The Billionaire's Bride (Complete Collection) (13 page)

“I wish I could stand up here and say that this has been difficult for me. That I needed to deliberate on my choice. But I didn't need to. The moment I met this girl, I knew I had to have her. I had to make her mine. She's like no one I've ever met...”

Eyes were on me. People slowly shuffled away, forming a line from Lucas to me.

“Please welcome on stage, my choice, the brilliant, elegant, and beautiful, Tia Daniels.”

He held his hand out for me to take. His hand outstretched, I strode toward it in my heels, which seemed to take forever. Some were taken aback. Some were applauding. Some girls were frowning, knowing this day had to come, but it still stung.

I took his hand. He pulled me onto the stage then swept me into his arms. I remembered his voice yesterday when I was afraid to open up…
trust me
, and I followed his lead, opening my lips and letting him in.

He kissed me and truly claimed me. Pushing his body against mine, he washed away all fears from my mind.

I was on stage kissing him in front of everybody, and it was liberation. We declared our love with that kiss. When he pulled away from me, my eyes were twinkling with the beginning of tears, and my lips were still hanging open as I star gazed into his eyes.

We left the podium. People began to talk again while some congratulatory messages came my way. Others returned to their prior conversations. A few girls stewed over the outcome. They’d begun to talk behind my back already, but it didn’t matter. They would be out of my life soon enough.

My life with Lucas would now begin.

As he led me away, back to his house, I guessed where we were going. He hadn't been joking about enjoying me. He expected to fuck me now. Oh yeah, I’d take it. There were some reservations about how loudly I would scream, and no way after we finished would I rejoin the party, but I was ready for Lucas, ready for all he would give me.

“Wait,” I heard behind me. It was an icy, blunt voice that slammed into my back. Someone else had grabbed the microphone.

Lucas let go of my hand. He took a step forward to block my view, but I stepped to the side so I could see. It was his father. And he looked pissed. The large vein near his right temple pulsated. His eyes looked like a dark storm now, its path in our direction, ready to rip us apart.

He clenched his teeth, his nostril twitching for a second, and then spoke calmly and clearly. “Wait, Lucas.”

“Dad—” Lucas began.

“No, you had your chance to speak. Now it's my turn.”

“Don't,” Lucas warned, but he didn't have the microphone and his voice fell short. Everyone focused on what his father would say. It was clear who still held all the power in the company, because everyone employed in attendance meekly looked away.

“I was the one who created this game. I'm making the rules, not you, Son.” He straightened his collar, stretched his withered neck, and continued. “You have chosen someone, good for you right now maybe, but have you chosen the right woman for you in the long run?”

When he said ‘the right woman’, his eyes flashed and burned a hole through me. My dreams were turning to kindling as he continued. I reached for Lucas, but he wasn't close to me anymore.

“Who is this girl? I don't think she was even invited.”

I peered back to Brent, but he remained frozen in place. Upon seeing me, he mouthed the word, “Sorry.”

Great. Not even Brent had my back.

Where was Lucas? Wouldn’t he say something?

I'd been led into an ambush.

“You might think you like her because she's something new. But this wasn't about finding some random girl, some poor girl that you could sweep off her feet. This was about finding a wife, a woman of prestige and strength who will bear you children, who would one day run the company in our name.”

He sneered in my direction. Mr. Moore seemed livid. What on Earth did I do to him? I wanted to run. It didn’t help that Lucas remained fixated on his father like his owner had deactivated him.

“What did you give me? This poor choice. A sad pick for a wife. This girl is nothing. No, this simply won't do. Lucas, you need to pick again.” He smiled and waved to the girls in the back. “The competition will continue. Lucas must find a
proper
wife. Until he finds a suitable wife who we agree will be good for him, the game will go on.”

There was some cheering. Others seemed to share my pain as they looked at me, destroyed.

Lucas charged toward the podium. When he jumped onto it, he saw me spin around and rush toward the exit.

“Wait,” he called after me, but I was long gone.

I didn't need to squeeze my way through. Everyone had moved aside to allow me to exit this world in which I clearly didn’t belong.

