All That He Loves (Volume 2 The Billionaires Seduction) (42 page)

Is everything alright, sir?… Understood. Call if you need maintenance.

“He’s part of it?!” I asked, astounded.

“I don’t know. Is he?” Connor asked Sebastian.

“Well, if he isn’t, he’s incredibly unlucky. Chad Harris, security systems supervisor last night, got off work at 2AM – two hours later than usual because of the shooting. I sent someone over to his apartment early this morning to talk to him, and they found him with a bullet through his head.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

This isn’t happening.

Although apparently it was.

“Did they get all his information?” Connor asked Sebastian.

“Everything. Computer, bank registers, bills, every scrap of paper in the apartment. Whoever killed him took it all.”

“Damn it,” Connor muttered. “Cell phone?”

“Gone. We bought his phone records off one of those websites, and the team is combing through them, but if he used a cell to contact the shooter – ”

“It was probably a cheap, prepaid disposable,” Connor said glumly.

“Exactly. And he could have ditched that anywhere between the Dubai and his apartment.”

Connor’s grim visage suddenly brightened “The shooter must have had one, though – and he
couldn’t have gotten rid of his.”

“We’re trying to find out, but LAPD won’t tell us what they logged into evidence.”

“I’ll bet Miranda knows,” Connor smirked.

My eyes bugged out.

Crap – Miranda has sources in the police department –

But how does Connor know that?

I looked at Sebastian and Johnny. “Do you tell him about – ”

Sebastian cut me off. “Obviously she knows they had cell phones if she
hired
them,” he said with a subtly raised eyebrow.

But Connor was smarter than that. “Tell me about what?” he asked as he glanced around at us.

Neither Johnny nor Sebastian looked very happy with me.

“Tell me about
what?”
Connor repeated.

I winced at Johnny and Sebastian. “Sorry…”

With their grudging permission, I started off with what Mr. Templeton had said in the lounge. I stressed the part where neither he nor Vincent nor Connor’s mother had known anything about the plot – and I tried to repeat his final words as closely as I could remember them.

Connor sat there listening with an expression halfway between thoughtful and cynical. “I’d like to believe that,” he said simply.

Then I told him about Miranda, and we played Sebastian’s voicemail for him.

The more Connor heard, the angrier he got.

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he demanded.

“Hellooooo, stoned out of your mind,” Sebastian said.

“Not for the last three hours, I wasn’t! And you told me everything else – ”

“We didn’t want you to get upset,” I said, trying to soothe him.

“Like you’re getting now,” Sebastian pointed out.

“I’m not upset,” Connor snapped.

“Riiiiight,” Sebastian muttered.

“But this means she’s got people on the inside of the LAPD!”

“Which is another reason why we have our own team,” Sebastian reminded him.

“You should have told me! She could have done something to Lily – ”

“Nothing happened,” I protested.

“But it
could
have.”

“But it
didn’t,
” I whispered, and rubbed his hand. “Why are you so freaked out?”

He looked at me, and suddenly his anger turned to helplessness. “I just… I feel like I failed… I couldn’t protect you…”

“From Miranda?
Nothing happened.
”

“No… in the hallway. When I…”

He trailed off into miserable silence.

I stared at him. “Connor, you saved my life.”

“But you could have been killed – ”

“You stepped between me and the gun!” I said, my voice rising. “You
literally
took a bullet for me –
two
of them!”

“I don’t think you can say I took a bullet for you when they were obviously meant for me,” he joked.

“It’s not funny!” I said, my voice cracking. “You saved my life! Stop acting like you didn’t do enough, because I sure as hell couldn’t save
you!”

Then I broke down into tears.

His eyes grew wide in surprise. Then he leaned over, sat me down next to him on the bed, cradled my head against his shoulder, and caressed my hair.

“Shh,” he whispered into my ear. “Shh…”

“Stop acting like you didn’t do enough,” I said, wiping away my tears. “You saved my life.”

“And you saved mine,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

I just nestled against him closer and let him hold me.

