The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 3 Read online

  THE TROUBLE WITH BILLIONAIRES

  Book Three

  KRISTINA BLAKE

  Copyright © 2015

  Published by: Rascal Hearts

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 1

  Annie

  Excitement bubbled in my chest. How lucky was I to have a roommate who not only worked at one of the biggest, most successful scientific companies in the world, Cepheus Scientific, but who also designed and was overseeing an advertising photoshoot for one of their products?

  They actually did have a catering table covered in amazingly tasty sweets, a set with a real looking backyard—inside the studio—and an actor I’d been dreaming of meeting since the moment I saw him in Zombie Vacation last year.

  Logan Mitchell.

  Even his name was sexy.

  And he was so unassuming. Television shows made you believe that actors traveled in packs…bodyguards and makeup artists and whatever else in tow. But Logan showed up by himself, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, like he was just an ordinary guy and this was just an ordinary afternoon.

  I so wanted to go over and introduce myself, but the photographer descended on him so quickly I didn’t have a chance. So I wandered over to the catering table and picked at the croissants—so French!—and tried to pretend I wasn’t watching everything as closely as humanly possible.

  When I saw Logan take a seat in one of the director-style chairs, I—as nonchalantly as possible—wandered over and sat beside him.

  “You’re Annie, right? Madison’s roommate?”

  Oh, my God! He just said my name.

  I smiled, pretending that having Logan Mitchell this close to me didn’t turn my insides to jelly and make my hands shake like leaves.

  “Yeah, that’s me. Madison’s roommate.”

  “We met a couple of weeks ago when I stopped by—”

  “…to check on her. Yeah. Me again.”

  Logan returned my smile, and my heart did a little flip.

  I glanced over at Madison where she stood beside Rawn Jackman, her boss and boyfriend—a very complicated situation that I didn’t even want to understand—the two of them having one last discussion with the photographer before things got under way. There weren’t very many people around beside them, the photographer’s assistant, and some lady offering everyone water or sodas.

  So, maybe he was talking to me by default. But at least he was talking to me.

  “You were at the launch party, too,” he said, rolling the water bottle he was holding between his hands. “I remember that red dress…it really complimented your hair.”

  I blushed. He remembered my dress! But I managed to keep my heart out of my throat when I said, “Yeah, me a third time.”

  “You’re funny. I bet you keep Madison in stitches.”

  “When she’s around.”

  He glanced over at Madison and Rawn. “Yeah, they seem pretty attached at the hip.”

  “Not that I’m complaining. She deserves a little happiness, what with her sister dying a few years ago and everything.”

  “Is that right?”

  I nodded. “They have a genetic type of MS, and Allison’s was really bad, it progressed so quickly the doctors couldn’t do much to help her. She died of pneumonia related to the MS.”

  Logan’s gaze was thoughtful, as he looked over at Madison again.

  Hell, I just turned her into some sort of romantic figure…

  But then he turned back to me, his eyes lingering on my face for a long second.

  “I’m only in town for tonight. I was wondering if you thought—”

  “We should get started,” the photographer suddenly yelled. “Logan, if you’d take your place.”

  “Sorry,” he said, another soft smile slipping over his lips. “Got to get to work.”

  I forced a smile, as he handed me his water bottle and hoped it didn’t look as furious as I felt.

  Damn, damn, damn!

  Was he going to ask me out, or was he just asking for best the place to get a good burrito?

  “Okay, Logan, if you’ll lean forward a little and look through the lens of the telescope…yeah, just like that,” the photographer said, as he began to snap pictures.

  I watched as Logan moved his body in different directions, seeming to read the photographer’s mind. He was a natural at this. I read somewhere he modeled before he got his first acting part. To pay his way through college, the article said. I found myself wondering what he had studied in school and why he picked acting over whatever direction his life had been moving in before that.

  So many questions I would have to ask over our first date.

  And I was convinced there would be a first date…someday.

  As I watched, Logan moved into another pose, stretching his hands over the barrel of the telescope and leaning forward, a smile on his lips that suddenly grew stiff. And then his eyes rolled back in his head and he, the telescope, and the tripod it was sitting on, all fell forward.

  “He’s seizing!”

  I rushed to his side, wondering if I should shove something in his mouth. Madison rushed over, calm as she turned him onto his side and began speaking to him in a comforting tone.

  “Call 911,” she said as she caught my eye. “He needs an ambulance.”

  I yanked my cellphone out of my pocket and dialed, my hand shaking so much I had to dial twice. When the woman on the other end answered, I tried to speak as calmly as I could.

  “We need an ambulance at Star Studios, Stage 5.”

  The woman started asking questions that I wasn’t able to focus on, let alone answer. I was more concerned with the man I’d fantasized about for years seizing on the floor beside me. I dropped the phone and held his shoulder, trying to keep him from shaking himself to death, as Madison continued to whisper to him as though he could understand what she was saying.

