Valentine's Billionaire Bad Boys

by M. S. Parker

  Lacey closed her eyes. “I don’t want things from you, Brogan.” I want you to want me. To need me.

  “I’m not talking about stuff, Lacey. I’m talking about…anything.”

  She frowned and then looked over at him. The flutter in her chest might be hope. But it had been a long time since she’d felt hope. She didn’t want to believe in it. “I only ever wanted you. I want you to give me yourself, to share yourself, baby. To be with me, all the way.”

  “All the way.” He nodded and then reached into his pocket. When he handed her his wallet, she took it, stared at it blankly. “Look behind my license.”

  Seeing a woman’s picture was the last thing she expected.

  Seeing her in a wedding dress, with her arms wrapped around Brogan, was a double-fisted sucker punch. “You…” She swallowed the pain in her chest. “You were married.”

  “For two years. She’s been gone for almost ten years now.”

  She pushed the picture back into its spot. “You all married young.”

  “Young enough. I was twenty-five. I knew what I wanted. What mattered. She was twenty-seven. Older than me, but she didn’t know what she wanted.” He laughed, but the sound was ugly and raw, like broken, rusty razor blades ripping out of his flesh. “We married right as I was building the company—her dad was the competition. My dad used to be partners with him and when we accidentally met at a charity function, she laughed it off. Let bygones be bygones…all that shit. She wrapped me and my dick around her finger. Then I wrapped her up.”

  Lacey moved toward him.

  His head whipped up and the fire burning in his eyes pinned her in place. “Don’t.” He shook his head and said again, his voice gruff, “Don’t, Lace. Not right now. She used me, the whole damn time we were dating, but then…things got weird. I think it got too real for her and I fucked with her head.”

  Rubbing her hand over the back of her mouth, Lacey stared at him. “Just how did you do that?”

  “Because while you play games with rough sex, I push it as far as I can go,” he said, his voice taut. “I took her as far as she could go. I never hurt her, and she loved everything we did…at the time. But when she was alone, it was too much. She’d go to her dad and he’d pat her on the head about what a good daughter she was, and he appreciated how she sacrificed for me. Then she’d come back to me and I’d tie her up and make her beg and she’d love it…”

  “It sounds to me like he’s the one who fucked with her head,” Lacey said when his voice trailed off. “And she didn’t have the courage to tell him to back off. Maybe she was falling for you and she just didn’t know how to handle it.”

  A humorless smile curved his lips.

  “Yeah, well, nobody will ever know.”

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Lacey demanded.

  He closed his eyes.

  Something sick stirred inside her heart and it only spread when he said, “There’s a note behind the picture, Lace.”

  She took it out carefully, eying the worn creases. How many times had Brogan read this?

  “There was another guy she’d been seeing when she accidentally made my acquaintance. Apparently it was the man her father had picked out for her to marry. They were best friends as kids, good friends even while we were together,” Brogan said softly. “And they were still making plans to get together once I was out of the picture, or so her father likes to tell me. But then somehow, they found out about my…deviant nature. He confronted her about it, then told her he couldn’t stand to touch a woman who squealed like a whore because a guy fucked her ass. I found out later that he’d paid one of my own security men to put security cams in my house. The son of a bitch was spying on us, gave the video feed to her dad, her sisters. Everybody. She killed herself a week later.”

  Lacey swallowed as she opened the note and started to read.

  Brogan

  It’s hard to write this, harder still knowing that you’ll get through this somehow, and I’m just too weak.

  I never set out with the intention to hurt you. My father is a hard man to tell no. He’s a hard man, period. Not unlike you in some ways.

  I want you to know that I never did tell him the information that he asked for. Many times I started to, but then something would make me stop. But I can’t live with myself anymore and I can’t look at myself knowing that everybody who cares about me knows what I’ve done over the past few years.

  I’ve lived a lie.

  I’ve embarrassed myself.

  Forgive me.

  Love, Sierra

  An ache in her throat, she folded it back up and slid it into its spot before moving back to him. He didn’t take the wallet so she tucked it into his pocket. “This is why you don’t want to share yourself with me,” she said quietly.

  “This is why I don’t want to share myself with anybody,” he corrected. “But I find that changing, around you. Even if Sierra did fuck me over—”

  Lacey frowned. “I don’t think she did.”

  Reaching up, she smoothed her hand down his shirt and then wrapped her arms around his neck. “Brogan, I read the note of a woman asking you to forgive her. She was a woman ashamed of the lies she told you. Ashamed that everybody would know that she went into that marriage as a lie.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but then he shook his head. “None of that matters now. It’s past time to let her go. This is what matters…I fucked up with you. I wouldn’t bring you in because the last time I let somebody in, it tore me open. But that’s not fair. Not to you, not to us. I fucked up and I’m sorry. Will you give us another chance?”

  Then he held up his hand.

  She looked down, her heart jumping around in her throat.

  And it almost leaped out when she saw the key.

  “That…” She licked her lips. “What is that?”

  “A key. I want you to move in with me, Lacey. I want a real chance. With you. For us.”

