The Billionaire's Conquest
He didn’t know what to do or say, could only stand there feeling helpless. It was an alien concept, this helplessness, and he didn’t like it at all. His instincts told him to flee before she saw him, but his conscience—and he was surprised to discover he actually had one—dictated he do something to make her feel better. He let the two war with each other, to see who would win, but when instinct and conscience kept bickering, he stepped in and made the decision himself. He took a tentative step forward, then another.
As he was reaching down to curl his fingers over her shoulder, she whirled her head quickly around. When she saw him there, her eyes went wide with panic, and she stood so quickly, she almost pitched backward down the stairs. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist as she managed to right herself, but neither seemed to know what to say or do after that. For a long moment, they only stood silently looking at each other. Then, finally, Della stepped onto the landing with Marcus. He released her wrist, but brushed away a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
He had no idea what to say. He, Marcus Fallon, who had never been at a loss for words in his life. The man who could find a quip—whether appropriate or not—to alleviate any tense situation, who could make light of even the most difficult circumstances, couldn’t scrape up one word that would ease the tension in this one. Some knight in shining armor he was turning out to be. But then, he’d never wanted to be a knight in shining armor.
Not until now.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly, threading his fingers into her damp hair.
Her eyes were huge, seeming larger thanks to the presence of her tears, making her look vulnerable and fragile. He knew she was neither of those things, and realizing that one conversation with Geoffrey could make her feel that way made him despise the man even more.
She nodded, but said nothing, only swiped at her wet eyes with both hands before shoving them into the pockets of her robe.
“You don’t look okay,” Marcus said. He lifted his other hand and wove those fingers through her hair, too, until he found the nape of her neck and cradled it in his palm.
“I’m fine,” she assured him quietly, sounding anything but.
Knowing it would be pointless to pretend he hadn’t heard her on the phone, he asked, “Who were you talking to?”
She looked at the phone on the floor, then up at Marcus. “How much of that did you hear?”
He thought about telling her he’d heard enough to know she was mixed up with someone she shouldn’t be who was obliging her to do something she obviously didn’t want to do, but that was kind of like the pot calling the kettle black. She shouldn’t be mixed up with Marcus, either. Not being the kind of woman she was.
Namely, the kind whose emotions ran deeper than a sheaf of paper.
“Not very much,” he lied. “I got worried when you didn’t come back, so I came looking for you.”
“Was I gone that long?”
He smiled, unable to help himself. “A few seconds was too long to be away from you.”
When she didn’t smile back, his own fell. “So who were you talking to, Della?”
“No one,” she said. “No one important.”
“He’s the one you were worried about missing you today, isn’t he?”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “But not the way—” She expelled an irritated sound.
“Not the way what?” Marcus asked.
“Nothing.” She pulled away from him, then bent down to scoop up her phone and the still-empty ice bucket. She looked at his face, but her gaze immediately ricocheted to the door. “Look, Marcus, can we go back to the room and forget this happened? ”
When he said nothing, she looked at him again, her eyebrows arrowed downward. “Can we? Please?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, telling himself the gesture was not defensive. Marcus Fallon didn’t get defensive. Marcus Fallon was the most offensive human being on the planet. “I don’t know, Della. Can we?”
She glanced away again. “I can if you can.”
Somehow, he doubted that. Because in addition to being the man who currently claimed Della as his own, Geoffrey seemed like the kind of man who wouldn’t let her forget about anything.
In spite of that, Marcus nodded. Once. “Fine. Let’s just forget it happened.”
Still not looking at him, she replied, “You promise?”
“I do.”
When she looked at him again, all traces of her former sadness were gone. She looked matter-of-fact and a little blank. She sounded that way, too, when she said, “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
It was only then, when she sounded so formal, that Marcus realized she had, for a few moments, been as familiar with him as she had been with the man on the phone. But now the reserve was in her voice again. When he looked at her, he realized it was in her posture, too. They were indeed back to pretending. He should be relieved about that.
