Billionaire Misery (6 page)

How could she want him so much when it was so obvious that he was the last thing she needed in her life?

T
he next few days passed in a haze of lovemaking and shared conversations. Jessie had never met anyone like Craig. He was infuriating and glib, but he was also wounded and enticingly haunted. She often found herself wanting to ask him if he still thought about Lisa, if he still loved her, but she didn’t.

They wouldn’t plan a meeting with Blake Wilkes too soon, or he would immediately suspect something. Jessie knew they had to figure out a way Wilkes would want to get Morgan out, or, if that didn’t work, she would have to risk having him sent out herself. She didn’t dare tell Craig she had that ball in her pocket. Nor did she know how to go about using it without exposing herself.

There was her cover to consider, and the mountains of evidence she had stashed away in a storage facility. She knew she was failing at keeping her distance from Craig, and every day that passed was one more day he got closer to her.

Getting close to him was risky and stupid. She knew it, but she’d wake up in the mornings and roll over to see his face on the pillow next to hers, and the loneliness that had dogged her would well up again, reminding her that she had never let anyone in before. It tore at her, but not as much as knowing that loneliness would be her constant companion after this case closed.

She’d lie beside him, watching him sleep, and wonder how in the hell she could keep him out of it. It frustrated her. She knew the only difference between a dirty cop and a good one was a few intentions, whether they were good intentions or otherwise; it was forgetting that justice, and not the people who were on the wrong side of it, was what really mattered.

It was easy to forget that Craig was one of the bad guys, that he had run dope for Wilkes too. Hell, it seemed the whole city ran Wilkes’ dope for him, and maybe Craig hadn’t known at first that the shit that Wilkes’ sold was the same product he peddled to the mid-range dealers. Wilkes had set Craig up, but it seemed impossible to prove.

There really was no way to keep Craig out of it.

Nate had found out there were DEA agents undercover months ago. They’d discovered the identities of all of them, except for her. Jessie knew exactly why that was. Wilkes had people in the agency on his payroll, too, and since she wasn’t on the roster, she was safe for Nate’s personal investigation. He didn’t have a clue about her.

But for how long?

She had no way of knowing. Eventually he would find out. He was biker, but he was also a damn good lawyer. He knew how to find things out. If Nate had been a cop, he’d have been a good one. She still needed to check in with her contact at the police station, or the Director would come looking for her personally.

Right now, all she knew was that, if she didn’t make a major break soon, Wilkes would slip right out of her grasp. This small window of opportunity was closing fast. Craig was the key to taking Wilkes down.

However, she couldn’t seem to stop putting off asking him about a meeting with Wilkes. The days went by, and, while Nate was unhappy about her spending so much time with an exile, the things he had her doing were low-level at best because of the pending trial with Morgan and the Orphans. She knew she should be collecting more information on Nate too, but it didn’t seem right at the moment.

She needed to figure out what she should be doing and where she should be focusing. With Craig around, she couldn’t focus on anything else.

One night after she came back from a long run for Nate, she sat down in the living room, tossing the money that Nate had given her onto the table. It was money she was supposed to log in for a police report, but she was so eager to get back to Craig that she hadn’t gone to that storage locker to do so.

She stared at the money on the kitchen table, and then across to the wall where she pictured Craig sitting on the other side of it in the living room. Her eyes trailed back to the dirty money. Keeping a cent, even if it was for just a little while, was wrong. She knew it. This needed to be logged as evidence. She needed to remember her real job here, and focus on that. She should be putting her emotions and all that shit aside and concentrate.

Craig came into the kitchen. He smelled like whiskey and wind and leather. All her recriminations flew right out the window as he strode to where she sat, and planted a kiss on her mouth that left her breathless and gasping. When it broke off, he asked, “Hard day?”

She smiled, loving that his scent clung to her lips. “Not really.” She realized her face must have given her away. She played it as best she could. “But Nate told me in no uncertain terms that he isn’t taking you on.”

His eyes were hooded, but he met her gaze and held it. “You might have to choose between me and them at some point.”

