The Billionaire's Dare (Book 4 - Billionaire Bodyguard Series)

by Kristi Avalon

  “Yeah, it does.” He stretched, scratched his grumbling tummy and reached for the laminated menus propped between the ketchup and mustard bottles.

  The waitress dropped off paper placemats and neatly rolled silverware. “What can I get you folks to drink?”

  “Coffee,” Adam said.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Cream. I’ve got enough sugar right here.” He draped his arm around Marissa and grinned like the sun rose and set on her.

  Was it wrong to swoon a little? “Orange juice for me, thanks.”

  “Aww, bless your hearts. Need more time with the food order?”

  Adam nodded. “We’re from out of town. Not familiar with the diner’s menu.”

  “Gorgeous couple like you, it’s no surprise. Y’all from Hollywood?”

  “Las Vegas,” he said.

  “Too much glamour for these parts. I’ll come by in another minute, give you time to accustom yourselves to our greasy spoon style.”

  “Greasy spoon beats a silver spoon any day.”

  “That’s for sure. Too bad you didn’t cross my path twenty years ago. I’d have left this sorry town and followed you to Vegas in a heartbeat.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. My heart’s taken.”

  “Ah, young love. Enjoy it, you two. Life won’t wait for you to make up your mind, before you figure out you lost the best thing you ever had.”

  “That’s kind of sad,” Adam mused.

  “It’s true,” Marissa replied and looked at the menu that hadn’t changed in ten years or more. “Small-town diner wisdom at its finest.”

  “I’ll tell you what else is fine.” He nuzzled her neck with his scratchy stubble and nipped her playfully.

  “Adam, stop.” She shoved him away and giggled, realizing such a carefree, pleasant sound hadn’t come from her lips in ages. So nice… Don’t get used it, she warned herself, unable to stop affectionate warmth from seeping into her chest.

  Although, since this was all an act, why shouldn’t she enjoy it? Just a little?

  “What do you recommend,” he asked her.

  “They have a stack of pancakes with marmalade and a side of sausage links you’ll die for.”

  “Good.” He dropped his menu to the table. “Done.”

  “I’m pretty boring. I stick with my usual two eggs, over medium, with a side of hash browns and bacon.”

  “Pretty, yes,” he agreed, his eyes sparkling down at her. “Boring? Hell, no.”

  She elbowed him in the side. “You’re laying it on thick, pal.”

  His eyelids lowered halfway. “You think I don’t mean it?”

  “I think it doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “You’re wrong,” he murmured.

  “Doubt it.”

  “I’m faking this as much as you faked your orgasms last night.”

  Her nostrils flared at his brazen statement. What had gotten into him? “Well, I wish you wouldn’t act like this with me.”

  “Why not?”

  Wait, her answer might give away her real feelings. And he’d run for the hills. She wanted to enjoy this side of him as long as it lasted. “No one will believe I’m your girlfriend, not for any length of time. Couples lose this fun, gooey stuff by month three.”

  “Huh.” He scratched his chin. Then he shrugged. “I don’t care what anyone thinks.” He tickled her and she collapsed against him in a fit of laughter.

  “You two don’t need a table, you need a room,” the waitress said with a patient smile on her hot-pink lips.

  “Already got it covered,” Adam said, grinning and wagging his eyebrows at Marissa.

  She swatted his arm. “You are impossible. Just order already.”

  They both placed their orders. Adam added, “Hey, can we get some to-go boxes, too?”

  “In case of emergency.” The waitress shook her head but maintained her pleasant smile. “You two make a woman wish she was young again.”

  “True love knows no age,” Marissa assured her, though she didn’t exactly have the experience in love to back up her claim.

  She hadn’t seen many successful relationships, mostly because she hadn’t cultivated friendships that lasted long enough to see how people’s lives developed during courtship, love and marriage. Her one close friend in Denver, Lindsey Rowan, was the best example she knew, since Lindsey and Slone’s love seemed destined to stand the test of time.

