Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (72 page)

The party went on until just after midnight. By then, Sasha was exhausted. She left Damien in the middle of a deep discussion with Linc and another trainer and went to get her car keys from the valet then make her way home. On the drive back to her place, she replayed the events of the party in her mind—the ease with her co-workers had embraced her after her mysterious absence, the way Damien had touched her and loved her in that back room. It had been a very good night indeed.

In the parking lot of her apartment, she got out of the car, grabbed her purse, and locked the door. From nearby, she could hear thumping music and the sounds of laughter, dominoes slapping against a hard surface. Her neighbors having a party.

“You look like a high class whore in that outfit.”

She spun around in the surprise, almost falling back against the car. Her brother stood in the shadows of an overhanging magnolia tree. She braced her hand behind her against the car, trying to calm her runaway heart beat. James showing up was never a good sign. As she watched, he made his way slowly out of the darkness until he stood before her, grinning. He wore red alligator boots, designer jeans, and a red Lacoste shirt under a black leather jacket. Her brother looked like he’d been on a shopping spree with her money since the last time she saw him.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“What is it with you? Why can’t I ever get a civilized hello? Good to see you, brother. It’s been too long.” He frowned in mock hurt.

“You’ll be waiting a long time to hear that bullshit from me,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Bitch.”

“What. Do. You. Want?” Even as Sasha fought back her anger, apprehension settled in her stomach, an unfortunately familiar feeling.

“Well, I think by now you know how this is going to go,” James said.

Sasha clenched her fists. “I don’t have any more money to give you.” She jerked her chin at her apartment over the rise. “You see where you’ve forced me to live. I can barely afford to put gas in my car to take my ass to work and make the money you’re extorting from me every month.”

“You’re doing well enough to afford that fancy dress and those shoes.” He stared at her high heels as if he wanted to rip them off her feet and run with them down to the pawn shop. “I know a whore who used to wear nothing but those red bottom shoes. One pair cost at least eight hundred dollars.”

Sasha swallowed, refusing to tell him that they were a gift. But he must have seen something in her face.

“Oh, your boyfriend bought those for you. Fancy.” His eyes glittered in the moonlit night. “I’ve seen you with him around town. I was there the night he took you to that restaurant by the water. I know you saw me. You go out with him a lot, don’t you? What I don’t get is why you go to his house to fuck but never spend the night. Why is that?”

Her mouth dropped open. He had been following her even more than she thought. She shied away from spending the night at Damien’s because she thought that would attract unwanted attention from her brother. Now she knew she’d taken that precaution for nothing. James had seen everything she hadn’t wanted him to see. He knew where she worked. Where she lived. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he followed her to the grocery store and knew what brand of tampons she bought. With one arm, Sasha braced herself against her car, speechless. Frightened.

But that didn’t stop James. “If your boyfriend is taking you to all these fancy dinners and buying you all this shit—” He gestured roughly to her dress and shoes. “—then you can definitely afford to give me another grand a month.”

That jerked her out of her stupor. She gasped. “A thousand dollars? No way! I can’t. I just don’t have it.”

“Either you get it or I tell your boyfriend all about our little relationship. I’ll get the money from him instead if you don’t do right by your brother.”

Terror clutched at Sasha’s throat. “Leave him out of this!”

“That’s up to you, sister. You know what needs to happen for me to stay away from that little bitch boyfriend of yours. Shit...” James made a contemptuous noise. “He’s pretty enough to be my
girl
friend.”

Sasha pounded her fist into the car door. “Stay the fuck away from him!” She felt herself shouting, the volume rising in her throat with hysteria a touch away.

Even though it was dark and late, quite a few people sat on their balconies enjoying the early summer breeze. Sasha could feel eyes on her and James, hear the faint rustle of beginning conversation.

“You don’t tell me what to do. Ever!” James moved closer to her, menacing despite his relatively short height.

But she’d had enough of him for the night. Running into him after having the best day in a long time was souring everything. The very air felt polluted. She shoved her hands against his chest but he only stumbled back, grinning. “Back off me!” she shouted. “You’ll get your fucking money.”

Sasha didn’t know how she was going to raise even more money to give to him. But she had no choice. She had to find it. She just had to!

“I thought you’d say that.” James’s eyes glittered in rodent-like satisfaction.

He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and slowly backed away. He watched her with each step. Then he abruptly turned and made his way toward a white car that Sasha hadn’t noticed before. It was a two-door Lexus. Doubtless bought with her money. She made a helpless noise in her throat, falling limply back against her car, heedless of her white dress and the car’s dust.

Her world was falling down completely around her. The career she had built from nothing would simply disappear with one word from her brother. The man she had fallen in love with despite her better judgment would abandon her, he would look at her with contempt. All because of an accident of birth.

Sasha felt like everything was spinning out of her control. Her head spun. She closed her eyes tightly against the sudden feeling of vertigo but she couldn’t stop it. Her stomach lurched then she was bent over vomiting up the champagne and canapés from the party into the gutter near her tires. Vomit splashed against her shoes. Her stomach heaved. Her throat burned as she threw up again and again until there was nothing left in her stomach. Angry tears dripped down her face. Sasha bent nearly double as her body voided every good thing it had ingested in the last few hours.

“Fuck!” She slammed her fist against the car door. Again and again.

But her hand only hurt after a while. She straightened and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Wiped her face. As she tried to pull herself together, she realized that there were eyes looking at her. People from the balconies stared down at her, most making no effort to hide their curiosity. Humiliation flushed her skin.

