by Lisa Ladew
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Notes from Lisa XOXOXO
The Billionaire’s Secret Life
by Lisa Ladew
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real organizations or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Copyright © 2017 Lisa Ladew All Rights Reserved
After a life-threatening incident, Daxton loses his very identity, but gains true love. A fair trade. But when his memory returns, will he lose everything he has gained?
Chapter 1
Kate moved swiftly down the forest path, the stillness of the morning making her dart a look around more than she normally did. She and her beast of a dog loved these woods, walked them several times a week, so why did this morning feel… different?
“Molly, NO! Please, Molly, don’t go in there!”
Kate hated to whine, but that’s exactly what she found herself doing as she watched Molly bound through the bushes to the right of the trail they were on, with complete disregard for her doggy grooming. Molly didn’t slow or even twitch at Kate’s imploring voice. So much for obedience training.
Kate made to follow, thinking the dog must have caught a scent she couldn’t deny if she was this determined to misbehave. Normally, Molly would respond to something as small as a tongue click, whipping her head back toward Kate to see what she wanted.
“Molly, come!” The Irish Wolfhound’s gray head appeared between two bushes that looked suspiciously like poison ivy for just a moment. Before Kate could finish telling herself that poison ivy wasn’t prevalent in this forest, Molly made a snuffling sound and turned her head to look behind her, then whirled and ran deeper into the foliage.
Kate snorted. “Is Timmy stuck in the well again?” she asked in a falsely high voice, then dropped the act and edged her way closer to her dog, the morning and the forest again feeling off in a way that gave her pause. But what could she do? Molly wasn’t listening, so into the underbrush Kate would have to go.
Kate stepped off the trail, careful to keep herself oriented as she did so. People had died in these woods by getting lost and falling over cliffs or into ground caves, and she wasn’t about to be a statistic, but, unfortunately, Molly had disappeared too quickly for Kate to be as careful as she wanted as she kept pressing further in.
“Ugh, Molly, it’s muddy. Gross.” She loved to hike, but hated to clean her boots and her one-hundred-and-fifty-pound, long-haired dog. Kate frowned at the mud sucking at her already, then stood on tiptoe to see over the bushes.
Molly barked, then whined once, a thin and desperate sound, before she moved even deeper into the ponderosa forest, looking back at Kate to see if she followed. “No. I’m not going with you. Come on,” she said in her sternest listen-to-me voice.
But Molly didn’t, leaving Kate no choice but to follow, and to worry about what made Molly so willing to disobey. A small animal? A large animal? Someone who really did need help? That thought made Kate speed up. She worked as a paramedic, and could handle any sort of medical emergency they found. Better a medical emergency than a bear, even a small one.
When Kate finally pushed through the scratchiest underbrush, she saw Molly twenty feet away at the edge of a shallow ravine, barking, but this time not at Kate.
Kate approached the edge of the ravine with caution and looked where Molly seemed to be barking. But all Kate saw was what appeared to be a discarded sleeping bag or pile of clothes.
Relief filtered into her brain. Molly had been following someone’s illegal trash dump. Nothing dangerous, nothing that needed saving. Until the “bag” moved, the shifting of the lines showing her that it was really a man. A big man, lying on his back, eyes closed, face pale like a movie vampire. “Oh shit,” she whispered, descending immediately.
She picked her way gingerly down the rocks, stopping every third or fourth rock to run her gaze over the man, trying to figure out how she was going to get him out of there.
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Kate confirmed that she had no service. She was on her own. If this man needed more help than she could offer, she’d have to hike as fast as possible back to her car and wait on emergency services to show up, then direct them back to this spot. Thank God for Molly in that case; she’d be invaluable in finding him again.
When she was within ten feet of the man, Kate was able to see his chest moving. She breathed a sigh of relief but also readied herself for the unexpected. There was always the chance this man was luring her in, pretending to be hurt, in order to take advantage of her.
“Hello? Are you… alive?” Way to go there, Nancy Drew. That’ll get you started on the right foot. Some paramedic you are. ‘Excuse me, sir, please tell me if you are alive or not, so that I can commence in saving you.’
The man didn’t respond. Kate didn’t hurry. She wasn’t getting him out of this forest within the next hour, whether she hurried or not, so no reason to go in half-cocked.
She slowed. Molly passed her, right to the man, and sniffed at their -her- discovery. A whine escaped Molly’s throat as she pushed her nose against the man’s arm. His chest continued to rise and fall at a slow, shallow pace. Kate stayed wary. Molly trusted him. Was that enough? Probably.
Raising up on her tiptoes, five feet away from the unconscious (or faking, she hadn’t decided yet, even though some part of her knew this would have to be the most elaborate fake in the world, if that’s what it was), Kate could see that the man’s jaw was barely shadowed with stubble. He hadn’t been out here long, then, and was usually clean-shaven.
