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And I wasn’t afraid of it.
I reached up and undid the last buttons of his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders. “Thank you,” I said. “Now prove it.”
Thirty-One
Devon
The air was getting cold, but Olivia didn’t seem to care. She was standing on the edge of the newly built back deck, her arms crossed over her chest, her back to me. She seemed to be looking out past the edge of Diablo to the mountains.
I picked up a blanket from the sofa and stepped out onto the deck, the wood chilling my bare feet. I had jeans and a long-sleeved shirt on, but the damp still went straight to my skin. I watched the wind play with her hair as I approached.
I put the blanket over her shoulders. She hugged it to herself, then leaned back into m
e, trying to get warm. I put my arms around her from behind and dropped a kiss to the side of her neck. My woman. “What are you looking at?” I asked her.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “I don’t want to go inside yet.”
It was Sunday, her day off, but she’d still been working all day. Not for her job, but making art. She had claimed one of the spare bedrooms as an art room and filled it with her works in progress. Working on her own art on the weekends made her happy. I could smell the tang of paint on her hands. “I just got a call from the investigator I hired,” I said. “About Cavan.”
“Oh?” She twisted and glanced up at me. “What is it?”
“He was living in Arizona two years ago.”
“That’s all?” she asked. “What was he doing there?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Cavan has stayed off the radar somehow. It’s frustrating.”
Olivia was quiet. “You’ll find him,” she said.
“Yeah, I will.” I didn’t know what I would find when I did. He didn’t have a prison record, and we hadn’t found a death certificate—that was pretty much all I knew. “He might have left the country,” I said. “But he was alive two years ago. That’s more than I knew yesterday.”
“You’ll find him,” she said again.
She shivered, and I held her tighter. We created our own warmth between us. Behind us, the lights from the house were warm yellow against the darkening sky.
“So,” I said to her. “What’s next?”
She reached an arm from under the blanket and pressed her hand against the back of my neck while she watched the sun set behind the mountains. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I have the feeling that whatever it is, it’s going to be wonderful.”
Thank you for reading Bad Billionaire! I hope you enjoyed it. The next book in the series is the story of Max and Gwen. Get Dirty Sweet Wild here!
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Dirty Sweet Wild
Chapter One
Max
I woke up on the strangest day of my life with a hell of a hangover. I don’t usually drink—I got out of the habit when I was on the meds—but for some reason I’d tied one on the night before. Whiskey. Consumed while sitting home alone on my sofa. Just another Monday night in Max Reilly’s rundown apartment, in the chilly fog of San Francisco.
My head fucking hurt. I didn’t have a shift today, at least. I worked construction for cash under the table, usually across the bridge in Oakland. You’d think I wouldn’t be prime material for a construction worker—my leg sees to that—but you’d be wrong. I had no problem getting on crews. Today was a day off, though, and I rolled out of bed, cursing Last Night Max’s idiocy, put on my leg, and made my way into the kitchen, wearing only boxer shorts.
Coffee and toast didn’t help much, so I cleared out the rest of my hangover by going to the gym. The rain had cleared out and I could see the dark clouds rolling off over the bay as I drove the short distance through the south end of the city to Sporty’s, the gym which was practically my second home. It was cheap, and a hole in the wall, and it smelled like unwashed balls and dirty socks, but no one asked me questions there. I’d never seen a woman there, ever—a woman would have to be nuts to go to Sporty’s—and the guys were all as silent and surly as me. It was the kind of place where you could lift weights at three o’clock in the morning on the nights you couldn’t sleep, and you wouldn’t be the only one there.
By the time I finished at the gym, the whiskey had mostly sweated its way out of my system, and my head was only throbbing at the temples. I put down the weight I’d been lifting and lay on the weight bench for a minute, staring at the water stains on the ceiling.