  Chapter Eight

  “That better be the last…” Lacey threw open the door and stopped, the words dying on her tongue as she stared at the woman in front of her.

  “Oh sorry.” She smiled, a little puzzled. “I thought you were my…boyfriend.”

  She could actually call Brogan her boyfriend. How fricking weird was that?

  “I’m sorry.” The brunette somehow managed to pull off elegant and cute in the same breath. She toyed with the strap of her purse and looked around. “I’m trying to find Brogan Grainger.”

  The elevator behind her dinged. Lacey smiled and said, “Well, you’re in luck.”

  The woman whirled around. “Brogan.”

  He’d been smiling but the smile on his face faded. “Leslie. What are you doing here?”

  “I need to give you a few things.” Her voice wobbled a little but firmed as she reached into her bag. “Dad doesn’t want you to have this stuff, but Sierra gave it to me and I figure that makes these mine to do with as I choose. And…”

  Sierra? Lacey started to move forward but stopped as the woman reached into her bag and pulled out a little wooden photo box. Brogan frowned, eying it as if it were radioactive. “Dad lied to you, Brogan,” Leslie said, her voice soft. “A lot. Sierra fell in love with you. She’d gone to talk to Brad that last time to tell him that she wanted to stay with you and she was going to tell you the truth, come clean and everything. I know, because she told me the night before.”

  Lacey thought Brogan looked as if he’d been hit across the head. And Leslie continued to stand there, the little photo box in hand, Lacey reached out and took it. “I’ll take it for now,” she said softly. “He’ll look through it when he has time, okay?”

  Leslie paused and then nodded.

  She headed to the elevator, but before she could push the button, Lacey called out, “Wait… It’s been ten years. Why did you wait so long?”

  Leslie stood there, staring at her feet for a long, long moment. Then finally, she turned back around, but she gave her answer to Brogan, not L
acey. “I blamed you. For a long time. Not like Dad did, but because she didn’t think you’d be there for her and support her when everything was falling apart. And then…” She shrugged and looked down. “A few years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dad got sick while I was going through chemo. Everything fell apart and I didn’t have anybody. My husband started cheating on me and I got to thinking… You would have been there for Sierra. I don’t know what was going through her head, but you would have been there. Your mind takes you on weird trips when you’re sick. I got better, but Dad…well, he never did. We buried him two months ago. And I decided it was time.” Her eyes flicked to Lacey. “Time for me to start living again. Time for Brogan to start living…but I had to let go of some things. I figured maybe he did too.”

  Lacey put the box on the mantel and, by the way Brogan was acting, he’d have been happy to just let it stay there.

  That wasn’t an option, though.

  For their first night together, and she meant really together, she’d ordered pizza and cracked open a bottle of wine. Now she was going to crack open Brogan.

  With the pie steaming in front of them and two glasses of wine waiting, she grabbed the photo box and sat down beside him. He saw it and she watched his face tighten, ever so slightly.

  “You asked me what I wanted from you,” she said, reminding him of the conversation a few weeks earlier. She put it down in front of him. “I want this. I want all of you…forever. And it involves you letting her go. But you can’t, until you see what’s inside.”

  “Lacey…”

  “No. Open it. You hid from me, from yourself, from everything, long enough.”

  The picture on top was from their first anniversary. One of the happiest times of his life, he’d thought. Just months before things went to hell. “She started getting depressed a few months after this was taken. We went to Scotland.” He showed the picture to Lacey, then put it aside. Found a picture of them in Destin. Another from Gatlinburg. Pictures of the two of them. Most of them were of the two of them, but a few were pictures Sierra had taken of him.

  “Those are the kind of pictures a woman takes when she’s in love,” Lacey said, taking one of them and studying it. Then she slid him a look. “Trust me, I know.”

  His throat knotted. “I’ve been pissed off, shut down for a long time.”

  “You’ve been pissed off, shut down because you were confused…and because her dad was fucked up,” Lacey pointed out. She gathered up the pictures. “You should keep these. Maybe not on the mantel, but somewhere. She meant something to you. I think she probably had something else going on for her to choose to end her life like she did.”

  “She had issues with depression when she was younger,” Brogan said gruffly. “I always thought I…well, what we did…”

  Lacey took his hand. “It wasn’t you. She was happy with you. You can see it in her eyes. I think she was torn up over her lies, over how her father used to manipulate her, and then the bastard she used to be with couldn’t take being pushed aside. If anybody is to blame, it’s her father and that bastard ex. They used her, Brogan. They didn’t care about what they were doing to her, they just wanted to use her. If anybody is to blame, it’s them.” She moved then, coming to straddle him, bringing the wine with her. “Let her go, baby. You loved her…she loved you, but that’s over and gone. It never should have ended like it did, but it’s done. Don’t lose any more of your life over it.”

  “I won’t.” He took the wine and curved his other arm around her. “I wasted too much of the time I want to spend with you anyway.”

  She dipped her head. “Good line of thinking. There’s no time to waste, right? We waste time that’s meant for games, right?”

  He was chuckling as she covered his mouth with hers. “Good way to look at it.”

  “I do love my games.”

