harden decided to enjoy a handsome cab ride through Central Park and surrounding blocks. The setting sun burned the blue summer sky: smoldering purples, yellows, reds.

  The horse clopped ceaselessly, huffing and shaking its head as the top-hatted driver shook the reins.

  “It’s really beautiful,” Kerri couldn’t help say as they rolled through the expansive park—trees everywhere, benches lining the smaller footpaths.

  Harden nodded. “I used to love coming to the park, to climb the trees and play with my friends. We used to pretend we were on one of those Star Wars planets—Ratattat or whatever—jumping out of the trees and chasing each other around with branches, having sword fights and stuff.”

  “Sabers.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Saber fights,” Kerri said. “They’re called lightsabers, right?”

  “Right, of course. It’s been a long time.” And Kerri could see that he was right. It had been a long time since Harden Steele or Harding Stone had enjoyed the pleasures of childhood. And he was certainly not going to regress to them at this point in his life. Kerri was grateful for it. But there was a natural remedy for his lost sense of wonder—a way to bring his life and hers full-circle.

  Kerri wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. They hadn’t ever discussed it, and every time Kerry thought to bring it up, she found some excuse not to: don’t spoil the night, don’t rock the boat, everything’s going so well…

  But it was just then that a young couple strolled past on one of the little footpaths: the pretty Asian woman pushing a baby carriage, the African American father smiling proudly and waving at the unseen infant.

  “Look at that,” Kerri said with a smile.

  “Yeah,” Harden said, “we’ve come a long way.”

  “Not that! I mean, yeah, that’s true, but I mea
nt, y’know, how sweet it is—a little family like that.”

  Harden smiled. “Yeah, it’s great.”

  “Hey, speaking of your past—that’s kind of part of what we’re doing here, right?”

  “I do have that meeting on Monday.”

  “Right. Anyway, I guess I know about most of your, um, conquests…” He shot her a wry look. “Some of your conquests,” Kerri corrected herself, but Harden’s expression was unchanged. “Anyway, what I was wondering was—”

  “No, Kerri.”

  Kerri felt abruptly silenced. “I think I have a right to ask if—”

  “I mean no, Kerri, I don’t have any children.”

  “Oh,” she said, “well, that’s…that’s good to know.”

  Harden let the subject lie and Kerri followed suit. She knew that he could tell she wanted to talk about trying for their first baby, and if he didn’t want to, Kerri felt it was better not to force him. He’ll talk about it when he’s ready to, she reassured herself. Like everything else, he’s got it covered.

  They had a light meal at the famous Tavern on the Green: crisp salads and white wine, and just a bit of braised salmon for protein and vital fatty acids. The way Harden looked at her from across the dinner table, quietly mischievous, Kerri had the specific idea that she’d need to fuel up without getting weighed down.

  The Club Cache in Greenwich Village was packed with young men and women dancing with each other in tight groups: men with women, men with men, women with women—all grinding away in one tremendous, clothed orgy—a public bacchanalia that would have impressed the Roman emperor Caligula.

  Each woman was more gorgeous than the next: smooth thighs leading up to ultra-short dresses, slender hips perfectly swaying to the music. Breasts pushed up, blond and red and black hair tossed and tussled over pouting lips and pretty faces.

  But they could all hold their own, or one another’s, according to their preference. Some were doing just that—hands on their partner’s crotches as hips gyrated to the synthetic dance beat, bulges pushing up under slacks, fingers finding nipples under thin dress-shirts and tiny cocktail dresses.