The Billionaire's Bargain Read online

  Isobel Hughes was one of those pretty faces.

  As if she’d overheard her name in his head, Isobel lifted her chin and surveyed the crowded ballroom. Probably searching for Baron and Helena. If she thought he’d allow her within breathing space of Gage’s parents, she’d obviously been smoking too much of that legalized California weed. He’d do anything to protect them; he’d failed to protect Gage, and that knowledge gnawed at him, an open wound that hadn’t healed in two years. No way in hell would this woman have another shot at the people he loved. At his family.

  The thought propelled him forward. Time to end this and escort her back to whatever hole she’d crawled out of.

  Clenching his jaw, he worked his way to the ballroom entrance. Several minutes later, he waited in one of the side hallways for the head of security. Glancing down at his watch, he frowned. The man should’ve arrived already...

  Darkness.

  Utter darkness.

  Dimly, Darius caught the sound of startled cries and shouts, but the deafening pounding of his heart muted most of the fearful noise.

  He stumbled backward, and his spine smacked the wall behind him. Barely able to draw a breath into his constricted lungs, he frantically patted his jacket and then his pants pockets for his cell phone. Nothing. Damn. He must’ve left it in the car. He never left his phone. Never...

  The thick blackness surrounded him. Squeezed him so that he jerked at his bow tie, clawing at material that seconds ago had been perfectly comfortable.

  Air.

  He needed air.

  But all he inhaled, all he swallowed, was more of the obsidian viscosity that clogged his nostrils, throat and chest.

  In the space of seconds, his worst, most brutal nightmare had come to life.

  He was trapped in the dark.

  Alone.

  And he was drowning in it.

  Two

  Blackout.

  Malfunction. Doors locked.

  Remain calm.

  The words shouted in anything but calm voices outside the bathroom door bombarded Isobel. Perched on the settee in the outer room of the ladies’ restroom, she hunched over her cell phone, which had only 2 percent battery life left.

  “C’mon,” she ordered her fingers to cooperate as she fumbled over the text keyboard. In her nerves, she kept misspelling words, and damn autocorrect, it kept “fixing” the words that were actually right. Finally she finished her message and hit send.

  Mom, is everything okay? How is Aiden?

  Fingers clutching the little burner phone, she—not for the first time—wished she could afford a regular cell. But with her other responsibilities, that bill had been one of the first things she’d cut. Constantly buying minutes and battling a battery that didn’t hold a charge presented a hassle, but the prepaid phone did the job. After seconds that seemed like hours, a message popped up on the screen.

  He’s fine, honey. Sleeping. We’re all good. Stay put. It’s a blackout and we’ve been advised to remain inside. I love you and take care of yourself.

  Relief washed over Isobel in a deluge. If she hadn’t already been sitting down, she would’ve sunk to the floor. For the first time since the world had plunged into darkness, she could breathe.

  After several moments, she located the flashlight app and aimed it in the direction of where she believed the door to be. The deep blackness seemed to swallow up the light, but she spied the handle and sighed. Without ventilation, the area was growing stuffy. The hallway had to be better. At the very least, she wouldn’t feel like the walls were closing in on her. Claustrophobia had never been a problem for her, but this was enough to have anyone on edge.

  She grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, the weak beam illuminating the floor only feet in front of her. As soon as she stepped out into the hall, the light winked, then disappeared.

  “No, not yet,” she muttered, flipping the phone over. But, nope, the cell had died. “Dammit.”

  Frustration and not-a-little fear scrabbled up her chest, lodging there. Inhaling a deep breath and holding it, she forced herself to calm down. Okay. One thing her two years in Los Angeles had granted her was a sense of direction. The ballroom lay to the left. Follow the wall until it gave way to the small alcove and the side entrance she’d exited.

  No problem. She could do this.

  Probably.

  Maybe.

  Releasing that same gulp of air, she shuffled forward, hands groping until they knocked against the wall. Step one down.

  With halting steps, she slid along, palms flattened, skimming. The adjacent corridor shouldn’t be too far...

  Her chest bumped into a solid object seconds after her hands collided with it. A person. A big person, if the width of the shoulders and chest under her fingers were anything to go by.

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry.” She snatched her arms back. Heat soared up her neck and poured into her face. She’d just felt up a man in the dark.

  Horrified, she shifted backward, but her heel caught on the hem of her dress, and she pitched forward. Slamming against that same hard expanse of muscles she’d just molested. “Dammit. I—”

  The second apology drifted away as a hoarse, ragged sound penetrated the darkness and reached her ears. For a long moment, she froze, her hands splayed wide over the stranger’s chest. It rapidly rose and fell, the pace unnatural. She jerked her head up, staring into the space where his face should’ve been. But she didn’t need to glimpse his features to understand this man suffered some kind of distress. Because those rough, serrated, wounded sounds originated from him.

  The urge to comfort, to stop those god-awful moans overrode all embarrassment at having touched him without his permission. At this moment, she needed to touch him. To ease his pain.