Instead, for some reason, now Marcus kind of wanted to cry.
Six
The mood in the room was considerably darker when they returned, Della couldn’t help noticing. As was the room itself. She strode directly to the window and pulled back the curtains to find her worst fears confirmed. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the snow was coming down even thicker and faster now than it had been when she’d first awoken.
She was never going to get out of here.
But then, what did she care? It wasn’t as though she had anything waiting for her out there. Nothing but a nondescript house full of nondescript furnishings in a nondescript Chicago suburb populated by nondescript families. Middle-class, middle-income, middle America. The area had been chosen specifically because it was so unremarkable and unmemorable. Della had been living there for eleven months now, and even she would have been hard-pressed to describe from memory what any of her neighbors or their houses looked like. It was the last place she wanted to be, the last place she should be living, the last place anyone would think to look for her.
That, of course, was the whole point.
What made it worse was that she’d been expressly forbidden to interact with anyone or set foot outside unless absolutely unavoidable, and never without asking Geoffrey for permission first. So far, he hadn’t considered a single one of her reasons to be absolutely unavoidable. Hence the sneaking around on those occasions when staying in the house would have driven her unavoidably insane.
As disconcerting as it was to be stuck here with Marcus until tomorrow—at least—a part of her thrilled at the prospect. She’d never felt as free or unencumbered—or uninhibited—as she did with him. She scarcely recognized herself this morning. Never in her life had she behaved with a man the way she had behaved with him. Not only the part about having sex with someone she’d just met, but also the sheer volume of sex they’d had. And the earthiness of it. The carnality of it. She’d never done things with other men that she’d done with Marcus last night. But with him, she’d felt no reticence or self-consciousness at all. Probably because he hadn’t had any himself. On the contrary—he’d been demanding and exacting when it came to what he wanted. But he’d been every bit as generous when giving himself to her.
Something warm and fizzy bubbled inside, an unfamiliar percolation of both desire and contentment, of want and satisfaction. She’d felt it on and off throughout the night, usually between bouts of lovemaking when their bodies had been damp and entwined. But Marcus was on the other side of the room now, and their exchange in the stairwell had been a less than satisfying one. Even so, she could still feel this way, simply by being in the same room with him, knowing he wasn’t leaving her. Not yet.
So really, why was she so eager to leave?
Maybe, she answered herself, it was because a part of her still knew this couldn’t last forever and saw no point in prolonging it. The longer it went on, the harder it would be when it came time for the two of them to part. And they would have to part. Soon. The fantasy she and Marcus had carved out last night should have been over already. They should have separated before dawn, before the harsh light of day cast shadows over what they had created together.
They both had obligations that didn’t involve the other—Della to Geoffrey and Marcus to the faceless woman for whom he obviously still had deep feelings. Even if he was no longer “with” her, as he claimed, it was clear he still cared very much for her. Too much for the possibility of including someone new in his life. Even if Della was in a position to become that someone new, which she definitely was not. Not here. Not now. Not ever.
How much had he heard of her conversation with Geoffrey? she wondered as she turned from the window and saw Marcus pouring himself another cup of coffee. She tried to remember if she’d said anything that might have offered a hint of what her life had become, but she was confident he would never suspect the truth. Because the truth was like something straight out of fiction.
He glanced up suddenly, and when he saw her looking at him, lifted the coffee carafe and asked, “Would you like some?”
It was a mundane question from a man who looked as if this was just another typical morning in his life. But Della could practically feel a vibe emanating from him that reached all the way across the room, and it was neither mundane nor typical. It was cool and distant, and it was, she was certain, a remnant of their exchange in the stairwell.
Was this how it would be for the rest of their time together? Strained and difficult? Please, no, she immediately answered herself. Somehow, they had to recapture their earlier magic. If only for a little while.
“Yes,” she said, even though her stomach was roiling too much for her to consume anything. She only wanted some kind of conversation with him that wasn’t anxious.
