The Billionaire’s Handler (4 page)

Carolina opened her mouth, closed it. She had to let him finish.

“Okay. So Second Son—even though he hasn't got a legal right in the universe, even though it's none of his business in any way, even though he doesn't have time to mess around with a stranger's life—tracks down this Carolina Daniels. I don't know what you call that. Guilt? Lunacy? Trying to fix the sins of the father? Whatever. Second Son gets the impression that maybe this teacher isn't the toughest nut on the tree. In fact, this new, fabulous fortune isn't working at all like the fairy tale's supposed to be. Her money's brought out every vulture and piranha in the area. She's never had to cope with sharks before. She's never been trained to deal with greed at this level—or what levels people will fall to—to get a cut out of her. All that money, but she can't get safe. She can't…”

Carolina was still listening, but some of his monologue made her zone out. Her heart suddenly felt hugely full, brimming over. She still didn't have all
the answers she wanted, and she hadn't had time to phrase even half the questions she wanted to. But he'd told her enough.

Her kidnapper was a good man. Better than a good man. Maguire was a true modern-day white knight who actually stepped up for damsels in distress—even if she wasn't a damsel, much less the kind of woman who counted on a man to save her from anything. Carolina never needed saving, anyway. She'd just desperately needed two seconds to think, to put her new life together, and there hadn't been a single stretch where she could hide from the bombardment of ceaseless pressures and demands being made of her.

“Maguire?”

“Yeah?” His voice edgy, wary now.

“You know I thought Maguire was your last name. You never once let on your real last name was Cochran.”

He answered, “Well, hell. I didn't want you to have a negative impression right off the bat. It's not like I had any choice over the family I was born into. Believe me, I would have chosen Smith. Or Jones.”

She got it, that he was hoping she'd laugh off the “little deceit” he'd pulled on her. But she couldn't stop thinking. “I kept trying to understand why I felt an…instinctive trust for you. Why I wasn't more afraid. I mean, for Pete's sake, you
were
kidnapping me.”

“Borrowing,” he corrected her swiftly. “Less prison time if we use a little different term than kidnapping.”

“I had every reason to think you'd be after my money. Because everyone's been after my money. So why would you have taken me if not for ransom? It's the conclusion any sane person would come to, wouldn't you think? But it just didn't make sense in my mind. It just didn't…fit.”

“You've been pretty drugged up, cookie. You shouldn't be expecting yourself to think rationally or normally for a while yet.”

“Maybe. But I still knew. Somehow. That you weren't going to hurt me. That this wasn't about your wanting something from me.” She leaned forward. “Maguire, how's Tommy?”

“Good. He's in Seattle. I petitioned the court for custody after my dad died, but as I mentioned, Gerald and I had issues. Dad did a good job of financially protecting him, but that's the best I can say. I see him at least twice a month, and sometimes he stays with me for weeks at a time…”

“So who is he with?”

“As odd as it sounds…with Jay's ex-wife. One of Jay's ex-wives. Shannon. The one thing Tommy needed that no amount of money could give him was a plain old mom. The nurturing of a mom, the warmth of a mom, the parenting relationship of a mom. He's
crazy about Shannon. So it isn't a blood tie, but probably that's best. The Cochrans aren't exactly famous for their maternal or paternal judgment.”

“So she volunteered for this? She's good with—”

From nowhere, in that quiet night, over the sparks of fire and zesty scent of pine, she suddenly heard a sound. A phone. A cell phone. Nothing more than that…but she instinctively responded as if she'd heard a rifle shot. She curled up, froze, covered her head.

“Carolina, it's okay, it's okay…I'll turn it off. Hell. I forgot I even had it on me…”

But there seemed to be an invisible mute button in her head that was punched hard. She stopped hearing the phone. His voice. The crackle of fire. It was gone again. Her whole sense of hearing.

She was back in that closet of silence, where no sound seemed to penetrate and nothing got through. She could feel herself shaking, a deep trembling from her fingertips to her lips. Her heart started pounding, pounding, as if she'd been running for her life and just had no breath left, nowhere to hide, nowhere to go.

She saw Maguire leaning over her, saw his mouth move. Was fairly positive his lips framed a mighty annoyed swearword. But that was all she could figure out for some time…

 

Within an hour of Henry's arrival, Maguire had the central dining table spread out with contracts, correspondence and various legal documents that supposedly required his immediate attention.