She did know, although the ‘them’ that she would have to choose over him were not the OutKasts, but a different crew. It was the DEA. That brought all her thoughts from a few minutes before surging back.

Craig’s face grew grim. “Jessie, I’m an exile. An orphan all over again. I know you want to be in Nate’s crew. It’s okay. I know. I get it.”

She stared at him. The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I don’t care about being in the OutKasts nearly as much as I care about spending time with you.”

He froze a moment, and then his eyes betrayed him before he could hide his reaction to her honesty.

She cursed herself inwardly. How had she just managed to blurt that out?

He said, “You’re crazy. But I would take you any day. Twice on Sunday.” He punched a fist into his opened hand and tucked it under his chin. He looked like a foster kid who had just been picked up by a family.

She wanted to take it back, because she had a terrible feeling she had made him incredibly happy... and she would end up having to destroy that hope and happiness.

He pulled her to up to stand, wrapping his arms around her waist. “You never stop taking my breath away with the things you do and say.”

His leg pressed against hers, and her pulse sped up. He could turn her on with nothing more than the smell of his jacket and skin after a long, hard ride. That was even more dangerous than the emotions that churned through her heart when she woke up in the morning and stared down at his sleeping face, wanting to see that face every single day of her life.

She had to stop this thing between them, and she had to stop it now, but the thought of being without him made her ache all over.

It wasn’t just that she would be alone again. It wasn’t even the dreaded loneliness. It was him. He was everything she had ever wanted in a man—and there was no way that they could ever be together. He would hate her when he found out she was a cop, and the temptation to scrap all of her evidence grew stronger every day. She fought that temptation, telling herself the agent who had turned on her father probably thought that his reasons for doing it were just and good too.

But she sure as hell didn’t want to kill Craig.

She wanted to love him for the rest of her life.

That was so impossible, and such a stupid thing to want. She was an undercover agent. The police. The DEA. Everything the Orphans and OutKasts hated. She had gathered evidence on him and most of his former crew. He’d go to prison, and she would be known as the agent who slept with the enemy. She was walking a thin line, and headed in the wrong direction. She couldn’t risk the damage it would do to her career, or her heart.

Maybe it would be better if she asked to be pulled out. Get out of the undercover gig. Just disappear. The OutKasts crew wouldn’t know what happened, nor would Craig. She could be gone in the blink of an eye.

Doing that would keep her from doing exactly what she’d been trying to accomplish for years, and there was no way she was willing to walk away when she was this close.

She was too close. To Craig. To Wilkes. To finally avenging her family.

Craig spoke, interrupting her tornado of thoughts. “Guess what?”

She tried not to look at him, but her eyes were drawn as if to a magnet. Tiny specs of brown dotted his irises. Damn, he was sexy! “What?” she managed, and swallowed hard. She had no idea if it was because of her stressed thoughts or his nearness.

“Guess who’s taking Morgan out?”

She frowned. “Taking him out like killing him, or taking him out like getting him out of jail?”

Craig’s lips were thinned down and his smile was nasty. “A fancy lawyer materialized and demanded his release. All the guys. I smell Wilkes all over this.”

She narrowed her eyes. He’d fucking gone behind her back! Not that she had any right to complain, but still... “You talked to him.”

Craig shifted but didn’t let her go. “I did.”

She accused, “You didn’t tell me.”

Craig watched her closely. “There was nothing to tell. He called me and said they were getting out. Said they had a lawyer who’d found a technicality that made them eligible for bail. Katie, of course, put the bail up—not Wilkes. And the lawyer, he’s an old friend of Katie’s who showed up to help her. She has no idea her father hired the guy.”

“What about Nate?”

Craig shrugged. “Nate did the best he could. There’s a plan here, Jessie. Wilkes wants it to look like they got greased in a street race. Any guesses who’s supposed to do it?”

“You.”

“Us. Wilkes has been spying. He knew about you without me even telling him.”