“Please.”
She strode to the breakfast cart, standing as close to Marcus as she dared, watching him pour. He had magnificent hands, strong with sturdy fingers and no adornments. Looking at his hands, she would never have guessed he worked for a brokerage house. He had the hands of someone who used them for something other than pushing the keys of a computer or cell phone all day.
“Do you play any sports?” she asked impulsively.
His expression was surprised as he handed her her coffee. “I thought you didn’t want to know anything about me.”
Oh, yeah. She didn’t. She already knew more than she wanted to. So maybe it wouldn’t hurt to know a little bit more. Ignoring the convoluted logic in that, she said, “I changed my mind.”
He handed her her coffee with a resigned sigh. “Squash,” he told her. “Three times a week. With another one of the—” He halted, as if he’d been about to reveal something else about himself, but this time it was something he didn’t want her to know. “With a coworker,” he finally finished. He sipped his coffee, then met her gaze levelly. “Why do you ask?”
“Your hands,” she said before she could stop herself. “You have good hands, Marcus. They’re not the hands of an office worker.”
His eyes seemed to go a little darker at that, and she remembered that there were other ways his hands were good, too. Lots and lots of other ways. She spun around, striding away on slightly shaky legs. But when she realized she was walking straight toward the bed, she quickly sidetracked toward two chairs arranged on each side of a table near the window.
“It’s still snowing,” she said as she sat. “Maybe even harder than before.”
Marcus strode to the window, lifted one curtain for a scant moment, then let it drop. “I guess we could turn on the TV to see what the weather guys are saying about how much longer this will last.”
“I suppose we could.”
But neither of them did. They only looked at each other expectantly, almost as if they were daring the other to do it. Della knew why she didn’t. She wondered if Marcus’s reason mirrored her own.
Finally, he folded himself into the other chair, setting his cup on the table beside hers. He crossed his legs with deceptive casualness, propped an elbow on the chair arm to rest his chin in his hand and, looking her right in the eye, asked, “Who’s Geoffrey?”
Della felt as if someone punched her right in the stomach. Obviously he’d heard more of the phone conversation than he’d let on. She wondered how much. She wondered even harder about how she was supposed to explain her relationship with Geoffrey to Marcus. It wasn’t as though she could be vague about something like that.
She reminded herself she didn’t have to tell Marcus anything. Not the truth, not a fabrication, nothing. She could say it was none of his business, repeat their agreement not to disclose any personal details about each other—which he’d already breached a number of times, one of which had been at her own encouragement—and change the subject.
But she was surprised to discover there was a part of herself that wanted to tell him about Geoffrey. And not just Geoffrey, but about everything that had led to her meeting him. She wanted to tell Marcus everything about the mess that had started on New Year’s Day to herald the beginning of the worst year of her life, about the months of fear and uncertainty that had followed, right up until her encounter with him at Palumbo’s. She wanted to tell him about how she hadn’t felt safe or contented for eleven months. About how lonely she’d been. About how hopeless and scared she’d felt.
At least until her encounter with him at Palumbo’s. It was only now that Della realized she hadn’t experienced any of those feelings since meeting Marcus. For the first time in eleven months—maybe for the first time in her life—she’d been free of anxiety and pleasantly at ease. She’d spent the past twelve hours ensconced in a perfect bubble of completeness, where nothing intruded that could cause her harm or pain. All because of a man whose last name she didn’t even know.
But she couldn’t tell him any of that, either.
She couldn’t say a word. She’d taken a virtual vow of silence about what had happened in New York, and she’d been told that if she revealed anything to anyone, it could compromise everything. And then the last eleven months of living in hiding and being so relentlessly alone would have been for nothing.