“Did you hold anything else back from me?” he asked Sebastian.

“No.”

“
Sebastian –
”

“NO.”

“Johnny?”

Johnny shook his head. “That was the last of what we know.”

Connor was silent for a moment, though he continued to stroke my hair.

“Double the reward,” he said darkly. “She’s never touching Lily again.”

“Connor – ” I protested, but he put his finger against my lips to quiet me.

“She’s never touching you again,” he whispered as he pulled me closer.

Despite the darkness surrounding that one conversation, the next two days passed pleasantly – almost like I was on one long, continuous, low-key date. Yes, we were in a hospital. Yes, Connor was confined to a bed. Yes, there was always a bodyguard ten feet away, and no, there wasn’t much more than a stolen kiss here and there. Connor was in too much pain for more than that, and Johnny was too paranoid to let him out of his sight.

But what we did have were hours upon hours together, trying to fill the time. We played a lot of cards – a
lot
of cards. Gin Rummy and Go Fish, mostly. After half a game, I forbade him to play Spit. Even though he was in a hospital bed with cracked ribs, he was so ultra-competitive that he wouldn’t stop slapping cards down as fast as he could – and he was too much of a macho idiot to admit he was in pain. I didn’t catch on until he started wincing, but as soon as I realized it, I put the kibosh on any card games relying on speed.

Mostly it was our talks that I remember. I laughed out loud at his stories about crazy shenanigans – like starting a bachelor party for one of his good friends in New York City, then waking up in Rome with only a hazy recollection of how he got there. (I’m sure there were women involved, but he judiciously edited that part out.) I almost cried about some of the things he’d seen on trips to Africa and India on behalf of the charities he helped. And I sat transfixed as he told me more about his childhood, from all the amazing experiences he’d had, to the thoughtless cruelties of his parents (cruelties he still, amazingly, regarded as ‘normal’).

I told him stories about me growing up – stories about my parents and my brother, stories about camping a week every year in the Smokey Mountains (and HATING it), stories about prom and bad boyfriends and all the stupid little things you might tell a man you were dating. Except that, instead of occurring over the course of months, it was all compressed into a couple of days. There was no physical intimacy, but the emotional intimacy between us grew by leaps and bounds. At the end of Sunday night, I felt like I knew him ten times better – and loved him twice as much.

The one thing we never talked about was our breakup two months before. He never mentioned it, and it was so painful – and I was enjoying our time together so much – that I never brought it up, either.

At some point Saturday evening, Sebastian – who was
always
on the phone – upbraided Connor about maybe doing a
little
work.

“I got shot,” Connor protested. “Best excuse for a vacation ever
.
”

“This is your idea of a vacation?” I asked. “You really need to rethink your leisure time.”

“That’s a good idea. Maybe you and I should go down to the Caribbean somewhere… lie on a deserted beach, and just drink lots of mojitos.” Then he added with a devilish grin, “…and have a lot of hot sex.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Or go to a little village in Tuscany, way off the beaten path. Drink a lot of wine, eat a lot of amazing food… and have a lot of hot sex.”

“I’m sensing a pattern here.”

“Yeah… alcohol is a common thread in a lot of our interactions,” he nodded somberly, as though it troubled him.

“Which leads to the all the hot sex you keep mentioning, right?”

“Lily, I’ve hesitated to mention it, but… you kind of seem obsessed with sex.”

I looked up from my cards and glared at him.

“Maybe you should get some professional help,” he continued with a straight face. “I’m sure they have an addiction specialist here – ”

I threw my cards at him.

“Don’t you mean an a-dick-tion specialist?” Johnny piped up with a grin.

I blushed and pointed a finger at Johnny. “YOU – do
NOT
encourage him.”

Connor tried to keep from laughing, but was failing badly. “I’d really like to know that you value me for something more than my body, Lily. I’m not just a piece of meat, you know – ”

At which point I threw the entire deck at him.

“Lily,” he said, barely able to contain his laughter, “sometimes I just need to
cuddle
– ”

At which point I started smacking him on the arm.