Tears should've been falling. But I was too numb. Too over it. How many times did the real world have to show its ugly face for me to understand that Lucas and I couldn't be together? It simply wasn't going to work.

I shoved open the front door and hurried to the limo. I rapped on the front window. The driver rolled it down and poked his head out.

“Yes?”

“You need to take me away from here.”

“Oh,” he said, clearly confused. “Is everything all right?”

“No. Everything's not all right,” I said, watching his eyes bulge out of his skull.

“Get me away from here,” I repeated, frantic to leave before anyone stopped me.

N
ot again
. How many times did Tia have to be disappointed? She'd dealt with too much in her life. I simply wanted to have a day in which I celebrated her, to show her how much I cared. I should've known better. Regret wallowed in my chest, but I charged ahead, trying to catch her to make this right.

I thought I could salvage it.

I
had
to salvage it.

While I’d expected my father to be displeased, I never thought he would publicly humiliate her. My first goal was to get Tia back. I needed to make sure she was all right. My second goal was to tell my father off. And oh boy, would that be sweet.

My chase didn't last long. Tia was arguing with the driver when I caught up to her.

“Wait, Tia.”

She turned and faced me. When I took a step closer to comfort her, she darted away.

“No, don't touch me, Lucas.”

“I'm sorry,” I started.

“I know you are.” She leaned on the back door. “But I need to leave. He was right.”

“He wasn't right. You need to stay with me. You are the best thing that ever happened to me and I might be arrogant for saying it, but I don’t care, I'm the best thing to ever happen to you.”

She reached for the door. I wanted to take her hand away, but she looked too afraid of me. It looked like Tia might scream if I tried again.

Hadn't she been through enough?

“I need to go. You need to let me.”

Tia rushed to me. Usually, I would spread my arms to take her leap and press her close. But she took my hands, clasped them in hers, and pleaded with me to let her go.

“You've got to let me go, Lucas.” Her expression told me it meant forever. Her tone seemed to hint at it lasting for the night.

“Take her back,” I told the driver, who’d been watching the whole time. “Make sure she's safe and call me when she gets there.”

Tia dragged her heels to the side of the limo. She wanted to turn to me, but decided it was best not to at the halfway point. Her door slammed closed in my face and then she disappeared behind tinted windows. The limo drove away.

My heart felt like it was in a vice. Hollow, I trudged back toward the party, wondering what I would do next.

My father waited in the driveway. I hung my head lower, looking at my feet, not wanting to meet his eyes. I was worried what I might do, what I might say. A hundred different versions of how terrible he was rambled in my brain.

Second, I was still thinking about Tia. My chief concern was fixing this.

But he wasn't going to budge from my path. He remained poised like an old, grizzled commander. I looked into his piercing, steady glare, so sure of himself. He disgusted me.

“Don't look at me like that,” he said. “I only did it for you.”

He really didn't understand me at all, did he?

“That was the only woman who ever made me happy. That was the girl I could happily live the rest of my life with.”

He scoffed. “I doubt that.”

My jaw clenched. I started to shake with anger. “You're not
listening
to me. You need to leave.”

My father straightened his cuffs. I got the image of him smacking me, but he'd never done that before. I doubted he would start now.

“Don't say anything you might regret.”

“The only thing I regret is listening to you as long as I have. If Brice hadn't listened to you, he might still be alive.”

My father's rage deflated. My words seemed to smack him across the face. The pained expression on his face wasn't a triumph. No, I was a mess, depression swirling around me, waiting to grasp me with its dark tendrils and pull me in. As soon as we finished, I knew I would crash.

Words I'd been dreaming about saying for a long time finally left my lips. “I quit.”

He smiled at first, but when he saw I was serious, he was about to drop. “You can't quit. You're talking like an idiot right now.”

“I can quit,” I said, standing up to him. He backed down. “Now take all of your workers, all of your eligible wives, and lastly,
you
, and get the hell off my property, Dad.”

He tried to say something, but my head was pounding, my senses dulled during my walk up to my office. I was numb.

I knew my orders would be followed. My father would do it out of pride. The company would be transferred to one of my cousins.