When Henry got in, he took one look at his boss's face and headed silently for the refrigerator. After inhaling every lunch food in sight, he'd poured a coffee, located himself against the counter and was being silent as a tomb. Possibly he'd worked for Maguire long enough to sense when his boss was crabbier than a bear with a sliver.

Maguire hadn't slept. He couldn't imagine sleeping in the near future.

This whole plan wasn't working. Well. Actually, it'd been working really well until Carolina heard the damn cell phone last night.

That she'd lost her hearing again wasn't the frazzler. Two different doctors had told him that could happen, and was even likely to happen. She had to be completely removed from stress for a serious stretch of time. The phone was a trigger for her.

She'd get her hearing back. That wasn't the problem. The problem was him. Instead of seeing her as a responsibility—a job, something he had to do—he kept feeling a pull toward those heart-big blue eyes. He touched her or tucked an arm around her, and
just like that, he was harder than a teenage boy. That tangle of sizzle and rush happened every damn time they were in the same room.

He needed her to trust him. Which meant he had to earn that trust. And he sure as hell couldn't do that if she was afraid he was going to jump her.

Which, of course, he wasn't.

It was a matter of her never guessing that was even a remote possibility in his head.

“Where is she?” Henry risked asking a question, although he was still keeping a wary distance, still had his aviator jacket on.

“She's upstairs. I heard the shower a little while ago.” He zoned in on the documents in front of him again—or tried to. The problem was that there were repercussions when he failed to concentrate on what mattered. If he failed to pay prompt attention to all this business, for example, he could lose a lot of money.

Unfortunately, he couldn't seem to give two shakes about losing money. He'd learned long ago that there were far worse things.

“Henry, you need to sleep over before flying again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“About all the issues we discussed regarding Carolina's place…”

“All done. Except that I also took the initiative of hiring a housesitter—actually, a concierge service—because I barely got to her place before there were people knocking and pounding and calling. She has some frantic relatives.”

“I'll bet she does. Excellent judgment on getting the concierge service on board.”

“Her sister, particularly, I believe, expected to be let in. Said Carolina had some things that were hers that she was supposed to get—”

“Right.” Maguire didn't snort. He just thought about it. “If her family has any type of medical financial need, take care of it. Or call me. Otherwise nothing gets removed from her place except for old food in her refrigerator. Her bills and personal business—any crises there?”

“No. I canceled a dentist appointment for next week. And she has a hair appointment next Thursday.”

“Hair.” For the first time Maguire looked up, alarmed. “You know how women are about hair.”

“Not exactly, sir.”

“Nothing puts women in a bad mood faster than a bad-hair day. I don't even know what a bad-hair day is, exactly, but if that's a source of stress, we have to fix it.”

“How, sir?” Henry asked.

“Damned if I know.” Maguire dived into the
next stack of files. “Any men calling her?” he asked casually.

“Yes, sir, I told you—”

“I mean besides dentists and drugstores and insurance salesmen. The other kind of men. Boyfriends. Relationships.”

“I don't think so.” Abruptly Henry tugged on an ear. “Mr. Cochran, I don't recall you asking me to notice or collect information on anything regarding boyfriends. I wasn't looking for that. It never crossed my mind that you wanted me to.”

“I didn't. And of course I didn't ask you. It's none of my business. It just occurred to me—a little late—that I should have considered whether or not she had a man in her life. You've seen her. Hard to believe there aren't man friends in that picture. And if it were
my
woman who disappeared from sight, I'd have raised hell and the National Guard and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the BBC—”

“I get your drift, sir. Possibly there just aren't any personal relationships in her life right now.”

“Maybe.” Maguire kept thumbing through documents. “In the meantime, I have a new list of things for you to do. Some of these are going to be fun.”

“Fun,” Henry repeated, and tugged on his ear again.

“Fun,” Maguire repeated. “I need a 1953 MG Mark IV TD here seven days from now.”

“Seven days?”

“Red.”

“Oh, that'll make it easier.”

“Then I need you to locate a tree house. Not a kid's tree house. The kind of tree house where adults could live. I don't care where in the world. I just need one.”

“That must be on your list of ‘more fun' things for me to do, I suspect.” Henry inked that in his Moleskine notepad, never blinked.

“Smile, Henry. Where else could you possibly work, where you had a job with this kind of diversity?”

“Nowhere, sir. There's no doubt in my mind.”

“All right. Now…I'll be reachable most of next week, but primarily through my laptop. I can call you back, but I won't have a cell phone turned on, until I'm specifically looking for messages, so connection via the internet will be more predictable. I'll be in Europe for the next four or five days—I'm not sure of the exact stretch of time. It depends on what she's physically up for. To start off, I want to keep her away from disruptive noise as much as I can.”

