The Billionaire’s Handler (3 page)

Carolina picked up the photograph with trembling fingers.

She knew the child. Tommy. It had to be Tommy.

Her eyes welled with tears. She couldn't seem to help making a keening sound…and then realized, for the first time in ages, she'd not only made that helpless sound of affection and sorrow…

But she'd heard it. Heard her own voice.

Her hearing had finally returned.

 

Although Maguire never heard her walking around, some sixth sense triggered an awareness that
Carolina had come downstairs. He severed the phone call and crossed the office to the door.

There she was, in the living area. Her hair fluffed around her cheeks, about as tame as gossamer, and the long robe swam on her slim frame. She was barefoot, holding Tommy's photo in her hand.

He saw the tears in her eyes. The emotion. The vulnerability.

“Hey,” he said with alarm. But then remembered, of course, that she couldn't hear.

On the other side of the lamp was another photo. He grabbed it, showed her. In the picture, Tommy was a little older, but not so big that Maguire couldn't easily carry him around on his shoulders. Maybe they didn't look physically alike, and Maguire was certainly a lot older, but the photo should have showed her their relationship. He loved Tommy. He was as crazy about his half brother as Tommy had always been about him. They may have had different mothers, but they were unmistakably kin.

She saw. “So that's how you knew about me?” she asked. “Because of Tommy? Because you're part of Tommy's family?”

He nodded. Eventually that answer would undoubtedly raise more questions for her than it revealed…but it was still a punch of information that mattered. Her shoulders lost some of that stiff wariness.

It was a beginning.

Rather than grab the netbook and trying to type-talk to her, he figured he'd see how far they could get with sign language for a while. Would she like to go outside? Walk? He brought sweatpants and a sweatshirt for her to wear, boots she could pad up with thick wool socks, a jacket of his.

Initially she seemed to hesitate, but she shot such a longing look at the outside that he knew she was sold on the idea. It only took her a few minutes to take the makeshift clothes into the bathroom and emerge, looking like a homeless waif—but definitely a waif up for an adventure. The doctors had warned him that she needed serious rest and no exertion, but Maguire had to believe a little fresh air and sunshine would do her good.

Their first step outside, and he heard her chuckle, and saw how a natural smile transformed her face. Quail had hung out on the property for years, and this particular community of twenty-five or so looked exactly like what they were. Doofuses. Bobbing doofuses. They followed the leader, even when the leader was clumsy enough to trip on a rock and lead them through puddles.

A sassy wind blushed Carolina's cheeks, combed wildly through her hair. He grabbed her hand, climbing over a tall rock through the pines. Her eyes shot to his at the physical contact, but she didn't object.

A quarter-mile hike through pines led to a cliff
edge. It wasn't the best view, just a pretty vista—the mountains were getting a drench of snow in the distance, with a sunlit valley just below, salted with grazing deer.

Abruptly, though, he realized that he was still holding her hand, that they were standing hip-bumping close. His pulse gave an uneasy buck. The view was nice, but the way she looked at him, you'd have thought he'd given her gold.

He wanted—needed—Carolina to believe she could trust him, but those soft eyes conveyed something else. Something more. Something…worrisome.

Swiftly he dropped her hand. “Okay, Cee. That's enough exercise for today. The more fresh air for you, the better, but I think we'd better build up to it.”

He forgot. She couldn't hear. But she seemed to respond to his intention, because she turned when he did, headed back down the trail. The last dozen yards, her face seemed to lose that wind-brushed color, and her eyes got that glazed, exhausted look again. He wanted to scoop an arm around her, but stopped himself just in time.

At the back door, he mouthed, “Nap for you,” which provoked an immediate negative response. She shook her head frantically.

“No, Maguire. This is all too crazy. I need to know what's going on. Especially since I saw the picture of Tommy—”

Yeah, well. He was more than willing to talk with her, but first he had to get things back on the right footing. He got her inside, did the bossy domineering thing, yanking off her boots, settling her on the couch with a pillow and comforter, giving her a pad of paper so she could start working on those lists, then he got out of her way. His excuse for disappearing into the kitchen area was that he was making cocoa.

That turned out to be unnecessary. By the time he returned with a steaming mug of cocoa, brimming with melting marshmallows, she'd fallen asleep again.

