Valentine's Billionaire Bad Boys

by M. S. Parker

  “You owe him,” Ryan said quietly. “You owe him that much.”

  I owed Jake more than any promise I could make, but this one, this one was almost more than I could take.

  Almost.

  It was knowing that it’d be best for Carly that made me nod my head, that made me promise to do as Jake had asked.

  I would wait.

  * * *

  Carly straightened up and gave me her wickedest smile. “You make me hot too. You really think I want to give all of that up?”

  I hoped she didn’t. I knew I didn’t.

  But I had to do it.

  Jake and Ryan were right.

  “We’re going to wait six months,” I said gruffly.

  She blinked, and then her smile turned into a scowl and a glare. “What?”

  “If you really want me on this job, if...fuck.” I walked over to stand in front of the window, for once not seeing the magnificent view. “Things are going to be rough for a while. With Jake. How much I’ve got to learn. Everything. Once things settle down, if we’re still...”

  “Crazy to fuck?” she suggested sweetly when I continued to fumble for words.

  “I don’t just want to fuck you!” I snarled, turning to glare at her.

  She blinked, looking caught off guard.

  “You think you’re the only one who has trouble connecting to people?” Frustrated and getting embarrassed, I rubbed at the back of my neck. A headache had been brewing all day, and it had just exploded to massive proportions. “I don’t like people. I don’t want to like people, either. But you...you’re different. I don’t want to mess this up. If this...” I waved a hand between us. “If what we have is something that matters, then will six months make that big of difference?”

  Chapter Twelve

  She’s going to need a friend, not a fuck buddy.

  That was what Jake had said to me.

  Except, after I’d made it clear that I was going to stick with my decision, Carly had made it equally clear she didn’t want me for a friend, and I was relegated to nothing more than a bodyguard, one she spoke to only when she had to, which wasn’t often. It hurt, but I didn’t let it show. All of us were in enough pain as it was.

  Jake had died three months – to the day – after he’d fallen.

  Pneumonia had settled in and after a couple weeks of fighting to breathe, he was just gone.

  He’d held on an extra day until he’d had a chance to tell Carly goodbye. She’d been gone on a short trip to a kid’s hospital in San Francisco, trying to keep busy, but when she’d heard he wasn’t doing well, she’d cut it short.

  He’d smiled the moment she’d walked into his room. She’d sat with him for hours that night, and the next morning, I found him still. He’d had a smile on his face then too.

  At that moment, I finally understood some fraction of the agony I’d put Dale through when I’d killed his brother. When I realized Jake was gone, I’d sunk to the floor and cried.

  One of the other bodyguards had come in a few minutes later. Ridley had turned out to be as much of an asshole as I’d originally thought, so much so that he’d actually started to make a snide remark, but then he’d seen Jake and raised the alarm.

  I’d gotten myself upright and mostly in control by the time everybody else had gotten into the room.

  But the ache hadn’t gone away. It still wasn’t gone, and it had been more than a month since it had happened.

  And Carly wasn’t helping things.

  She’d disappeared a week after the funeral, taking half the team with her. A half I wasn’t included in.

  She seemed even more determined to ignore me and I was getting fed up.

  Five days before Carly was due back, Ryan hunted me down, finding me outside my little cabin.

  I could see the warm, gold glow spilling out of the windows of her house from where I stood at the water’s edge, throwing rocks into the water and trying not to think.

  Any time I let my mind kick into gear, I found myself standing at the side of the bed, staring down at Jake’s lifeless face.

  Cancer was a mean bitch. She shouldn’t have taken Jake. A guy like that, he should have lived until he was a hundred and eight. Should have gotten married, had a dozen kids, two dozen grandkids. Should’ve been there for Carly.

  She should’ve taken me.

  “You going to look at me or keep throwing rocks?” Ryan asked.

  I threw another rock and then glanced at him. “I looked.” Then I grabbed up another handful from the ground.

  “The way you’re going, Carly will need to have another truckload of those things brought out here,” Ryan said.

  I just shrugged and listened to the splash.

  “Jake’s will is being read next week. Right after Carly gets back in town.”

  Splash. “So?”

  “You’re going.”

  “Figured. I assumed Carly has to go, and the guys who’d gone with her would need a bit of a break when they got back.” I shrugged.

  “Ah. Well.” He shrugged. “Yeah. It’s just...aw, hell.” He blew out a breath. “Jake would’ve kicked my ass for this, but I figure you’ll do better if you’re prepared. You’re in it, kid.”

  I’d had a rock left in my hand. My arm fell limp at my side at his words, the small stone falling to the ground. It hit my bare toe but I hardly noticed. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Ryan rocked back on his heels, hands tucked into the back of the khakis he wore when he wasn’t officially working. Ryan, even when he wasn’t on the job, he looked like he was ready to be caught on camera. He wore a pair of khakis with a knife sharp crease and a linen shirt that opened at the throat. Clean, perfectly pressed, and presentable.

  I was in a threadbare t-shirt I’d brought with me from Kentucky and a pair of jeans that already had a hole in the knee. You can take the boy out of Kentucky, but you can’t take Kentucky out of the boy. Even in my most expensive suit, I knew I didn’t belong with the rest of them.

