Billionaire Biker (Billionaires - #23)

by Claire Adams

  Mom sucked in a deep breath and then slowly let it out. She nodded over at the paperwork. “Medical history. I think I’ve got most of it, but you might want to look it over.”

  “Thank you again for being here.”

  “There’s—something else,” she said, her expression turning grim.

  “What?” I said. Every time I thought my heart might begin to calm, some new reason sent it racing like I was being chased by a tiger.

  “They need to know how you’re going to pay for the operation.”

  Bile rose in my throat as I walked over to the chair. “I’m guessing emergency surgery isn’t cheap.”

  Mom shook her head. “No, it isn’t. The good news is that because you don’t have insurance, you’ll get a discount, and I was able to get them to code some of the billing in some ways to keep the price down, but you’re still going to owe over thirty thousand dollars.”

  I stared at her for a long while processing what she was saying. I’d worried in the past about taking Jack to urgent care or something and ending up with a high bill, but I’d never imagined a situation like this. I’d tried to look into getting some sort of insurance help from the government, but I was making too much. All those modeling jobs were great for paying our monthly bills and helping me put aside some for savings, but I’d thought it was a smarter move to save money for education than pay into really expensive insurance premiums, especially since I could afford all his vaccinations and doctor’s visits.

  It’d all sounded like such a smart cost-benefit analysis when I’d done it, but now that a thirty-thousand-dollar bill was staring me down, I felt like an idiot. If I’d been working at the hospital like Mom wanted, I’d have insurance, and it would probably be a matter of coming up with a couple hundred-dollar deductible instead of thousands.

  I slumped into the chair and pinched the bridge of my nose. I looked up at Mom, who stared back at me, a mix of worry and irritation on her face. The worry, I assumed, was over her grandson, but the irritation I figured was over the lack of health insurance. This was her ‘I told you so’ moment.

  There was no way I was spending time on that, so I didn’t even ask her about it. She’d let me hear about plenty, I was sure, in the upcoming weeks. It’s not like I didn’t deserve it. She’d been right, and I’d been wrong. I would be the first one to admit that on any other day but today.

  My savings wouldn’t come anywhere close to covering that bill, but I could make payments. My stomach churned as I realized my dream of sending Jack to private school was probably dead.

  There was a light knock on the door, and I assumed it to be the doctor. “Come in.” I needed to thank him for helping my son and discuss his aftercare.

  No doctor stepped inside. Instead, it was Drew that entered. The worry and irritation on Mom’s face turned to surprise.

  I was pretty surprised myself. To be honest, I’d forgotten that he was even parking my car. That was another failure of mine. He’d dropped everything to rush me over when I couldn’t drive myself, even though he knew I disliked everything he loved.

  I sighed. It looked like I was pretty much failing everybody that day—my son, my mom, and my boss.

  “I’m going to go get something to drink,” Mom said. She offered Drew a nod and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

  Drew sighed and shook his head as he took in the sleeping Jack. “Is he okay?”

  I nodded. “From what Mom said, everything went well. He should be able to go home tomorrow, but he’ll have to spend time at home recuperating, so I’m—done with the ad campaign. I’m sorry, I—”

  Drew shrugged. “If we don’t have enough shots of you already, I’d be surprised. Don’t worry about it, Cat. And you’ll get full pay.”

  I stared at him, my mouth hanging up open in surprise. It was too generous.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes, irritation flashing through me. It wasn’t Drew I was mad at but myself.

  “Sure,” I said. “You can somehow retroactively get me health insurance so I don’t owe the hospital thirty thousand dollars.” I hung my head, ashamed of my own failure to provide my son. When I looked up, Drew’s face was scrunched in thought.

  “I’m not an expert, but I’ve read enough union contracts to know that it won’t work because you’re a contract employee.”

  I let out a long sigh. “Oh, I know. I was mostly joking, venting really. It was stupid of me not to have bought insurance or been in a job that provided it,” I shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll let me make payments, or I can take a loan out against the house or something.”

  “Just because I can’t get you insurance doesn’t mean I can’t take care of the problem,” Drew said.

  I blinked and stared at him, looking for a smile or some sign he was joking. I didn’t want to believe he’d joke in a situation like this because it was in such poor taste, but I also couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Huh?” was my great response.

  “I’ll make sure the hospital bill situation is all squared away. No worries.”

  I shook my head. This had gone too far. “I was joking before. I obviously don’t expect you pay my thirty-grand hospital bill.”

  Drew’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “Just don’t worry about it.” He headed out, leaving me there with my mouth hanging open.

  Was he still just joking? He seemed serious, and he was a rich guy who owned a company, so maybe he could.

  No. It was stupid. It was just him playing off my joke.

  My attention returned to my sleeping son. I’d failed him in the exact way Mom had predicted. I’d gotten so obsessed with the private school and saving tuition that I’d not planned for a more obvious and likely problem.

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I needed to do better for Jack. Mom wouldn’t always be there for us, and I should never have been in a position where the daycare couldn’t get in contact with me.

