Personal Disaster (Billionaire Secrets Book 3)

by Ainsley Booth

I didn’t get that guy’s name, and I suddenly, blindingly, realize it doesn’t matter.

  Brianne. Someone on the inside, fired up, but in real danger of losing her job.

  Someone who might not know enough about technology to not leave a few breadcrumbs for a reporter.

  A young person who a good guy might feel protective of.

  I ask a few more questions, take a few more pictures, but my brain is now officially occupied with a different story all together.

  When Marcus comes to pick me up, I wait until we’re back at the hotel to ask him the opening question I’ve decided on. I’m not going to beat around the bush. After what we’ve shared, that wouldn’t be fair.

  He comes out around to my side of his truck to help me out, but I hop down on my own and pace away from him. When I turn back, he’s giving me a wary look. Good. He should have some warning that this is coming. “Do you have one of Toby Hunt’s masking devices?”

  “No,” he says carefully.

  “Did you?” My pulse hammers in my neck. “At one point? And maybe you gave it to someone else? Someone who couldn’t carry two cell phones on her without being too obvious?”

  His face tightens up. “What are you talking about?”

  “Someone named Brianne?”

  “How the hell—”

  “She’s dating that climber. Kaden. Good kid. But he doesn’t know what his girlfriend is up to.”

  “And neither do you. Neither do I, frankly.” But his tone changed on the last point. Like he only didn’t know the whole picture because maybe he was deliberately keeping himself in the dark—now.

  “I bet if I go through the followers for Alt Nat Park Service, I’ll find a relatively anonymous account in the early follows. Someone who doesn’t participate on Twitter a lot, someone who sits back and watches what’s being said—particularly about his own corner of the country.”

  “Don’t write that.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Write about anything else.”

  “That’s not how this works. I’m not going to kill a story that is worth writing.”

  He gives me a thunderous look of disapproval, and I realize too late, he’s not talking about himself. “She’ll be fired.”

  I press my lips together and think. I could change the details. Mask her identity. Maybe…

  “For God’s sake, Poppy, put yourself in her shoes. Insert yourself into this situation for one God damned minute and stop pretending it’s just another fucking story. You have to take self-defense courses! This is not normal. This is fucked up. And she doesn’t deserve to be punished for, as you said, shining a spotlight on the reality of decisions made a world away from us.”

  He’s right. I know it. But there was something else in his diatribe… “Insert myself.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “Right…” I stare off into the distance.

  “Poppy?”

  “Hang on a second.” I pace back and forth, then ball my hands into fists. Gah, it’s so close. But how do I do it without…

  I turn and I look at him. Oh, he’s not going to like this.

  “I could do that. I could insert myself into the story. I can change it into a process piece about me. But it would be you, too. You are, after all, quite appealing.”

  “Quite appealing.” He snorts. “I’m going to put that on my resume.”

  He’s joking, but it hurts my chest to think that he might actually need to look for a new job because of me. “I don’t want to put you in any kind of danger, though.”

  He gives me a dark look. Is that better than the thunderous look from before? I feel like it might be, but my brain is spinning. The world is upside down, because I have a story, I have a lead to follow, and I don’t want to.

  If Marcus says no, I’ll find another way. If he—

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “I trust you. Write me into your story. Call me cute. Whatever you gotta do.”

  “You just met me. How can you trust me?”

  He moves closer and cups my face in his hands. “Because of that look on your face right now. You don’t want to hurt anyone. I know you don’t. And this won’t hurt me. It’s a good idea.” He brushes a kiss across my mouth. “I gotta get back to work. Write like the wind, Reporter Girl.”

  “Okay, Ranger Boy.” I swallow around the lump in my throat. “See you later?”

  “Come find me in a couple of hours.” He gives me a lopsided grin. “I’ll share my second lunch with you.”

  Lunch. How are we only at the middle of the day?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MARCUS

  I’M FOLLOWING up on a report of a bear cub trapped in a dumpster when I get an email from Poppy.

  From: Poppy Lisowski

  To: Marcus Dane

  Okay, here’s my article. I guess I’m sending it to you for comment? This is weird. Also, I’m past the point of hangry, so I’m bringing along more food for our lunch.

  There’s an attachment, but I have a bear cup to reunite with his mother before said mother loses her shit, so I just fire back a quick reply.

  From: Marcus Dane

  To: Poppy Lisowski

  I didn’t realize you had my email address. But I look forward to reading the article. Pick up cookies at the bakery.

  I leave my phone in the truck and carefully approach the dumpster. Sure enough, there’s a small bear inside. “Ah, bud, what have you gotten yourself into?”

  I glance around for mama bear, but she’s not making herself known just yet. What I need is something long and sturdy to stick into the dumpster to give the adventurous cub a ramp out of his prison. I have a shovel in the back of my truck, and some rescue gear, but none of it is quite long enough, because the big dumpster was recently emptied.

  Heading to the edge of the woods, I’m on high alert. If I was mama bear, this is where I’d be. Watching and ready to take out any threat to my baby.