His clothes were relatively clean, and his dark gray tennis shoes were in good condition. Kate guessed he must be a hiker who got careless and went over the edge, maybe hit his head. As she juggled the possibility in her mind, she spotted blood on his shoulder near a rip in his black leather jacket.
“Hello? Sir?” Kate made her way from her perch to the rocky ledge where Molly and the man lay. “You need help, don’t you,” she said under her breath. He wasn’t faking. She’d decided.
Kate squatted near the man’s hip and gingerly reached out to grasp his arm, which didn’t look broken. N
one of the rest of him looked broken, either. Just that blood on his shoulder and the stark paleness of his skin. She stared for a moment, noting the handsomeness of his features somewhere in the recesses of her mind. Square jaw. Wide face. Clean cut. Attractive, in a rough and tumble way.
All at once he came awake, eyes wide open and mouth gasping. Kate fell on her backside and scrambled to regain her position.
“Fuck!” The man’s voice was deep, rusty with disuse and probably lack of water. His face contorted in pain and he made to raise his hands to his head. A more urgent pain took over, though, as he grabbed instead for his left shoulder and cursed again.
“Try not to move.” Kate’s voice took on an authoritarian edge, as it did every time she was on the job. She found that men, in particular, needed her to take charge and give them clear orders in stressful situations. Being nice didn’t cut it on the ambulance.
“Did you fall?” Kate met his deep amber eyes and, for just a moment, she forgot to breathe. With his eyes open, his attractiveness was undeniable.
He gazed back at her in confusion, as if seeking answers to questions he hadn’t even articulated. Slowly he settled on the rock ledge and seemed to force his breathing to slow. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
As Kate began to assess the stranger with the compelling eyes, palpating his limbs to be sure they were sound, she talked to him, like she would to any patient. “What’s your name?”
She watched his face from the corner of her eye, looking to see if he’d tell the truth. No reason, really, except for some reason, 60% or more of the patients found in strange situations like this lied or hid something. She could almost always tell if they did. This one, though, he scrunched his forehead in thought, giving every appearance of being confused by the delay in his answer.
“I don’t know. I feel like it’s right there on the edge of my mind, but I just can’t grab it. Why can’t I remember my name?” His panicked eyes lifted to Kate’s, tweaking her sympathy, as well as her suspicions. But more than answers, she needed him calm. She smiled at him and lifted her hands to his scalp.
“Don’t worry about it right now. It’ll come back to you. I bet you hit your head on the way down. That can lead to temporary memory problems.” As her fingers edged around to his occipital bone, the hair there felt matted and stiff with what was probably dried blood. She lamented her lack of gloves for just a moment, then pressed on, feeling the edges of a minor laceration and the swelling of an injury. Her patient winced.
“Sorry. My name is Kate and this is my dog, Molly. She found you. Made me come this way.”
The stranger lifted his fingers, getting Molly’s attention, then rubbed her muzzle with his knuckles when she sniffed at his hand. “Thanks, Molly. I owe you one.”
Kate melted just a little, love me, love my dog, and all that, then straightened her spine and got back to business. “You’ve got quite a goose egg on the back of your head. How does your neck feel?”
She should be strapping him to a board and hauling him out immobilized, but unless she found a forest fire station, that wasn’t going to happen. He would have to walk out… if he could, and she would have to pray that he didn’t have a hidden neck injury. He was definitely beaten-up and bruised. Even his fingertips were scraped raw, the wounds crusty with dirt, but nothing looked broken. “Okay, let’s see that shoulder.”
Her first surprise was that the rip in the leather wasn’t jagged, but a clean, round hole. He would have had to be impaled on a sharp branch for that to happen, and, if that was the case, it was likely the branch would still be in the wound. Suspicion grew in her mind, making her look around at the forest, trying to hear something suspicious under the normal sounds of the wind whispering in branches and birds calling to each other.
He shrugged out of the jacket slowly, pain harsh on his face, his mouth set in a grim gray line, his face still pale as death.
Kate pulled his solid blue shirt open and eyed the also-round hole in his shoulder, then chanced another look around. Too bad the birds still chirped. It would have been a perfect time to say, It’s quiet. A little too quiet, if you know what I mean. But nature wanted to be a bitch like that. She grinned, knowing it was a good thing that the birds were still singing and no one was sneaking up on them to put more bullet holes in this guy.
She checked his back, guessing what she would find there, and she was right. No exit hole. The bullet was lodged inside. Small caliber for sure, lucky for him.
She kept her smile in place as she met his eyes. “Do you mind if I check your pockets for some identification?”
He frowned. “Good idea. Not knowing my name is really bugging the shit out of me.”