With the stares ravaging her skin, all she wanted to do was sink into the gutter and die.

Chapter Sixteen

Sasha grabbed her keys and fumbled to open the car door, fell into the driver’s seat. Her hands clutched the steering wheel. Tightening and releasing around the unyielding black circle. What could she do? What options did she have? She stared through her windshield into the darkness.

Her apartment was the biggest expense. She could give it up and take a room at a boarding house. But even then, she would need more money to make up the difference in the additional thousand dollars that James wanted. She could sell her car and take the bus to work, but that would only be a one-time thing. She needed a constant influx of money to keep her brother off her back.

Sasha thought of every possible scenario for making money, selling everything she owned, selling her platelets and her eggs, everything short of becoming a whore. But nothing seemed like the most practical solution. James was always going to demand more money.

Sitting in the car with the non-options running through her mind like hamsters around a wheel, she felt trapped. Out of her depth. The windows fogged up as she sagged in the driver’s seat, practically hyperventilating, flooded with impotent anger and helplessness.

The last time her life had felt so out of control, she had been in one of the group homes. Alienated from everything familiar except her brother’s daily terrors. The kids picked on her and tried to hurt her but she fought them. Fighting them only got her in trouble, made her time at the home even worse. But she couldn’t stop fighting them; she couldn’t just lie down and let them beat her into submission each day. It was a dumb and painful cycle that she’d only escaped once she got involved with the volunteer riding program. And now, here she was again.

Sasha angrily shoved the key into the ignition and started the car. Pulled out of the parking lot. She didn’t know where she was going; all she knew was that she couldn’t sit in the car much longer with all those eyes staring at her in the darkness. She couldn’t keep sitting still.

And so, she drove. She drove until she left her apartment behind. She drove until Louisville was nothing but a highway sign in her rear-view mirror. She drove until the hopelessness in her was just background noise to the sound of the tires on the pavement. Sasha didn’t realize what she was driving toward until she crossed the Tennessee border. Once the knowledge settled into her of where she was going, she felt calmer. The beginnings of sunrise gradually lightened the gray landscape and soon she was driving into the sun.

Davenport, Tennessee. The small town where she had spent her adult life before Taylor Stables. The town where she’d known happiness for the first time in her short life. It wasn’t long before she reached the familiar winding road, the hilly landscape, the scrolling black gate that was never shut. Then the tombstones.

She found him easily. He was right where she’d left him last time. Gray marble headstone and slab in a sea of hundreds like it.

Marshall Taylor. Loving Husband. Treasured Friend.

Someone had put flowers on his gravestone recently. Probably his wife. They were far from fresh but the violets had retained their vibrant color. White baby’s breath blossoms scattered over the gray marble like snow.

It had been a long time since she’d been to his grave. Nearly five months now. She traced his name in the gravestone, wishing for the thousandth time that it was someone else who had died in that car crash. The drunk and high driver, not the devoted father of three, the faithful husband, the trainer who had been like a father to her.

For the first time since the entire ordeal with James began, Sasha allowed herself the tears of self pity. They fell from her now, freely. Running down her face like rain from a storm tossed sky. She cried loud wracking sobs until her body jerked in the early morning air, until her nose ran and her eyes felt gritty, until her throat was hoarse from screaming.

She didn’t know if she was crying because of what James had done to her or because she had no one to turn to now. She wanted to rail at James, rail at the world. But wasn’t this her own fault that she hadn’t taken better care of her life? Her own fault that she hadn’t built up a more credible story and made something of her life that no reappearance of ghost of lifetimes past and best forgotten could touch? She could have done better but she had not. This was as much her fault as it was James’s. She was stupid. And now she was paying for that stupidity.

Sasha cried with her back pressed to the headstone, her head bowed. Gradually, slowly, she felt the sun on her face. It was warm, touching her forehead with its friendly heat. And as she lifted her head, warmth touched all of her face. She blinked into the sky.

For a moment, she felt like there was someone with her—Marshall?—and she wasn’t afraid. She drew in deep breaths, let the tears fade away, allowed the cries to dry up.  She tilted her head into the sun and felt as if Marshall was there with her. She had never actually cried on his shoulder when he was alive. He had only been there for her, encouraged her to do her best and to be what she wanted instead of allowing her past life to determine her future. He had been the guidance she lacked in her childhood. He had been the father she wished she had been born with.

With her face lifted to the sky, she could almost feel him, almost see his weather-beaten face, the bald head his wife insisted he cover with sunscreen every day before going out with the horses. The smile that made her believe in the goodness inside people again.

She remembered the last time she’d seen him, just after she decided to accept the job at Taylor Stables instead of the one at McGreevy’s. Marshall had told her to trust her gut, that it would not lead her astray in this, one of the most important decisions of her life. The McGreevy Stables were closer to the Tennessee border and of course, closer to Marshall, but there had been something about the McGreevy trainer, Anthony something or other, that she didn’t like. And so, she’d followed her gut, signing on with Taylor Stables and leaving Marshall and the comfortable life she knew behind.

It had been one of the best decisions she’d ever made. The only thing she regretted was not being there for Marshall and his family when he had been hit by the drunk driver. She had driven the nearly four hours from Louisville but by the time she pulled up in the hospital parking lot, he was already dead.

The thought of it now made her sad, made new tears start behind her eyes. But she looked up at the sun again, felt the life-giving warmth and the tears dried. The heaviness gradually left her.