Taking on the Billionaire Read online

  Adam waited until Franklin had exited his office and Justin had secured the door behind him before grabbing the nearest object and hurling it across the room. The mug hit the wall, created a significant crater in the dry wall and shattered and scattered across his hardwood floors.

  “Man, you just broke the wall,” Justin said, walking toward Adam with his hands raised in a placating gesture that made Adam roll his eyes.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry. I just...”

  “You lost your shit.” Justin pointed at the mess. “I mean, you’re the CEO so you can break the wall if you want to break the wall...”

  Adam ground his teeth and searched for words that could shatter the rage haze induced by Franklin.

  All he could manage was another lame apology. “I think I threw your mug. I’m sorry.”

  Justin waved him off, crossing the room while making a show of sidestepping the large shards of ceramic on the floor. “Adam, just shut up already. I’m glad to see you lose your cool for once.”

  “Losing my cool is unproductive.”

  “It’s also human and a relief to see that you’re not actually a robot. I just can’t believe that you haven’t punched Franklin by now.”

  Adam knelt down, casting a glance up at his best friend as he picked up the larger pieces of ceramic. They’d known each for a long time and Justin was one of the few people who knew everything that Adam could remember about his life before coming to California and what he couldn’t forget about what had happened once he’d arrived.

  “It’s not like I haven’t thought about it,” Adam admitted, rising up to toss the pieces into the trash. “Helene would lose her mind if we ended up in the ER and on the front page of the papers.”

  “Or she could have told her husband not to be a dick,” Justin said, shrugging in an apology that didn’t look like he meant it at all. His best friend wasn’t a fan of anyone in the Franklin family.

  If Adam’s adoptive mother, Helene, were a color, she’d be beige. All she really cared about anymore was her charity work, keeping her roots from showing, and not ending up in any of the tabloids. She hadn’t always been like that, or so Adam had been told. Years with Franklin had made her into the kind of woman who kept quiet and looked pretty and ignored every bad act by her husband.

  She’d been distantly kind to Adam, never motherly, but she’d never tried to cause him harm. For that, he would try not to cause her pain if it could be avoided.

  “Helene hasn’t had it easy either,” Adam said, not wanting to cover this old ground again.

  Justin shrugged, his expression morphing into the closest thing Justin ever got to serious and Adam braced for what he knew was coming. It was a well-worn topic between them—as familiar as the focus on women, sex, money and poker was in their frequent late-night cigar-smoking sessions after long days making a company run. “It’s not your job to take care of everyone, Adam. Redhawk/Ling isn’t going to rise and fall on you alone.”

  “Justin, I know that but this is important. If we don’t figure this out, I’m going to let a lot of people down. People who have banked their futures on Redhawk/Ling surviving.”

  “You mean ‘we,’ not ‘I.’” Justin moved even closer to shove against his chest, his glare echoing the anger and frustration in his voice.

  “I know,” Adam replied, avoiding making direct eye contact. But Justin wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.

  “No, I don’t think you do.” Justin grunted out the last of his frustration and scrubbed a hand against the stubble on his cheek. “Look, I’m done trying to change you but you’ve gotta start letting some of this shit go. Rely on other people. Now you’ve got a brother and sister to help you work on that life skill.”

  Oh yeah, the one subject sure to make him stress even more than usual. Now he had a family to worry about when he knew nothing about family.

  “I’ll be sure to call you out of your next weekend-long poker tournament to help out at the office. That will work,” Adam grumbled, immediately feeling a pang of guilt at the jab that he knew would strike the soft underbelly of his oldest friend.

  “Okay, now you’re being an asshole and that’s my cue to give you some space to brood and fixate on all the things you can’t control.” Justin paced over to the couch, grabbed his phone off the table and headed toward the door. “While you’re pondering all the shit in the universe during your ninety-mile run tonight, don’t forget to figure out what the hell was happening between you and Tess a little while ago.”

