Take Me Home_A Billionaire Protector Romance Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Exclusive Offer

  Blurb

  1. Gina

  2. Vincent

  3. Gina

  4. Vincent

  5. Gina

  6. Vincent

  7. Gina

  8. Gina

  9. Vincent

  10. Vincent

  11. Gina

  12. Vincent

  13. Gina

  14. Vincent

  Epilogue

  Vegas Bound (Sample)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  TAKE ME HOME

  We were like fire and ice.

  I was mousy and quiet. He was wild and rowdy.

  It was everything that I’d ever dreamed of.

  His eyes, piercing and blue, had me fall for him – hard.

  Then we came crashing down like a tidal wave.

  Vincent Carr, a drool-worthy billionaire, has waltzed back into my life.

  Like he owns it. Like he owns me.

  But now, he’s not the only one who wants me all to himself.

  A man in the mafia has his gaze raking over me like I’m a piece of meat.

  Vincent Carr is a bad apple.

  But his protective arms are my only hope.

  1

  Gina

  My arms full of new supplies, I used my hip to bump the door open and yelled, “Maria!”

  Dogs of all ages started barking the moment they heard me. I set the box down on the front desk as Maria emerged from the back, cocking an eyebrow at me.

  “I know I’m late,” I said. “But I stopped by the store and got a bunch of new toys to replace the ones that Bowser destroyed.”

  Maria sighed, taking the box from the desk. “You really don’t have to do that, Gina. It comes out of your own pocket.”

  Maria knew that I wasn’t exactly rolling in dough. I came from a family that had been comfortable, growing up, although not nearly as wealthy as our neighbors and the other kids at my high school. But since I’d graduated and was living on my own in the city, I paid for everything. And working in an animal shelter was never said to be a lucrative career path.

  A lot of people in high school and college suggested I at least become a veterinarian. But that wasn’t what I’d wanted. I wanted to help animals find forever homes, to brighten people’s lives by helping them find a lifelong and devoted companion.

  When I was little, I wanted to help people, always. I thought that I should be President of the country or something. That change had to be big and loud. But as I got older, I came to feel that change was best done person to person, on an individual level.

  This was a way that I could do that. Helping animals, helping families… and hopefully having a good impact on the neighborhood. This area wasn’t exactly upper Manhattan. Maria didn’t always approve, but I let the neighborhood kids come in and play with the animals. It was good for both the kids and the animals, helped all of them feel better.

  “It’s okay,” I promised her.

  Maria sighed. “I’m not sure that it is.” I followed her into the back room so she could distribute the toys to the cats and dogs we had. “We might be out of a job before the week’s over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that our lease is up and we got bought out. Our old boss is gone. Somebody new is in charge. Bought the whole neighborhood.”

  She talked like there was another layer of meaning that I was supposed to be getting, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. “So, we’ll just negotiate with the new owner.”

  Maria turned and looked at me, hands on her hips. “No, Gina. I mean, the neighborhood’s under new management.”

  “Right. So why can’t we talk to that management?”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “The mafia,” she hissed. “The mafia is in charge of our neighborhood now. The Corillo clan. They claimed it as theirs in a turf war. I just got the news this morning.”

  My blood ran cold. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant to have the mafia controlling your business, but a criminal family taking over couldn’t be good, right?

  I’d dealt with “bad boys” before. I’d dated one all through high school. He’d done nothing but take advantage of my patience, run me ragged worrying about him, and then, he’d dumped me for some chick who was just as into danger and trouble as he was.

  She’d also been skinny where I’d always had… curves, let’s put it that way. Heavy curves.

  Not that I had let myself think too much about that when the whole thing had gone down.

  Point was, I’d had enough of trouble to last me a lifetime, and here it was again, right back on my doorstep.

  Literally, since not half an hour after getting the news, the mafia themselves came knocking.

  I’m Italian myself, on my mom’s side. My grandmother always reminded me of that. “Your last name might be Brown,” she would tell me, “plain English, but your first name is Gina. For me. You remember that always.”

  But I wasn’t a part of the mafia and when my grandmother told me to keep in touch with my roots, I was pretty sure that wasn’t what she’d meant.

  There were three of them. Two were obviously grunts, sporting sunglasses and cheap suits. Thanks to said dangerous boyfriend, I knew where they were carrying their guns. One on the left breast, so they were both right-handed. A small ankle pistol. And then a third, tucked into the waistband against the back.

  The third was dressed in a bespoke suit and had the sort of smile I’d expect to see on a shark. “Hello ladies. Lovely day.”