“But she can't hear, sir.”

“Oh, yeah, she can. She hears too much. That's
the core of the problem, Henry. The point, however, is that I can't give you a complete schedule of where I'll be. I need to see how the next week goes with her. For her. Then some type of pattern should emerge.”

“You don't need me for that week?”

“I need you all week. But for projects. I'll catch a ride on the Cochran business jet.”

For the first time, Henry's face showed expression. “You know I can fly that—”

“Yes. I know you love flying anything. But I really need someone that I can completely trust on this—someone who can keep their mouth buttoned. You're one of the few in the universe. This is going to take some major finagling to pull off.”

“Personally, I think it takes a man who's out of his mind, sir.”

“Yeah, that, too. You know, I'm surprised the sister didn't threaten to sue—”

“She did, Mr. Cochran.” Henry looked alarmed. “Didn't I already tell you that?

“You'd have gotten around to it. And there'll be more problems like that, for darn sure. Don't let it get your liver in an uproar.”

“I don't drink, sir. My liver is almost never in an uproar. On the other hand—” Henry suddenly shot to an upright posture, looking in the doorway.

And there was Carolina, carrying a paperback, a
blanket draped over her shoulders, barefoot, looking like a waif.

A waif.

Not a femme fatale. Not a cocky confident woman who knew her way around men and valued her own allure.

A damn waif.

Yet his pulse started slamming as if an alarm just went off.

C
onsidering that her entire life had turned into a massive, uncontrollable disaster, Carolina couldn't believe how well she'd slept.

It was almost noon before she opened her eyes—and then she had to shake the clock, certain it had to be broken.

For the first time in weeks, though, she woke up charged—maybe not ready to climb mountains—but definitely in a hustle to yank on clothes and rush downstairs.

Halfway down the steps, she spotted Maguire sitting at the big table. One look, and her heart caught on a snag of emotion. Everything he'd told her last night
had echoed in dreams, wild dreams, good dreams, all with the same underlying theme. She wasn't the only kidnappee. Maguire had had his soul kidnapped a long time ago, was stuck with an unpaid ransom just as she was. She had huge things she wanted to say to him today, huge things she wanted to do.

But abruptly she realized he wasn't alone. Another man was standing at the kitchen counter—Henry, she thought his name was. He was the man who'd piloted the jet, but also who just seemed a critical employee for Maguire, from everything she'd sensed and seen so far. When she called out a cheerful “Hello!” though, his cheeks flushed like a boy's.

Henry might be ultra-shy, but Maguire surged out of his chair as if jet-shot and jogged toward her. “Carolina! I was afraid you'd gone into a coma. You have to be starved. Or thirsty. Hell, I forgot, you lost your hearing again. Wait two shakes until I grab the netbook—”

She didn't sway because of dizziness or illness or anything like that. She was just stepping toward him, trying to make an instinctive calming gesture, when she seemed to trip over…nothing. Air. Her own feet. A speck of dust.

You'd have thought she'd started a fire. Maguire shouted something to Henry, grabbed her, swept her into his arms and started chugging with her up the stairs.

“Maguire—” Whether she could hear him or not, she was pretty sure there was nothing wrong with his hearing. Right then, though, he wasn't listening to her or anyone else. He was too busy having a fit and a half.

He charged with her into the bedroom, laid her on the bed as if she were breakable china, put a hand on her forehead while he was scooping covers over her at the same time. At the rate he was going, she was going to be smothered, either from excess heat or the weight of covers. It was pretty darn obvious he thought she was weak and sick and traumatized.

Hell's bells, maybe she was all three of those things, but the hysterical-deafness thing was getting beyond exasperating. At that precise moment, all Carolina wanted to do was communicate—that she was okay, that she wasn't in some new state of trauma, she'd just clumsily tripped over her own feet.

She didn't set out to kiss him. It was just…a kiss seemed a way to halt him in his tracks.

It worked beautifully.

Sort of.

All she did was frame his face in her hands, lift up and press her lips against his for a couple of seconds. That was all it took for Maguire to go from manic-energy machine to statue-still.

There was an unexpected repercussion. Her heart suffered immediate cardiac arrest. With that first
contact, her lips seemed to instantly recognize that Maguire was nothing like any man she'd ever known. Her whole body knew it a millisecond later.