  I took my sleeping son’s hand in mine and gave it a squeeze. “I’m sorry I failed you, Jack. You shouldn’t have had to be sick without your mom with you. I thought I was doing the right thing, that I was giving you a better future, but—”

  My tears dropped to the ground. I’d have to concentrate for now on the fact that the surgery went well, and that my son would recover.

  The money situation I could figure out another day. Drew’s jokes aside, no one could take care of this mess except for me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Drew

  “What do you mean we can’t just call up, ask what her bill is, and pay it?” I said, over my phone. “That seems pretty straightforward to me.”

  The lawyer sighed on the other end of the phone. I hated talking to this guy. He always spoke to me like I was a stupid kid. That said, the guy got results, so sometimes you had to put up with a little crap if you wanted something done right.

  “They can’t even acknowledge if someone’s a patient without running into privacy law trouble,” he said. “And that’s federal law, so they take it very seriously. So, you can’t ask to pay a specific person’s bill without the person’s explicit permission.”

  I grunted. “Even though I just want to drop tens of thousands of dollars on them? That’s stupid. I’m not asking for her kid’s medical records. I just want to pay the bill.”

  “Doesn’t change anything in the end. Really, the easiest way to do this would just be to write the woman a check, and then have her pay it.”

  I thought that over. I suspected if I tried that, Cat wouldn’t accept my money for some reason, especially given the way she’d reacted when I mentioned handling it before. I understood pride and all that, but sometimes you just had to set things aside and get help. I could afford it, and she needed the help.

  There was also the issue with her thinking she owed me or that I was trying to buy her. No. It’d be easier if I could pay the hospital directly.

  “There’s got to be some way I can
do this,” I said. “Some way that cuts out the middle-man, or the middle-woman in this case.”

  “Some way that doesn’t involve just writing that middle-woman a check?”

  “Yeah. Come on. I pay you a shit ton of money. Think of something.”

  He snorted over the line. “Okay, let me think for a second.”

  My office door opened, and Daniella stepped in. I held up my hand and gestured to the phone, and she nodded, heading over to the chair across from my desk to sit down. She pulled out her phone and started tapping away while she waited.

  “I have an idea,” the lawyer finally said. “Though it’ll be costlier.”

  “I’m all ears,” I said. “And I have money to burn.”

  “You could do a large anonymous donation. Then, you could just specify that you want to help out families with certain problems, like all the expenses for uninsured children who received appendix surgery in the last week or so, and after the hospital goes through the small number of patients meeting that criteria, including the woman in question, they can use it for whatever. That way they don’t have to tell you anything, but the woman still ends up with her bills paid. You’re effectively cheating the system.”

  “I don’t give a shit about their rules. As long as it ends with her bills paid, I’m happy.”

  Daniella looked from her phone and shot me a quizzical look.

  “And you’re not willing to just write her a check?” the lawyer asked again.

  I leaned back in my chair. “No, the anonymous large donation sounds like a better plan. I really like the sound of it. Just to be careful, let’s do something like a million dollars, then. I might as well help out a lot of people while I’m in a giving mood,” I chuckled to myself. “You draw up whatever paperwork we need to make this happen. I want this done ASAP.”

  “All right then, I’ll get on it right away. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s all for now. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The line died, and I set my phone on the desk.

  “You’re donating a million dollars to someone?” Daniella said, eyeing me. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

  “Yeah, the hospital.”

  Daniella slipped her phone into her pocket. “Not that I’m against donating to the hospital, but why now?” She furrowed her brow. “Does this have something to do with Cat?”

  I shrugged. No point in hiding it now. “She’s uninsured. She has at least a thirty-thousand-dollar hospital bill, and apparently, I can’t just call up the hospital and say I want to pay her bill because of privacy law bullshit. So I’m being kind of tricky about it.”

  “And you can’t just ask her?” she quirked a brow.

  “I already tried to tell her, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me.” I waved a hand. “But I did tell her, so it’s not like I’m really doing this behind her back.”

  “And you can’t just ask her if she wants a check?”

  “If I thought she’d take it, I’d do that. But she needs the money and to stow her pride.”

  Daniella tapped her lip. “Now that I think of it, actually, this is better anyway. If we do it this way, she won’t have to deal with the tax burden. If you did just cut her a check, then the Feds would want their slice, and she still might end up in a bad position.”

  I grinned, “See, it’s a better system anyway, and I kind of like the idea of the donation. Maybe we should set up some sort of yearly thing to the hospital from the company. It’ll be great PR, right?”

  Daniella nodded. “Yes. We could definitely expand our charitable giving. I know the accounting department has suggested it. The board will need to sign off anything large from the company accounts though.”

  “I’ll handle the donation this time, and then I’ll bring it up to the board at the next meeting.”

  I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t want to do something like this, but it was hard to say. Those guys liked me because I made them money, and giving away money might not be received with the same warmth, but it wasn’t like a million dollars would take a big chunk out of our profit. Depending on how accounting worked it, it might even help.