He felt his stomach declench, his shoulder muscles loosen up. He'd made too much of that “look.” Everything was fine. She needed to see him as a leader or a benevolent caretaker or someone who'd taken control of their situation. Actually, he didn't much care what label she gave him, or what she thought of him—as long as she didn't mistake him as a potential lover.

And obviously that wasn't a problem, if she could nap this easily. Everything was going hunky-dory, nothing to worry about, Maguire was sure.

M
aguire was quite a piece of work, Carolina mused. She needed to understand him, but figuring the man out was no easy task. Some of the puzzle pieces were definitely jagged fits. He was tough. He took charge and wanted everything his own way, and wasn't big on democracy in a household. He spelled “high-maintenance guy” in any language.

On the surface, he wasn't a man she'd normally like, much less be attracted to.

Carolina turned the page on her book. The office/library—no surprise—had whole shelves of books on birth defects related to brain function. Tommy had been one of those. And the room, like everything
else in the lodge, was fabulous…three walls of fruit-wood bookshelves, a semicircular desk, little ladders to get to the top of the bookshelves, a couch and chair to sit in—and an old-fashioned fainting couch. The fainting couch was in a thick, suedey kind of fabric, and Carolina had taken one look and claimed it the minute she walked in here.

Nobody was getting her off that couch. Not Maguire. Not the army. No one or nothing. She was in love, and that was that.

In the meantime, dusk had already fallen. The day had passed amazingly fast—Maguire did some kind of work, but he'd left her upstairs with a pile of packages to sort through. Clothes. Not hers, but her size, nothing formal or fancy, just jeans and sweatshirts and socks, that kind of thing. And she'd napped. How on earth she could need more rest was beyond her, but apparently her body wanted to zone out every few hours, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Late afternoon, Maguire had pawed through the freezer, and come through with a gourmet French stew that just needed unthawing and heating to be savored. While he'd done that, she'd made her lists, but after dinner, she'd taken great pleasure in doing the dishes—primarily to give Maguire another fit. Apparently she wasn't supposed to do a thing for herself.

And after all that, they'd both settled in. She'd
pounced on her fainting couch with a book on special ed kids, while Maguire had taken the long couch, cocked his stocking feet on the trunk coffee table and was penciling through her lists. Initially he'd done so quietly, but Maguire being Maguire, eventually had to get a pen, a legal pad, to make notes and comments, and eventually he started muttering to himself. Probably because he still thought she couldn't hear.

“Lobster. Crab. Lobster. Scallops. Hmm. I'm sensing a common theme on your food list. Salmon from Alaska, only
really
from Alaska. Fresh sweet corn straight from a farmer's field. Blueberries right off a bush…for Pete's sake. Has no one ever fed you, girl…?”

He jotted some more scribbles on his legal pad. The last she'd peeked—less than a minute ago—no one had a prayer of reading his writing, including him.

“…Grape leaves. Stuffed, you know, the way the real Greeks do it. Actually, I don't know, tiger, but I get it that you want authentic. If you're going to be this easy to please, though, we're not going to have any fun. This isn't even challenging. And yeah, I know you can't hear me. But it's interesting, having a one-way conversation with a woman who can't talk back. Kind of every guy's favorite fantasy…well. Favorite fantasy separate from sex, of course…”

She could hear. Seeing Tommy's photo had jolted
something that morning…but not consistently. Her hearing, the volume of it, had gone in and out for hours now. It was only since dinner that she'd been able to hear anything consistently.

Once he'd hurled himself on the couch with her lists and started muttering, though, she'd heard every word.

She could have confessed that her hearing was back. She intended to come clean, eventually. Even little lies had always bugged her. But since she was distinctly at the most vulnerable disadvantage in this twosome, Carolina figured it was fair to find out what she could—any way she could. And there was an extraordinarily terrific side benefit to her deceit.

His voice.

Hearing the sound of his voice was like a powerful, free turn-on pill, with no risk and no side effects—beyond a tickle of her hormones. The pitch was low, not a bass, but definitely a low tenor, with a roll and timbre to his accent that put a shiver down her spine now and then. Sexy. He was just so altogether hopelessly, helplessly sexy. Those lethally blue eyes. Those all-guy bones of his, the overall look of him, the way he thought, the way he moved. It all came through in his voice. I am man, hear me roar.