  As she slid one palm over his jackhammering heart, she swept the other over his shoulder and down his arm until she enclosed his long fingers in hers. Then she murmured, “Hi. Talk about an awkward meet cute, right? Citywide blackout. Get felt up in the hallway. Sounds like the beginning of a rom-com starring Ryan Reynolds.”

  The man didn’t reply, and his breathing continued to sough out of his lungs, but his fingers curled around hers, clutching them tight. As if she were his lifeline.

  Relief and determination to tow him away from whatever tormented him swelled within her. It didn’t require a PhD in psychology to figure out that this man was in the throes of a panic attack. But she had zero experience with how to handle that situation. Still, he’d responded to her voice, her presence. So she’d continue talking.

  “Do you know who Ryan Reynolds is?” She didn’t wait for his answer but kept babbling. “The Green Lantern? Deadpool? I’m leading with those movies, because if you’re anything like my brother, if I’d have said The Proposal, you would’ve stared at me like I’d suddenly started speaking Mandarin. Well...that is, if you could stare at me right now.” She snickered. “What I wouldn’t give for Riddick’s eyes right now. To be able to see in the dark? Although you could keep Slam City and, ya know, the murder. Have you ever seen Pitch Black or The Chronicles of Riddick?”

  This time she received a squeeze of her fingers and a slight change in the coarseness of his breathing. A grin curved her lips. Good. That had to be a positive sign, right?

  “The Chronicles of Riddick? I enjoyed watching Vin Diesel for two hours, but the movie? Meh. Pitch Black, though, was amazing. One of the best sci-fi movies ever. Only beat out by Aliens and The Matrix. Although I still maintain that The Matrix Revolutions never happened, just as Dirty Dancing 2 is a dirty rumor. They’re like Voldemort. Those Movies That Shall Not Be Named.”

  A soft, shaky chuckle drifted above her, but seemed to echo in the dark, empty hallway like a sonic boom. Probably because she’d been aching to hear it. Not that she’d been aware of that need until this moment.

  An answering la
ugh bubbled up inside her, but she shoved it back down, opting to continue with what had been working so far. Talking. The irony that this was the longest conversation she’d indulged in with a person outside of her family in two years wasn’t lost on her. Cruel experience had taught her to be wary of strangers, especially those with pretty faces wielding charm like a Highlander’s claymore. The last time she’d trusted a beautiful appearance, she’d ended up in a loveless, controlling, soul-stealing sham of a marriage.

  But in the dark...

  In the dark lived a kind of freedom where she could lose her usual restrictions, step out of the protective box she’d created for her life. Because here, she couldn’t see this man, and he couldn’t see her. There was no judgment. If he were attending the Du Sable City Gala, then that meant he most likely came from wealth—the kind of wealth that had once trapped her in a gilded prison. Yet in this corridor in the middle of a blackout, money, status, lineage traced back to the Mayflower—none of that mattered. Here, they were only two people holding on to each other to make it through.

  “My next favorite sci-fi is Avatar. Which is kind of funny, considering the famous line from the movie is ‘I see you.’” She couldn’t smother her laughter. And didn’t regret the display of amusement when it garnered another squeeze of her hand. “Do you have a favorite?”

  She held her breath, waiting. Part of her waited to see if his panic attack had finally passed. But the other part of her wanted—no, needed—to hear his voice. That part wondered if it would match his build.

  Being tucked away in a mansion’s dark hallway in a blackout...the insane circumstances had to be the cause of her desire. Because it’d been years since she’d been curious about anything regarding a man.

  “The Terminator.”

  Oh. Wow. That voice. Darker than the obsidian blanket that draped the city. Deeper than the depths of the ocean she sorely missed. Sin wrapped in the velvet embrace of sweet promise.

  A dangerous voice.

  One that invited a person to commit acts that might shame them in the light of day, acts a person would revel in during the secretive, shadowed hours of night.

  Her eyes fluttered closed, and her lips parted, as if she could breathe in that slightly abraded yet smooth tone. As if she could taste it.

  As if she could taste him.

  What the hell?

  The inane thought rebounded against the walls of her skull, and she couldn’t evict it. Her eyes flew open, and she stared wide into nothing. For the second time that evening, she thanked God. At this moment, she offered her gratitude because she couldn’t be seen. That no one had witnessed her unprecedented, humiliating reaction to a man’s voice.

  “A classic.” She struggled to recapture and keep hold of the light, teasing note she’d employed with him BTV. Before The Voice. “But I take your Terminator and one-up you with Predator.”

  A scoff. “That wasn’t sci-fi.”

  Isobel frowned even though he couldn’t see her disapproval. “Are you kidding me?” She dropped her hand from his chest and jammed it on her hip. “Hello? There was a big-ass alien in it. How is that not sci-fi?”

  A snort this time. “It’s horror. Using your logic would mean Avatar was a romance.”

  Okay, so this guy might have the voice of a fallen angel tempting her to sin, but his movie knowledge sucked.

  “I think I liked you better when you weren’t talking,” she grumbled.

  She was rewarded with a loud bark of laughter that did the impossible. Made his voice even sexier. Desire slid through her veins in a slow, heady glide.

  She stiffened. No. Impossible. It’d been years since she’d felt even the slightest flicker of this thing that heated her from the inside out.