  Also By Shiloh Walker

  Look for Shiloh’s Latest…

  Headed For Trouble

  He was more than six feet of sexy, bearded Scottish trouble.

  Not the trouble she was looking for…

  yet he proved to be everything she needed.

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  Read on for an excerpt from Headed For Trouble

  Ian Campbell had left Scotland for a couple of small reasons, and one rather big one. The small reasons were varied—he liked to try new things, he’d always wanted to run his own pub, and he’d never been one to turn down a chance at an adventure. Living in America for a time could definitely be that.

  The rather big reason was simple.

  Money.

  He’d been offered a fat sum to come across the pond and run this pub, and if all went well, then he could even buy it. It had been a hard choice to make, he wouldn’t lie.

  More than once—once a week even—he wondered if he’d done the right thing, and considered going home. He could. He’d have to start over, but he wasn’t afraid of hard work and he wasn’t afraid to start over, either. He’d had to do that more than once in his life, that was certain.

  But then he’d crawl out of bed, get himself a cup of coffee—or better yet, three. Ian Campbell wasn’t a pleasant man without his first cup of coffee in the morning. Once he was awake, he’d go to his balcony and stare out over the river.

  This place was thousands of miles from Braemar, the small village in Scotland where he’d lived for the first thirteen years of his life and just as different from the house where he’d lived after his mother died and he moved to Aviemore to live with his grandparents. He’d lived there from the time he was thirteen until he was eighteen, in a house where raised voices and flying fists had him desperate to leave, and even more desperate never to return.

  Nobody here looked at him and whispered as he walked past.

  True, it had been a long time since people had done that back home.

  But he didn’t see the looks in their eyes, and if he lifted a pint at the end of the day, he didn’t have to wonder what they might think.

  A clean slate, that was what he had here, and he couldn’t help but appreciate it.

  Perhaps he didn’t like the heat that hit you like a sweaty fist for too much of the year, but any circumstance would have its drawbacks now, wouldn’t it?

  And . . . there were the benefits.

  He found himself studying one now and felt a stir of interest he hadn’t felt in more time than he cared to think about.

  She stood in the doorway, oddly apart from everybody else even as she studied them, eyes moving to linger on a group here, then there. After a couple of moments she moved away, and he found himself tracking her progress.

  Don’t be here to meet somebody, he thought, and immediately, he wanted to kick himself. What did it matter if she was?

  He told himself it didn’t and glanced up as Gary Harnett settled down and ordered his usual. Ian started to build the Guinness as they chatted, but the entire time he watched her from the corner of his eye.

  She moved like a dancer, with effortless grace and easy elegance. He could imagine those legs, long and slim, wrapped around his waist, could picture that torso, just as long and slim, bent back as he leaned over to press his mouth to pale, soft skin.

  Gary said, “They say it’s going to break a hundred again tomorrow.”

  “Imagine it will,” Ian murmured, the easy chatter second nature, while in his mind, he continued to mentally undress the redhead.

  She slid onto a vacant stool tucked up against the wall just as he finished Gary’s Guinness, and Ian took a moment to appreciate the fact that he had a heavy, solid bar between the two of them, because, thanks to his wandering mind, his bloody cock was hard as iron and pulsing.

  She looked at him then, her mouth unsmiling, but wide and soft and lush.

  Fuck me.

  He rested his hands on the bar and smiled. You’ve a job to do, so do it.

  He opened his mouth.

  You’re the sexiest fucking thing I’ve seen in ages—mayb
e forever. He could feel those words hovering on the tip of his tongue.

  Biting them back, he fell back on the job he’d been doing for ages.

  “Well, ’allo. What can I get you?”

  A faint smile flirted around her lips, and a hot ball of lust twisted inside, settling down low in his balls. Mad. He’d gone mad—that’s all there was to it.

  She nodded toward the Guinness he’d just finished and said, “I’ll have one of those.”

  He nodded. Self-preservation told him to move his arse and get to work.

  He told self-preservation to get fucked as he got to work on her Guinness. As he did, four more orders came in, and he filled three of them before her Guinness was ready. By the time he had another minute to breathe, she had folded her hands around her glass and was studying everything around her, almost mesmerized.

  “Visiting?”

  She blinked, a startled look in her eyes. Her gaze slid away. “Depends on your point of view.” Then she flashed him a wide smile.

  It was disarming, that smile, bright and wicked, the kind of smile a temptress would give a saint to lure him into all manner of sins.

  Ian was many things—a saint had never been one of them. As she propped her elbows on the bar, he found himself easing closer. “I’m here for . . . personal things, but that’s for later,” she said, lifting her shoulder in a shrug. “Tonight . . . ? Tonight I’m just trying to not think.”

  I can help you with that.

  The words popped into his brain and they almost escaped his lips.

  He managed to keep them trapped inside, but one thing he couldn’t do was keep his eyes off that mouth.

  She noticed, too. He could tell by the hitch in her breathing, the way her pulse slammed against the fragile wall of her throat. Curious, he reached out and pressed a finger against it.

  He could very well be doing the stupidest thing he’d ever done.