She'd felt so trapped these last two months, caged so tightly she couldn't seem to free herself. Maguire had inserted himself in the role of her white knight—alias her kidnapper—but that wasn't the man she found herself kissing.

It wasn't a hero who kissed her back.

It was a man who wasn't used to having his cage doors rattled. A man who didn't expect himself to…respond. A man who was used to initiating action, to controlling it, but not to ever, ever be on the receiving, unprepared end of it.

Carolina perceived all that on a swoop of sensation. Then other instincts completely took over.

The taste of him was dangerously exotic. Unfamiliar. Her heart bucked as if she'd been caught petting a tiger. She saw the flash in his eyes—a flash of alarm, awareness—just as she was closing hers. She'd never experienced it before. That spice of danger. She'd always been impulsive, enthused about taking the unknown road, exploring something different. With special children, she tried anything she could possibly think up, no matter how unconventional, to reach them. But that was about life in general.

It wasn't about men.

Yet when she felt the gruff whiskers on Maguire's
cheek and neck. Felt the pulse in his throat throb under her touch. Felt the satin-smooth texture of his mouth. Smelled him. His soap, the wood smoke he carried from their fire outside, nothing that yelled of a specific scent…except that he was male. Five-hundred-percent male.

She didn't know any other five-hundred-percent males. Maybe there weren't any. Maybe this was the only male in her particular universe who pushed certain triggers that had never been pushed before, who aroused a cacophony of sensations that she hadn't realized existed before. She didn't think those things. She just sort of felt…awash. In him. His presence, his textures, his scent.

He broke free from the kiss connection, reared up his head, looked at her with a frown—a frown darker than a thundercloud. He started to speak, then seemed to remember she couldn't hear, and started to shake his head to communicate that way.

She went back for another kiss.

He'd been the kidnapper, but he didn't have all the power. She hadn't had any power in a long, long time. She'd been overwhelmed by everyone and everything. She was sick of it.

Being overwhelmed by sensation, now, was a different thing. That she could have power over him was enticing. Beyond enticing. She'd never remotely
experienced feeling wicked before. She discovered that she liked it.

Possibly his back was breaking from the contorted posture he'd been trying to maintain, because when she surged up to try another kiss, to steal another taste, he suddenly lost all that perfect control of his. One second, she was sweetly claiming his mouth…the next second, he'd taken a dive into the bed, on her, with her. In a swirl and twist of covers, she was suddenly tangled with him, length to length, his arms swooped around her this time, his mouth taking hers.

One of her arms got trapped between the tussle of blankets and bodies. It wasn't fair; he had both his arms free, one slivering through her hair, then stroking down her back, kneading and rubbing, spine to hip and back up again.

He kissed differently than she had. His kisses involved tongues and teeth. Pressure. Invitation. Demand. The I-Want was bold, not subtle, out there like an open plane door, a chance of skydiving with no parachute, all risk, all…

All wonder.

All thrilling wonder.

“Hey.” He broke away suddenly, breathing like a racing engine. “We can't…you can't…I can't—hey.” His face was flushed, his eyes on fire. For her. At her. His face looked as fierce as a warrior's—but
definitely not a happy warrior as he pushed up and away from her. He yanked the sheets up to her neck, and then hurled out of bed as if a fire were chasing him.

For a few seconds he stormed around the room, then whirled back, pointing the royal finger at her. The gesture for no was certainly crystal clear. Then he went out the door and slammed it.

Apparently this hearing thing was going to come and go indiscriminately, because she definitely heard the door slam. She could probably have heard it in Siberia.

Carolina wasn't sure what was going on—what she was doing, what she was risking or not risking. But she was positive about one thing. Her kidnapper was a fine man.

She'd heard his story, about how he'd been estranged from his father and family for a long time. Except for Tommy. And Maguire knew her story, at least the part about her helping Tommy, and the how and why his father had left her with such an extraordinary hefty inheritance.

So Maguire certainly wasn't a kidnapper in the usual sense. He had more money of his own than he could ever need. And he obviously didn't begrudge her the chunk from his dad, since he'd been treating her like a pampered princess.

She pushed up from the pillow, thinking that she'd
learned a lot of information…. yet seemed to have even more questions than she had before.

She kept having the strangest feeling…that Maguire was the one who needed her, instead of the other way around. Of course, that didn't make sense. Her head still wasn't right. Her heart, her head, her whole body seemed to be nonstop exhausted, in some fuzzy state where she couldn't think clearly no matter what.