“Ow, ow – injured man here, injured man!” he roared with laughter.

After my impromptu round of 52 Pickup, I had to shuffle the cards all over again. As I dealt, he asked, “Remember our date in Santa Monica?”

“And all the hot sex?”

“I’m serious.”

I looked at him askance, and decided he was.

“Of course,” I smiled. “That was one of the best days of my life.”

“Mine, too,” he agreed as he arranged his cards. “What did you enjoy about it the most?”

I settled back in my chair and considered. “I think… that you got such a kick out of it. The fact that you got to be ‘normal.’ It was like seeing a little kid try ice cream or go to the circus for the first time. I loved that.”

A look of peace and contentment filled his face… and then he looked at me quizzically. “Is this what normal people do?”

“What?”

“Play cards and just… talk.”

“When they get shot as part of an assassination plot? I guess.”

He gave me a wry look. “You know what I mean.”

“Don’t you ever play cards with anybody?”

“Well, yeah, but usually it’s poker at $10,000 a hand.”

That took a second to process.

“No. Normal people don’t do that.”

“Hey… speaking of poker… remember that first night we met?” he grinned.

My face flushed red, and I glanced over at Johnny. He was reading a magazine and pretending not to listen to us. Once bitten, twice shy.

I looked back at Connor and scowled. “
Hush,
or you can just play with yourself.”

I didn’t realize what I’d said until he started laughing – and then going ‘Ow, ow’ between guffaws.

“Play
by
yourself, play
by
yourself!” I shouted.

Even Johnny could barely stifle his chuckling. I kept hearing him snort behind us.

“I meant play
by
yourself, not
WITH
yourself – ”

“Stop, stop, please, it hurts,” Connor howled – both in hilarity and pain – as he held his ribs.

“Good, you deserve it,” I muttered. “Now draw.”

I spent Saturday night in the room, but Connor was adamant that I go home Sunday night.

“You need your sleep,” he lectured me.

“But I have to go into work on Monday – ”

“Even better reason for you to get a good night’s sleep.”

“But – ”

“I’m not going anywhere, Lily. Just come by the hospital in the morning before you go to work, and then come by afterwards.”

I grudgingly agreed, kissed him goodbye, and left around 11 PM to go home.

Monday morning, I told Anh I was going to drive to work separately so I could visit Connor beforehand. She told me to say ‘hi.’

I got to the front desk of the hospital about 9AM.

“May I get a visitor pass? I’m here to see Connor Templeton.”

“Who?” the woman asked. She must have been a weekday person; I didn’t recognize her from over the weekend.

“Connor Templeton, Room 817. I’ve been visiting with him since he was admitted on Friday night.”

The woman checked the monitor and shook her head. “He checked out this morning at 7AM.”

I stared at her. “What?”

“That’s all it says – he discharged himself against his doctor’s orders.”

I stood there at the counter in stunned silence.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” she asked.

“Um… no. Thank you,” I said, and moved away.

Son of a bitch.

He
knew
he was leaving early – he
had
to have known.

So why didn’t he tell me?

And why did he try so hard to keep me from spending the night?

I pulled out my phone.

No messages.

I dialed his number.

It went to voicemail.

“If you have this number, then you know who this is. Leave a message,”
his familiar, sexy voice rumbled over the line.

“Connor,” I said, trying to choke back my fear and disappointment and anger. “Hi. I just asked at the front desk and they said you checked out two hours ago? Um… why? Call me.”

I hung up and thought for a second… then called Sebastian.

“This is Sebastian Berg of Extremis Incorporated. Please leave a message, or if this is an emergency, contact the 24-hour company hotline at  –  ”

I ignored the number and started talking as soon as the phone beeped. “Sebastian, it’s Monday morning at 9 AM, and I just found out you guys checked out two hours ago. Now I can’t reach Connor. Call me and let me know where you are, okay? I just want to make sure everything’s okay.”

I hung up… considered the pros and cons against it… decided I didn’t care how desperate it made me look, and dialed Johnny.