The Billionaire Boyfriend Trap

Copyright 2014 Kendra Little

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http://kendralittle.com

About THE BILLIONAIRE BOYFRIEND TRAP

Cleo knows her job is borderline unethical,
but she tells herself that the businessmen she spies on are
arrogant and greedy. Besides, it pays well and she needs the money
for her sister's medical bills and to put her through art school.
But when that art school's very existence is under threat from
Cleo's latest target, billionaire Reece Kavanagh, she will do
anything in her power to stop him and keep her sister happy.

Until she falls in love with him.

He was supposed to be a jerk, but Reece turns
out to be everything Cleo ever wanted in a man. His heart is not
cold and empty as reported, but beats only for Cleo. So when he
reveals the dark secret that drives him to close down the school,
she knows she has to stop him, for his own good as well as her
sister's.

But what will Reece do when he finds out that
the woman he trusts has been undermining him all along?

CHAPTER 1

Men are like a children's picture book—easy
to read, occasionally entertaining, but lacking the substance to
keep an adult female captivated long-term. My boss tells me I'm too
cynical for a twenty-five year-old, but that's what happens when
you've been doing what I've been doing for two years just to pay
the bills.

I'm not a hooker, I'm a trapper. There's a
difference. Hookers sleep with guys for money. I'm paid to get them
to trust me, and sometimes fall in love with me. Some trappers
cross the boundary and wind up in bed with their target for a bit
of extra cash on the side, while others think they're starring in
Pretty Woman
. Not me. I like my mental health too much. I
couldn't have sex with a man who wasn't my boyfriend.

If only boyfriends weren't so hard to come by
for someone in my line of work, I'd be doing okay in that
department. Unfortunately not too many guys are understanding when
you explain what you do for a living. Make that none.
They
don't see the difference between a hooker and a trapper. And
there's the whole lacking substance thing too.

"This guy's big," my boss Ellen said. She
handed me a USB drive in the shape of a teddy bear no bigger than
the size of two of my fingers. It made a change from her usual red
ninja one. Unlike the ninja, I had to remove the teddy's head and
insert his neck into my laptop. The ninja had the USB sticking out
of his butt so he looked like he was farting into the computer. The
teddy just looked decapitated.

"How big?" I asked as I copied the files to
my hard drive.

Ellen crossed her long toothpick legs and sat
back in the chair with a smile stretching her vamp-red lips.
"You'll see."

I rolled my eyes at her melodrama. She seemed
to think she was M from
James Bond
, living a high-flying
clandestine life, taking down the bad guys. In truth we were
bringing down whomever our clients paid us to bring down. Luckily
our targets had so far all been businessmen with dubious ethics or
I would have had a problem with my job. I didn't mind ruining a
business deal for a few assholes though.

That summed up Ellen's operation. She hired
us girls on behalf of her clients to learn the secrets of powerful
and wealthy businessmen. Her clients were their rivals, often
wanting to close the same business deal. They hired Ellen—us—to
learn the secrets and weakness of their competitors, or to ferret
out confidential documents to prove collusion or other unethical
practices. Our job involved getting close to our targets over a
period of time until they trusted us enough to include us in their
inner sanctum. Sometimes I wondered if I would achieve my ends
faster if I
did
sleep with them. People reveal a hell of a
lot of stuff when they're blinded by lust. But I avoided that kind
of arrangement and Ellen never pushed me. I played the part of
flirty, friendly assistant. If some of my targets fell a little in
love with me along the way, all the better. Their frustration and
attempts to get me into bed served my purposes perfectly.

Ellen chuckled at my eye roll. "That's why
you'll be perfect for this one, Cleo."

"What do you mean?"

"You're funny and cheeky. Clever too. He
likes those traits in a woman. Of course it helps that you're
gorgeous and sexy in a school teacher kind of way."

I couldn't picture any of my old teachers
doing what I was about to do. Maybe my sister Becky's old French
teacher could have gotten away with the double life. The boys used
to drool over her in class. She was lovely too, going out of her
way to see if I needed anything when Becky got sick. Of course I
always said "Thanks, but no thanks". What I didn't tell her was I
just needed Becky. It wasn't until later, when Becky went into
remission, that I realized I needed money to pay her medical bills.
A crap-load of money. That was why I answered Ellen's advertisement
and how I ended up being a trapper, against my better judgment. Two
years later the loan I'd taken out to pay the medical bills was
still there and I was still a trapper.

I laughed and Ellen laughed too, a hearty,
throaty chuckle that had her whole body shaking. Sometimes she
could be ninja-like, and then she'd take me by surprise and become
a teddy bear.

Just like Bond's M, I didn't know Ellen's
second name, whether she was married, had children, or where she
lived. She was about sixty years old and as perfectly groomed as a
Vogue model. She was a living, breathing Chanel advertisement and
never had a blonde hair on her head out of place. I could step into
her hundred-and-first floor office with my hair blown around by the
wind outside, but she always looked immaculate. She once said that
was my charm compared to her other girls. They had the sleek model
thing going for them, perfect for jobs where the target responded
to that type. She used me for everything else and I was never short
of work. I guess even arrogant billionaire assholes like the sexy
school teacher type. Or they just trust them more.

Ellen's assistant brought in two coffee cups
and set them down on the glass table between Ellen and myself.
There was a lot of glass in her office. The table, desk, a large
mirror over a low shelf. The length of one wall was all windows
too. The building overlooked the bay and today, sailing boats
dotted the clear blue water. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. It
was a perfect summer morning. Later, the freeways would be choked
with traffic as everyone headed out of the city to enjoy a weekend
away in the beautiful weather. But not me. I would be working.

