Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (13 page)

"This way!" he shouted, charging down the hallway, away from the ugly brute, towing me behind him as he clutched at my wrist.

I heard the man behind us roar again, and the thunder of his feet as he came after us. I felt something dragging at my free hand, and realized that I still held the frying pan. Trying my hardest not to stumble over my own feet, I half-turned and threw it over my shoulder.

Somehow, entirely by accident, my throw connected with the man's face. He stumbled to a stop, clutching at his face. Between two fat fingers, one eye glared bloody murder at me - but then Rob hauled me around the corner, and the sight of him vanished.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked, but Rob just kept running.

"We need to get out of here, that's what!" he answered, somehow managing to take the right sequence of turns to get us back to the front of the mansion.

For just a moment, I saw Alfred's face flick past us, his eyes wide as he watched us sprint out of his house. "Call the police!" I shouted at him as we ran past. "There's someone in the house with a gun! Intruder!"

Alfred looked like he just had more questions, but we didn't slow down. Rob's car was still parked right in front of the main entrance, and we piled in.

"Drive!" I shouted unnecessarily at Rob, even as the car's tires squealed on the driveway and we peeled out of there, away from the mansion.

I risked a glance back out the rear window, but didn't see any signs of pursuit. That didn't help my thumping heart slow down, however, and I had to sit in the seat and take several deep breaths as we increased the distance between us and the mansion before I stopped feeling light-headed.

Teddy and the other reporters wouldn't even believe me when I told them about this!

Chapter Fifteen

*

"What the hell happened back there?"

Rob kept his voice pitched low, but that didn't lessen the intensity of his words as he glared across the table at me. Now, we sat in a local little eatery. I'd wanted to go back to his house, but he pointed out that the intruder might decide to follow us, or see us pull in next door, and that it would be better for us to stay someplace public, someplace with lots of witnesses in case he showed up again, gun in hand.

So now, instead of sitting at home, we sat at a back table in a busy little cafe. Rob had ordered something for me, insisting that it would help me calm down, so a large milkshake in an old-timey frosted glass sat in front of me, a red and white straw poking up from the top and angled towards my lips.

I took a few sips of the milkshake, and discovered that it was chocolate flavored. In addition, it did calm me down a little. I took some more sips.

"I don't know," I answered, after I'd swallowed my mouthful of chocolate milkshake. "I heard breaking glass, like someone threw a rock through a window. I went out to look for you and see if you'd caused it, and saw that guy peering around the corner at you, holding a gun."

"What about the frying pan?"

"What about it?"

Rob rolled his eyes. Seeing him do it made me want to slap him a little bit, but the gesture also seemed strangely comforting. No one in mortal danger would waste time rolling his eyes at his partner. "Where did it come from? Why were you walking around with a frying pan in your hands?"

Briefly, I explained to him how in horror movies, the heroine always wanders out into dangerous areas without a weapon, and ends up helpless and in trouble. "So I took the frying pan so that I could defend myself," I finished, feeling like it was a totally reasonable explanation.

Rob opened his mouth to reply, but didn't say anything for a second. "Most women wouldn't have thought about that sort of thing," he finally said, shaking his head at me. In his eyes, however, I saw the glint of something unexpected - respect.

"Well, it saved your ass," I pointed out.

"You did, although I'm not sure how much of that was luck. What was your plan in sneaking up on him?"

"Er, to sneak up on him," I said. "I was about to clonk him in the head, but then Alfred came up behind us and shouted, and he turned around."

"Alfred?" Rob just looked even more confused.

"The caretaker," I explained. "He yelled, and the intruder guy saw me, so I hit him with the frying pan in the elbow to make him drop the gun."

Rob raised his eyebrows at me. "On purpose?"

"Um, no comment." I took another big pull on the straw in the milkshake.

After a moment, Rob sighed and sat back. "Well, I did find some interesting stuff in the study, before I heard the shouting from outside," he said. "It seems like Cartmann had a lot of data on us traders - including printouts of all the trades, and it looks like he was tracking several of us in particular."

"Is that weird, though?" I asked. "I mean, as the boss, isn't it his job to oversee everything?"

"Sure, but he doesn't need to print the stuff off," Rob replied. "And again, if he wanted to pin this on me, this is what he'd need to do - he'd need to really pore over my trades, so that he could track how he doctored the documents to make this all look like it was my fault. Even when they're cooking the books, a company needs to keep the honest set around somewhere, so that they know what lies they've told."

"But that's not enough to prove that you're innocent, and that Chad Cartmann is behind everything, is it?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No. It's not."

He sounded dejected, so I reluctantly relinquished my mouth's grip on the milkshake. "Here, have some of this," I said, pushing it across to him. "It'll make you feel better."

Rob looked doubtful, but he took a big swallow of milkshake. "Eh, maybe it works better for you." He did look a little less stressed, however, I thought privately to myself.

"So what would you need, if it really is Chad at fault behind all of this?" I asked, after another minute.

Rob considered the question, looking out the window. A family with three young children sat at a table outside; one of the kids was happily pelting the others with French fries. "If Cartmann is behind this, he's got to be doctoring my trades. Every trader has their own program for submitting trades. If Chad's pretending to be me, doctoring my trades, he must have some way of breaking into my account so that he can pretend to be me."

I nodded; it made sense. "But where would he keep that?"

Rob's face turned sour. "Unfortunately, I know exactly where he'd keep it - and that's a problem."

