The Billionaire's Touch (The Sinclairs #3) (11 page)

“It’s fine. I’ll go.” Tessa hurriedly gathered her cleaning products and shot out the door.

Micah sprinted to his bedroom and pulled on a clean pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt. He was taming his hair with his fingers as he walked back out to the living room.

Everything was quiet; the only sound he heard was the whistling of the wind.

“Tessa,” he bellowed angrily before realizing that she wouldn’t hear him. “Fuck!”

Micah tugged on his boots and raced outside via the front door. There were no unidentified vehicles in Jared’s driveway.

Tessa was gone.

CHAPTER 10

I have to tell her. I will tell her—very soon.

Evan sat in his downstairs office with Randi’s champion farter dog, wondering
when
in the hell he was going to tell her that he was her mystery emailer. He wanted to, he needed to, but what if they couldn’t communicate as well face-to-face as they did via email?

What if she panicked? What if she thought he was a jerk for not telling her that he, S., was actually Evan Sinclair long ago? Maybe she’d feel betrayed that he hadn’t corrected her assumption that S. was just some person who worked for the Sinclair Fund. Okay . . . maybe he’d even lied to let her keep thinking he was a normal guy. He’d lose both of them, his best friend and the woman he wanted more than he’d ever wanted another female in his life. Okay, yes, they were the same person, but that made it all the more difficult for Evan to tell the truth. There was twice as much at stake.

Evan had already blended the two women together, seeing so much of the Randi he was getting to know in person in her mysterious emails.

Heaving a frustrated sigh, he leaned back in his comfortable office chair and put his hand on Lily’s head, stroking her silky fur without even thinking about it. Randi had fallen asleep on the couch after working on some things for her teaching job, and Lily had followed him down to his office. He was beginning to become accustomed to having a dog in the house, and, to his surprise, he was starting to like Lily’s company. It was funny how the animal seemed ecstatically happy just because she got affection and food. Really, dogs were fairly easy to please.

Evan didn’t want to admit he’d spent far too long just watching Randi sleep, fighting the temptation to touch her, move to the couch and strip off her clothing so that he could slake the frustrated, animalistic urges he kept experiencing to claim her—hard and completely.

“I’ll tell her pretty soon,” he whispered huskily to Lily. The dog looked up at him, her eyes dark and serious as she cocked her head sideways as though she understood. “Is she going to be pissed?” he questioned the canine as Lily looked at him with an empathic gaze.

Fuck! I can’t believe I’m talking to a dog.

Evan knew he had it pretty bad if he was using a golden retriever as his advice counselor. But he was way out of his comfort zone right now, and he was uncertain as to what the hell to do.

He could talk to his brothers, but they’d probably give him hell, and rightfully so. When they were wooing their women, he hadn’t exactly been there for them and sympathetic. He’d been the one to try to discourage both Dante and Grady from marrying so quickly, and he’d been a real bastard to Jared when Evan had actually wanted him to get together with Mara.

Hope had told him to fess up to Randi immediately and see where things went from there. She said if they already had good communication, things would evolve.

He hadn’t taken his sister’s advice, holding off on telling Randi the truth. The longer he procrastinated, the harder it was going to be to blurt out the secret. He knew it, but his concern about her reaction held him back.

Maybe the sexual part of their relationship had developed too quickly, but Evan couldn’t regret the most earth-shattering night of his life even if he tried—and he didn’t want to. He and Randi had been circling around each other with sparks flying since the first time they’d met. Honestly, he’d thought that maybe once they’d fucked each other senseless, the gut ache he had every time he saw her would go away.

It hadn’t.

Now he was pretty sure he had a full-blown ulcer eating away at his stomach every time he looked at her.

Opening his desk drawer, he pulled out a roll of antacids and popped several of them into his mouth. The way he’d been popping the chewable pills since he’d found out he was going to have to see Randi again, he really needed to think about buying stock in the company.

