The Billionaire's Gentle Rescue (The Sisterhood) (3 page)

With resignation, he bent down and lifted her into his arms, wondering how a grown woman could weigh so little. He wasn’t exactly sure where her bedroom was, but he suspected it was up the long flight of pine and steel stairs that was somehow attached to the ceiling.

Climbing the stairs, he took advantage of her slumber to notice the smaller details. She’d definitely filled out, he thought as he laid her down onto her bed and unzipped the dynamite looking red dress. No wonder she’d done so well in the clothing business if she wore her own designs. He liked looking at her in this dress almost as much as he liked taking it off of her.

She’d been a teenager when he’d last seen her. As he slid the dress down her shoulders, revealing the almost nothing red bra and underwear, he noted that she was definitely no longer a teenager. She’d filled out in some areas, and shrunk in others. Her breasts were full and more than a handful while her waist was tiny and her stomach contoured in ways that made his mouth water to slide his hand along the length. His hands also itched to see if they could wrap around her little waist, but he didn’t think she’d be very appreciative of his discovery in the morning. Her legs were long and gorgeous and would definitely create some great fantasies, he thought.

When he’d finally pulled the dress down her hips, he covered her sleeping form with the white duvet cover, watching her snuggle into the softness of the mattress.

Glancing at his watch once again, he flipped open his phone and made several calls. An hour later, he had a better idea of what was going on with Zoe Alexander and was both impressed with her brains, ingenuity and smarts and exasperated with her naiveté. How could she have handed over so much control to her accountant? And why no quarterly auditor? That was just standard procedure. Hell, he would do it monthly with Zoe, since she was just too damn trusting.

Grabbing her house keys, he made sure that her door was locked up before he left the building. Out of curiosity, he went down to the work rooms below and took a look around, skimming through her designs and was impressed with everything he saw.

She wasn’t going to like the deal he was going to offer her, but she’d take it. Or she’d lose all of this and he wasn’t going to let that happen.

Chapter 2

The pain in her head was unrelenting and Zoe tried to cover her eyes, hoping that it was the light streaming down on her that was causing her all the pain. When even the darkness hurt, she thought it would be better if she woke up and solved the problem more thoroughly. But then she moved, and Zoe knew that solving any problems right at the moment was out of the question.

Memories of the night before came back to her slowly. And then the events of the day and she groaned, wishing the pain throbbing in her head would break through the torment she was feeling over the failure of her business.

The noises downstairs hurt her head and she wanted to yell at whoever was making so much noise, but the effort was too painful. Besides, it was probably Debbie who was in the same situation she was in.

Then Zoe remembered that Debbie had left. Her husband had arrived to pick her up and take her home. Leaving her here with….

No, Marco couldn’t be here. There was no way he’d found her and was here in her loft. Wishful thinking, she persuaded herself. Or not so wishful thinking, considering how they’d left things so many years ago. The last time she saw him, the day after their devastating kiss that had rocked her world completely, he’d been standing at his father’s poolside, with another woman draped across him and laughing at whatever that ugly witch had been saying.

“Are you getting up?” a deep voice called from below her.

Zoe opened her eyes and looked around. That definitely wasn’t Debbie’s voice.

She lifted her head, cringing from the pain that movement caused and laid her head down. She’d just been imagining someone calling to her. Or maybe Debbie was sick and her throat sounded funny. They’d started singing along with Sinatra at some point during the night, which would account for why her own throat was so sore.

“The aspirin is down here on the counter. Come on down and get it. Coffee is ready as well.”

Coffee sounded extremely good, but why did she have to go all the way down there to get it?

Well, since she wasn’t sure who was in her loft, it was a crazy thing to want them to bring her coffee up here to her bedroom.

She tried to swing her legs over the side of her bed, then decided against it, preferring the stranger downstairs to bring her the coffee rather than her coming down there to get it. The last option just wasn’t happening right now.

“Zoe, if you don’t come down here and get some coffee, I’ll bring it to you. But I’m not sure if I can resist those very tempting pieces of nothing you were wearing underneath that dress last night. If you want to risk it, I’m all for it.”

Zoe gasped and looked down underneath the covers. Sure enough, she was wearing only her red lace bra and underwear.

That realization overcame her need to not move. In fact, she moved very quickly, grabbing her robe from the top of the chair beside her bed where she’d put it yesterday morning after her shower. Sliding her arms into the sleeves, then standing up and belting the robe closed, she peered down over the side of the bedroom area.

Since the kitchen was directly underneath her bedroom area, and everything was open, she couldn’t see anything into her kitchen without toppling over the iron balustrade.

She’d have to venture downstairs to find out if….

No, she didn’t want to know. Stepping backwards, she moved into the bathroom and closed the door. Looking at her face in the mirror she was horrified at her appearance. Between the crying, the drinking and sleep, her mascara was smeared underneath her eyes, she had no more lipstick on, and her hair looked like someone had styled it with a blender and then stuck her finger in an electric socket. Her skin was painfully pale and her head was still pounding.

Shower! Warm water, definitely some soap and makeup. Yes, that would help.

Turning on the warm water, she lathered herself with soap, trying to scrub away the terrible feelings of the day before. A fresh start, a new perspective, that’s all she needed to try and figure out a way out of this mess. Surely there was some way she could get herself out of debt and maintain her business. She’d have to work fast, and….

“I brought you some coffee. It will probably help,” a deep voice said from the other side of the shower curtain.

