Keeping Her Safe: A Billionaire Second Chance Romance Read online

  Keeping Her Safe

  A Billionaire Second Chance Romance

  Summer Brooks

  Contents

  Keeping Her Safe

  1. Eric

  2. Grace

  3. Eric

  4. Grace

  5. Eric

  6. Grace

  7. Eric

  8. Grace

  9. Eric

  10. Grace

  11. Eric

  12. Grace

  13. Eric

  14. Grace

  15. Eric

  16. Grace

  17. Eric

  18. Grace

  19. Eric

  20. Grace

  Author’s Note

  Copyright © 2018 Summer Brooks

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  This is a work of fiction. Resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales or events is entirely coincidental.

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  The following story contains mature themes, strong language, and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.

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  All characters are 18+ years of age. All sexual acts are consensual.

  KEEPING HER SAFE

  *

  She is the one that got away, leaving me to fantasize about the curve of her hip and the taste of her lips.

  *

  I have everything I could ever want, except for Grace.

  *

  She is unlike any woman I’ve ever met—wild and free.

  And impossible to pin down—even for a man of my considerable resources.

  *

  Now, maybe I have a second chance with her.

  But I am in danger; I am being followed, stalked, and accused of stealing another man’s wife.

  That’s something I might have done before.

  *

  But not now.

  Now, I only have eyes for Grace.

  And I’ll do anything to keep her by my side.

  *

  But will I be able to keep her safe?

  I will. Or I’ll die trying.

  1

  Eric

  I loved Zurich. The city cut into the mountains and made its mark on the earth, refusing both to succumb to the natural beauty around it and to fade into the shadows. It was everything a place should have no right to be in the twenty-first century—stubbornly clinging to old-world charm in the face of everything shiny and new and digital. It was no surprise that with such luxury and beauty, Switzerland refused to take sides in any world conflicts. When you have that much to lose, you don’t risk it so easily. I was amazed that it had taken me so long to find my way there, and surprised to find that I was sad to see it disappearing out of the wide windows of the Gulfstream G200.

  But now, I owned a piece of it. And that thought made me secretly giddy with excitement.

  I was headed home. Back to Chicago, the home of The Bean, a shit-ton of Cubs fans that had finally gotten their rocks off after waiting a century for something interesting to happen, and my narcissistic parental units. On the upside, at least I wouldn’t continue to be followed everywhere I went by that translator with the nasal-sounding broken English. I almost fired him no less than a dozen times, and kept sending him out for coffee because I could communicate better when he wasn’t there; most people in Switzerland speak English anyway.

  Sinking back from the window into my soft leather seat, I ordered a bloody mary from a smiling redhead and reminded myself that it was necessary to go home to help my company, Sorenson Capital Investments, massage an upcoming acquisition through all the proper channels by hand. The deal in Zurich had proven a welcome distraction from everything going on at home, but now it was time to saddle up.

  My company—or, rather my father’s company (as he was always eager to point out to me)—was in the process of acquiring a smaller development firm, Vance National Holdings. It should have been easier than a walk in the park, but my brilliant father had somehow pissed off the company’s wunderkind CEO, Sebastian Vance, and it was no longer looking so good. So it was my job to come in and smooth everything over. Sebastian and I had known each other for a long time—we’d been best friends in high school, and stayed that way until our second year of college, when I got wasted one night and screwed some girl he was trying to impress. I was sure I could reason with him, despite our falling out.

  “Would you like something to eat, Mr. Sorenson?” the smiling redhead asked me, returning from the plane’s galley.

  She handed me a small leather-wrapped menu, but her keen grey eyes offered up a different kind of delicacy entirely. Her small, warm hand lingered on mine, making her implication as clear as the blue sky outside the plane’s windows. The nametag on her ample chest read, “Kassie.”

  This was my parents’ plane, sent to collect me when I balked at the idea of leaving Zurich when they suggested I come home a week ago. Actually, “suggest” is far too kind a word for what my father does when he does not get his way. The word “insist” might be a little better, but even that was like calling a kidnapping an “invitation.” I wondered if my father had fucked this Kassie girl, or maybe the brunette that was working with her on the plane. Probably both. And my mom had probably found her way into the cockpit a couple of times, too. The two of them had the most screwed up marriage I had ever seen.

  That is why love is stupid.

  “Have a seat, Kassie,” I ordered her. She obeyed, perching herself delicately on the seat next to mine, and smiling at me with those wide grey eyes, examining me appreciatively. “I’m not really hungry right now, but I could use some company. It’s a long flight with no one to talk to.”

  “Sure,” she replied shyly in a soft, breathy voice, “I’d like that. What would you like to talk about?”

  “Tell me about yourself.” In my ever-so-humble (yet, correct) opinion, these four words are more powerful than any others in the English language. If you get a woman freely talking about herself, you can get her to do almost anything else you want.