Two weeks, she reminded herself. That was how long Geoffrey had told her she had to wait. Only two more weeks. In sixteen days, everything would be revealed, everything would come to light, and Della would be free of all of them. Of Geoffrey, of Egan Collingwood, of her boss Mr. Nathanson and everyone else at Whitworth and Stone. And even if that freedom meant losing everything she had now and starting all over somewhere else, even if it meant becoming an entirely new person, at least she would be done with all of it. She would be safe. She would be free. She would be done. She just had to hold on for two more weeks.
She opened her mouth to tell Marcus that Geoffrey was none of his business and then change the subject, but instead she hedged, “Well. So much for forgetting about the episode in the stairwell. And you promised.”
“I’ve made a lot of promises since meeting you,” he reminded her. “And I haven’t kept many of them. You should probably know that about me. I’m great at making promises. Terrible at keeping them.”
She nodded. “Good to know.”
“Doesn’t make me a terrible person,” he told her. “It just makes me more human.”
It also made him an excellent reminder, Della thought. His assertion that he couldn’t keep promises illustrated more clearly why she couldn’t tell him anything more about herself. She might very well become the topic of his next cocktail party anecdote or an inadvertently shared story with a colleague who had some connection to the very life she was trying to escape. Not because he was a bad person, as he had said. But because he was human. And humanity was something Della had learned not to trust. “So who is he, Della?”
She hesitated, trying to remind herself again of all the reasons why she couldn’t tell Marcus the truth—or anything else. Then, very softly, she heard herself say, “Geoffrey is a man who … who kind of …” She sighed again. “He kind of takes care of me.”
Marcus said nothing for a moment, then nodded slowly. His expression cleared some, and he looked as if he completely understood. That was impossible, because there was still a lot of it that even Della didn’t understand.
“You’re his mistress, you mean,” Marcus said in a remarkably matter-of-fact way. “It’s all right, Della. I’m a big boy. You can spell it out for me.”
It took a moment for what he was saying to sink in. And not only because the word mistress was so old-fashioned, either. Marcus thought she and Geoffrey had a sexual relationship. That he was a wealthy benefactor who was giving her money and gifts in exchange for sexual favors. That she, Della Hannan, the only girl in her neighborhood who had been determined to claw her way out of the slum not using sex as the means to get there, was now making her way in the world by renting herself out sexually to the highest bidder.
She should have been insulted. Instead, she wanted to laugh. Because compared to the reality of her situation, his assumption, as tawdry as it sounded, was just so … so … So adorably innocent.
Wow. If she were Geoffrey’s mistress, that would make her life a million times easier. But number one, the guy was married. Number two, he was old enough to be her father. Number three, he looked like a sixty-something version of Dwight Schrute. And number four, there was no way he could afford a mistress when he had two kids in college and a daughter getting married in six months. After all, federal marshals weren’t exactly the highest paid people on the government payroll.
Marcus must have mistaken her lack of response as being offended instead of off guard, because he hastily continued, “Look, Della, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m the last person who should, or would, judge the way another person lives their life. I don’t consider your situation to be appalling or bad or cheap or dirty or embarrassing or—” He seemed to realize how badly he was belaboring his objections—and he’d barely made a dent if he was going to be all alphabetical about it—something that made them sound even less convincing than they already did. He gave his head a single shake, as if he were trying to clear it. “Besides, it’s not like I haven’t, ah, kept a woman myself in the past.”
Della wasn’t sure, but he almost sounded as if he were about to offer her such a job now.
He tried again, holding out one hand as if he were literally groping for the right words. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think any less of you for it. Sometimes, in order to survive in this world, people have to resort to unconventional methods. It doesn’t make them any less a human being than anyone else. In a lot of ways, it makes them better than the people who don’t have to struggle to make their way. Because they’re … they’re survivors, Della. That’s what they do. They … they survive. That’s what you are, too. You’re a survivor. You’re unconventional and you’re … you’re making your way in the world, and you’re … You’re surviving. You’re—”
“No man’s mistress,” she finished for him, interrupting him before he broke into song. Or broke a blood vessel in his brain trying to cope. Whatever. “That’s not how Geoffrey takes care of me, Marcus. We don’t have a sexual relationship at all. I mean, Geoffrey is his last name. I don’t even call him by his first name.” It was Winston, and probably why he asked everyone to call him by his last name.