  I’m no threat, I projected. Just a friendly ranger, being a good neighbour. I make lots of normal noise as I gather up some downed branches, and keep it up until I get back to the dumpster.

  The cub scurries to the far side of the bin as I angle the first branch in. It falls in, not quite tall enough, but the next one is, and so is the third.

  I back all the way up to my truck and climb in.

  The little fella had a ramp. Now he just had to figure out how to use it.

  I read Poppy’s article while I waited. By the time I’m nearly to the end of the surprisingly raw, emotional piece about how journalism is shifting beneath her feet, a little black head appears at the mouth of the dumpster. He scrambles up onto the lid, then pulls himself onto the out building before following the slanted roof off in the other direction.

  As he disappears, I turn back to Poppy’s last two paragraphs.

  I flew to Colorado in search of answers. It turned out, I didn’t understand the questions. As journalists, we’re used to piecing together narratives—for our own stories, and as a community. We lay our articles side-by-side and through that collective lens, we see the bigger picture. The last twenty-four months have cracked that lens. I had to climb a mountain to realize my own focus was zoomed in too tight on entertaining details. I was missing the big picture. I was missing life.

  There is a disconnect right now in America. I don’t know what questions to ask. But for the next while, I’m going to do more listening than talking (or writing) while I figure it out.

  Damn.

  I put my truck in drive and head back to my office.

  She’s sitting on the porch, and she’s wearing a dress.

  “I thought you were going to write about us,” I ask as I hop out of the truck.

  “We’ve only known each other for twenty-four hours. It occurred to me that it was a bit early to know what that us might look like, too. More hubris from the journalist.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “Maybe.�
� She stands up and holds up a familiar brown bag. “I brought you cookies.”

  “We already have a tradition,” I say as I catch her wrist, tugging her and the cookies hard against my chest. “It was a good article.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nod, then I kiss her. Need roars to life inside me in a way I’ve never experienced before. Sure, I want her. I’ve wanted her since the first swish of her ponytail yesterday in this very spot. But now I feel something else—a possessive urge to claim her as mine.

  It’s ridiculous. I’m a lone wolf, always have been. But always will be no longer sounds like the right thing to tag on there at the end.

  I like this feeling. I like the way she pushes back against my kiss, demanding more. I like the taste of her, the soft sweetness she gives me when I earn it.

  “Today was a good day, then?” I run my nose along her cheek as I breathe in the scent of her skin.

  “I’ve salvaged the trip. Professionally, I mean.”

  “And personally?”

  She twists her head and captures my mouth with hers. I get it. I don’t want to answer that question, either. Twenty-four hours is hardly enough time to fall in love—especially when a good number of those hours are spent yelling at each other.

  “It was more than I could have hoped,” she whispers.

  That’s a damn good answer. I tighten my arms around her and lift. She shrieks and clutches her cookies tight, and I do my damnedest not to notice how her bare legs wrap around my waist.

  I carry her inside and set her on my desk, next to my lunch bag.

  She crosses her legs and opens the bag of cookies. Her eyes sparkle as she looks up at me. “Hungry?”

  “First we eat real food. Then dessert.”

  She nods solemnly. “Right. Save the sweetness for later.”

  My cock wants the sweetness right now, and he did not miss the double entendre.

  “Soon,” I say with a growl, and she grabs the front of my khaki uniform, fisting the fabric as she tugs me in.

  “Promise?”

  I brace my hands on either side of her. “I want to do a lot of things to you on this desk.”

  “Any of them inappropriate?”

  “All of them.”

  “I like the sound of that,” she whispers, tugging me the last inch so our foreheads bump together. She smiles, her eyes soft. Her breath is warm and sweet against my mouth. “Want to know my secret confession from yesterday?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I was hoping you were a pervert of the highest order.”

  “You’re in luck.” I nip at her lower lip, dragging my teeth over her delicate flesh. “Want to know my confession?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Oh, the way she says please. It does wrong, wrong, dirty things to my insides. “I wanted to chase you down. Catch you by the waist and tumble through the grass, until you were straddling me. I wanted you to peel your skirt up and show me what you were wearing underneath.”

  “That’s terrible,” she breathes, her eyes big and bright. “I love it.”

  “We can do that just as soon as we eat. You’ve had a long morning.”

  “Okay.” She pushes herself off the desk and into my arms.

  Goodness like this is what makes people think that things happen for a reason. They don’t. That’s a lie. Things just happen, randomly and chaotically.

  Poppy might think she came here because she had a crush, but that wasn’t me. She didn’t know me yet. She doesn’t know me now.

  That doesn’t stop me from hugging her, though.

  Then I clear my throat and she brushes past me to sit in the chair.

  I move around my desk, and here we are again. Yesterday, we were adversaries. Today, we share a mutual attraction. That card has been laid on the table.

  I pull out the sandwiches and lay them out just so.

  Buying time now.

  Being a bit of a coward, really.

  “It wouldn’t be a selfless act,” I finally say. I lean back in my chair as Poppy takes a sandwich. “Hypothetically. If I passed on technology to someone who might use it to mask their identity. I wouldn’t do that to be a hero.”