How much did he know? Her heart thundered against her rib cage at the thought. She should have known Wilkes would be spying. Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t gone to the storage unit tonight. Had they been trailing her, she wouldn’t have noticed because she was too caught up in her own personal drama. She pressed her lips tightly together and forced a long breath out of her nose. The idea that Wilkes had someone spying on them, someone who might know the details of the nights she had spent with Craig, made her blood run cold. What if he knew she was an undercover cop? What if it was photographed or videotaped? Fuck! “So now we’re screwed! We can’t really march them into his place to try to get into his safe if he wants them dead on the street.”

“I know. I’m stumped.” He nodded, and let her go as he leaned back against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and set the sole of his boot on the wall behind him. The pose was incredibly masculine and sexy. Jessie tried not to think about it.

She shook her head, trying to think fast. “We need to talk to Morgan.”

“Pardon?”

“We need to tell Morgan what’s going on. Katie too. You say Morgan’s an incredibly smart guy. Maybe he’ll know what to do.”

Craig said, “I just don’t know if he’s willing to help, all things considered, especially if he knows Wilkes put a hit out on Katie. He’d die to save her.”

Like every man should. Jessie didn’t know what to say. They were basically back at square one, running out of options, and her chance to catch Wilkes was slipping away from her grasp.

“The good news is that he cooled his heels long enough in the jail to heal up and be ready to fight.”

“The bad news is he might just whip your ass,” she retorted.

He put a wounded expression on his face. “Oh, babes, that was not nice.”

She laughed as he pulled her into his embrace. That intoxicating smell of his drifted into her nose, and she sighed. Maybe after some sex, she would be able to concentrate better. The erotic image in her head was shattered when Craig spoke, his voice rumbling up through his chest and into her ear.

“We have to get into that house tonight, Jessie. He’s got a big party going on. There’re going to be a shitload of fancy people there. Billionaires, high-class, politicians, all the crap. If we could get in, maybe use Morgan and Katie as a distraction like we planned, but in a different way, we might have just enough time to get into that safe. Break in and get what we need.”

A thought hit her and she had to ask him, “Craig, how is that you know about the safe?”

His heart beat steadily. “I told you.”

“I know, but out of all the people in the world, why would he trust
you
with that information?”

His heart sped up but only slightly. When he answered, his heart dropped back down and ticked along at a steady pace a sure indicator that he had considered lying, but wasn’t. “I suppose he thought I was the one person in the world who wouldn’t rat him out.”

“Why?”

He moved her, gently, but away before she could use his heartbeat as a makeshift lie detector test again. “I have no idea why the hell he does any of what he does.” He glanced at the money on the table and then his watch. “I have to go see Morgan. He’ll be out now.”

“You can’t. Not if Wilkes is watching. Neither can I.”

Craig rubbed his face with his hands and gave her a rueful smile. “I sort of suck at this spy shit, huh?”

If only she could believe that. “Go to the store and call him. There’s a payphone in the back. Buy something and come back. See if you can get something done like that.”

He kissed her hungrily on the lips and then pulled back. “What would I do without you?” he asked, and then sauntered out.

Jessie watched him go, admiring the way his jeans clung to his ass. She wondered how many times she’d watch him leave before he never came back to her.

As the sound of his bike engine faded away, she leaned back and stared at the ceiling. She was definitely too close. She moved over to the table and began putting the money in a backpack. She needed to count it and let Nate know what she had. Or hide it somewhere so she could use it as evidence.

It took her half an hour to count, sort, and then find a spot in Craig’s house to hide it.

Craig came back in the meantime with a pizza loaded with olives and sausage, her favorite, as well as a bottle of red wine. He set the food on the table in the living room and she followed him to the couch.

“So what’s going on?” Jessie asked, unable to wait any longer.

Craig drank directly from bottle of wine. “Morgan’s agreed. Then he one-upped the ante. He said if Wilkes wants him dead, he’ll have hell to pay trying. I spoke to Katie as well.” He grinned, one eyebrow up as he gave her a once-over. “When I told her I had heard that Wilkes hired that guy, she got real quiet and then said she should have known. He was a guy her dad had wanted her to date.”