WIFE WANTED (A Billionaire Bad Boy Romance) (15 page)

“No plans to go on another date with your…other man?” he asked, raising a brow as he shoved a whole piece of bacon in his mouth with half a piece of toast.

Phoebe laughed but shook her head. “No, no such plans exist.”

“Good.”

“Why, what are your plans?”

“I have a few meetings I have to go to. Sadly, those take place on the weekends when we have guests from out of town,” he said.

“Oh.” Phoebe took a long sip of coffee, hoping to hide her disappointment. “That’s all right. I understand.”
Typical. You have a freaking awesome night together, but he books it after making you think he might actually hang around…

“Anna, did you hear me?”

“Hmm? Sorry, what?”

“I said, I have those meetings to go to unless there’s a very good reason for me not to go.”

Phoebe stared down at her coffee, then back up at his blue eyes smiling right back at her. “What would be considered a good reason?”

“That depends,” he said. “It’s usually something pretty serious. Something that means I’m unable to get out of my apartment…or someone else’s apartment.”

She wrapped her arms across her chest and pretended to shiver. “I am feeling a bit under the weather. Cold really, right down to the bone. I don’t think I can take care of myself very well today. And I have so much to do around here.”

Ben walked around the counter, looking very concerned. “I can’t leave a very dear friend home alone and sick. I think I should help warm you up first,” he said with a wink. “A shower, maybe?”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

He leaned down and kissed her cheek, then made his way to her lips. Hers parted for him, and they were both lost as their bodies were pulled towards each other. Phoebe laughed and took off down the hall, tossing her t-shirt behind her as she ducked into the bathroom. Ben was right behind her.

***

Riley tried hard to catch his breath as Anna rolled off him in the bed. “You’re a quick learner,” he muttered.

“About some things, it seems.”

He rolled back to his side and pulled her close, kissing her again, feeling the length of her body against his, slicked with sweat from the last hour. His hand trailed down her shoulder and the slope of her breast just so he could see her eyes darken and a shiver pass over her body.

“Glad to see you had a good reason to miss your meetings. You sure you don’t need to answer your cell?” she asked. It had gone off several times throughout the day. Riley had already left several messages with Ben, telling him to find a reason for his CEO to miss some of the most important meetings of the quarter. But being with Anna, a woman who was quickly finding a way into his heart…that was more important than anything else. A woman he could spend the rest of his life with.

A woman who could not take the place of, but be by his side instead of, his Meredith.

Maybe his grandfather was on to something after all. It was time to move on, and Anna might be the one to help him do it.

“Nah,” he said. “I won’t be missed that much.”

“They’ve called like ten times.”

“Yeah, well, they have everything they need.” He laughed, kissing her nose. “Stop making me feel guilty for missing work.”

He saw a cloud pass through her eyes, and he wanted to ask her what it was about when her cell rang next. It buzzed a few times on the nightstand before it went to voicemail. She didn’t look away from him. Then it started to buzz again.

“Do you need to get that?”

She rolled over, and he felt a sudden chill from where her body had been keeping his warm. She picked it up and muttered something, but Riley didn’t hear before she turned it off and set it back down. “Nope, nothing important.”

“Not about your mom?”

“Nope. I don’t expect to hear anything about her for a few days still. If at all.” She sat up and glanced around her room, lost for a second. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.” She hopped out of bed and threw on a robe, leaving Riley to follow behind after he flung his jeans back on.

“Anna, you all right?”

“Yeah, just…there’s a lot going on and this right here…what is this?”

“A great Saturday afternoon that seems like it’s going to carry on into a great Saturday night.”

She shifted, wringing her hands, and Riley realized part of her didn’t believe this was happening. She was nervous, acted like he was going to walk out that door and never look back. He went to her and took her hands gently in his.

“Anna, listen, I have no idea what this is, but I’m not just going to run out of that door and never see you again.”

“And why should I believe you?” Her words turned bitter, and he understood too late that, just like he had been hurt by losing the love of his life in an accident, someone had hurt her before, too, and she had yet to recover. She pulled her hands out of his and stalked into the kitchen. “First he left me, then my dad died, and now Mom is losing her mind! I’ve been left to pick up the pieces in too many parts of my life. I haven’t let anyone in since then. Never.”

Riley ran a hand over his beard, hating the fact that he was still lying to her, but he couldn’t reveal the whole truth, not yet. But he could give her something so she would trust him. “Listen, Anna, that day at the cemetery, the things I needed to take care of…I was visiting the grave of my dead fiancée.”

Her eyes softened immediately. “What? Ben, I’m so sorry.”

“We were in an accident four years ago,” he said quietly, as the distant wail of sirens started to sound in his ears. He tried to stay planted in her apartment and not slide back to those horrible few minutes that changed his life forever. “Drunk driver hit us, or that’s what they said. But Meredith…she died at the scene. Never even made it to the hospital.”

Overwhelmed with emotion, he made his way to the couch and sat down, trying to steady his heart. Anna followed him and curled up on the opposite side. “I had no idea.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I wanted you to know…I know what it feels like to have the world pulled out from under your feet.”

She scooted closer and reached for his hand. They sat like that for a few moments, both lost in thoughts of where their lives had taken them, each of them lost in futures that would quickly turn grim if they didn’t find a way to get free of them soon. Riley wanted nothing more than to tell her in that moment exactly what he needed from her. That he needed a wife so he could keep his fortune, but if he said a word, it would scare her off. No sane woman would ever agree to that after only one official date and a few rolls in a bed. No, Anna deserved more time before he tossed that at her feet.

And he would do his best to give it to her.

“And I just had a broken heart from some jackass,” she muttered.