  “My girl’s smart. Master’s degree and all. She knows her stuff,” Adam said proudly and waved to the waitress as she turned and attached their order to the wheel at the kitchen counter. Then he draped his arm along Marissa’s seat back.

  “You know I don’t even think about the difference in our education,” Marissa told him, wanting to make that point clear.

  “That’s cool. I think it’s great you’ve done so well.” He slid a fingertip along the ruffled, low-cut collar of her sleeveless top and traced her bra strap. He whispered in her ear, “Good thing I have a different kind of education to keep you interested.”

  A little shiver chased down her spine. She grinned at him. “Oh, yes, you do.”

  Their glances caught and held, and she swore she saw the unusual glimmer again. “Maybe later, before we leave the motel, you’d be up for another lesson?”

  Really? The notion made her giddy. Yes, please. But she played it cool. “I don’t see how you can top last night.”

  He arched a wicked eyebrow. “That sounds like a challenge, sugar. I can teach you all kinds of things you’ve never experienced. If you can handle it.”

  “I’m a quick study.”

  “Yes, you are.” His gaze fell to her lips. “I like that about you.”

  “You can be very…enlightening.”

  He winked. “Just wait.”

  The promise in his eyes foretold of another tempting experience awaiting her. So he didn’t want to talk about their sexual encounters. She could live with that for now. Show versus tell definitely had its advantages. Especially in the bedroom with Adam.

  The bells chimed on the door. Adam looked up and his smile broadened. “Red Eye. Good to see you again, man.”

  They shook hands. The strange guy wearing the duster jacket, cowboy boots and feathered hat—in this insane heat?—seemed pleased to see Adam, too.

  “I want to introduce you to my girl. Marissa, this is Red Eye. We met at Tate’s bar last night.”

  Uh-oh. He might be strange, but he wasn’t a stranger. The moment he took her hand and bowed over it to kiss her knuckles, she remembered. Jack Stern, or Red Eye, had spent countless nights sobering up over stale coffee at Tate’s Bar after they’d closed. He was a personal friend of her grandfather’s, if a bit odd and eccentric.

  Memories flooded her. All those nights, all those gallons of coffee, all the times Grandpa had driven him home…

  With her free hand, she squeezed Adam’s leg so hard he slammed his knee against the underside of the table and cursed under his breath. “Nice to meet you,” she murmured, retrieving her hand and lowering her hat over her eyes.

  “Found yourself a mighty pretty lady, my friend.”

  “Thanks. My better half.” Adam beamed, but he tapped her thigh twice, and she discreetly nodded. “You know, we’re just grabbing some grub to go.”

  “I figured.”

  She peered at Jack, er, Red Eye from beneath the pink airbrushed brim, watching his expression turn grave.

  “Signs are up all over town advertising Tate’s estate sale. It’s bringing out the treasure hunters in droves. And that’s not all it’s attracting.”

  Adam frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It ain’t. Butcher and his gang are circling the block like vultures. Just might drive some people back into their houses to lock their doors and close the shades.”

  Marissa covered a gasp with her hand. Adam caressed her shoulder. “What are they doing at the house? I figured the prize was the bar.”

  Red Eye shrugged. “No telling what th
ose devils are up to. I’d hate to find out, but it’s also got me curious.”

  “Me, too,” Adam muttered.

  Their plates arrived, and Marissa immediately shoveled her food into a to-go box, her appetite gone. If there were already people swarming the sale, she couldn’t waste a second. Even if it meant putting herself in frightening proximity to Butcher again. Recalling the encounter at the cemetery still made her shudder.

  Adam tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table and they left the diner with him telling Red Eye they’d meet up at the bar later to figure out what was going on with the gang, and why the members expressed so much interest in the house.

  “This seems personal for you,” she remarked as they headed toward her childhood home.

  “I don’t know, it’s weird,” Adam admitted, rubbing his forehead. “Last night when I told folks at the bar I was a relative of Tate’s, they made me feel like one of their own. Almost like they’re looking to me to make things right in the face of Butcher’s sketchy comeback. These are good, decent people. They don’t deserve to be rode roughshod over by biker assholes.”