  If she harbored even the tiniest shred of common sense, she’d back away from this man now and blindman’s bluff it until she placed some much needed distance between them. Desire had once fooled her into falling in love. And falling in love had led to a heartbreaking betrayal she was still recovering from.

  No, she should make sure he was okay, then leave. With moving back to Chicago, raising her son as a single mother and working a full-time job, she didn’t have the time or inclination for something as mercurial as desire.

  You’re sitting here in the dark with him, not dating him.

  One night. Just one night.

  She sighed.

  And stayed.

  “Is something wrong?” A large hand settled on her shoulder and cupped it. She gritted her teeth, refusing to lean into that gentle but firm hold.

  “Nothing. Just these shoes,” she lied, bending and slipping off one and then the other to validate the fib. “They’re beautiful, but hell on the feet.”

  He released another of those soft chuckles that sent her belly into a series of tumbles.

  “What’s your name?” His thumb stroked a lazy back-and-forth caress over her bare skin, and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip. Heat radiated from his touch. Until this moment, she hadn’t known her shoulder was an erogenous zone. Funny the things she was finding out in the dark.

  What had he asked? Right. Her name.

  Alarm and dread filtered into her pleasure, tainting it. Gage had done a damn good job of demonizing her to his family, and then his family had made sure everyone with a willing ear and flapping gums knew Isobel as a lying, greedy whore. It’d been two years since she’d left Chicago, but the insular ranks of high society never forgot names when it came to scandals.

  Again, she squeezed her eyes shut as if she could block out the scorn and derision that had once flayed her soul. She still yearned to be known as more than the cheap little gold digger people believed her to be.

  “Why do you want my name?” she finally replied.

  A short, but weighty pause. “Because I need to know who to thank,” he murmured. “And considering we’ve known each other all of ten minutes, ‘sweetheart’ seems a little forward.”

  “I don’t mind ‘sweetheart,’” she blurted out. His grasp on her shoulder tightened, and a swirl of need pooled low in her belly. “What I mean is we don’t need names here. In the dark, we can be other people, different people, and I like the idea of that.”

  The bit of deception plucked at her conscience. Because she had no doubt that if he was familiar with her name, he would want nothing to do with her. And selfish though it might be, she’d rather him believe she was some coy debutante than the notorious Widow Wells.

  That large hand slid over her shoulder, up her neck and cradled the back of her head. A sigh escaped her before she could contain it.

  “Are you hiding, sweetheart?” he rumbled.

  The question could have sounded inane since it seemed like the whole city was hunkered down, cloaked in darkness. But she understood what he asked. And the lack of light made it easier to be honest. At least in this.

  “Yes,” she breathed, and braced herself for his possible rejection.

  “You’re stiffening again.” The hand surrounding hers squeezed lightly, a gesture of comfort. “Don’t worry, your secrets are as safe with me as you are.” He paused, his fingertips pressing into her scalp. “Just as I am with you.”

  Oh, God. That...vulnerable admission had no business burrowing beneath skin and bone to her heart. But it did.

  “Keep your name, but, sweetheart—” he heaved a heavy sigh, and for an all-too-brief moment he pressed his forehead to hers “—thank you.”

  “I...” She swallowed, a shiver dancing down her spine. Whether in delight or warning, she couldn’t tell. Probably both. “You’re welcome. Anyone would’ve done the same,” she whispered.

  Something sharp edged through his low chuckle. “That’s where you’re wrong. Most people would’ve kept going, only concerned with themselves. Or they would’ve taken advantage.”

  She didn’t answer; she wanted to refute h
im but couldn’t. Because the sad fact was, he’d spoken the truth. Once she’d been a naïve twenty-year-old who’d believed in the good in people, in the happily-ever-after peddled by fairy tales. Gage had been her drug. And the withdrawal from him had nearly crushed her into the piece of nothing he’d constantly told her she was without him.

  Shaking her head to get him out of her mind, she bent down and swept her hands along the floor, seeking the purse she’d dropped. Her fingertips bumped the beaded clutch, and with a small sound of victory, she popped it open and withdrew the snack bar she’d stashed there before leaving her apartment. With a two-year-old, keeping snacks on hand was a case of survival. And though her son hadn’t joined her at the gala, she’d tossed the snack in out of habit. Now she patted herself on the back for her foresight.

  Unbidden, a smile curved her lips. If Aiden could see her, he would be holding out his chubby little hand, demanding his “eats.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose, battling back the sting in her eyes. Obtaining help for her son had driven her to this mansion, and she’d failed. It would be easy to blame the blackout for her not locating and approaching the Wellses. But she couldn’t deny the truth. She’d left the ballroom and headed to the restroom to convince herself not to leave. The plunge of the city into darkness had snatched the decision out of her hands, granting her a convenient reprieve from facing down the people who’d made it their lives’ purpose to ensure she understood just how unworthy and hated she was.

  But it was only that—a reprieve. Because when it came down to a choice between her pride and providing a stable environment for her son, there wasn’t a choice.

  When the blackout ended, she still had to face the Wellses.