Dropping onto my leather chair, I leaned back and blew out a long drag of air. I rubbed my forehead, then messed my hair and stood up straight. My skull throbbed, and black spots peppered my vision like I might pass out from anger.

What about Brice? Had I let him down...or would he be cheering me on?

My desk had some papers from the LWM company on it. I pushed them onto the floor. After shutting the blinds, and flicking on the light, I pulled out the plans I'd been working on for so long but never thought I would get to implement.

I placed the ideas for my company flat on my desk.

“Thank you, Tia,” I said, knowing that I would never have been brave enough to do this without her.

I would break away. I would start my own company. The company that I always dreamed of.

Sometimes, memories would take me by surprise – his hot, muscled body driving into me, the look of carnal lust clear on his face, as he appreciated every curve of my body.

I would think about him a lot in the shower. Masturbation had picked up. For a time. I had even bought a vibrator to curb my starvation of Lucas. It worked a few times, but I grew dissatisfied in comparison to the way his loving tongue roamed over me, the way his hands pinned me down to force me to take all of him.

There was no comparison.

It was a beautiful dream that had passed in what seemed like one quick, hot night. He tried his best to contact me, but I refused to answer and I didn't send anything back to him. It was for the best.

When my mother saw how I crumbled to the floor, crying myself sick that night over what his father said and how I'd been treated, she didn't blame me. “You're going to cry yourself to death,” she told me, then she avoided bringing up the billionaire again. She thought I had been through enough.

I was like a zombie, going to my jobs, then coming home. All of my passion had been sucked from me. I made payments. They were getting smaller, but not small enough. My debts would last years to come.

Yeah, it wasn't quite the fun romance it had seemed it would be. Sorry.

The only romance for me was the occasional fantasy about Lucas. But that's all it was, a fantasy, imagining a man that clearly wasn't the real Lucas or our current circumstances. It was an alternate reality.

Eventually, I started to look ahead. I called an old friend from Santa Barbara and we agreed to meet up for drinks on the weekend. We wouldn't be clubbing it up or anything crazy. Dating didn't seem right after what happened months ago.
Give it a few years,
I wistfully told myself.

Alicia was a good friend of mine I hadn't seen since she moved away. We shared common interests and clicked instantly, even though we came from two different backgrounds. Alicia worked in Europe rehabilitating wildlife and was in only for a week. She'd been in before, but I'd been in too much of a slump to meet her.

This time, I promised her I wouldn't be such a bad friend.

We met up at an Irish pub called O'Leary’s. She was already there by the time I arrived, late as usual. But it was difficult to get around with my jobs, and she understood. It was good to see her. We quickly got to talking. It was like the time between our last meeting hadn’t occurred. Alicia still looked slender, skinny with some rocking curves and small breasts that she would always joke about.

Small breasts or not, Alicia always drew men's eyes with her gorgeous, shimmering blond hair and her long legs. One man’s looks she always dreamed of catching...when she was on a trip to Africa, she went with a safari guide who stole her heart.

He was a much older man. She showed me a picture of him. He was older but attractive, like a sexy professor, the gray in his hair made him look distinguished. His skin was tan from being on long safari rides and his hazel eyes stared proudly ahead as he leaned against his jeep.

“I'm so happy for you, Alicia. You’ve done so well for yourself. Not everyone has,” I said.

What a Debbie Downer....it wasn't my intention to draw attention to my current status. But we were both thinking it.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to be a downer. I didn’t mean to bring myself up. Honestly, I think it’s great.” I took a sip of my Guinness. I was trying to get into the whole Irish experience, but it wasn't helping much. Mostly, the Guinness was working as an appetizer before our meal.

“I didn't want to bring this up, but you practically brought it up for me. If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine—” Alicia started, chewing her lip.

“Say what you want to say. When have I ever cared?” I laughed, but directed my eyes elsewhere.

She chuckled nervously, drew in a careful breath, then continued, but not before placing her palm on top of my hand.

“How are you doing? It seems like—were you in a relationship recently?”

My eyes bugged out. “How did you know? Did you pick up some voodoo tricks abroad or something?”