  I let Maria take the lead on this. She was the one who’d learned about our new… landlords. She was the one who should talk to them. God only knew I’d mess it up somehow.

  “Hello,” Maria strode forward, smiling the way that servers smile at rich customers in a restaurant. “I’m Maria, I’m the owner and general manager of this shelter. This is Gina, she’s one of my best employees.”

  The man’s eyes flicked over to me, and I saw a flare of fire in them. I quickly looked away. I didn’t need this guy interested in me.

  No dice. He walked over to me, still giving me that shark smile. “I’m Gabriele,” he said, the Italian coming out as he pronounced his name. “It’s a…real pleasure to meet you.”

  The way his gaze raked over me told me exactly what kind of pleasure he thought it was.

  I had to resist the urge to glare. Normally when a guy looked at me like that, he got a smack. I wasn’t a piece of meat. But pissing off a guy who had two bodyguards equipped with three guns each was the epitome of a bad ide
a.

  I just kept avoiding his gaze.

  “Pleasure to meet you, as well,” I replied. “We look forward to continuing to serve the community here.”

  Gabriele looked amused. “Serve the community?”

  “We do great work here,” Maria said quickly.

  “You don’t bring in much money, last I checked,” Gabriele replied, almost conversationally, like they were discussing the weather.

  “We’re a shelter,” I replied, my temper rising. “We’re not about bringing in money. We’re about giving lost animals a forever home. We’re about giving families a bundle of joy that will love them forever. Pets are proven to help with mental and emotional health issues. They teach kids responsibility. We give back, even if it isn’t in dollar signs.”

  Gabriele turned to look at me, raising his eyebrows in surprise. Maria gave me a look of dismay. She was always telling me to watch my temper.

  “Well, well,” Gabriele said. He sounded even more pleased than before. “Looks like this kitten has claws.”

  I met his eyes this time and let him see in them how furious I was. I wasn’t going to let anybody intimidate Maria, not when she’d worked so hard to keep this shelter running. And I wasn’t about to let anybody dismiss our work as worthless just because they couldn’t squeeze it for every dollar they could.

  Gabriele’s gaze raked over me again. “I’m afraid I’ll have to talk to my boss about… whether this shelter is worth the upkeep.” He shrugged. “But I’m sure we’ll find plenty of reasons to meet again. Gina, was it?”

  I didn’t give him a response.

  Gabriele and his men swept back out the door. Only then did I let out the breath I was holding.

  Maria crossed over to me. “You are playing with fire!” she hissed. “He has an interest in you now. There is nothing more dangerous than that! Men like him don’t like to be told no!”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak just yet. My heart was pounding.

  It looked like I’d gotten involved with a bad boy again. And this one might have been even more trouble than Vincent.

  2

  Vincent

  I paused in front of the building, double-checking that I was in the right place. This animal shelter was more run-down than I had expected when I’d agreed to take a look at it for my foundation.

  When I made my first billion, I had decided that it was time to turn away from just business and look at giving back, in a big way. I’d screwed up enough in life. I had bad karma up the wazoo. It was the least I could do to give back to the world when I’d spent so much time wreaking as much destruction as I could muster.

  I knew it was nostalgia that made me choose to start with purchasing and funding various animal shelters around the city. I’d wanted to go big, but Darien, my best friend, had reminded me that it was best to start small and work my way into expanding.

  “Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” he’d said.

  I hated to admit it, but as usual, he was right.

  This shelter was one of the worst off that I’d seen. It was badly in need of funding, clearly, and it wasn’t in the best neighborhood either. I’d have to see what I could do about that. With my money, I could definitely afford to take care of things.

  Small steps, I reminded myself. Start small.

  I walked into the shelter, ready to talk to the owner—and froze.

  It had been ten years, and she’d changed a bit. Grown an extra inch, I think. Her dark brown, almost black hair had gotten thicker, and she’d finally figured out how to style it. She was wearing some light makeup, which she’d been too nervous to do in high school.

  And she’d gone from pretty to drop-dead gorgeous.

  “Gina?” I blurted out.

  She turned, her golden-brown eyes going wide when she saw me. “Vincent.”

  It wasn’t a question. I thought that I’d changed with time. My hair was less wild, for one thing, although it still never behaved the way I wanted it to. My tattoos were covered by long sleeves. I wore suits now—when I was out working, anyway.

  Apparently, none of it was enough to cast any doubt on my identity. Not for Gina.

  And she didn’t sound at all pleased to see me.

  I couldn’t exactly blame her. Last time I’d seen her had been at high school graduation. The one where she was a few points away from being valedictorian and I had just barely scraped by.