  She smiled faintly, a slight wobble in her chin. “They find their way into your heart, don’t they? Now you can understand why it was so hard to leave this place.”

  He nodded and glanced over at her. He reached out and wrapped his fingers around hers. Not the lover’s handhold he displayed earlier, but the reassurance of a close friend. Were they back to friends when they were in private? She was confused about what to make of Adam’s pendulum swings. Right now she didn’t care, as long as he pushed the pedal to the floor and drove as fast as possible to Grandpa’s house.

  Red Eye’s account proved true—in both cases. The first was the crowds.

  Parked cars lined the left side of the street around the whole block. Groups of folks gathered and milled around in the hot sun, waiting for the doors to open, to let the clawing and grasping begin.

  No doubt people assumed Grandpa Tate stocked all kinds of valuables and collectibles, since he’d been a rare commodity, one of the few business owners in town who’d survived the dismal economy. They didn’t realize he’d invested most of his capital back into the bar. Last she knew he’d taken out a second mortgage on their home, a year before she’d left. He owned several prized collections: over a dozen Rolling Stones records, old tools with a few dating back to the Civil War, miniature painted soldiers, a couple train sets in the basement. But they had special meaning to him. Except for the tools, maybe the records, she suspected the gathering might be disappointed by the lack of “treasure.”

  Red Eye’s second description, also correct, sent a chill of dread creeping over her. Butcher and his crew made noisy passes by the house. People jumped when an aftermarket pimped-out pipe blew past them. The gang members messed with the housewives and retirees on purpose, their faces gloating with sneers each time they startled a newcomer. They flicked lit cigarette stubs at sidewalk loiterers. They glared at children who hid behind their mothers. What a bunch of schoolyard bullies.

  Disgusted, Marissa exhaled. “This is how it used to be when Ames Gray became the leader. He took every opportunity to menace folks in town.”

  “The apple didn’t fall far,” Adam muttered, sharing her disgust. “There’s no excuse for the crap their pulling.”

  “I hope they didn’t come back to buy the bar.” The worst irony imaginable. They’d probably burn it down afterward out of spite.

  “Do you know about the auctions?” Adam asked carefully.

  “There’s an auction? For the bar?”

  “And the house.”

  “My house. Our home?” She swallowed back a surge of bitterness. “They can’t do that,” she insisted. “Can they?”

  “I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair. “A Google search can tell us how they decide those things. Right now we need to find a way into the house past all these cars and people, before the sale starts.”

  “I know a way.” She guided him three blocks down. Two left turns later they parked in an alley behind the back of the property. “There’s an opening in the fence we can cut through.”

  Adam inspected the sharp work of wire cutters as they approached the tall gap, the chain-link pulled back by a strong set of hands and frozen in a permanent curl. “Something tells me you snuck through here once or twice.”

  She grinned and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Did you create the escape hatch.”

  “No.” She frowned. “It’s been like that for years.”

  “Huh…”

  “What?”

  “Could be nothing. Let’s head to the house. And for the record, if anybody asks, I was the one who knew about the gap in the fence. Makes me seem legit as a relation of Tate’s.”

  “You just like taking credit for clever accomplishments.”

  He gave her a playful swat on her ass. “That, too.”

  Again he laced his fingers through hers and they crossed the backyard acreage to the patio sliding doors. Water beaded on the glass, revealing the sharp contrast in temperature between the outside and the air-conditioned interior. He tugged the handle. The sliding door scraped open on a squeaky track.

  The smells of her childhood rushed to greet her. Overripe bananas he’d forgotten to refrigerate. Old Spice cologne. Quarters touched by thousands of hands rolled in wrappers awaiting deposit. Lemon Lysol bathroom spray. Sweet pipe smoke still steeped in the wallpaper long after he’d quit.

  “Home,” she whispered.

  Suddenly a well-dressed woman draped in pearls raced to them. “You can’t be in here yet,” she snapped. She stared down her bony nose at them, reading glasses perched at the tip. “Return outside and wait your turn like the rest.”