I waited, and he sighed. "Chad has his own personal laptop. He usually doesn't need one, since the company supplies super-fast trading computers, but he still carries it around. Latest model, super thin, brags about how it's lightning fast, all of that stuff. I always figured that he just wanted to flaunt his wealth - but if he's got a program like this, it's going to be on that computer."

"So it's back in Manhattan?" I asked, feeling dejection creeping up again.

"Worse than that. As far as I can tell, Chad takes that thing with him everywhere. He keeps it with him in the office every day, and brings it home each night. He doesn't leave it around and unguarded."

I sighed. "Well, maybe tonight some idea will come to us."

"There's also the concern of who that man in the Cartmann mansion was," Rob went on after a minute of silent contemplation. "That guy was there because he was spying on me. I'm betting he's more than just an upset investor, given that he brought a gun."

Just the memory of how the man had casually held the gun in his hand made me shiver. "Yeah. He was scary."

"You did handle him well, though," Rob said, and I glanced back up at him. That strange expression of respect was back on his face, and I could hear it in his tone as well. It seemed odd and unexpected but not at all bad, a bit like finding an extra dollar bill in a pocket of some old jeans. "Most people wouldn't have responded like you did."

"It was mostly luck," I said, thinking of how I managed to block the man's punch with the frying pan by sheer chance.

But Rob shook his head. "It's not luck that kept you from freezing up. That must be one of those traits that make you a good investigative reporter, I bet - the ability to think under pressure."

I laughed, but he sounded serious! For a few seconds, we looked right into each other's eyes, and I felt a strange but pleasant connection between us.

After a minute, however, Rob coughed and looked away, down at the milkshake. "I'll clear this," he said quickly, grabbing it off the table and sucking down the last mouthful of chocolate liquid pooled at the bottom of the glass. "We should probably head home - and take the long way, to make sure we're not followed."

I gave the milkshake glass one last forlorn look as Rob dumped it in the bin of dirty dishes, but followed him outside. We'd parked the car down a side street, and we both kept glancing in different directions as we headed over. I didn't see anyone really paying attention to us, but my mind felt all but overwhelmed with paranoia, as if that big, bulky guy in the cheap suit was about to leap out of a bush, gun in hand.

The drive back to Diana's house proved just as uneventful, although Rob still took the precaution of sticking to back roads and taking a more roundabout route. We pulled into the driveway, parked the car in the garage, and then quickly ducked inside.

"I think we made it," Rob said, after we'd both pressed ourselves against the front window, peeping out through a crack in the curtains.

I nodded. "Is there something that we can do as a distraction tonight, maybe? I just keep on feeling the thud of that pan hitting the guy, and..." I shuddered, looking down at my hands as they started to tremble. Was this post-traumatic stress?

A moment later, Rob reached out and held my hands gently in his own, and the trembling ceased. "Sure," he said softly when I looked up at him. "How about a movie? Something funny? We can make popcorn and watch it together."

"Okay." The word sounded small and alone, coming out of my mouth. "That sounds nice."

"But first, dinner," Rob said, giving my hands one last squeeze before letting go.

I followed him into the kitchen, watching as he diced vegetables and trimmed chicken thighs with quick, sure movements. He was so confident with a knife in his hand, I had observed over the last few days. While I'd always shrunk away from the idea of a scary sharp knife, he acted like the blade was an extension of his own hand, moving with no hesitation.

"Here, cut up these!" he said to me, passing me a cutting board full of vegetables.

Not wanting to disappoint him, I got to work. My knife cuts weren't nearly as fast, and my diced vegetables weren't as neat as his, but I managed to keep all of my fingers. I considered that to be a success, as far as cooking was concerned.

Twenty minutes later, we both had plates of delicious smelling chicken and vegetables, steaming hot from the pan and making my mouth water. Rob disappeared into the living room for a minute, and then returned with a stack of DVDs.

"Plenty of movie options to choose from," he announced, fanning them out on the table. "What looks good?"

With my mouth full of moist, juicy, perfectly cooked chicken, I tapped on the DVD case for "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," a classic movie featuring Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr., one that I'd seen dozens of times before and never got tired of watching. "That one," I managed to get out around my mouthful of food.

Rob flipped the DVD case over, examining the backside. "Huh. Never seen this one before."

"What!?" I forced myself to swallow the big mouthful of food. "You've never seen this one? Oh, it's classic! The director is Shane Black, which means that there's lots of action and that it's set right around Christmas, in the late nineteen hundreds or so. It's so funny - it's Robert Downey Jr. before he got all big and famous from the Iron Man movies!"

"Okay, okay!" Rob protested, holding up the case as a shield against my enthusiasm - but smiling at the same time. "We'll watch it after dinner." He smirked at me. "And since I made dinner, it only seems fair that you wash the dishes."

"Aw, man," I protested half-heartedly, even though we'd stuck to this same arrangement since the first night that Rob started showing off his skills in the kitchen. Despite my complaints, however, I sighed as I looked over at the sink full of dirty dishes, mentally calculating out how long it would take me to get through them.

Rob patted me on the shoulder. "Cheer up - I make great popcorn," he promised me. "I'll go get to work figuring out how to get the television in the living room to play this thing."

I nodded, feeling a strange little touch of warmth in my chest as he headed off. Maybe it was just happiness and contentment at being someplace safe after that assault earlier this afternoon, but I liked this little moment. Somehow, I wished that it could last forever, that I didn't have to go back to investigations and the real world tomorrow.

At least, for tonight, I could forget about all of that and just relax with Rob.

Chapter Sixteen

*

The dishes didn't take too long to clean, and I stacked the last of the plates in the drying rack just as Rob returned back into the kitchen.