  The photographer stood over us, his shadow beginning to annoy the crap out of me, while Rawn stood at the door, waiting to wave the ambulance crew in. When they arrived, I was so relieved that I didn’t mind when one of the paramedics pushed me out of the way.

  Madison moved up behind me and slid her arm around my waist, as we watched the paramedics check Logan’s vitals and start an IV when the seizure started to subside. Then, they were on the move, rushing him out to the humming ambulance and then driving away almost instantly with the sirens blazing.

  “We have to go with him,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  Madison took me over to Rawn’s car. Rawn surprised me by staying right behind the ambulance despite the number of red lights between us and the hospital. I hadn’t thought he was passionate about anything but Madison, but I guess his business ranked pretty high up there, too.

  Even though we arrived at the hospital with Logan, they wouldn’t let any of us go into the exam room with him. We weren’t family.

  I didn’t even know who Logan’s family was, or if there was someone we should call.

  “Should
we call his manager, or his agent?” I asked no one in particular. “Someone should know what’s going on.”

  “That’s probably not a very good idea,” Rawn said. “If the press gets ahold of this…”

  Shit.

  I’d forgotten that Logan was in rehab last year. If word got out about this, people would think he had relapsed or something.

  I began to pace, tears forming in my eyes, as the vision of him lying on the ground, his body drawn up and shaking, suddenly registered for the first time. He’d had a seizure. What did that mean? Was he sick? Did he have a brain tumor? Was he going to die?

  We hadn’t even had our first date yet.

  I knew it was a little stupid that I was so convinced that Logan and I were meant to be together. But there was a moment at the launch party…he looked at me and I just knew there was something there.

  I knew deep in my soul that Logan Mitchell was my future. I didn’t know how or when, but I’d known since the night of the party that it was going to happen. And it seemed like it was about to…and now this.

  If he died before—

  “Madison Miller?”

  I spun around as Madison moved away from Rawn’s embrace to approach the nurse who’d called her name.

  “Mr. Mitchell wants to speak to you.”

  “He asked for me?”

  The nurse shot Madison a tired glance before gesturing for her to follow. Madison looked at me, a little guilt in her eyes before she followed.

  I began to pace again.

  “I’m sure the seizure left him a little confused,” Rawn said.

  I shrugged. “If he’s asking for anyone, it means he’s alert. That’s got to be a good sign.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  It seemed like Madison was back there forever. Even Rawn seemed a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. He leaned casually against the wall, but every time someone came through the doors that led to the exam rooms, he tensed. I didn’t know Rawn very well—he and Madison usually spent all their time together at the office or this apartment Madison told me about that he fixed up for the two of them—but I’d spent a little time with him when Madison was missing a few weeks ago. I was beginning to learn to read the subtle nuances in his masked expressions.

  He was as bothered by this as I was.

  It seemed like we had been there hours—despite the fact that only forty minutes had passed on the clock displayed on my cellphone—when Madison finally came through those doors.

  Rawn immediately pushed away from the wall and went to her. There was something raw and real about the way he touched her shoulders that made my heart ache. But it was the sad, almost frightened, look on Madison’s face that really concerned me.

  “Is he okay?” I asked, joining their intimate circle. “Did the doctors say anything?”

  “He’s going to be alright,” Madison assured me, a hand on mine underscoring her words.

  But there was still that fear.

  Madison glanced around us at the other people waiting to see a doctor or for loved ones who were already in an exam room. She grabbed our hands and pulled us toward the door, dragging us out under the concrete canopy that covered the circular drive.

  “He thinks he was drugged.”

  Rawn stepped back and dragged his fingers through his hair. I just shook my head, the image of Logan going down rushing through my mind again.

  “Why?” Rawn demanded.

  Madison glanced at me as though she was measuring how much she should say. “He says that there was an odd taste in his mouth that he now knows must have been some sort of drug. He says…” She cleared her throat. “He just…he knows that this wasn’t natural. And he’s afraid that the doctors will run blood tests that will show something in his system that could ruin his acting career.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  Madison shook her head. “Why would someone kidnap me? Why would Mellissa become the target of some crazed kidnapper?”

  “You think it’s all connected?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But it seems like too much of a coincidence.”

  Rawn looked at me then focused on Madison again. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”

  “Can he leave? What if he has another seizure?”

  Madison gave Rawn a look, and he nodded. “We’ll take him to my building. I’ll call Conrad and have him set it up.”

  “Come with me,” Madison said, grabbing my arm. “You help him get dressed while I distract the nurses. And Rawn,”—she glanced behind us to where Rawn had already pulled out his phone and was in the middle of pressing Conrad’s number on speed dial—“pull the car around to the side door.”