  And there it was. Payback for the poker comment. He deserved it.

  “I’m not talking to you about that,” he answered, not bothering to deny that he knew exactly what Justin was talking about.

  He had to figure out how to navigate the fact that he’d called her baby and how hard it was to stay away from Tess. He’d failed miserably at not fantasizing about her or dreaming about her—why did he think that actual physical contact would be easier to navigate? There was no easy answer, but he had to make a decision to give in to temptation or cut Tess loose. And he knew in his gut that letting her go wasn’t the answer.

  “You were leaving, right?” Adam prompted, needing time to process the day’s events.

  “I was. I am. I’ll be back here tomorrow morning and we’ll find out who is trying to destroy our company.” Justin pointed at him, his grin telling Adam that all was forgiven. “And we’ll also discuss why you can’t seem to understand the difference between asking Tess out and hiring her.” He shook his head. “No wonder you’re still single.”

  Four

  “One day I’m going to show up and you’ll be wearing an aluminum foil hat.”

  Tess put a Post-it on the file she was reviewing and looked up to find her baby sister leaning on the door frame swinging her set of house keys back and forth in front of her. Well, Mia wasn’t a baby anymore. She was twenty-one years old, a junior in college and a testament to the fact that Tess had done something right.

  Except for the part where Mia was such a smartass. That part was all Mia.

  Okay, maybe that was all Tess.

  “Is that how I taught you to speak to your elders?” Tess asked, surprised at the stiffness in her back and the tingly sensation running up and down one of her legs. She glanced down at her watch; she’d been head down for hours. She pushed back her desk chair and shook out her sleepy leg, smacking her sister’s hand when she flipped open a file on the desk. “No peeking at stuff on my desk. I can’t believe I still have to tell you this.”

  “I still can’t believe that you’re such a broken record,” Mia grumbled, tapping her finger on the file in question. “I was just checking to see if this was about your favorite subject. I rang the bell twice and called out and you still didn’t hear me.”

  Tess groaned, stretching out her leg as she headed toward the kitchen for the strongest, biggest cup of coffee on the planet. She still had a dozen files to read through before she could even think about hitting the sack. It had been a long week and it looked like it was about to get longer. Somebody was definitely trying to sabotage Redhawk/Ling and she’d been hired to do a job.

  Adam was depending on her.

  And she was lying to him.

  Tess shook her head to clear the cobwebs and the memory of him and the way he’d called her baby in his office earlier. It had been unexpected and clearly, if the flare of surprise in his eyes was any indication, something he hadn’t planned on saying. But the endearment had been uttered with a sexy rumble and a protective ferocity that sent a shiver of anticipation down her spine. Factor in how he’d been immediately concerned with the well-being of Estelle, his sweet assistant, and Tess added another item to the long list of reasons why she wanted to jump Adam Redhawk.

  Okay, she really needed that caffeine.

  “I was working, Mia. Why aren’t you at school?” Tess shuffled behind the
counter and flipped the switch on her coffee maker, grabbed a pod and slipped it into the machine. She turned around to lean on the countertop while the machine worked its magic and created the elixir that would keep her from making bad man-oriented decisions. “Not that I don’t love seeing you but don’t you have a paper to write or a class to attend? A study session with coeds in your pj’s?”

  “It’s college, not an Anna Kendrick movie,” Mia mumbled from where her head was stuck inside the fridge.

  She emerged, her auburn pixie cut sticking up at odd angles due to the static electricity, a string cheese in her hand. For a minute, it was ten years ago and Mia was the pain-in-the-butt little sister who tried to listen in on Tess’s phone calls with boys and who also crawled into bed with Tess when their father was having a rough spell. Those days solidified their relationship; they’d learned the hard way that in the end they really only had each other.