He laughed and clucked her chin gently with his thumb. “Hey, a broken heart is a broken heart.”

“And you know what’s good for a broken heart?” He waited to see what she would do as she jumped off the couch and started to rummage through her cabinets, pulling out a box. “Brownies!”

***

They’d completely lost track of time. They’d made the brownies in between bouts of more love-making in the kitchen…and on the couch. Phoebe wasn’t sure what had gotten into her, but she just couldn’t seem to get enough of this man who’d stumbled into her life. She’d asked him about his grandfather, and they’d settled down on the floor of the living room, using whatever blankets she could find to make them a bed. There was a half-eaten plate of brownies nearby as they snuggled up next to each other, and he told her all about his life.

Or at least most of it. He was trying to trust her, she could tell by everything he was telling her, but he was still keeping something from her. The question was how big it was. Would it affect her too much in the end? But the end of what?

She was hiding a few things from him as well, but she forgot all about them as she listened to him talk. His voice was gentle, and he smiled as he told her about the type of man his grandfather had been. Strong, honest, a hard worker who had built a company from the ground up. That was the man he strived to be like.

“What type of company?” she asked.

He hesitated for just a second before he said, “Cyber Vault, Inc.”

Phoebe pulled back from him slightly. “You work for that huge company? Wait, your grandfather built that company?”

“Not exactly,” he said but his lips twitched. “He helped the man that built it, and in turn, when he passed, I took his place. I’m a bit higher up in the company but still just a tech monkey. Don’t have the amount of pull my grandfather did with the CEO, but I’m pretty happy with where I’m at.”

“That’s interesting. Guess that’s why I saw you at Yancey’s company the other day.”

“Yeah, my boss sent me to find out some information about a merger for us that almost fell through.”

Phoebe tapped her fingers on her leg as she sat up and debated what to tell him. She knew Yancey was up to something that concerned research that she had never seen before, or at least not that she remembered. She’d only been there a few years, long enough to know what had already been archived by the person before her. Did this have something to do with what was going on? Whatever that was? Mitch had said she needed to find someone she trusted to tell her findings to.

“Anna? What’s wrong? You look a bit agitated. Mad I work for your competitor?” he teased.

“No I just…there’s something I need to show you, and I think it has to do with this merger of yours. Just hang on a second.” She stood, completely forgetting she was naked, and watched Riley swallow hard as something else grew even harder. She winked at him, said maybe later, and dashed back into her bedroom for the files.

Her phone, still off, sat on her nightstand, and she thought she should at least check to see if Charlotte called. Not that she wanted the sudden dose of reality of what awaited her outside of this room, but she needed to know what was going on. The second she turned it on, she got twelve notifications of missed calls and three texts. The messages were from Charlotte saying her mom was fine and wanting to know how her date went. The phone calls were all from Mitch.

He only left a couple of voicemails, and she listened to them quickly, peeking down the hall at Ben. He still lounged on the floor, flipping through something. Her photo album? She grinned until she remembered what pictures were in there. Spring break vacation when she and Charlotte did their craziest stunts and partied. The only time Phoebe ever really let loose.

She felt her whole body start to flush with embarrassment until Mitch’s voice filled her ear.

“Just checking in. Tried calling you a few times. Wanted to make sure everything was all right. Maybe we can make plans to meet up Sunday for dinner? Call me back.”

She moved onto the next one, still from him, saying pretty much the same thing. But it was the last message that made her hand grip the phone. “Listen, just want to make sure you’re all right. After finding all those weird files the other day, I started to do some digging of my own and I think we might need to leave this alone. There was some guy following me today—looked a bit rough around the edges. Just text me or something, let me know you’re fine. I might just swing by so I know you’re good.”

Swing by? Oh no, he couldn’t swing by while she had Ben here. She was pretty sure that would piss him off and ruin whatever deal they might be on their way to making to save her mom. She texted him back quickly, saying she was fine, just stuck at home sick. It was a lame-ass excuse, but hopefully, it would keep him from knocking on her door sometime today. Considering how late it was, there was no reason for him to be out. She hadn’t even noticed the time passing, but it was nearing midnight. Had they been sitting there talking that long?

It brought a smile to her face, being able to be so close to someone for this stretch of time. Almost like a real relationship. She waited until Mitch texted her back, then set her phone back down and went into her closet. Beneath all of her shoes was a tiny floor safe her parents had made her install when she’d first moved in all those years ago. She hadn’t had anything in it for the longest time, not until she got the files from the archives room. The ones Yancey had been messing with.

Phoebe thought about it for one more second before she snatched them up and headed back into the living room to find Ben laughing hysterically at the pictures in his hands.

“You have got to tell me what happened here,” he gasped. “Really. How did you get your hair to be that many colors?”

“It was an art festival with lots of booze,” she said, laughing right along with him. “We were trashed and had way too much money on hand, so they dyed our hair and painted our faces, and I’m pretty sure I woke up the next day with full-body henna tattoos.”

Ben glanced up and down her body, his eyes narrowing as he took in every inch, making Phoebe squirm with wanting to pounce on him. “I think you’d look pretty good like that.”

“Yeah, well, too bad. No pictures of that.”

She pulled the album out of his hands and dropped a stack of files onto his lap. “Here, this is what I wanted to show you. If you don’t mind, I’m going to the bathroom. Be right back.”

***

Riley looked at the file and saw Yancey Securities on all the folders. He opened the top one, then sat up straighter and set them all on the floor, opening them one by one. The pages were extremely familiar, research documents and notes he’d seen before. He’d seen all of them before. These pages had come directly from his own company’s files and been planted in these folders. They were very thin files, though. Barely two or three pages in each. Yancey was missing research, which meant these files…he was trying to create a paper trail from his own company.