Big Bad Billionaire (The Woolven Secret Book 1) (6 page)

Blake turned and ran back toward the main house.

Chapter Six

Blake Woolven wasn’t like she’d imagined him.

He wasn’t even the same person as she’d gathered in her first impression of him.

Admitting it didn’t mean she would suddenly trust him because he gave good cunnilingus. She would admit, he was good with his tongue in more ways than one. Not just bringing her off, but in the things he’d said, too.

“There’s our little doom doll now,” Parker Woolven said as she approached the front door to the manor house.

“You’re the baby Woolven, right?” She asked it even though she knew damn well who he was.

“Baby Woolven, that’s me.” He offered her an affable grin. “But I still bite.”

“Of course you do. All handsome men bite.”

“You think I’m handsome?” He straightened. “I can be downright dapper if I try.” He held the door open for her. “Out exploring?”

“You could say that.”

“Alone, or did you go walking in the moonlight with my big brother?” He eyed her. “You know, some women, in certain circles, call him Big Bad.”

She was determined not to blush, as if she had any control over it. She could see how he’d earned the moniker, thinking of the way his cock felt pressed up against her. “As in Big Bad Wolf?” Randi snorted. “To his face? Lord knows, that man doesn’t need any more of an ego.”

Her mind was drawn back to that moment outside of the maze when she’d thought she’d seen something inhuman looking back at her and, when she’d fled, run as if her life depended on it, what had she thought followed her?

The Big Bad Wolf? And it had been.

She shook her head, trying to shake the stupid thought out of her brain, and suddenly became aware of Parker’s intense scrutiny. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

The tension should’ve shattered or cracked, but it didn’t. “No, Randi. You don’t.” He continued to study her.

“Then just what the hell are you looking at?”

“You, obviously.”

“Obviously. What about me has so captured your attention, Baby Woolven?”

“Just wondering if you got my gifts. A certain crossbow and a handy-dandy bit of candy in a can.”

“The pepper spray was you, too? You should know, I have no experience with a crossbow and I almost killed your brother with it.”

Parker actually laughed. He laughed so hard, he snorted. It wasn’t the least bit attractive. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard in years.”

“That I almost killed your brother?” She was incredulous. They had a strange relationship, these brothers.

“You might’ve given him a shiny scar to show the ladies, but he’d have survived. And he would’ve bitched the whole time.” He laughed some more.

“He thought the estate security had been compromised.”

“That’s…even…better.” Parker couldn’t breathe.

“Now you’re just being mean.” Randi continued her progress toward her room.

“One would think, Randi, if you were trying to burn his company to the ground, you’d want him to suffer.”

She didn’t answer but kept walking. She didn’t want to think about it.

“So one walk in the moonlight with Big Bad changed your life, did it?” he called after her.

She didn’t answer him, but rejoined with her own question. “What is with your family and celestial bodies? You even named your estate after planetary movement.”

“Did we? I didn’t realize. What does it mean, Aphelion, I mean?”

“It’s the place in the orbit of a heavenly body when it’s the farthest from the sun.”

“Huh. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You know, answering my curiosity…that saved you the joke about
your
heavenly body. But only this time.” Parker winked at her.

She rolled her eyes. “I know what I look like. You don’t need to turn on the charm with me. I know how this works. If ‘Big Bad’ can’t seduce me then maybe Baby Brother can? Not a chance.”

He cackled again. “You mean he
didn’t
? Oh, Goddess. That’s just too much.” Parker was laughing so hard he was practically crying. “Oh, oh. But wait, wait.”

She lifted a brow and waited for him to finish cackling.

He took a breath and managed to speak. “You really are a beautiful woman, Randi. If he hasn’t told you that yet, he’s been remiss.”

“You act like we’re engaged or something. Are you all insane?”

“Or something.” Parker shrugged and cheerfully took himself off toward another wing of the estate.

Randi bit her lip with indecision. Her plan had been to go back up to her room, take a nice long shower and then go to bed. But her father’s notes were within reach. She was exhausted, so it was unlikely she’d be able to decode anything until tomorrow anyway… but she was hungry for a piece of him. To touch something he’d touched, to trace her steps over his and feel like maybe the veil of death wasn’t so heavy after all.

She wanted to scrub away the guilt too. Randi shouldn’t have let Blake touch her, she shouldn’t have
wanted
him to touch her. She certainly shouldn’t be thinking about when he might touch her again.

This was what he intended, to distract her.

To do something to break her.

He’d build her up, make her think that he wanted her, then he’d crush her. Like it mattered. She didn’t matter. Only avenging her father mattered, and she couldn’t let herself forget it.

While she’d been distracted with long walks in the dark, she should’ve already been in the laboratory going over her father’s notes, figuring out just what he was working on, and why it was worth his life.

Where had Woolven said the lab was? She pulled out the ID card in her pocket and set off in search of the secured wing.

Almost as if she’d sensed Randi’s need, the rounded, graying Mrs. Westwood appeared. She brought with her the scent of sugar cookies and tea, like someone’s grandmother. To have corralled all of the Woolven boys, Randi rather imagined the older woman’s sweetness hid something lethal.

Or it could just be that she’d been swept away to a country estate, with a brooding and enigmatic billionaire and had been chased through a maze, run through secret passages… that was like every gothic romance she’d ever read. She just needed to be out wandering the woods or some cliffs in Dover in a filmy white nightgown and she’d be all set.

It comforted her that in most of those books, the hero who’d seemed so terrifying always had some horrible, heartbreaking secret and it was never his fault. He was never really evil.