  She lifts one shoulder. “I don’t think there are any true heroes now.”

  How I wish she were wrong. “There are good people putting up a solid fight. It doesn’t do anyone any favors to give them superhero capes for doing that, though.”

  “You’re a hard man to figure out, you know that?”

  “Normally I would take that as a compliment.”

  That gets a smile, which I’ll take. She take a bite of her sandwich and points to mine, which remain untouched. I get the message. Eat.

  Eat, and then we can play.

  Her story is done. It wasn’t about me. I’m just a guy she met while out here.

  No, you’re the guy who she’s been thinking about for weeks, if not longer.

  “Poppy…”

  She puts down her sandwich and gives me a half-smile. “Is this where you warn me that we can only be a one-off fling?”

  My stomach drops. That wasn’t exactly where I was going, but maybe it should be.

  “Because I’m fine with that. Crush aside, I’m in a weird place right now. I just emailed in an op-ed proposal when I’ve never written one of those before, and in it I’m semi-sort-of-maybe saying that I’m stepping aside from journalism for a while. Which is a bold and crazy thing for someone who lives very much month-to-month in a stupidly expensive city to say. So right now is not a great time for me to entertain the notion of a long-distance flirtation, let alone any kind of serious relationship. But I also have some rules about sex and jerks—the two don’t work well together for me. So I’m okay with a fling, but it’s gotta be honest.”

  Her voice is tight by the time she finishes saying all of that, and I want to vault over the desk and promise her it won’t be like that at all.

  Except it probably will.

  “I can fly to you,” I say.

  “What?”

  “For our next date. I’ll come to you.”

  “Aren’t you working seventy hour weeks because there aren’t enough staff hired on for the summer?”

  There is that. I rock my jaw side to side. “Okay, how about this. One of my best friends just got engaged. They’re planning a wedding for Thanksgiving, in New York City. Would you like to be my date?”

  “You think our second date should be at a wedding four months from now?”

  “I wouldn’t call it our second date. Maybe fourth or fifth, depending when you fly back, and how many meals we can share between now and then.”

  “A lot could happen in four months.”

  Yeah. “Like getting to know each other. Sharing frustrations about how twisted and broken the world is right now.”

  “I want to do more than be frustrated.”

  I know. I read her piece. “And that’s why you probably won’t take a very long break. But I want you to be careful.”

  She picks up her sandwich again. She chews slowly, her too-clever gaze watching my face. “Hypothetically,” she says slowly when she’s finished. “Would someone like you be in a position to know something about the dangers of in-depth reporting?”

  “Yes.” I don’t hesitate to answer. I want more than one more afternoon. That’s going to require more cards being laid on the table.

  “Off the record.”

  I nod and pick up my phone. I scroll through the most recent updates, and read her a few highlights. I don’t look at her as I do it. “Right now there’s a nineteen-year-old white supremacist doing background research on every staffer at every major news network that he can find. He’s putting them on lists.” Rage builds inside me as I read, and I tamp it down. “There’s a lot of positive chatter about a beer ad. They’re reading a lot of anti-immigration bullshit into it that just doesn’t exist. And—” I stop, cutting myself off. She doesn’t need to know that there are a group of people joking about killing homele
ss people.

  Jesus Fucking Christ, I hope to God they are joking.

  I’m not sure, though. And that’s why I keep an eye on them. I’m not alone, either.

  Poppy stands and moves around the desk. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Marcus…”

  I pull her into my lap. “You were right. I did figure out who the Alt Park Service account was, and I gave them some pointers for staying under the radar. But that’s not the real story. That’s a distraction.”

  She softens, going from perched on my lap to molded against my body in a single, frustrated exhale. “But is writing about the dark underbelly of the internet feeding into that distraction model, too? Is it feeding the trolls? I feel like we need some light to balance the darkness. Don’t we?”

  If there was an answer to that question, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “I have to do something.” Firm. Resolved. Spirited.

  I smile into her hair. “You will.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Good.”

  She taps my chest with her fingertips and makes a thinking sound. “But speaking of not careful…you spend your free time monitoring nihilists and racists in online forums?”

  “Everyone needs a hobby.”

  “I thought yours was rock climbing.”

  “I do that, too.”

  “Tell me about it. Off the—”

  I cover her mouth with mine. I know it’s off the record. I kiss her instead, because that’s so much better than the darkness out there. I kiss her because I trust her, because I don’t need her assurances.

  I just need her, for the short time we have left.

  I’ve always taken a pretty pragmatic view of the risks of the world. So why can’t I do that when it comes to Poppy?

  CHAPTER NINE

  POPPY

  THERE’S something serious in the way Marcus is holding me. Kissing me.

  Serious and a little desperate.

  We could get lost in that need, and for a few seconds, I do. I let his kisses consume me, a rolling riptide of sensation.

  But we’re not going to get to do this again for…four months. And that’s if everything goes well. If we continue to like each other, if we keep in touch, if the world doesn’t implode…