“She’s so damn beautiful,” he shared with Lily quietly as he swallowed the chalky substance that he hoped would take away the burning ache in his chest and his gut.

Snapping out of his fixation with Randi long enough to shut down his computer, Evan decided he wasn’t going to be able to work. He was too damn distracted. He’d go check out the weather and see if Randi was awake. It was getting to be late afternoon and she still hadn’t eaten anything.

He stood and brushed down the soft denim of the jeans he was wearing. Really, the casual clothes that Hope had bought for him after they’d visited the supermarket weren’t all that bad. In fact, he was pretty comfortable. The sweater was warm, and it was nice not to have a shirt and tie around his neck. Granted, it felt strange, but not altogether unwelcome. The only time he hated the jeans was when his dick got hard, which was almost every time he saw or thought about Randi. The material had very little give, and for a man his size, an erection was highly uncomfortable pressing against the unforgiving fabric.

Hope had taken him shopping after they’d bought groceries, telling him he needed to loosen up and try to make himself more approachable with some casual clothing. He was willing to do just about anything to get Randi to communicate better with him, even if it meant giving up his usual attire. The items weren’t as well made as his usual clothing, but if it meant getting Randi to notice him as something other than an asshole, he’d wear them.

He was just opening the office door when he heard an audible scream from upstairs.

Miranda!

A cold chill raced down his spine, and he sprinted up the steps like an Olympic champion, his heart racing as he imagined someone hurting her . . . or worse.

He came to an awkward, abrupt stop as he saw that she was still sleeping on the couch, but her body was flailing restlessly on the leather.

“I’m not a whore. I’m not a whore,” she kept repeating in a muffled voice. “No. Please. I can’t.”

She was whimpering now, and the sound of her distress tore straight through Evan’s heart. She was dreaming, but what in the hell was her nightmare about?

As if she’d experienced her mistress’s bad dreams before, Lily approached Randi cautiously and started to lick her face.

“Nooooooo!” The tortured sound that escaped from Randi’s lips was a combination of a scream and a plea.

Evan sucked breath into his lungs painfully as he moved forward just as Lily launched herself onto Randi’s legs and her mistress sat up, panting. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Not again.”

Evan waited for her to notice him, afraid of frightening her. She clutched her dog to her chest and fisted Lily’s silky fur as she rested her forehead on top of the retriever’s body.

“Lily,” she said in a still-panicked, breathless voice, letting go of her death grip on her dog as she apparently recognized that she’d been dreaming.

Finally, he spoke quietly. “Are you okay?”

Randi continued stroking her dog absently as though it comforted her.

“Yes.” Randi’s voice sounded tremulous and anything
but
fine.

Unable to contain his fear, concern, and relentless desire to comfort her for another moment, Evan gently pulled the dog back to the floor and picked Randi up so he could sit and let her sprawl on his lap. Automatically, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and Evan rested her head on his shoulder while he stroked her silky, dark hair.

“What happened?” he asked soothingly. “I could hear you screaming from downstairs.”

“Nightmare,” she murmured into his sweater. “I’m sorry I disturbed you. I used to have them as a teenager, but I thought they were gone. I hadn’t had one in years until Joan died. This is the second time it’s happened since. I think maybe they were triggered because I’m alone again.”

She’s not alone. She has me.

He tried to curb the fierce longing to make her understand that she wasn’t without somebody who cared just because her foster mother was gone now.

“What were you dreaming about?” Evan tried to keep his tone even, but he hated anything that frightened her, even if it was only a dream. “Why were you denying that you were a whore?”

“Long story,” she said anxiously. “The dreams are left over from a long time ago. It’s over.”

“Talk to me, Randi. Please.” Evan intentionally used her nickname, sensing that whatever was bothering her was attached to her childhood and maybe her mother. If her memories were this frightening, he vowed to never again call her by anything
other
than her nickname. “Tell me about your life before you came to Amesport.”