Unless she went really old school and this was one of those where the anti-hero turned out to be the devil. Literally. She used to read those way too often.

“Can I help you find something, dearling?”

“The lab. I’d like to get started on my father’s notes.”

“Industrious little thing, aren’t you?” Mrs. Westwood gave her a cheery smile.

She’d never been called a ‘little thing’ and certainly never by a woman who was half her size. “That’s what I’m here for, Mrs. Westwood. I’m not here for a vacation or a house party.”

“You can call me Eleanor. I insist the boys call me Mrs. Westwood because, well, you know how little boys can be. They’re adorable little beasties, but mostly made out of noise and dirt.”

She found herself smiling. “That they are.”

Eleanor fiddled around in the pockets of her dress and produced another canister of the pepper spray. She tucked it into Randi’s palm. “This is for you. Keep this on your person at all times.”

“First the bow and arrow and now this? What am I missing? Blake told me that I was safe here, but all of this cloak and dagger stuff with those sad, pitying smiles… what’s that about?”

Eleanor patted her hand. “You are safe, but it never hurts to be prepared. Corporate espionage has been known to happen. Sometimes, people like the de la Lunas will try to get other people to do their dirty work.”

Randi cocked her head to the side. “So, if Woolven is at direct odds with de la Luna, why was he fucking Marchessa? In his office of all places?” She clamped her hand over her mouth—both because she’d just dropped the f-bomb on someone’s grandmother and because of the cold wash of guilt that skittered down her spine at the mention of corporate espionage. Wasn’t that why she was here? To bring Woolven down?

These people had welcomed her and—
stuff it, honey
. She reminded herself that if she didn’t have the chops for revenge, she shouldn’t be there. All that stuff about Woolven wanting her, it was to elicit exactly such a response. He’d brought her in to the bosom of his family when she was the most vulnerable.

By giving her what she needed and wanted most—he’d turn her.

Screw that.

And screw him.

“Oh, he’s done with that now that you’re here.” She inclined her head toward the far hall. “This way.”

Randi couldn’t help but remember what Blake had said earlier:
What did you expect, Wuthering Heights?
She was so disappointed when they turned down an institutional hallway. Mrs. Westwood—Eleanor, she didn’t seem to fit. She was an anachronism—a throwback to an old world with old traditions and this setting almost seemed like it would be anathema to her.

“Are you okay, child?” Eleanor asked her.

“Wool gathering.”

Eleanor nodded and swiped her security ID. A set of doors opened with an audible hiss. She led her through another security measure and what seemed like another maze before she swiped her ID on one final door.

Randi knew they hit the end of the road then—she knew it was her father’s lab even before she’d stepped a foot inside. She could feel his presence and she pressed her lips together hard, holding back the emotion. She missed him and she knew going in this room would be the last of him.

The alchemy of the room would change: the scents, the presence, the air… it would all be transformed once she’d entered and she didn’t want to let that part of him go. But it wasn’t as if Woolven would let her turn it into some kind of memorial. This was a place of business. Or work.

And her father wouldn’t want her to if she could. It was a place of science, not emotion.

For about the hundredth time since he’d passed, she thought her father would have never taken his own life. Reason and logic ruled him, not high emotions. If he hadn’t killed himself when her mother died, nothing else on the earth could make him.

Maybe calling Woolven a killer hadn’t been so figurative after all.

She must’ve paled because Mrs. Westwood asked her, “Are you all right, dear?”

Randi managed to nod and step inside the room.

She was hit hard with all the things she’d imagined and the sensation was like when someone walked past you quickly and the air rustled in their wake, leaving behind the scent and sense of themselves.

It was almost as if she’d come to the office and just missed him on his way out.

“Can you—please?”

“I’m just a buzz away. Four on that phone.” Eleanor Westwood closed the door behind herself, leaving Randi alone with her ghosts.

She sank down into the chair, curled her knees up to her chin and hugged herself in the embrace her father could no longer give her. The office was so him; he ante-room designed in a similar style to his study at home—the details the same, right down to the all the books on the shelves and the giant, leather chair and ottoman next to the fireplace.

The only notable difference she saw was a door on the east wall which led to the inner workings of his lab.

She wanted to stay there, wrapped up in his memory for just a bit longer, but it wouldn’t solve the mystery of what he’d been working on. Randi knew it was something to do with silver nitrate and he’d told her it was to help soldiers in the field.

Randi chewed her lip, eyes taking in the room again from a different perspective. She’d assumed helping soldiers meant healing, because of the kind of man her father was. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he worked on some super death ray.

She knew his notes would be there, and she wanted them before she entered the rest of the lab. Randi traced her fingers over the spines of books her father had touched, followed in his steps, until she came across a book she didn’t recognize. She knew it was out of order and didn’t belong because, as a child, she would have grabbed for it immediately. She’d been into horror movies and the darker myths. Of course, as an adult, she’d outgrown that sort of nonsense.

The book’s blood red leather binding read
The Book of Were-Wolves
by the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould. It called attention to itself, but no more so than any of the other books in her father’s collection.

Thrilled with her discovery, she opened it and found something that didn’t quite belong. A small case hid in the hollowed out pages with a touchscreen that looked like it needed a thumbprint to open.

Surely, he’d left it for her.

She pushed her thumb into the box and something sharp pricked her, causing blood to well. When her blood dropped onto the surface, it clicked open and offered her a small, silver key that looked like it belonged to a safety deposit box.