  Hands on my hips, I glared at him. “Whatever it is, I don’t want it.”

  “What if he left you the solution to world peace?”

  “Then give it to the world.”

  Ryan stared at me for a long moment and then turned his head, staring out over the lake. “Bobby, you’re a stubborn son of a bitch, you know that?”

  “Kiss my ass.” I grabbed another rock and threw it. It skipped four times.

  Ryan picked up a rock and tried to make it skip. It sank instead. Scowling, he tried again. After he had another roaring failure, I picked up another small, flat stone and sent it skipping. Ryan tried again. After yet another flop, he looked at me.

  I ignored him.

  “You know you meant a lot to him.”

  I went to throw another rock, then stopped. “I know that. He...” I cleared my throat, unable to say the words that would have been the whole truth. I stuck for the best I could do. “He was a good guy. One of the best.”

  Ryan studied me for a moment, and then nodded. “It would be a kick in the face not to take the gift he wanted you to have. Don’t insult his memory, Bobby.” Then he turned and walked away.

  Deflated, I sank to the ground.

  Was there any way to even argue with that?

  I stayed there until the sun was near the horizon, and only then did I force myself to my feet. I couldn’t, however, make my mind obey as easily as my body. My brain refused to let go of any of the chaos swirling around inside.

  I was already living a life I didn’t think I had a right to. In the past six months, I’d made more money than I’d made in a few years before, and the clothes I had hanging in the closet in my place cost more than all of my previous wardrobe combined. Jake had actually apologized to me when he told me what I’d make a year. It won’t average out to five grand a week, kid.

  I probably would’ve had a heart attack if it had.

  All that money, just to be at Carly’s side, and I was getting more and more stupid over her.
None of them knew that I would have given up what little I had just to be with her in the first place. But she’d still given me everything. What did I have that hadn’t come from her?

  Now I had something else to figure out how to handle. What in the hell had Jake decided to give me anyway and why?

  Hopefully it was something small, something easy for me to accept. One of the books he was always giving me to read. That would be nice. I could get behind even several of his books. Hell, I’d seen the library in his house once. He’d had a lot. Jake had a house, a nice one up in the mountains. When Carly hadn’t been traveling, Jake had off Fridays through Sundays and he’d always gone there.

  I’d gone to see him a couple times and we’d gone hiking and fishing. Before. After, he hadn’t been able to go back. The house hadn’t been designed for somebody in a wheelchair, and he’d refused to have it updated, agreeing instead to let Carly set him up at the main house.

  No reason to tear up the house when I’ll only be around a few more months.

  I knew he’d just wanted a legit reason to spend as much time with Carly as he could.

  I’d never go hiking with him again, never go fishing. Never discuss Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. Never argue over which was better, the movie or the book.

  That knowledge slammed into me, and I stumbled right there in the middle of the wide path that led up to my house.

  The visceral pain all but cut me off right at the knees. I’d never handled emotional pain well. Give me a hit to the face over this any day.

  Feeling like I was going to be sick, I bent over, hands on my knees and tried to breathe through it.

  The sound of a shoe scuffing over pavement had me jerking my head up, and I saw Ridley just as he came around the bend. Curling my lip, I sneered at him.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  His block-like face had some sort of smug set to it that I already didn’t like, and without even thinking about it, I mentally braced myself. I’d gotten to know Ridley better in the past few months, and nothing had changed about my opinion of him.

  He was a genius at electronics and could juggle schedules, work with outside security when we had to take Carly to all the events she attended, her various charities, functions and causes. Lately, that had also included a lot of visits to a publisher because she was writing a biography about her dad.

  There were tons of them out there, of course, but nobody could write it from her point of view, because nobody had her view. The daughter who’d never known him, and the daughter he’d loved so much, he’d already written five songs about her before she’d even been born. Songs that ended up being her only real connection with him.

  She was mostly writing it herself, although she had the help of a popular biographer who’d come in a couple times a month to help. Carly had visited a few publishers, had dinner meetings, breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, more meetings than I would’ve thought a simple biography could’ve needed.

  Ridley was the one who basically handled Carly’s scheduling and coordinated all of the security who went with her. Despite the fact that he was essentially an asshole who watched Carly a little too closely for my taste, I knew he had to be doing a good job, or Ryan would have fired his sour ass.

  As he continued to just stare at me, I lifted an eyebrow. “Did you hear me? I asked what in the hell you wanted.”

  That smug smirk spread into a smile and then he held something out. Letters

  I reached for the letters, but he jerked them back and said, “These were in Carly’s mail. You need to get this freak of yours under control, pretty boy. It’s annoying.”

  “Suck my dick,” I suggested as I grabbed the packet of envelopes. This time, he didn’t try to stop me. He knew better. The two of us had come to blows once. Only once. Ridley’s face hadn’t been any prettier for it, but he’d learned not to let it get to that point.

  Cutting around him, I waited until I was almost to my house before I let myself look down.

  There were only three sheets of paper.