  “I have more right to be here than anyone,” he stated. “Even you.”

  While Adam stood his ground, the woman matched his unwavering stance. She pursed her mauve lips. The chains attached to her glasses swayed as she shook her head. “I think not.”

  “Are you related to Bill Tate?” When she frowned, he retorted, “Didn’t think so. You need to move.”

  “And you are…?”

  “Adam Tate—I’m here to take family keepsakes. Don’t worry, nothing of value you’ll lose commission on,” he said, ending on a faint snarl. “I want first dibs before people buy his Vietnam War medals for a buck and sell them on eBay for ten to a schmuck who wants to pretend he served his country.”

  “Commission?” Confused, Marissa glanced between them.

  Noting her expression, he explained. “She’s the appraiser for the estate sale, judging by her dress code. For her appraisal services, she gets a ten-percent kickback from anything sold.”

  “Ten-percent of the total valuation,” she corrected, speaking through her sour lemon lips. “And I prefer to call it my fee.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  She pointed a finger at his sidekick. “If you’re related to Mr. Tate, what’s she doing here?”

  “This is my girlfriend, Marissa. She’s here for moral support. We’re in town from Vegas, and we didn’t come all this way for nothing.”

  A man wearing a dapper suit popped his head into the doorway of the kitchen, when led to the family room where they were at an impasse. His shrewd glance touched on each of them, lingering on Marissa. “Everything all right in here?”

  The woman spun on her heel. “This man claims he’s a relative of Mr. Tate. From Las Vegas, the con artist capital.”

  “A relative?” Interest sparked in the man’s dark eyes. “Then by all means.” He swept his arm in tacit welcome. “Let the man in.”

  “But, Mr. Greenburg—”

  “June, we’re not running a showcase of the Crown Jewels. These people don’t need to prove their royal legacy. They lost a family member. We’re not going to ban them from Mr. Tate’s things.”

  “They could’ve informed us beforehand,” she said with a high-pitched humph, before turning to a row of tables requiri
ng her fastidious arranging.

  All of Grandpa’s possessions on the auction block. A bleak sensation penetrated Marissa’s soul for a moment, until the pleasant man waved them up to the living room.

  “Please, have a seat.” He murmured low, “Forgive June. She’s a stickler for rules and takes her job very seriously.”

  “Too seriously,” Adam said, unimpressed by the man’s explanation. “Who does she think she is?”

  “She’s nervous about the crowds, worried something will get pocketed when no one’s looking. Go on, have a look around. Take what has meaning to you.”

  “Thanks.” Adam shook his hand. “I appreciate your understanding. We’ve had a rough couple of days.”

  The man nodded with deference. “No doubt.”

  Then Adam steered Marissa upstairs toward the bedrooms. “He seemed nice,” she said.

  “He’s the lawyer,” Adam revealed in hushed tones.

  “Oh.” She hunched behind her former bedroom door with Adam. “You didn’t get to tell me about him.”

  “There wasn’t time. Look.” He blew out a breath. “I don’t know what his deal is. He popped into the conversation downstairs the second he heard your name.”

  “Okay…” She waited for an explanation.

  “Not okay. Last night when I was talking with Bones he mentioned a lawyer handling the estate sale and auctions. Do you know anything about your grandfather hiring a lawyer to draw up a will or something?”

  She shrugged miserably. “How would I know that, Adam? He might as well have been dead to me for the past ten years.” Tears threatened. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Not a big deal,” he said, tone softening. “Take a deep breath. One more. That’s my girl.” He cupped her shoulders. “You need to stay strong through this. The plan has changed. I’m going to pump the lawyer for information. You go around and find the things you came for. But bring them into the living room and run them by me, as if I gave you a list. Thank you can handle that?”

  “God, Adam, you’re so good at this. What would I have done without you here?”

  “You can thank me later.” He gave her a sexy wink. “I’ll see you back downstairs, okay? You good?”

  She nodded and tried to reassure him and herself with a smile of determination. “Good.”