It was that kind of voice. A baby-you're-gonna-love-how-I-kiss voice. A you-can't-imagine-how-much-trouble-I-can-get-you-into kind of voice.

It was mighty stupid, she knew, to travel even for a minute down that silly road. As sporadically as her hearing was returning, her memory seemed to be resurfacing the same way. Everything wasn't clear. But she'd recalled enough to make her want to curl up in a closet again, go back to where she'd become so agitated she couldn't keep food down, couldn't sleep, couldn't rest, couldn't escape. Anywhere.

So maybe it was irresponsible and downright dumb to dwell on Maguire's voice…but temporarily, it felt like self-preservation. Just listening to him allowed her to push her real life away for a little longer. It was hard to feel too guilty. Nothing was waiting for her in real life but more unsolvable problems and anxiety.

“Okay,” Maguire mumbled. “Moving away from the food list and onto the major life wishes list. And right off the bat, cookie, I can see this list has more potential to be challenging…” He was still obviously talking to himself. He hadn't lifted his head from the legal pad. “You want to have dinner in a tree house. A real tree house. Hmm. You want fifteen pairs of Italian shoes. No surprise there—the shopping gene was bound to surface sooner or later. You want to sleep in a castle. A real castle. You'd like a weekend at a spa. Now you're talking. You want to ride in an old MG, like a '53, one of those ‘darling ones' with running boards and all. You want…well, hey. Are you actually
listening
to this monologue, Carolina?”

Maguire had abruptly looked up. Looked straight at her.

He'd caught her. There was nothing she could do but fess up, so she nodded. “My hearing's coming back. I can't make it stay, but I've been listening to you talk. And I can hear my own voice. My hearing just seems to fade in and out. It's not consistent. I don't understand it.”

“I do. The doctors all explained it the same way. You stopped hearing because your life had become an overwhelming pressure cooker. Remove the pressure, and there was every reason to believe you'd get your hearing back again.”

“But nothing's changed.” Anxiety nipped at her nerves, then took a serious raw bite. “The pressure and problems are all there, all real. In fact, I have to go home. I have to get up. I have to—”

When she made a move to push off the couch, he interrupted. His voice was quiet, calm. “I've got a deal for you.”

“I'm not a make-a-deal kind of person, Maguire. There is no deal. As crazy as it sounds, I haven't minded being kidnapped, but now…it's all coming back. I don't have time to mess around. I have to go home—”

“Hold it, hold it. This is a deal that's going to work for you. I promise. You want to know how I happened to bring you here, don't you? So I'll fill in all the
missing information. All you have to do is give me a chance to do that.”

She hesitated. She did want to understand—fiercely—how this whole crazy thing had happened. But she wanted to hear about it right away, with no interruptions.

She should have known better. Everything had to be his way. He came through with a man's parka and hat and gloves for her, dragged her outside again. Early evening, the last color was just purpling the snow on the mountaintops. Not a breath of wind stirred. He helped her into an old Adirondack chair, buried in down blankets, but mittens out—so she could hold a glass of wine. Maguire started building a fire in a copper pit by the chairs.

It only took a few minutes before a blaze of golden sparks lit up the night. Wood smoke whiskered off in the valley, mingling with the pungent scent of pine. Maguire, wearing a leather jacket so old Goodwill would probably reject it, took the chair next to her, but his attention was on hunching over, stirring the fire, keeping it heaped up and hot.

And then he finally started talking. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a man named Gerald who had three sons. Gerald's daddy had invented something so fantastic that he made millions, then billions, and Gerald inherited it all. He devoted his
life to buying anything he wanted… That wine okay with you?”

“The wine's fine,” she said impatiently. It was better than fine. It was some kind of fancy Pinot Noir, rich and dry and deep as the night. “Don't trying diverting me, Maguire. Keep talking.”

“Okay, okay. Well, Gerald's first son was named Jay. Jay never worked, and probably never will. From the time he was sixteen, he was going through drugs and women, smashing fast cars, getting into every kind of trouble he could think of. He sounds rotten, but I swear you'd like him. Everyone does. He's a charmer.”