She slipped her fingers to his back pants pocket, determinedly ignoring how firm his body felt under her hands. Finding nothing, she moved to the other side, this time pulling out a money clip fat with twenties, fifties, and hundreds visible. Kate guessed there was easily a thousand dollars there. Maybe more.
The clip itself was silver-colored, with an engraved “D” on one side. Kate handed it to the stranger, noting his perplexed expression. “Ring any bells?”
“I was on my way to buy a car?” He turned the clip over in his working hand, the one immobilized by the bullet hole in his shoulder lying limp in his lap, his face showing that even the small movements hurt him.
He stared at it for a long time, as if it could answer his questions, then spoke without looking up at her. “You think the ‘D’ stands for my first name or my last?”
The vulnerability in his expression tugged at Kate’s heart. She found herself having to swallow hard before she could answer. “If I bought something like that for one of my brothers, I’d put their first initial on it. Less confusion that way.”
“Good point.” The stranger lifted his eyes to the sky and blinked fast, as if trying to maintain his composure. “What are some names that start with ‘D’? For some reason, I can’t think of any.”
“Darius, Dexter, Dick - although I guess in that case it’d be ‘R’ for Richard - Daniel, Dan for short, David, Dustin…” Her voice trailed off as she ran out of names to suggest.
Her identity-less patient drew a shaky breath. “I guess I was hoping you’d say one and it would all come rushing back. No such luck. But I liked Dan.”
Kate grinned. “I’ve never named a person before.”
The stranger blinked briskly, frustration clear on his face, making Kate feel bad for joking. She decided to take his mind off his current worry by presenting another.
“Ready for it to get weirder?” She touched his arm and braced for his reaction. He seemed normal. Now to see what he did when she revealed the harsh truth to him.
“You’ve been shot.”
Chapter 2
Talon parked his motorcycle and stalked into the courthouse, his stomach tied in nervous knots. He’d been anticipating this day for years, and almost couldn’t believe it was finally here.
The nervous looks people shot him as he passed by made him grin, but not on the outside. His dark glare, the Mad Marauders cut he wore, the heavy clomp of his boots on the marble floors, not one of them conveyed that today was the happiest day of his life.
He turned the corner and immediately locked eyes with the reason he was there: his fiancée, Crystal. She was practically glowing, her cheeks rounded in the smile only he could bring to her face. Her dark hair curved in glossy barrel curls that called attention to her flawless skin.
His eyes drifted down her body, taking in the light blue of her dress. The scoop neck framed her breasts perfectly, while the nipped waist made her look impossibly delicate. Talon knew different. His Crystal was tough as nails, and it thrilled him to have knowledge of this woman that no other man ever would. He was so overcome by his love, it took him a minute to focus on anything else.
When he did, he realized that his beautiful bride was surrounded by almost everyone who mattered in their lives. His brothers, Eric and Greg, stood to the side with Crystal�
�s brother Jaze, grins splitting each of their faces wide. Jaze looked good, almost fully recovered from his ordeal. Happy. Their good buddy, Rams, was there, looking proud to be invited in spite of his usual social awkwardness.
To the other side of the hallway stood the newest members of his makeshift family, his half-brothers. Knox Rosesson had his arm around Mica, who was looking up in adoration at the smile on her fiancé’s face. Next to them, Bronx rested his back against the wall as Eme, his own fiancée, leaned her back on him and held his arms crossed at her chest.
“You didn’t really think you were going to get married in secret, did you? In this family?” Knox’s voice held none of its usual edge as he stepped forward and held out his hand to shake, pulling Talon into a one-armed hug. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world, brother.”
Talon felt a strange ache in his chest, like he couldn’t draw a deep enough breath. He hugged Knox and slapped him on the back. “Don’t know what I was thinking. I’m glad you’re here, man. How’d you know?”
“Oh, that’d be my fault, babe.” As Talon drew back from his brother, he felt Crystal’s soft, small hand slide into his. A distinct warmth travelled up his arm at the touch of the woman who was soon going to be his forever, and he turned to look into her smiling eyes.
“Even though we decided to do the courthouse thing, I still wanted to buy a special dress. And who better to help than our resident fashionista?” At that, Crystal threw a mock glare at the woman standing next to Knox.
Mica blushed even as she lifted her chin and shot back a smile. “All I did was ask what the occasion was. It’s a perfectly reasonable question. You were the one who gave it away with that twinkle in your eye.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I’m so glad they’re here. It feels more like a real wedding this way.” Crystal reached up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against Talon’s. “Aren’t you glad?”
He grabbed her by the back of the head and held her still for a more intimate kiss. The love swelling his heart was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. “Damn straight I am, Gidge. Let’s do this thing.”