  He nodded, but Madison didn’t really wait to see it. She knew he would agree without needing that confirmation. That was the kind of relationship they had.

  It was the kind I dreamed of having.

  Madison pulled me into the building and through the doors that led to the exam rooms, pausing only once when she heard a couple of nurses walking toward us. I didn’t even know where we were going and quickly got lost in the maze of hallways she navigated without hesitation.

  When did Madison become this confident, this sure of herself?

  We’d been roommates since the first days of college; she’d even taken me home for the holidays a few times. I adored her little brother and her quiet but kind parents. Her family was so different from mine. Close. That was not a word I would use to describe my family.

  She finally found the door she’d been looking for and hesitated just a second.

  “He’s still a little groggy,” she said. “You’ll have to be patient with him. But get him dressed as quickly as you can and then tap on the door. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out.”

  I nodded, my heart sort of quivering as she pushed me through the door.

  Logan was sitting up in the hospital bed, an IV still snaking into his arm. His movie star physique was covered with a thin hospital gown and a heavy, white sheet with the name of the hospital stamped on it. His eyes were closed, dark circles visible under them. He looked vulnerable in a way he never had before. I couldn’t help myself…I went to him and touched his cheek with a tenderness that physically hurt my heart.

  Without opening his eyes, he reached up and touched the back of my hand, his touch as gentle as mine. He sighed, his lips moving to form words I couldn’t understand.

  When he opened his eyes, he immediately pulled away, sitting up a little straighter in the bed.

  “Where’s Madison?”

  “She’s in the hallway, watching for the medical staff.” I tilted my head slightly as I studied him. “Do you want me to get her?”

  He hesitated, and that just about killed me. I turned away, spotted his clothes folded on a counter, and retrieved them.

  “She wanted me to help you get dressed so we can sneak you out of here. But I can go get her, if you’d prefer—”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  He started to tug at the tap that held his IV to the inside of his elbow.

  “Wait.” I went to the counter and searched a few of the drawers until I found a gauze pad. “It might bleed.”

  He nodded, taking the pad from me as he pulled at the clear tubing. A second later, the needle slid from his flesh and the inside of his elbow immediately flooded with blood. He pressed the pad there as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, knocking the sheet to the floor and baring his long, muscular legs.

  “You’re going to have to help me,” he said. “They gave me something that’s got my head swimming.”

  I nodded, as I grabbed his jeans, not really looking at him as I shook them out and unfastened the button someone had fastened after taking them off of him. It felt strange, helping him put them on after fantasizing about helping him out of them so many times.

  He pressed his hand to my shoulder with his free arm, his other bent to keep pressure on his bleeding wound. He stood, and we were sudd
enly in an awkward embrace, my arms around his waist and his hand sliding from my shoulder to the center of my back. He smelled—mmm—despite the clinical smells of the hospital around us, he smelled like a warm walk in the woods. My nose was practically touching his throat, and I wanted to just stay there and breathe him in for a while. But then his jeans slipped up over his hips, and he let go of me to fasten them.

  I stepped back, and he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed again, running a hand over his forehead, clearly struggling with a little vertigo. I busied myself with unfolding his shirt and shaking it out, trying to ignore my inconvenient—but overwhelming—arousal.

  How often do you get to stand that close to your fantasy?

  But, again, how often does your fantasy become a reality that turns out to be as vulnerable and fragile as everyone else?

  When I turned back to him, he had slipped out of his hospital gown and dropped it onto the floor. He was looking at his elbow, dabbing at a few stubborn drops of blood.

  “There’s probably a Band-Aid here somewhere.”

  He shook his head. “It’s done bleeding.” He grabbed the shirt out of my hand and pulled it over his head. “Can you find my shoes?”

  I did, a pair of expensive sneakers that looked like he had only worn them once. I handed them to him, but when he bent over to pull them on, he nearly lost his balance and slid off the bed. I pushed him back and took the shoe out of his hand, dropping to my knees in front of him and quickly helping him into them.

  I waited for him to say something funny. He seemed like the kind of guy who could charm his way out of an uncomfortable situation, but he wouldn’t even look at me when I finished and stood again.

  “We should go before the doctor or one of the nurses comes back.”

  He inclined his head slightly and held out his arm. I gripped him under his triceps and pulled him to his feet. He swayed slightly, so I slipped my arm around his waist. Again he hesitated before he laid his arm across my shoulders and let me lead him toward the door.

  I tapped, as Madison had instructed. A second later, she pushed open the door and gestured for us to follow. We had to walk fast. The emergency room was fairly empty with a lot of staff members standing around with too much time on their hands. It might have been better if they were busy…but we managed to make it to the back hallway before a man—a doctor—called out to us.