  “She’s gotten some herself!” Ridley shouted as I slammed my door shut behind me.

  Written in block letters, all capitals, were two sentences.

  YOU’RE A KILLER. YOU DON’T FOOL ANYBODY.

  Shit.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d seen letters like this. I’d gotten the first one about two months after the pictures of Carly and me first hit the internet. The gossips had all but glued themselves to our asses, and rarely more than a few days went by when somebody didn’t dig up or make up something to post about us.

  The letter sender had taken longer to get started, but it wasn’t that easy to figure out how to get in touch with Carly Prince. It wasn’t like her address was listed in the white pages. They’d tracked down her publicist instead.

  Her publicist had advised firing me. Strongly.

  Carly had fired her publicist instead.

  She liked her new publicist more anyway. I did, too. The guy was flamboyant, flirting with anything and everything – me included – but I’d gotten used to it once I realized that was just him.

  A few days after that realization, I’d met Max’s husband – who just happened to be a pro wrestler who could’ve turned me inside out without breaking a sweat. I didn’t play that side, and both Max and his husband knew it. Max’s husband also knew what a flirt Max was, so we didn’t have any issues there.

  At the moment, however, I felt like kicking the hound-dog’s skinny ass. I’d told him to let me know if more letters came. I didn’t want Carly knowing about them. She’d worry, and that was the last thing she needed right now.

  The second letter was more of the same.

  Is she next? Will you kill her like you killed Derrell?

  Disgusted, I flipped to the next one, and then stopped in the middle of the hall.

  The message was simple, but to the point.

  Do you believe in a life for a life?

  Blood started to roar in my ears and my heart jumped up into my throat.

  It wasn’t fear for myself that did it to me. It really wasn’t. I’d looked death in the face more than once, and I’d figured out a long time ago that there were worse things.

  That was what worried me, that this was one of those worse things.

  Whose life was this talking about?

  Mind made up, I left my cabin and headed up to the big house. I was going to hunt Ryan down and figure out what in the hell was going on.

  I found him in the security room.

  He took a look at my face and shook his head. “Nothing I can do about the will, Bobby. You can’t argue with a dead man.”

  I just stared at him, my breathing ragged.

  After a few more seconds, he turned his head and looked at me, caution bleeding into his eyes. “Bobby? You in there?”

  “Yeah.” I looked down at the letter and read it again. Then I shoved it in Ryan’s direction.

  He came out of his seat and approached, taking the letter, still watching me warily. His breath hissed out between his teeth after he’d read it.

  “When did you get this?” He shot me a look. “Are there more?”

  “Yeah. Two of them.” I bared my teeth at him. “Ridley brought them to me. He said Carly is getting them. What the fuck, Ryan?”

  “It’s procedure.” Ryan’s voice was flat. “You know that. Max gets everything that’s sent to this address and to Carly’s fan club. He then sorts it out.”

  “Procedure, yeah, that it go to his office, but not that he open my fucking mail!” I bellowed at him.

  Ryan took a step toward me. “Would you have told us about the letters if you’d gotten them directly?”

  The expression on my face answered for me.

  “Exactly.”

  It hit me then. “You told him to do it.”

  “Damn right I did. I’m not letting your ego get someone hurt.”

  “Fuck you,” I snapped.

  “Don’t like it,” he sa
id, voice smooth. “Then quit.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Both of us turned as Carly moved into the hall.

  The sight of her was like a dull knife cutting into me, sawing through the half-dead meat that was my heart. Gruesome, yeah, but what I was feeling wasn’t pretty. And judging by how she looked, she wasn’t in the best shape either. Her eyes looked bruised, tired from crying. She was pale, her curls restrained in a simple braid. And she was still beautiful. Maybe the media frenzy that followed her wouldn’t think so, but to me, she was always beautiful.

  “Carly,” I whispered. I cleared my throat and tried again. “You’re back early.”

  She gave me a polite, blank look and I wanted to shake her.

  “I was tired,” she said. Then she looked at Ryan. “What’s going on?” Before he could respond though, she glanced at the letters and her mouth went tight. “Let me see.” She held out a hand.

  Fuck.

  I tried to snatch the letters away, but Ryan held them out of my reach.

  “I want to see,” she said, forcing the words through clenched teeth.

  “It’s my problem!” I snapped.

  “Oh, of course.” She rolled her eyes and for the first time in months, the façade she wore around me cracked. “Everything is somebody else’s problem. Let’s not bother poor Carly with anything! She might not be able to handle it because she’s so fucking fragile!”

  Temper sparked in her eyes and she took a step closer to me. My head started to spin because this was the closest she’d been to me in weeks – no, longer. Probably in over a month. Up until Jake had started going downhill, I’d been the one who’d been on personal detail, but after, she went back to having Ace at her side for the most part. It had hurt like hell, but it had also made it easier to keep my hands to myself.

  Now, with her standing so close, it made it a lot harder not to reach out and touch her, grab her. Hold her. Kiss her.

  My gaze dropped to her mouth.

  Her lips parted and she sucked in a breath.

  A second later, my head snapped to the side. My cheek flamed where she slapped me.