Page 34 of The Billionaire's Special Relationship

“Oh.”

It was about as much emotion as he would have expected from his children toward their grandmother. He tried to bring them to see her once, but his mother refused to allow it. So he never tried again. “But do they know who did it?” he asked Clare.

“I told you we don’t know anything.” Then she asked him like a daughter who could not trust that her father would be there for her. “Are youcoming?” she asked him.

Alan betrayed him mightily, unlike any human being ever had, but he was still his son. He still loved him. That was the way Stuart was built. His own mother hated his guts, but he still took care of her too. “Of course I’m coming. Which hospital?” She told him, they said their goodbyes, and then he ended the call.

Tabby wanted to ask what was wrong, but she saw that perplexed look on Stuart’s face. So she waited for him to tell her.

But after a few seconds of thinking things through in his head, he went back into the bathroom, peed for a long time, and then came back into the main room and began scrambling and putting on his clothes.

Tabby felt he was so distracted that he had forgotten about her. Which kind of broke her heart. She knew the day would come when he’d go back to his own life and his own world. But she didn’t think it would come this fast.

Then his phone rang again. He looked at the Caller ID. It was Mel Weiss, the Chief Executive Officer at Dellstone. “I just heard,” he said to Mel.

“So did I.” Mel was livid. “Can you imagine that these assholes kept that shit from me? Our chairman has been shot down, and they don’t bother to let the CEO know about it? This place is dysfunctional as fuck since you’ve been out of the loop, I’m telling you. I found out from areporter. A reporter! How did you find out?”

“Clare just phoned me. I need to get back to New York.”

“Since you decided to drive all the way to Ohio, I’ve chartered a plane to bring you back. It’ll be ready for you at the airfield. I’ve also hired security to escort you to the plane.”

Stuart found that odd. “Is that necessary?”

“Probably not. But we aren’t taking any chances. Give me your location and the team will be there to escort you in. Somebody shot down Alan like he was a dog in the street. We’ve got to make sure it’s isolated to Alan.”

Stuart understood that. He gave Mel his location.

“I thought you said you were going to do a quick turnaround and drive back yesterday,” Mel said. “What happened?”

Stuart looked at Tabby. If he would have told Mel that some waif of a girl nineteen years his junior happened, he wouldn’t believe it. Stuart never went for younger girls. Not even when he was young himself. It would have been absurd to Mel. “I’ll see you soon,” Stuart said instead of answering his question, and ended the call.

Now Tabby was too curious. “Is everything alright?”

He continued to stare at her. He didn’t want to traumatize her further with more news of violence. “I’ve got to get back to New York,” was all he would say about it.

Her heart sank. She knew it was going to happen. She knew he was eventually going tohave to leave her. She just hoped that . . . She wasn’t sure what she hoped. The man had to go on with his life. And so did she. “Okay,” was all she said.

But Stuart was still staring at her. How was he going to leave her to fend for herself? The police wouldn’t back her up. She had no friends and not even that cousin of hers would go that extra mile for her. And she was still scared shitless about that close call last night. And pile what he put on her last night and he knew it was too much for a person like her to deal with all at ounce.

And besides, he wasn’t giving her back.

Against all rhyme and reason, he made up his mind. She was his responsibility because she was nobody else’s. “Finish getting dressed,” he said. “You’re going with me.”

Had Tabby been herself, she would have questioned the mess out of such a bold statement. But she wasn’t herself. After last night, she was far from it. She didn’t question a thing. She finished getting dressed.

They were supposed to wait for some local security detail Mel had hired, but Stuart was too anxious to stick around. His son was in surgery, undoubtedly fighting for his life, and he wasn’t about to sit around worrying about his own life. Once dressed, he decided to leave.

As they stepped outside, they realized it had been raining, and probably all night long, as great big puddles of muddy water were everywhere. But Stuart’s anxiousnesscaused him to not only step into the biggest puddle of water right at the front door, but to forget his car keys and his wallet altogether. Which wasn’t like him at all.

But even though Tabby still didn’t know why they were leaving, and why he was so anxious, she could easily see that whatever the reason was it had him deeply distressed. “I’ll get’em,” she said as she hurried back into the room.

She had just stepped back outside, and hadn’t even had a chance to close the motel room door when a car suddenly sped up to them. Men in blue windbreakers with FBI written all over them, and with guns already drawn, hopped out, yelled for Stuart to hit the pavement face down, and to put his hands where they could see them. She was so terrified that her phone and Stuart’s keys fell from her hand and dropped into the huge puddle of water beside her feet. The only reason his wallet didn’t fall was because it was so thick in her hand.

She stood there stunned as they lifted Stuart up, cuffed him and frisked him, and threw him in the backseat of their car as if he was on the FBI most wanted list. Which seemed so insane to Tabby that she didn’t know what to make of it.

“What’s happening?” she finally asked one of the agents standing near her.

“You know him?”