“My mother did bad things. I did bad things,” Randi told him in a warning voice.

“I don’t give a shit what your mother did. You aren’t your mother, and you were just a kid. Tell me,” Evan cajoled.

“My mother was a hooker.”

Evan could feel Randi’s body shudder as she made the confession.

Randi continued in a rush, “She was a prostitute for as long as I can remember. She was only sixteen when I was born, and I never knew who my father was—probably one of her . . . clients. We had a small apartment near her corner, but I didn’t see her very much. There were quite a few other prostitutes who lived in the same building, worked the same general area, and they took turns visiting me. Sometimes they brought me food. They were kind to me when they didn’t have to be. I wasn’t their kid.”

Evan’s grip tightened in Randi’s hair, his entire body shuddering with anger as he thought about a child growing up in those kinds of conditions. “What happened?”

I have to stay calm. This is about her and not me. She needs me right now.

And damned if he didn’t want her to need him.

“One of the ladies helped me register for school, and I went every day. I don’t remember anything much before early grade school.”

“Did your mother bring her men back to your apartment?”

“No. She’d leave, sometimes before I got home from school, and sometimes she wasn’t home when I left in the morning.”

Evan felt his temper flare even hotter, an unusual occurrence for him. Randi had basically raised herself, with the occasional help of some prostitutes? “How did you end up in Amesport? What were you dreaming about? Something that really happened?”

She nodded slowly against his shoulder. Her voice was unsteady as she continued. “When I was thirteen, my mother left and never came home. They found her body a week later. She was murdered, probably by one of her johns, but they never found the perpetrator.”

Evan’s anger ramped up another notch. “So you were alone?”

“When social services found out I existed, they took me into foster care.”

Confused, he asked, “So you were adopted by the Tylers?”

“No. I was fostered to a family in Southern California. And then I ran away.”

Evan knew there was something missing from her story. “What happened?” He knew she had a reason why she ran away. If she’d had any sense of stability after her chaotic childhood, she wouldn’t have left.

“My foster father knew I was the daughter of a prostitute. He assumed I had the same skills as my mother,” Randi told him quietly.

Evan felt a rage rise inside of him, a fury that he’d never experienced before. “He forced you? You were a child.”

“My mother was a runaway. Some of the ladies start very young, usually a product of broken homes and abuse,” Randi explained patiently. “He tried to shove his dick in my mouth. I had to fight my way out of the house. I left with nothing . . . not that I really had much as far as belongings were concerned anyway.”

“They could have found you another home—”

“I was scared. I thought I was better off taking my chances on the streets than in foster care.”

Evan could understand why. But it did nothing to calm the intensity of his fury for Randi and her previous circumstances as a child. “Tell me how you ended up here.” He didn’t want her to have to relive her past anymore. She might sound like she was over her childhood, but if she was still having nightmares, she was still holding on to some of the pain. If he could find the man who tried to violate her, he’d kill the bastard himself.

“I lived on the streets for a while, homeless. I stopped going to school. I did what I had to do to survive. One day, I was so hungry, so desperate, that I tried to steal a wallet from a tourist. The last thing I wanted to do was sell my body, but I knew I was getting close to going back to the ladies and begging them to take me in. I would have ended up doing whatever I needed to in order to survive.” Randi’s voice was tremulous as she recounted her desperation earlier in her life.

Evan took a deep breath, trying to focus on Randi instead of his own emotions. The thought of Randi coming so close to needing to sell her body to survive nearly made him come undone. “Did you succeed in getting the money you needed?” he asked, not giving a shit if she ripped off a hundred people to survive. She deserved a better life than what she’d been handed as a child . . . a life that sounded like a living hell.

“No.” Her tone changed, her voice becoming melancholy and reflective. “The wallet I tried to steal belonged to Dennis Tyler.”

“Your foster father?” Evan asked incredulously.