Marcus’s relief was almost palpable. So much for not thinking less of anyone who survived in the world through unconventional methods. She might have laughed if he hadn’t been right about one thing: She was surviving. And she did depend on Geoffrey’s presence in her life to accomplish that.
Della couldn’t give Marcus any details about what had happened in New York or the fact that she was a material witness in a federal case that involved her former Wall Street employer, Whitworth and Stone, and her former boss, Donald Nathanson. Especially knowing as she did now that Marcus worked for the equally illustrious Fallon Brothers. It wasn’t unlikely that he knew people at Whitworth and Stone and moved in the same circles. Not that she feared he would report her to anyone, since no one there even knew—yet—about the case the feds were building. As far as anyone at Whitworth and Stone was concerned, the reason Della had stopped showing up for work without giving notice was because of personal reasons that would make performing her job intolerable. After all, Egan had been one of Whitworth and Stone’s up-and-coming executives.
She had no way of knowing how Marcus would react to the revelation that Della had, in her position as executive assistant to one of the company’s vice presidents, discovered a trail of illegal money laundering for unsavory overseas groups and the gross misuse of government bailout funds. She couldn’t tell him about how she’d smuggled out files over a period of two weeks, or about going to the FBI with what she’d uncovered, or about how they’d immediately put her into protective custody with the U.S. Marshals and moved her out of New York to keep her under wraps until she could appear before the grand jury. She couldn’t tell him how she’d been in hiding for the past eleven months while the feds built their case.
And she for sure couldn’t tell him about how, once the trial was over—and Geoffrey had just told her the grand jury was convening in two weeks—she was probably going to be placed in the Witness Security Program, for safe measure. Even though her life hadn’t been threatened, and even though none of the crimes committed had been violent ones, being a whistle-blower wasn’t exactly the most celebrated gig in the world. There was no way she’d ever find work in the financial world again.
And, well, even though it was unlikely, there was no guarantee there wouldn’t be some other kind of retaliation against her. Some of the groups to which Whitworth and Stone had diverted funds had done some pretty terrible things in other parts of the world. It would be best for her to start over somewhere as a new person, with a new identity and a new life. A place where nobody knew her real name and where there was no chance she would ever be discovered.
A place completely removed from the spotlight Marcus so joyfully embraced in his own life. The last thing Della could afford was to have someone see her with him and recognize her from her former position. It would be even worse for her to be recognized after she’d given her testimony and put a lot of powerful people behind bars. At best, she would be a social pariah. At worst … Well, she didn’t want to think about things like that.
Bottom line, there was no way this thing with Marcus could last beyond a weekend. He would never give up the big, showy lifestyle he loved. And she was a woman who had to avoid a big, showy life at all costs.
“Well, if Geoffrey isn’t your … benefactor,” Marcus said now, “then who is he? A relative?”
Stalling, she asked, “Why do you want to know? What difference does it make? Once the snow lets up, you and I are never going to—”
“I just want to know, Della.”
“But why?”
“Maybe because you burst into tears after talking to the guy?”
Oh, right. That. That had kind of startled Della, too. But for some reason, during this morning’s talk with Geoffrey, she had begun to feel keenly how truly alone she was. Geoffrey had been her only tie to the outside world for eleven months—at least until she met Marcus—and the conversations she had with him never lasted any longer than it took for her to check in every day and let him know she was okay. She always wanted to talk longer, since she never got to talk to anyone. Just to hear a human voice that wasn’t coming from an electronic device. Every time, Geoffrey cut short the conversation because there was no reason to prolong it. Especially on weekends, he wanted to be with his family. Geoffrey always had things to do, places to go, people to see after he hung up. And Della always had to go back to the vast nothingness of waiting, all alone.