Maguire checked her glass, saw she'd only had a sip or two, poured himself some, then went on. “Gerald went through that wife, then another. Eventually he had a second son. They got along like a snake and a mongoose. About the time Second Son was in college, he had a huge fight with his father because Gerald made a manslaughter charge against Jay disappear. Jay happened to be driving drunk, and hit an old man. The guy was homeless, so he didn't matter, right? No one knew him. No one missed him. The father couldn't figure out why his second son got his Jockeys in such a twist, but that was the last time Second Son spoke directly to his father.”

Maguire paused for breath, but Carolina didn't comment. She'd stopped breathing altogether. For the
first time in months, she easily put aside her own life and problems. It didn't take rocket science to figure out that Maguire was the second son, that he was talking about himself.

“A wife or two later, a third son came into the picture. Tommy was a complete surprise. Unfortunately, when Gerald's wife was eight months pregnant, he thought she'd enjoy taking a hang-glider ride. Apparently, they both did enjoy it, until the glider crashed. Gerald wasn't hurt, but his wife went into premature labor. She never made it out of the delivery room, lots of complications. Tommy lived, but he was born weeks too soon, was never right.

“Gerald solved the problem of Tommy like he did everything else. Threw money at it. The kid had full-time help at home, every toy ever made, was dragged to the best medical specialists on a regular basis. Since all the records pointed to the premature birth, the lack of oxygen—and maybe to the recreational drugs Gerald and his wife enjoyed—no one really expected to find miracles for Tommy. But at least there was no fear he wouldn't always be well taken care of.”

Carolina watched him. He was restless now, couldn't sit still, had to fuss with the coals again, even though the fire was vibrantly shooting gold sparks into the night sky. “Last summer, Gerald put Tommy in a special place. He'd heard there was this
really unusual summer program near South Bend, a school that had fresh ideas for the range of kids who just can't seem to progress because of their mental disabilities. Gerald wasn't really expecting Tommy to improve, of course. He just wanted to vacation in Corfu, wanted a place to stash him.”

“Maguire.” She said his voice softly, gently. She couldn't just let him go on, not when he was expressing so much hurt—in such a tough voice.

But he motioned her with a hand. “I know this is a long story, Carolina, but I really hate telling it. I'm almost at the end, so just let me get through it, okay?”

She nodded.

“So Tommy goes to this incredible place. And he has a seizure. Seizures aren't unusual for someone with Tommy's brain issues, but this teacher thinks there's something that doesn't make sense. So when an ambulance picks him up from the school, she goes to the hospital with him. Everybody starts getting mad at her. The doctor, the medical staff. They think she's interfering, full of herself, doesn't know anything. But the thing is, this teacher—by the name of Carolina Daniels—was right. All this time, there was actually a reason for a lot of Tommy's mental and physical disabilities. He had a tumor behind one eye.

“Now Tommy still isn't perfect. Never will be. But
his life just became damn close to normal, thanks to her. Gerald, being Gerald, offers her money. This Carolina woman won't take it. But that's all Gerald has ever known how to do—throw money at problems—so he puts her in his will, leaves this unsuspecting teacher somewhere around fifteen million dollars. Of course, Gerald wasn't actually planning on dying. But whatever. Gerald wanted her to have some payback, and being Gerald, he got what he wanted.”

Maguire finally tried stretching out his long legs toward the fire, leaning back in the chair. “My guess is that our mysterious teacher—Carolina Daniels—was initially thrilled about the money. I mean, hey, who wouldn't be? Isn't that everybody's dream, to have total financial security, financial freedom, never have to worry about money again? Only, it didn't seem to work out quite that simple for her…” For the first time since he started talking, he shot her a glance. “You cold?”

“No, not at all.”

“We're going inside the minute you're cold. You hungry?”

“No.”

“More wine?”

“No. Good grief.”

“Okay then. We're getting to the last part of the story. The awkward part. Here's the deal. The second son was always an interfering son of a gun. Self-
righteous. Thinks he knows everything. That kind of pain-in-the-neck type of character. But he happens to really love his little brother. And even though Tommy's got a trust set up that will protect him forever financially, that second son has always been a part of Tommy's life. So that's how he knows about this teacher of Tommy's. How she saved Tommy's life. How she inherited that nest egg from Gerald.”