“No, Tia, I can tell. It looks like someone's broken your heart.”

“How can you tell?”

“The usual fire in your eyes is out. And you've been looking at the couple in the corner like you want to rip their heads off.”

“Oh, damn, really?” I covered my face and turned away from them. I'd been staring too hard. They were an affectionate couple, college aged, who were sharing some dip and kissing in between. The way they smiled and laughed with one another, I hated them. It was unreasonable, but after my billionaire fallout, any happiness must be destroyed.

“Yeah, when I broke up with Rob—” Rob was a guy she dated for two years in college. She'd always liked him, but not enough to stay in California for him. “I hated seeing other couples in love. It reminded me of what I was missing.”

Alicia pressed me for answers. Who was he? What happened?

“It's too complicated. I appreciate it, but I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget it even happened.”

“That bad? Are you sure?”

“It was complicated,” I said again. “That's why it didn't work out. Far too complicated. Can't I just find a guy who isn't boring but isn't troubled? Isn’t there a nice in between?”

Something swelled in my chest. Heartache. I avoided it.

“What about those guys over there?” Alicia asked as she nudged a shoulder down the bar.

A couple of preppy white guys hung out at the other end of the bar. They would occasionally glance our way, but I wasn't interested. They were clean and handsome, but that was all.

“I'm not interested in a man right now. They’re nothing but trouble.”

“I understand. I thought I was through too. That's when real love happens, when you're not looking for it. It finds you.”

Which was exactly what happened with Lucas.

I turned the conversation over to Alicia's job. She often talked about it for hours, and while I was kind of jealous, I loved to live vicariously through her. We ended up leaving the pub after three hours. At the end of the night, she invited me to visit her sometime, but I doubted with my schedule it would ever happen.

She needed to be up early in the morning. That didn’t mean I would quit adventuring. Even though it'd been an hour ago, having Lucas come up in conversation had ruined my mood. I took a cab to the zoo. They would sometimes have events in the evening, and sure enough, this was one of those nights where they had local wineries handing out drinks. Since it was a cool, crisp autumn night, it helped lighten my mood.

They were hard at work on Kojo’s new enclosure. Something would always remind me of Lucas...he'd made his mark on me, that was for sure. After strolling around with a glass of wine, I headed for the exit much happier than I entered.

There was a bus stop not far, in a much better area than the one I took for work, so I let my guard down. A full moon shone overhead. With the calming breeze, and the crisp scent of fall, I was experiencing a high like I hadn't in weeks. I loved the fall. It was my favorite part of the year. Horror movies were my thing, no matter how cheesy. I ate every one of them up.

Because I'd been so unaware of my surroundings instead of looking around—I was staring at the glowing moon—I was taken by surprise. A van screeched to a halt next to me. By the time my neck whipped in its direction, the back doors kicked open and men jumped out.

I started to scream, but they already snatched me. I fought and swung, but they had me.

Staggering back, I tried to push them off, but I lost my footing. I wasn't strong enough to shove off three men. All were wearing black ski masks and dark clothing.

Who would want to kidnap me? Were they aware of my debts? I was in the negative.

“I've got nothing,” I growled, trying to fight them off as they pulled me toward the open van.

“Get in.”

Oh, hell no. I was not getting into the back of that creepy van. When you went in the back of a creepy van, it was over.

“Hell no.” I kicked and hit one in the chin. He howled, but the others kept dragging me. The black pit of the van's insides welcomed me, growing bigger no matter how much I fought.

“Get the fuck off her,” someone shouted. I hoped it was more than a concerned citizen. I hoped he knew how to fight.

It was four more men out in the street who looked like security guards. They pounced and threw fists. One caught me by my waist and pulled me close to him and away from the brawl, as shadows scattered in the night.

The van's driver hit the gas and it screeched around the corner and disappeared.

“Thank you, thank you,” I said.

The four rescuers stood before me. Two of them hooked my arms and started to pull me away.

That's when I spun around and saw another van waiting for me.

What in the hell? What were the chances that two different people would want to kidnap me? If I wasn't currently scared for my life, I would've been honored.