Bedding the Billionaire (Book 3) (Legacy Collection) (37 page)

“You’re not worried about exposing everything by
bringing him
here?”

“No, because Jeremy has assured me that no one will ever know what we did unless we say something about it.
”
Alethea
gave her friend a meaningful look. “And
we’re not going to, are we, Lil?”

Lil’s composure cracked. Her feelings gushed out.
“I have to tell them, Al. Jake and Dominic are in real jeopardy of losing their company if they don’t fix their server issue and Jeremy might be the only one who knows something that could help them.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,”
Alethea
sighed. “You’ve never been a good liar.”

Lil brought a grateful and shaky hand to her mouth
as she realized her friend’s true motive for being there that night
. “You brought Jeremy in case I need him.”

Alethea
nodded and said, “I also know of at least three ways out of h
ere if this goes s
outh.”

Lil looked across at the man who was stashing crab
cakes in the pockets of his checkered dinner jacket. “And Jeremy is onboard with this?
He’ll help us?”

Alethea
grimaced and said, “
He reall
y does want to meet the
Waltons
, but
I may have
also
promised to run away with
him to Mexico if Dominic decides
to press charges and we ha
ve
to escape and create new identities for ourselves.”

Lil bit her lip to stop from finding amusement in a situation that was really too scary to warrant it. “He likes you that much, huh?”

Alethea
shuddered.
“Yeah, make sure it doesn’t come to that. He’s not my type.” She looked around the room and nodded in the direction of a well-built, intense looking man who was
dressed in a tuxedo but was far too alert to be one of the guests. “Now that man could frisk me, any day.”

As always,
Alethea’s
choice was one of the most dangerous
men
in the room.
“That’s Dominic’s head of security
.
He does not have a sense of humor.
” She tried to regain her friend’s attention by elbowing her discreetly. “
Stop making
eyes at him. If he finds out you snuck in here we’re both dead.”

“
Don’t worry about Mr. Sour Grapes; I can handle him.”
Alethea
winked at the man across the room and smiled when the act brought a rush of
angry
color to his face.
“Oh, yeah.
I might actually have some fun.”

“No, Al, no fun
,” Lil pleaded
.
“
Promise me
you’ll
play it cool tonight.
We’ll be lucky enough if we don’t land ourselves in jail when this is all over.
”

Alethea
sighed dramatically.
“Fine, killjoy.
The sacrifices
we
make for friendship…”

Asking
her
to stay out of trouble was like asking your dog to stay off the couch.
Sure both might look innocent
enough while you were right
there with them,
but you had a pretty good idea about how things would go down as soon as you left.

“It would serve you right to spend the rest of your life as Mrs. Jeremy
Kater
or whatever new name you two lovebirds came up with
.”

“Nice, Lil.
I’ll remember that when the police cars pull up.”

Lil sobered for a moment as the
real
possibility of that thing happening settled on her and she realized the enormity of what her friend was willing to risk for her.
“
They won’t when Jeremy tells Jake what he found.
Thank you, Al.”

Alethea
shrugged off Lil’s gratitude, but Lil knew it had touched her friend to hear it.
“Go
–
”
Alethea
said. “Go get Jeremy and save your man.
I’ll be here if you need me.”

With one last grateful hug, Lil left her friend’s side to do just that.

Taking advantage of Lil’s momentary absence,
Jake
shouldered up to Dominic. “So where is this couple you
think has the answer to all of our problems?”

Dominic hesitated, a sure sign that he was up to something he didn’t think Jake would approve of. “
Victor
is entertaining them in
the
study. They aren’t too keen on being seen in public.”

“But they were willing to come to an event like this?”

Dominic shrugged. “You were
enough of a
lure.”

“Who the hell…” As soon as the idea came to him, he tensed with growing anger. “Tell me you didn’t bring my parents here.”

“
Are your parents
named
James and Judith Walton?
”

“Dominic!” Jake rubbed a hand over his eyes. “You just wasted another week of our time on a dead
e
nd.
They haven’t worked in the computer field for almost
ten
years.”

“They
seemed to understand what our issue is.”

“That’s because they are
geniuses, but
a decade
of farming in Maine is not good preparation for something like this.”

“It’s amazing to think that they went fr
om two of the most renowned physic
ists
who to
practically invent
ed
quantum encryption–
to absolute obscurity.
Didn’t they accuse the government of stealing their software designs for the military?”

“Yes, they did.
They
claimed
that some of their experiments with laser beams were stolen and used to advance the guided
missile
program.
They are
also
convinced that
Ivan
Getting stole their
initial Global Positioning notes and sold them to the military.”

“You don’t believe them?”

Jake shot a glare at Dominic.
“I stopped caring what the truth
was
a
long time ago.
My parents have
paid a high price for the gift of intelligence.
They built a shared reality based on
paranoia
and an over-inflated sense of self-importance
. I’m surprised you go
t
them to leave their compound at all.”

Dominic shrugged.
“
They said they missed you
.
How long has it been since you’ve seen them?
”

“Are you honestly going to lecture me about family relationships?
” He shook his head at the irony overload. “
I don’t have a vendetta again
st my parents;
I
simply don’t have a close relationship with them. In fact,
I find that the less time I spend with them, the happier we all are.”

“They didn’t seem that bad to me.”

“You didn’t grow up with them,” Jake growled.

Dom
inic
smiled.
“Are you getting angry about this?”

“No,” Jake gritted his teeth as even he heard the emotion in his denial
.
He took a calming breath.
“Don’t be surprised if they refuse to help.
If it doesn’t have to do wit
h something they are working on–or apparently planting lately–
they don’t usually spare any time for it.”

“They cared enough to come here, Jake.
Give them that much credit.
”

A bit too late for them to pretend to be doting parents.
When Jim and Judy were together, they
didn’t need anyone else – they never had.
Why they’d bothered to have Jake at all still
baffled
him.
He
had been
a responsibility that came after science, after each other,
and
after their growing distrust of the government.
More time
s
than he cared to remember t
hey’d forgotten to
pick him up from school, to make meals for him, to check that he had clean clothes.
He’d learned early that the only one he could rely on was himself.
At the age of eleven, he’d chosen a boarding school and enrolled himself.
A small part of him had hoped that they would wake up and beg him not to go, but instead they had lauded his choice of schools and deposited him there with a disgusting amount of relief.

He’d
found reasons why he couldn’t go home each summer – internships, study abroad programs.
The reason didn’t matter to
his parents, nor
did his destination.
They sent money when he asked for it and, he supposed, that was
all that mattered in the end.

Holidays had always been the w
orst. In the beginning he’d had
a choice between going home to parents who didn’t believe in celebrating days that
they claimed
governments or religions had
arbitrarily
chosen to give importance to, going home with a friend with a
close-knit
family who only reminded him painfully of what he didn’t have
, or spending the holiday alone.

Meeting Dominic in college had offered a much better alternative…designing a company that would grow and one day dominate the computer market.