Zoe’s yelp was sharp and painful but she didn’t take the time to recover. Pulling the frosted shower curtain closer, she peered around the edge. Sure enough, there he was, in the flesh. Marco DiAngelo, most gorgeous man in town, confident, cocky and arrogant. And the man hadn’t changed.

“What are you doing in my bathroom?” she demanded.

The smile lurking on his rough, rugged mouth actually made her blush. “Enjoying the view?” he replied casually, leaning a shoulder against the bathroom doorway. “Are you going to take the cup or am I going to get a closer look?”

Zoe followed the path of his eyes and looked through the shower curtain, yelping once again when she realized that, by pulling the shower curtain against her body, she was actually making the material almost transparent. “Get out!” she screamed and jumped back from the shower curtain. “Get out of here right now!”

His reply was another deep chuckle. A moment later, his tanned, lightly haired arm reached in and set the cup of coffee down on the side of the bathtub. “Come on downstairs when you’re finished and we’ll talk.”

Zoe stared at the cup of coffee, her mouth almost salivating over the need to take a sip, but afraid of moving out of the corner of her shower until she heard the door to the bathroom click shut. When it finally did, she sagged against the wall in relief. Marco, after all these years, was much, much hotter than he’d been that summer after she’d finished high school. Much more rugged, more appealing, more confident…and decidedly more dangerous.

With her head pounding, she didn’t have the luxury of ignoring the coffee. Reaching out, she took the cup, but peeked around the shower curtain to make sure he was truly out of her bathroom. With a sigh of relief, she noted that she was alone once again.

Possibly not for long, she thought. He’d done it once and he could easily step right back into the bathroom. Unfortunately, the door was too far from the shower stall to reach out and easily lock without stepping out and dripping water all over the floor. Instead, she washed and conditioned as quickly as she could, gritting her teeth against the throbbing pain in her head.

When she was finished, she had another problem to deal with. She had her robe, but it didn’t seem like adequate coverage when she had nothing else to wear and Marco was downstairs, with no doors or walls to hide behind. Unfortunately, her closet was across the bedroom from her bathroom.

There was nothing to do but step out and get her clothes.

As soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, she was struck by two things. One, the smell of something absolutely delicious and fattening was cooking down in her kitchen and, two, that arrogant, irritating man had already gone through her clothes and laid out an outfit for her.

As if she would actually wear the dress he’d chosen, she thought, stomping past the bed where the orange, red and yellow flowered dress was laying. As she passed by though, she realized that he’d even laid out underwear!

Of all the gall! She felt the blush creeping up her neck all the way to her hairline as she looked at the lacy, almost nothing pink bra and underwear lying next to the dress.

“No way,” she whispered to herself. Even if she were to wear the dress, one simply didn’t wear pink underwear with that color dress!

Feeling silly for arguing with herself about the color of his chosen underwear when she wasn’t going to wear it anyway, she stomped to her dresser and pulled out a pair of jeans, then a simple blue knit shirt, scoop necked and runched at the sides which made her eyes appear much more blue, not that she cared one little whit about her eye color around that man, and cinched in her waist, which she absolutely did care about. The man was the first who had ever really kissed her, and he’d ruined her dating life for the past ten years because no man had ever measured up to that experience. Nor had she ever really trusted another man after that experience, always waiting for the guy to leave her for the next woman and usually pushing him in that direction, or breaking it off with him before he could do it.

She combed her hair quickly, then twisted it into a knot on the back of her head, touched up the dark circles under her eyes with concealer, a touch of mascara, powder and lipstick. She still felt horrible, but at least she didn’t look so pathetic.

As she stared at her reflection in her bedroom mirror, she tried to find a bit of confidence. But the man downstairs was just too….she couldn’t define it, but he had it, whatever it was. And she definitely didn’t have it.

“You look beautiful. Come downstairs and get something to eat,” his deep voice called up from her kitchen. “Breakfast is ready, you’re ready, come eat while it’s hot.”

Zoe almost jumped out of her skin when he called up to her. She didn’t wonder how he knew she was ready. She’d been puttering around while getting dressed, and now she was standing in front her mirror. Obviously the silence in her loft told him everything he needed to know. Or he had telepathy, she thought with a grimace.

Her shoulders sagged as she turned around. She wanted to simply dive right back under her fluffy comforter and hide, but that was the coward’s way out and she’d never been a coward. Besides, she had to get him out of her loft, or he’d haunt her for a long time. She didn’t want to see him all over her loft, she didn’t want that visual of him being comfortable around here. She loved her place, and seeing him in it would ruin the pleasure she got when she worked up here by herself, or had friends over.

She took the stairs slowly, wishing she could just push him out the door. As she walked down the stairs, it occurred to her that she hadn’t let him in. “How did you get in here this morning?” she asked suspiciously.

“Once I got you to bed last night, I took your set of keys so it was easier to get back in this morning without waking you up too early.”

She glanced at the clock and raised an eyebrow. “It’s only eight o’clock now. What do you consider too early?”

“I’ve been up since about five this morning. I didn’t think you’d had enough time to sleep off the wine by that time so I let you sleep a bit more.”

Zoe hated the cool confidence that surrounded him. He didn’t move with a lot of fussiness. Everything he did as he took down two plates and filled them with scrambled eggs and bacon was with minimal movement, cool, efficient, precise.

He took her coffee cup and refilled it, then handed her a glass of orange juice, placing the cup beside her plate. “You need a bit of sugar to get yourself going this morning,” he explained as she looked longingly at her coffee cup.

Not having much experience with hangovers since she rarely drank, Zoe accepted his word that the orange juice would help.