Like now. With her mouth still feeling bruised from his kisses, her skin feeling electrified where he'd touched, that sense of impending fall-off-a-cliff still skimming through her blood…she closed her eyes and inhaled an amazing sense of contentment. She felt hungry for the first time in weeks. Within her, a smile was starting from the inside out, for the first time since she could remember.

Clearly she was still weak and crazy, and Maguire was the voice of sanity.

But just for that instant…it didn't feel that way.

 

Two days later, Carolina found herself on a plane. Not the same fancy private jet they'd flown on before. This one was bigger, had a pilot and copilot up front, and a third man who'd been functioning as a butler, bringing platter after platter from the jet's galley.

Wilbur, the butler, had elegant white hair, the impeccable posture of a British lord, a face carved in
strict expressionless lines and a fabulous wink. He'd started serving their dinner ten minutes ago. It was still coming. The table set up between her and Maguire was heaped with dishes. Lush bowls of hot butter. A tray of tools. Massive bowls of king crab. And initially, of course, bibs bigger than nightgowns.

Maguire was eating with her. But he wasn't talking. He'd barely said a word to her since those unexpectedly wild kisses two mornings ago. He'd been running around nonstop, scowling half the time, acting ultrabusy. He'd used the netbook to inform her they were flying east, a good trip, not to worry.

She wasn't worried and hadn't asked. She'd wanted to think about that unexpected sexual encounter herself before tackling Maguire again. But once they started stuffing themselves with the rich, juicy, succulent crab—one of her favorite meals in the universe—she started talking.

“My hearing's coming back again,” she announced.

He looked up. “Good.”

He added nothing else, but that was fine with Carolina. She wanted to be the one to direct the conversation this time.

“I was hoping you wouldn't mind telling me some more about how Tommy's doing.”

He hesitated, but not for long. “Since last summer,
I think you'd find his progress has been amazing. He'll never be normal—”

“Normal's a meaningless word, as far as I'm concerned. He was always happy by nature.”

“He still is. But he's talking now. Not perfectly, but he's able to communicate. He stopped having the seizures, the fierce headaches. Something is seriously weird about his brain wiring. Nobody seems to be able to completely identify or fix it. But he's amazingly better, thanks to you, with a much happier picture for a future.”

“I wasn't looking for thanks, Maguire. I just remember him. I care what's been happening with him.”

Maguire was far more skilled at handling the crab than she was.

She had to work twice as hard to scoop out half as much of the sweet white meat—but damn. It was fun.

“My father always claimed to love Tommy, but his method of caring was to throw treatments and programs at him. Nothing was too expensive. But typical of my dad, that meant that Tommy was primarily seen and raised by various professional people. Strangers. Not people who were really listening to him, looking at him, day by day. You listened.”

“Quit it, Maguire. I wasn't looking for praise or thanks. I wanted to hear more about the progress he's
made since the surgery. What programs he's part of now.”

He nodded. “Hopefully, sometime over the next couple weeks you'll get a chance to see him.”

“Really? I'd love that.” For a few seconds she was diverted from eating the butter-dripping crab. “I'm not sure if he'll still remember me, but—”

“Trust me. He remembers you.”

Wilbur had brought bowls, warm water with squeezed lemons, for them to wash their hands. She didn't want to give up eating, but she didn't expect to have Maguire trapped like this forever. So she rinsed, wiped, removed the gigantic bib and sat back. “You're clearly happy with what I did for Tommy. But I still find it upsetting that you leaped into my life since I turned into…well, into a fruitcake. So I'd like to explain the fruitcake thing.”

“You don't have to.”

She said quietly, “Yeah. I really do.” She took a breath and then just started in. “The day the lawyer called, to tell me about the inheritance, I was…beyond stunned. Obviously I know I helped your little brother. But it's not as if I did anything brave or spectacular. It was just…luck. I work with enough special kids to notice those different symptoms in Tommy.”

“Luck might have been part of it. But you cared
enough to step in. To fight for him,” Maguire said brusquely.

“Well. Whatever. The point is…everyone in my world was thrilled for me. My parents. My sister. Aunts and uncles, friends, everyone. We never had much growing up, so the first thing I did for my dad was buy him a new car. He'd never had a new one before. He always bought used, so new was a treat. And my mom…for years she'd been dreaming about having a new kitchen with a double oven. I started out having so much fun with the money, I can't begin to tell you. Only, that changed. Pretty quickly.”

Maguire finally finished eating, sank back while Wilbur took away the evidence of their feast and then disappeared into the front cabin with the crew. Carolina doggedly talked on.