  “Well, I’m from Arizona, and I moved to Chicago about two years ago…” she began babbling about her education and interests. I honestly couldn’t tell you another word that she said; I had already tuned her out and was using the moment as an opportunity to examine her many attractive qualities—none of which involved whatever nonsense was coming out of her mouth.

  If Kassie was like most women in their mid-twenties, she was already telling herself that my focused attention was flattering. In her mind, she was thinking that I was so interested in her that I was practically transfixed. She was wrong, of course. I wasn’t listening; I was taking a mental photograph that I could use later.

  Kassie was maybe twenty-three—if that. She was at least eight years younger than me, but old enough to know my reputation, and yet she was still making the decision to flirt with me. Even as she spoke, she placed her delicate hand on my knee like some kind of professional. She was tall and curvy, with porcelain skin that I imagined might show a handprint quite nicely.

  I suspected that Kassie was the kind of girl who’d had low self-esteem in high school, then escaped her shitty hometown to find that life didn’t suck and men really did want to fuck her. She still had that look in her eye, like she was expecting rejection. I’m sure she knew that, from me,
it was coming, but not until we had some fun.

  In all, I was confident that Kassie wasn’t the type of woman who would fall in love with me, call me late at night, and follow me around like a puppy dog, which meant that I was willing to give her what she did want. I’d be a story she could tell her impressed friends later over their third bottle of Moscato. She had sex with Eric Sorenson on a flight from Zurich. The same Eric Sorenson who was always seen in the tabloids with new, hot models, but never with the same woman twice.

  Kassie was not the type of woman I was usually attracted to, but the red curls that framed her ivory skin appealed to me, and her curves were out of this world. Still, I wished she weren’t quite so tall, and it would be nice if she weren’t practically throwing herself at me. I wished that her eyes were blue, rather than grey. And, more than anything, I wished she would shut the fuck up.

  “Come here,” I ordered her, yanking her hands to pull her out of her chair and into a kneeling position on the ground in front of me. She stopped talking, and looked up at me, her grey eyes full of false innocence. She clearly didn’t mind me ordering her around. My hands tangled into the fiery curls at the back of her neck as she tilted up her face to kiss me.

  This was almost too easy.

  2

  Grace

  My phone rang.

  Actually, that’s not an appropriate characterization. Phones don’t really ring anymore. Instead, they create a series of electronic sounds that are supposed to sound pleasing to the ear, while also indicating that someone is trying to reach us, which is rarely a pleasing experience in itself. Psychologists say that the sound of our phone going off is supposed to create all kinds of warm, fuzzy chemicals in our brains, but most of the time, it just makes me want to crawl into a hole.

  “Hello?”

  The voice on the end of the line was sobbing, which didn’t make me any happier to receive the call. But a crying woman on the line usually means a paycheck, and a girl’s gotta eat.

  I repeated my greeting.

  “Is-is th-this G-grace S-s-s-silver?” the woman finally managed to utter. I was already impatient with the line of questioning, but I remained as professional as I could under the circumstances.

  “Yes ma’am,” I replied. “What can I help you with?”

  “I don’t think my husband loves me anymore.”

  Now, I have to say that, while many people might be shocked or saddened by this statement, it was nothing new in my line of work. In fact, I had probably heard that exact same sentence at least fifty times in the last year alone.

  This is why love is stupid.

  After a few more questions, I learned that the woman, whose name was Catherine, didn’t really suspect her husband of cheating on her with someone specific. She was just certain that he would if given the opportunity. She wanted to hire me to flirt with him and see if I could get him to go home with me. I had done that kind of thing before. In fact, I had apparently done it for a woman that Catherine worked with, which is how she found out about me. But I didn’t enjoy that kind of work. To me, it felt smarmy and dirty, and it was nothing like what my father would be doing if he were still here. Still, I agreed to it. After all, it was money in my pocket, and it would keep the student loan people off my back for a while.

  It seemed like when my father was around, we were doing more interesting work. All through high school, I was his assistant on cases that involved fraud, embezzlement, and family disputes. Granted, I mostly only did internet research and grunt work, but at the time, the job seemed so much more fun than it did now. Lately, it seemed like most of my work involved cheating wives, cheating husbands, or cheating lovers. If there was a way for people to investigate their cats for cheating on them with another family, I’m sure they would. And, if they paid enough, I’m sure I’d take the case.

  My office was in a tiny second-story walkup that my father purchased when I was still in diapers. It was nothing special, but it meant that I could be in the city, and because I owned it now, no one could kick me out. When you’re broke, you take pleasure in the small things like this. The dusty hardwood floors had probably been installed sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, and the windows were drafty enough to allow a steady breeze to blow through the space throughout the coldest months of the year, but it was a roof over my head. And, honestly, to have an apartment with a separate living room and bedroom in this part of the city was something of a miracle. I had thought several times about selling it. With the price it would sell for, I’d be pretty comfortable for a while, but my father had always loved the place so much that doing so would feel like a betrayal to him.

