Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (80 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can pack my things and go today.”

Damien made an impatient noise, strode quickly across the den to grasp her shoulders. “You’re not going anywhere, Sasha!” He pulled her to him in a rough embrace. “All this time you’ve been dealing with this pathetic excuse for a brother all by yourself, you should have come to me.”

She sagged in shock at his defense of her, his soothing caress on her back. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me again after you knew the truth. I thought – I thought James would only make trouble for you.”

“There’s nothing that can make me banish you from my life, Sasha. Nothing.” His hand tightened on her back. “As for your brother, he made some stupid threats, but he doesn’t scare me.” Damien drew back to look into her eyes. “He’s nothing but a low life. I know exactly how to get rid of him and keep your name and anything that he might say out of the papers.”

She stared up at him. “You do?”

He shook his head with the smallest of smiles. “I would be a poor businessman indeed if I didn’t know how to send opportunistic rats scurrying back to the dung heap they came from.”

Sudden tears started in her eyes and rolled down her face. “I—really?”

“Really. You don’t have to worry about—”

A knock sounded on the door, interrupting the rest of what Damien was going to say. He cursed softly. Looked at his watch.

“My office is damn lively for a Monday afternoon.” He kissed her briefly on the mouth. “Let me see who this is so I can get rid of them and take you out to lunch.” He lifted his head to face the door. “Come in.”

After a brief hesitation, the door opened and Michelle walked in. The vet had her glasses perched on her nose, a collection of papers in her hand, purpose in her stride.

“Sorry to interrupt, Damien. Sasha.” She greeted them with a brief smile. “But we have a problem.”

As Damien crossed the room to take the papers from Michelle’s hand, Sasha looked into her friend’s face, saw that whatever it was must have been very serious indeed.

“I can go and leave you two to it,” Sasha said as she started to walk toward the door.

“No, love.” Damien tossed the words casually over his shoulder. “Have a seat for a few minutes would you, please. I’d like you to stay.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she went to the couch and sat down. “Okay.” She pulled a magazine from the rack nearby and tried to pay attention to the glossy pages.

The papers in Damien’s hands rustled as he read them. “This is impossible,” he said. His voice was hard and tight.

“That’s what I thought too. But my office got an anonymous tip and we had to follow up on it.”

Damien frowned at the papers as if he could incinerate them with the power of his stare. “No one at Taylor Stables would do something like this. I hire people with integrity. And everyone here knows the penalty I inflict for dealing in this garbage.”

Michelle nodded, her glossy blonde hair moving over her shoulders in a golden curtain. “I understand. Be that as it may, this report confirms some details of the tip. Someone here at Taylor Stables had been doping horses.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Sasha gasped silently, unable to believe what Michelle had just said. Even the most untrustworthy Taylor Stables employee would never do something like that. They knew what was at stake. Their jobs. The stable’s reputation. Their freedom.

“I’ll look into this, Dr. Wallace. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” Damien paused as he looked through the papers again. “Do what you need to do as far as your reporting obligations. I’ll take care of this.” He passed the papers back to her, instructing her to have copies made and put on his desk as soon as she was able.

Tight-lipped, she nodded. Then after a slight wave at Sasha, she left the office and closed the door behind her.

Damien’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “This doesn’t make any sense at all. I can’t think of anyone who’d do something like that here.”

“There must be some sort of mistake,” Sasha said. “In all my years here, that’s never been a problem. I can’t see any reason why that would crop up now. Something is off about that accusation.”

“I agree.” Damien rapped his knuckles against his desk, staring off into space. Then he shook himself. “We might not be able to have that lunch after all,” he said.

“I understand. This is important.” She stood up and crossed the room to press her lips briefly to his. “Maybe we can have dinner tonight and—”

She trailed off as the phone rang.

“Busy day. I just hope this isn’t more bad news.” Damien shook his head, a tight smile on his lips. “Don’t leave yet,” he said as he picked up the phone.

“Damien Taylor.”

Sasha tuned out the conversation as he talked, trying to decide if she should take the pie away and put it in the kitchen for him to eat later. Then something in Damien’s voice made her look at him. He was rigid behind the desk, a look of disbelief on his face.

“Thank you, Mr. Davis.”

He said something else to the man on the other end of the phone and then he hung up. He stared at Sasha. “That was one of the investigators from the state police.” He paused. “They already know about the doping charges. The same anonymous tipster probably contacted them the same time they reached out to Michelle.”

Damien was talking but it seemed he wasn’t really paying attention to the words coming from his mouth, but rather to something else. Like he was trying to figure out a puzzle.

Something is very wrong.
Sasha crossed the room to stand on the other side of his desk. Her fingers gripped the edge of the polished wood desk. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.

Damien frowned down at the phone before looking back up at Sasha. “They’re looking into Taylor Stables as the source of the doping. The investigation is focusing on you in particular, Sasha.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What?!”

Chapter Twenty-five

Sasha stared at Damien, unable to believe what he just said. They were investigating her for doping horses? Her? She wanted to leap across the desk into his arms, begging him to believe that she would never do something like that. But the sudden rise of an irrational fear held her bolted to the floor across from Damien. She gripped the edge of his desk as she sagged against it, staring at him.

“I—I’d never do something like that!” she gasped. “You’ve got to believe me.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Damien said. “That thought never even crossed my mind.”

He came to her immediately, pulled her into his arms, and resting a gentle hand at the back of her head. His heartbeat thumped loudly beneath her ear. Or was it the sound of her own runaway pulse, frightened that the police would take her away simply for just being who she was? Her brother’s sister. Her parents’ daughter.