  Tess had worked her ass off, juggling several jobs for a number of years and cases she would have loved to turn down to secure this little house. It was only two bedrooms and one bath and a backyard that was barely big enough for a grill but it was their home. Tess used the space in what was intended to be the dining room to work from home on the days she didn’t need to go to the tiny office she leased from a local insurance company on a barter basis. She always kept Mia’s room open for her and tried not to let on just how much she missed her since she’d gone to college.

  “Fair enough but please don’t join an a cappella group. That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.” Tess held up a hand in defense at the site of her sister’s glare. “Not that I don’t love it when you come and see me but...”

  Mia rolled her eyes and opened the string cheese. “I need to do my laundry.”

  “Of course, you do.”

  “Whatever. I also haven’t heard from you in a couple of weeks and I wanted to make sure it was a case and not a serial killer home invasion that had removed you from your usual place of up my butt and all in my business.”

  Tess’s machine gurgled and sputtered the signal that it was done and she turned to grab the mug of hot coffee. “I’m going to drink this and pretend that you’re not here.”

  Mia sidled up beside her, chuckling as she nudged Tess to the side to start her own brew. “You love me and we both know it.” Her sister nudged her again and leaned down to peek up at Tess. “Seriously though, are you okay? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  Tess huffed out a sound that was part sigh and part laugh. “Define okay.”

  Mia frowned, tossing the cheese wrapper into the trash with a dunk shot that would have made their dad proud. Clearly, hours spent in the driveway shooting hoops had paid off. “Tess, I love you and I respect your dedication to the cause but you have got to let this vendetta go. Franklin Thornton is untouchable and always will be. He got away with it. End of story.”

  “No, that is not the end of the story,” Tess fumed, sloshing coffee out of her mug when she picked it up with a little too much force.

  “No, you’re right. It’s not the end of the story because the actual ending will read, ‘Daughter ruins her life just like her father. Franklin Thornton wins twice.’” Mia emphasized her harsh words with a flourish of her hands in the air like she was highlighting a movie marquee. “Let it go, Tess. Get laid. Read a book. Go to a movie. Get a fucking life.”

  She didn’t need the caffeine because her sister’s words woke her up like an injection of epinephrine straight to the heart. Where fatigue and lethargy had weighed her down just moments before, she was now fueled by anger and a betrayal that cut to the quick.

  “Fuck you, Mia.” Tess squared off with her sister, her voice bouncing off the hardwood floors and cabinets. “If I don’t have a life it’s because I’m doing this for you and for Dad.”

  “Bullshit, Tess. I didn’t ask you to do this and Dad has been dead for years and he doesn’t care anymore. If you want to do something for me, then stop all this avenging angel crap and let me have some peace instead of carrying around all this guilt for everything you’ve done for me. If you can’t let yourself off the hook, then get it off my back. Please.”

  Whoa. Tess blinked hard, trying to clear the roaring in her head and the hot tears stinging her eyes and blurring her vision. Mia’s words pierced her deeply and Tess reached for her coffee, taking a too-hot sip to fill the heavy silence that polluted the air between them. It wasn’t easy to hear that her efforts weren’t recognized for what they were, that her sister didn’t see the value in making the past right.

  Mia had been so little—she didn’t always remember just how bad it had been after Franklin Thornton had cheated their father and sent him spiraling into depression and self-destruction. But Tess remembered it all because she had been the one who had stepped in and shielded Mia from the worst of it. In a way, Tess had made it possible for Mia to not understand how she couldn’t just let this go.

  Tess wouldn’t tell Mia that she’d met the man today, that he was as awful up close and personal as he was on paper and the internet. She wouldn’t tell her because it wouldn’t change anything for her sister. This was a conversation that they’d had in some form or other a million times before and she wasn’t going to change her path so it was best to let it drop.

  Tess cleared her throat, testing her voice a little before she changed the subject. “I wasn’t working on the Thornton case, anyway. Adam Redhawk hired me to help him find someone.”

  “I thought you wrapped that case up,” Mia said and Tess let out a grateful breath that she was going to let their fight over their dad and Franklin Thornton go.