  It wasn’t until there was a loud knock on my door that I realized I had been daydreaming for several minutes. My chin had been propped on the palm of my hand, but the force of the hand knocking on the wood frame rattled its frosted glass pane that read “Silver Investigating,” which startled me enough to cause my elbow to fall from the edge of my desk in what was surely a comedic display of my clumsiness.

  I managed to pull myself together before responding.

  “Come in,” I announced. I was still working on not sounding too friendly when I said those words. My father had been a gruff man, and the people who hired him respected him for it, but part of me couldn’t help but be cheerful when there was a visitor at the door.

  The door opened to reveal a man, probably in his mid-forties, and soft around the middle. His dark brown hair was matted against the sides of his face in an unattractive way that made it seem as if he had not bathed or slept in quite a while, and he was wearing a suit that, while not cheap, was probably a full size too small for him, hinting at a previous life that was maybe a little better than whatever he was going through right now. He had an overwhelmed look in his deep-set eyes that was at once desperate and angry—not at me, but at the world that had caused his current circumstances and forced him into my office.

  In short, he was a typical client.

  I rose to greet him, stretching out my hand professionally, but he either didn’t see it or didn’t care, and sat down in the chair across from my desk with enough force that I feared he might break its ancient legs. He was silent, and for a long moment the only sound in the room was his heavy breathing, no doubt caused by the trek up the stairs. By the time he looked into my eyes and spoke, I was a little creeped out by his demeanor, but nonetheless completely unfazed by his words.

  “My wife is cheating on me,” he said through heavy breaths, “and I need you to prove it.”

  Predictable.

  3

  Eric

  The best part of flying on private jets (I mean, aside from watching the clouds float by while a hot redheaded flight attendant is going above and beyond to serve all of your most urgent needs), is not having to deal with airports. Between the lines at ticketing and the lines of the security check, airports are the worst place in the world. In fact, I think that they compete for the title of “Hell on Earth” with only two other places: portable bathrooms at summer music festivals, and my parents’ house.

  My parents, Bradley and Geneva Sorenson, still live in the home where I grew up, despite the fact that they have since become extraordinarily wealthy. Their home isn’t exactly tiny, but it doesn’t look like the home of someone who can afford a private jet, either. My father has this stubborn sentimental attachment to it because it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and he admired him as a man who wouldn’t bend to anyone’s will, and blah, blah, blah. But I think my dad just liked to see the shocked look on people’s faces when he invited them to his home and they learned that it was not, in fact, a palatial estate, but a modest craftsman-style bungalow on Oak Park that would sell for less than two million dollars tomorrow.

  I think he thought it made him seem grounded.

  But with two private jets, a tower downtown emblazoned with our family name, and multiple magazine covers that have been graced with his cheesy grin, he’s not fooling anyone.

  I�
��ve never understood rich people who say they don’t like being rich. Some of the people that we know love to talk about all of the hassles of their station in life. My parents are different; they never outwardly complain about having money, they just do everything they can to hide it. But I love being rich. I love riding on private jets, and I love my fantastic penthouse loft on Lake Shore Drive. And, I love when the jet that I’m riding in, that has my last name emblazoned on the side, lands at a private airport, where I am ushered onto a helicopter that takes me to the roof of a building with my name emblazoned on it as well, all without having to sit through rush-hour traffic.

  Being rich is awesome.

  Awesome, that is, until I headed down to my office on the eleventh floor, and my father was sitting behind my desk, feet propped up like a teenager on the live-edge redwood finish, demanding that we talk about Sebastian Vance and his fucking company.

  “Can’t you just be like other dads and say, ‘Hi, son, how was Zurich?’” I asked him, but I already knew the answer to my question. It would be impossible. That kind of greeting would require both small talk and affection—neither of which my father is capable of.

  “We don’t have time for bullshitting,” he said instead, pulling his feet off of my expensive desktop and lifting himself to them in one smooth motion that should not have been so easy for a man pushing towards his retirement years sooner rather than later. “We need you to talk to Vance.”

  “I’ve got it covered. We are having drinks at Andrew’s place tonight. I’ll take care of it.” The Andrew in question was my little brother, an incredible chef who was smart enough to get out of the family business before it squeezed every inch of life out of him. I introduced new people to his restaurant every chance I got. It also helped that I got free drinks and looked much cooler than I am whenever I took ladies there. Sebastian probably wouldn’t be impressed, but he’d probably be so loaded he wouldn’t remember how bored he was. He has a serious problem, and it was causing his company to suffer, which was why we were in a position to acquire it in the first place.