The assistant left as silently as she'd
entered and shut the door. The files had finally finished loading
and I opened them one by one. The first was a document listing the
target's business interests, associates, and details of how he
became founder and CEO of RK Financial Group at just thirty-three.
The next document covered his personal life—birth date, known
addresses, the names of his parents, schools and past girlfriends.
Then I pulled up the next document. It contained several close-up
photos of the target. I knew who it was. I'd seen him in the
news.

Reece Kavanagh was gorgeous. Charcoal black
hair, tanned skin without a single mark to blemish its perfection,
and strong bones. The nose was straight, the jaw hard. His mouth
either curved up on one side into a wry smile or dipped into an
intense frown depending on the angle of the photo. But it was his
eyes that held me. The eyes always gave a man away, and Reece
Kavanagh's eyes were a pale blue at odds with his warm skin and
mischievous mouth. They reminded me of a frozen winter lake—cold,
deep and dangerous.

A little shiver rippled down my spine and I
wished I'd worn something warmer than the short yellow skater
dress.

"He makes you nervous," Ellen said. It wasn't
a question. She'd seen my reaction. Ellen saw everything.

"I'm not sure yet," I said with a casual
shrug. No one could determine what a man was like just from a few
photos. It wasn't his fault his eyes were ethereally pale. He might
be very friendly.

"By all accounts, he's a cold bastard," Ellen
said. So much for my theory. "Some even say he's cruel, but I've
found no evidence of it."

I swallowed heavily. "Do you know why he's
cold?"

"Absent parents who screwed up his
upbringing. No doubt he still blames them for all his past, present
and future problems." She shook her head, as if she'd heard it all
before. Ellen didn't believe in people being screwed up by their
parents' mistakes. According to her, kids grew into adults and
adults needed to take responsibility for their own problems. Sure,
their parents might have been abusive or simply unloving, but get
over it already.

That's what she'd once told me. It made me
think she did have children, but they blamed her for whatever
problems they had now. I never responded. My parents died seven
years ago in a car accident. I still missed them.

"Was it your client who claimed Reece is
cruel?" I asked, staring at the screen. I couldn't look away. Even
in pixels, Reece Kavanagh had a presence about him that made you
want to stare and stare and stare. There was self-assuredness in
that face that probably tipped over to arrogance in real life. That
was the problem with gorgeous rich men. They all thought they were
God's gift to the female population. I guess I wouldn't know for
sure until I met him.

"Not my client." Ellen tapped her manicured
fingernails on the side of her coffee cup. The blood red was stark
against the white china, the
click-clack
brisk. "His rivals,
some ex-girlfriends, acquaintances…everyone I spoke to said he
keeps his distance."

"What about friends? Does he have any?"

"Very few."

"It says here he's the eldest of five boys
born into the Kavanagh family. They still live in Serendipity
Bend," I said, naming Roxburg's most exclusive suburb. "Is he close
to them?"

"The family is extremely tight-lipped about
their own." She sounded annoyed at the rare failure to gather
information.

I clicked over to the page that listed his
previous girlfriends. It was full. I recognized three models, at
least four celebrities and a few whose job description could only
be described as socialite. Reece's trophy collection was
impressive. I wondered which ones had described him as cruel, and
what that meant.

I brought the photographs of Reece up again.
"It's not often you see such handsome men in powerful positions.
Usually they're old, bald and fat."

"And married," Ellen filled in. She continued
to tap on her coffee cup. It was irritating, but I wouldn't tell
her that. I wanted to keep my job. She suddenly stopped and gave me
a wry smile. "Actually you'd be surprised. I know several
billionaire men who are as rich and powerful as Kavanagh and just
as handsome and available."

"Why aren't they taken?"

"Married to the job, or the power, or they've
got Issues with a capital I." She bestowed one of her rare smiles
on me.

I smiled back. "Hasn't everyone got
Issues?"

Her smile slipped and she studied the coffee.
"Some more than others." She sipped and I stared at Reece
again.

Then I closed the laptop. Those eyes were
getting to me. "When will I meet him?"

"Tonight."

Damn. It had to be tonight, didn't it? I
never went out, never went anywhere except work and the grocery
store, and the one time I did have something to go to, it clashed
with Ellen's plans. And Ellen didn't like clashes. She liked to get
her own way. Girls had been "let go" for showing lack of commitment
by putting their real life ahead of their work. While Ellen knew
about Becky, she didn't know how important this evening's
exhibition was to my little sister. Or to me.

Becky's recovery had been slow and arduous,
but once she'd been given the all-clear, she became listless,
bored. She couldn't see the point in returning to school. She'd
almost lost her life and didn't want to spend precious time
closeted in a room with kids younger than her. She'd missed her
entire senior year and going back meant graduating with people who
weren't her age. Although I cringed at the thought of her not
graduating, I couldn't force her. I just couldn't. She was right.
Life should be lived, and there was no way you could tell a cancer
survivor any different. When she was so ill that I thought every
labored breath would be her last, I vowed to see that she lived a
full and happy life if she survived. I wouldn't back out now that
she'd recovered.

It was one thing to say it, and another thing
to find out what a teenager wanted to do. We couldn't afford to
travel—the medical bills screwed us there—but, thanks to Ellen, we
had enough for her to go to art school. Becky had always been
talented at drawing, and it seemed to give her the peace she
sought. Her first exhibition with the other students was to be held
tonight at a gallery run by a friend of her teacher.