  I figured it was killing two birds with one stone. It didn’t matter for this year, though. I’d handle it myself, so I didn’t have to deal with explaining myself to any of those men.

  Shit. I still needed to explain everything to myself. Cat was nothing to me, just a model who’d been on a photo shoot for a couple of weeks at my company, and I was about to drop a million dollars at the hospital just to make sure her kid’s medical bills were taken care of. So much for being over my obsession.

  “How are Simon and PR handling losing Cat?” I said.

  “We had to rethink a few product shots, but in reality, we were close to being done anyway, and the way things worked out, we’d been doing a lot more with Cat anyway, so it shouldn’t really affect the ad campaign overall. I knew she was something special.”

  I relaxed. As much as I wanted to help Cat, that didn’t change the fact that I had a company to run. This ad campaign was an important part of the summer launch for our new product line, and that could have a huge impact on revenue for the year. I guess sometimes you really could have your sexy cake and eat it too.

  “That’s good to hear,” I said. I folded my hands in front of me. “Things could have been bad.”

  “Why didn’t you want her?” Daniella suddenly asked.

  I blinked, “Huh?”

  “When we were doing the casting, you didn’t want her. You argued against her, in fact. It’s like you didn’t want her near the ad campaign.”

  I shrugged. Given I didn’t even know how I felt yet about the entire situation, I wasn’t ready to admit anything to my sister. “She was blond. Didn’t want a blond.”

  “Bullshit,” she peered intently at me. “Tell me the truth.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “I’m not some random person, big brother,” she said, a gleam in her eyes. “I may even know you better than you know yourself.”

  I grunted, “What is it that you want me to say?”

  “I just want to hear you admit it.”

  I locked eyes with Daniella. Damn her for being so perceptive.

  “If you already think you know the answer, why should I have to say shit?”

  She chuckled, “Because I love knowing I’m right,” and winked.

  “And you’re supposed to be right about what?”

  “You want her. Badly. The chemistry between you two is off the damn charts.” Daniella shook her head. “I just wanted to hire her because I knew she’d be perfect for the ad campaign, but when you threw your little baby fit about hiring her, I knew that’d she’d be perfect for the campaign and perfect for you.”

  I snorted, “I didn’t throw a baby fit.”

  “No, you just went out of your way to try and not hire a special and gorgeous woman because you were afraid.”

  I stared at Daniella. “Have you been huffing glue in your office, or what? What are you talking about? I’m afraid? Of some model? I don’t exactly want to go into my sexual history with my sister, but you know I’m far from a fucking virgin.”

  She shook her finger at me. “Oh, spare me the male posturing. I know you, and I know women because I am one. I’ve seen you two together, and I know that you want her, and she wants you. I think that scares you because you’ve not felt something like that before.”

  “She hates bikers, and she hates motorcycles. Her husband died on one, you know.”

  Daniella nodded slightly, her expression turning somber. “Oh, really? That explains a lot, but disliking motorcycles isn’t the same thing as hating you.”

  “Isn’t it? This company is older than either of us. We’re almost as much the children of motorcycles as we are of Mom and Dad. Hating bikes means hating the Stroker family.” I slammed my palm on my desk. My sister rolled her eyes.

  “She had a trauma. That doesn’t mean t
hings can’t work out between you.”

  “Even though I put this shirt on every day and have to kiss the collective ass of a board of directors, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a biker.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not giving that up. She’s a woman who hates bikes. So it’s pointless to even talk about whether or not I want her.”

  The corners of Daniella’s mouth quirked into a smile. “Oh? It’s pointless?”

  “Yeah, it’s pointless. Why are we even having this discussion?”

  Daniella burst into laughter. I stared at her. Somehow, I’d lost control of this conversation, even though I’d thought I’d been leading it the entire time.

  Her laughter only intensified. I kept staring until she calmed down and wiped some tears from her eyes.

  “If it’s so pointless,” my sister said between snorts, “then why are you about to donate a million dollars to the hospital to make sure her kid’s medical bills get paid?”

  “That’s not the—”

  She cut me off with a raised hand and stood.

  “Lie to others. Never to me, or yourself. Maybe you actually believe the bullshit you’re spouting, but I doubt it. You’re too smart a guy. If it’s pointless, then you’ve got nothing to worry about. If it’s about the bike thing, that’s something you can work through.” She winked. “Just keep an open mind. Happiness, especially in the form of hot bikini models, doesn’t walk into your life every day.” She waved and spun on her heel, walking out without another word.

  I stared after her, wondering how my little sister ended up being able to see right through me.

  There was no future between Cat and me. This was just an obsession fueled by lust. Maybe I didn’t have time for a quick fuck to get it out of my system, but it didn’t matter. Helping her out with medical bills and helping out some others at the same time was a good thing to do, regardless of what I felt about Cat, so I figured I might as well do it.

  Besides, Cat wasn’t coming back for any more photo sessions. So, we were done. It’s not like I’d have any reason to see her again.