  “I did. This is a new one.”

  “That guy sure does lose a lot of people,” Mia mused, her eyebrow raised in self-congratulatory amusement at her very bad joke.

  “It’s not that kind of case. Nobody is actually missing.” Tess considered how much she could talk about and not violate her confidentiality agreement. “It’s like a bunch of background checks on steroids.”

  “And he doesn’t have anyone at that huge company he owns who could possibly do that for him? Not. At. All?” Mia shook her head on beat with her words, her grin wide and a little bit lascivious.

  “Mia,” Tess said, amused warning coating her response. She knew exactly where this was going and if it was possible, she wanted to talk about this topic even less than she wanted to argue over their father.

  “Tess.” Mia hopped up on the counter and kicked out to poke Tess with a purple sparkle–painted toe. “I saw you and Adam Redhawk together and let’s just say that they can see the sparks zipping between you two from the space station. I felt like I needed to get you guys a room with a horizontal surface as soon as possible or risk the entire building going up in flames.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tess shuffled over to the dishwasher, opening it to see if the load was clean and needed to be put away. She peered into the dim interior and found only a couple of plates and mugs on the racks; a clear reminder that she was a single woman living alone. She shut the door with a thud and desperately looked around the tidy space for anything that could distract her sister or at least give Tess a refuge from the turn this conversation was taking. She spied a stack of catalogs strewn across the coffee table in the family room that needed her immediate attention.

  “The house is spotless, you neat freak. Stop avoiding the discussion,” Mia yelled at her back from the kitchen.

  “This isn’t a discussion, it is you letting your imagination run on that little squirrel wheel in your head. Adam Redhawk and I have a professional relationship only. He had a job that needed discretion and I had done good work for him already and so he asked me to stay on. As a small business owner, I’m not going to turn down a good job.”

  Behind her she heard Mia jump down from the counter and she could feel the distance closing between them. Images of unsuspect
ing gazelles being stalked by cheetahs on the Nature Channel crossed her mind and Tess knew exactly who was the gazelle in this situation. She turned and faced her tenacious younger sister and decided to put this to rest once and for all.

  Maybe she’d believe it herself this time.

  “Mia, Adan Redhawk is a good guy...”

  “And smokin’ hot.”

  “Mia, please focus.”

  “I did focus. I focused on those pictures of him in the L.A. Style weekly the last time he competed in a triathlon. I focused on his six-pack and I focused on his biceps and I focused on his bounce-a-quarter-off-it ass. Believe me. I was f-o-c-u-s-e-d.”

  Mia grinned as she sat on the arm of the sofa, grabbing Tess by the arm and dragging them both down onto the seat in a tumble of cushions, arms and legs. It brought back memories of the many nights they’d cuddled up like this together on shabbier furniture, heads bent together as they shared secrets. Tess missed those days when things had been simpler and her crush on a boy had been something she could indulge in. Before sex was a weapon and trust was a fiction.

  “You’re ridiculous,” she murmured, wrapping a strand of her sister’s hair around her finger. “Mia, I can’t get involved with Adam.”

  “Because you might have to use him when you make your move to take down his father?” Mia asked, her expression ridiculously coy.

  “Franklin Thornton is not Adam’s father.” Tess surprised herself at the visceral reaction Mia’s words triggered in her gut. And her rapier tone shocked her sister as well, if the raised eyebrow and gaping mouth were any indication.

  “Wow. Protective much?”

  And that was exactly what she was feeling: protective. Protective of a man who’d had very little of that in his life but who offered it to so many people around him. His employees. His best friend. His long-lost siblings.

  She was neck-deep in background files because he needed to protect Redhawk/Ling from an unknown enemy. He had stood toe-to-toe with Franklin, demanding an apology for Estelle, and had put his body between her and the man, physically trying to shield her from his words. Adam had come into her life because he needed to find his brother and sister, determined to ensure that they were okay.