Her lover’s tender caress didn’t wipe the thought of her own tainted nature from her mind. She’d just confessed that she had come from some of the worst kinds of people in the world. That her brother was blackmailing her for nearly every dime she made, and she’d kept the truth of these things from Damien and basically everyone she cared about. How could he not believe she was guilty of the doping she was being accused of? Sasha’s fingers curled tight in the fabric of Damien’s suit jacket.

“I know what you’re thinking.” He made soothing motions against her back, kissed the top of her head. “Don’t,” he said. “Where you come from does not determine where you will end up.”

Damien put a finger under her chin and gently tilted her face up to look at him. “You’re a woman I’ve come to know and trust in so many ways. The time we’ve spent together, the things we’ve done, the person you’ve shown me to be, none of these things tells me I’ve placed my trust in the wrong person.”

Tears started in Sasha’s eyes. Her lower lip trembled and a wet tickle started behind her nose. Through the sheen of tears, she saw Damien’s blue, blue eyes. The faith and trust that shone from them as brightly as a beacon on the shore of a stormy, night-black sea. “I know you, Sasha Cormick,” he said. “And you’d never do something like this.”

The tears fell. She sobbed and clung to him, the stress of the last few weeks boiling over and spilling out through her cries. In one swift movement, Damien lifted her into his arms and took her to the couch. He sat with her on his lap, silent and patient as she cried into his shirt front, the ugly and endless sounds falling from her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a long moment. She sniffled, wiped her palms across her damp face. “I don’t usually act like this. I promise.”

“I know your strength, darling. You have nothing to apologize for.” His hand soothed her back while he looked into her face, his eyes piercing and unblinking. “We all have moments when we need to lean on another person, if only for a little while.” A smile touched his lips. “I’m honored that you have enough trust in what we have to lean on me.”

A steady warmth blossomed in Sasha’s chest. Radiating out and through her until she was filled with it, comforted by it. She sniffled again, settled back into Damien’s arms. “Thank you.”

“You have nothing to thank me for yet.” A touch of amusement colored his voice. “I still need to find out who’s making these accusations against you. And also who the hell is doping our horses.” The humor left his voice, leaving it cold and hard. “Whoever this bastard is, he’s going to regret the day he crossed me.”

Lying against his chest, Sasha shivered. She almost felt sorry for whoever it was that dared to mess with Damien and his business. Almost.

Chapter Twenty-six

There were investigators crawling all over Taylor Stables and all over Sasha’s life. Although they wore plain clothes and were polite, she still felt as if they – the intimidating and stern men and women who appeared on the grounds almost overnight – looked at her with suspicion whenever she ran into them. Which, in turn, made all her co-workers, who hadn’t so much as blinked when they found out about her and Damien, begin to look at her with an unpleasant, speculating look on their faces.

She knew she hadn’t done anything, but that didn’t stop her from feeling guilty about her past and thinking that it was something about her that made the investigators’ suspicion gravitate toward her. And even if there had been no real reason for them to suspect her, once they found out about her past, they would be sure to look at her even more strongly for the crime. They might even make up the facts of her guilt, figuring that someone who came from such a poisonous tree obviously had to be rotten to the core as well.

Because of this discomfort, this feeling of constantly being under the microscope, Sasha only came to the stables to do her job, work with Linc as needed, then quickly drive back to her little apartment and wait for the suspicion to fall away from her. Damien was busy trying to find out who the culprit was. Looking through paperwork, questioning the staff, checking records of the horses’ feeding schedules, medications, and performances. He’d discovered nothing, but he vowed not to stop until something fruitful came to light. Because of his preoccupation with clearing her name and the name of Taylor Stables, Sasha had barely seen him.

She’d spent the night with him just a few days before, but he had been too distracted to lie in bed beside her, instead going through stable files and records until nearly five o’ clock in the morning. Even after he put the papers away, he’d only gone to take a shower and get dressed, saying his mind was too preoccupied for him to sleep. Sasha knew exactly what he meant. As he’d worked into the night, feverishly dissecting the records on paper and on the computer, Sasha had envied the fact that he was able to do
something
. She felt completely helpless in the situation, able only to wait and see what another day would bring.

It was near the end of another long day. The sweat still coated Sasha’s face and neck, dampened the line of her back under her shirt and jacket. Bits of hay stuck to her face and arms, making her itch. She left the practice track and walked heavily toward the locker rooms then the stable showers. She was hot, tired, frustrated. The entire process with the investigators was going so slowly. The pain of the investigation was just as bad as James and his blackmail. Both wore on her nerves. Both made her question how people would now see her.

She turned the corner in the large, air-conditioned building, grateful for the blast of A/C on her skin. With a sigh, she adjusted the bag over her shoulders while her booted feet sounded against the wooded floors.

“There you are!”

She stopped short and looked up to see Michelle walking down the hallway toward her. The vet was wearing her street clothes. Jeans, a pink t-shirt, ballet flats. She had her glasses on properly today, perched on her small nose, while her blonde hair, even at the end of the day, was still elegantly piled on top of her head. She looked beautiful. Relieved.

When Michelle reached Sasha, she quickly pulled her into a strong hug. Sasha held onto her, feeling the prick of tears. But she fought them away.

“Hey,” she said softly to her friend.

“I’ve been looking for you all week,” Michelle said as she pulled back from their hug.

Sasha shrugged, the bag shifting on her shoulder. “I’ve been here this whole time.”