  “Hey,” I said, feeling all of my smoothness go out the window. Crap. I was good at chatting up girls, I always had been, and here I was feeling like I was fourteen again and trying to get the attention of the pretty girl in front of me in class. “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine.” Gina looked at my suit, obviously skeptical. She raised an eyebrow. “What are you up to?”

  I shuffled my feet. Dammit, I command board rooms, I thought. I should not be so nervous right now! “I’m the owner of a company, actually. CEO. You’ve heard of Syntech Global?”

  Gina nodded.

  “I, uh, created it. That’s my company.”

  It was a sign of how much Gina could throw me off my rhythm that I was nervous about announcing this. Usually I bragged about this. Stated it as fact, like gravity.

  But Gina was the one who’d always believed in me. The one who’d always told me that I could be more, that I could do something with my life.

  I’d rewarded her for that by dumping her and breaking her heart.

  Both of Gina’s eyebrows were raised now. “Oh?”

  Another woman emerged from the back. “Hello!” she said brightly. “How can I help you?”

  I smiled at her. “Hi. I was hoping that I could speak to the owner?”

  “You’re looking at her.”

  I nodded. “I was hoping to talk about…” I looked over at Gina. “... borrowing your assistant here for a quick lunch? We’re old school friends and I’d love to catch up.”

  The woman looked over at Gina. “Well, we’re slow today. If you want to, Gina, you can take a break.”

  Gina shot the woman an are-you-kidding-me? look that she didn’t even try to hide from me. Yeah. Gina Brown was not the kind of woman who gave up her grudges easily. Ten years later and I could feel the fury rolling off of her in waves.

  “Sure,” Gina said, looking at me the way I was pretty sure hyenas looked at wounded baby antelope. “Let me just get my purse.”

  Out of all the ways that I’d thought meeting Gina again would go—all the ways that, yes, I had fantasized about over the years once I’d gotten my head out of my ass—this was not one of them. And it was certainly not the way I’d hoped it would go.

  I’d been hoping for a lot less clothing, for one thing. Although I hadn’t dared to imagine that she’d gotten this sexy. I wanted to run my hands all over her curves, kiss her olive skin, see if I still knew what made her shiver.

  Right now, it looked like the only shivering I’d make her do was in anger.

  Well, we’d see what lunch would do. I wanted to catch up, if nothing else. Apologize. See how she was doing.

  Ask her how the hell she’d ended up working in an inner-city animal shelter.

  I opened the door for Gina as we stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Oh, and by the way?” she said breezily as she walked past me. “You’re paying, Mr. Millionaire.”

  “Billionaire, actually.”

  Gina gave me the kind of smile that could cut glass. “Excellent. You can pay for dessert, too.”

  Hoo, boy.

  3

  Gina

  Vincent Carr was taking me out to lunch.

  Once upon a time, that would’ve been all that I dreamed about.

  I hadn’t been able to believe that he’d chosen me—mousy, quiet, bookish Gina Brown—to be his girlfriend. Vincent’s family was rich, far richer than mine, and he was the bad boy of our high school. If you wanted something you weren’t supposed to have, Vincent could get it for you. He raced motorcycles in his spare time. He had tattoos (although how he�
��d gotten them before he was 18, he wouldn’t tell me—I always figured he’d had a fake ID). The fact that he had chosen me, out of all the girls in school, to be his girlfriend had been the best kind of head rush.

  Didn’t help that I’d been head over heels for him for about a year by that point.

  Now, though…now I just wanted this over with.

  Vincent had hurt me. And I had no intention of letting that happen again.

  Of course, he still had to be attractive as hell, dammit. Taller than I remembered, and even under the suit, I could tell he’d been working out. His dirty blond hair was cut shorter now, instead of flopping all in his face, and his jaw and cheekbones had become more defined. His eyes were the same, though. Piercing and blue. I wondered if his tattoos were the same—if he still had those, or if he’d shed them along with his leather jacket and long hair.

  We went to this little diner down the street.

  “You sure this isn’t too good for you now, Mr. CEO?” I asked sarcastically.

  I knew I was pushing his buttons, but Vincent had always been stupidly easy to rile up.

  To my surprise, he just gave a small smile and shook his head. “It wasn’t too good for me before.”

  I snorted. “Nothing was too good for you before. Except studying.”

  “Yeah.” Vincent gestured for me to take a seat in one of the booths. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I nearly failed, Vincent. I nearly lost out on going to college.”

  “I know. I was being really selfish back then.”

  That took me by surprise, even more than his lack of temper. Vincent, or at least, the Vincent that I knew, had never apologized for anything. It had been one of the many reasons I’d realized that he wasn’t good for me.