Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (123 page)

“Do you have a preference?”

“I’d prefer our child not have Kane
Wright’s accent.”

“I mean gender.”

He sat back in his seat and appeared to
give it genuine thought.
 
“No.
 
No, I think either way could be
amazing.
 
Having a little girl that
looked and talked and behaved like you would be exquisite.
 
But then again, it might be a blast to
have a boy that I could do boy stuff with too.
 
Know what I mean?”

She nodded, her eyes glistening with
tears.
 
“I do.”

They ate and talked some more, and Nicole
was pleasantly surprised to find they were almost always on the same page about
things, as they pertained to the unborn child.
 
Neither of them wanted to stress about
getting the kid into fancy private schools like so many wealthy New Yorkers
did.
 
They both wanted to find out
the sex of the child in advance.
 
Neither of them wanted to have their families overly involved in
decisions around how the child would be raised.
 
And Nicole definitely didn’t want to be
one of those couples that used nannies to do all of the hard work of raising a
child.

Red agreed with that
too—mostly.
 
“I think that a
balance has to be found.
 
I know too
many rich parents with kids who are more attached to the help than they are to
their mom and dad.”

“The help.
 
It sounds so aristocratic and stuck
up.
 
I hope I don’t turn into one of
those obnoxious mothers who drink wine and bitch about the help.”

He laughed.
 
“I don’t see you as that type.
 
Poor choice of words on my part.”
 
He kissed her hand.
 
“That being said, having someone around
to give us a spell every once in awhile might not be such a bad thing.”

“Yeah, they’re called babysitters.”

“Touché.”
  

She smiled at him.
 
“I’m not trying to be bitchy,” she
said.
 
“I mean, this is so totally
new to me.
 
I’m just thinking
aloud.”

“We’re allowed to think aloud,” he told
her with a smile.

She smiled back.
 
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”

“Wait until tonight, when I show you
those new positions.”

***

By the time night had fallen, Nicole had
made two attempts to call Danielle with no luck, and she’d had no missed calls
or voicemails from her either.
 

“It’s pretty strange,” Nicole said as
they sat outside the cabin in two chairs next to the fire pit Red had
made.
 
The fire crackled and sparks
flew off it, drifting and floating into the sky.
 

“What’s that?”

“Danielle.
 
I can’t figure out why she didn’t call
me back by now.”

They were toasting marshmallows and Red’s
had caught on fire.
 
He pulled it
towards his mouth and blew out the flame.
 
Now half the marshmallow was black.
 
“I’m sure she’s just busy.
 
Maybe she has a hot date.”
  

“No.”
 
Nicole shook her head.
 
“I know Danielle and she’d be calling me
back no matter what.
 
She’s always
worried about me, and besides—I told her it was important.”

“Do you want to drive back tonight?”

Nicole thought about it, as she put her
melted marshmallow between two graham crackers and a piece of Hershey’s
chocolate.
 
“I’m having too much fun
right now.
 
Is that selfish of me?”

“Yes,” he said, through a mouthful of
food.

She shrugged and bit into her
s’more.
 
“God that’s good.”
 
She enjoyed the rich chocolate melting
on her tongue.
 
“I’m sure she’s
fine.
 
I just have a weird feeling
is all.
 
I’m worried that Kane
Wright might have gotten to her before we had a chance.”

“That would be like him,” Red agreed.

“Thanks, that makes me feel better.”

“I’m just telling you that he might have
contacted her and messed with her head.
 
But once we talk to her, she’ll calm down, even if she’s nervous right
now.”

“As long as she’s just nervous and
not…something worse.”

“Worse?”

“He had some shady characters working for
him.
 
You don’t think he’d have
someone hurt her, do you?”

Red smiled at her.
 
“What, you think Kane Wright put a hit
out on your roommate over a measly hundred grand?”
 
He laughed.
 
“He might be an asshole, and he might be
a psychopath, but he’s definitely not stupid.
 
And he’d have to be an idiot to hurt her
over an insignificant amount of money.”

“One hundred thousand dollars isn’t
significant to most people.”

Red nodded.
 
“I know.
 
But Kane Wright isn’t most people.
 
The guy spends a hundred grand on a
fucking Oscar viewing party, for god’s sake.”

“Okay, okay.
 
I believe you.”
 
Nicole moved her chair closer to Red’s
and snuggled up against him.
 

“I feel like I’m at summer camp,” he
laughed.

“Only we’re the last counselors left for
the season.”

“Unless we picked the wrong summer camp
and this is Friday the 13
^th
or something.”

“Don’t even joke about that.
 
It’s way too dark and isolated out
here.”

“Oh, come on.
 
I’ll protect you, babe.”
 
He wrapped a strong arm around her and
she smiled because, the truth was, she did feel protected.

“Can we just stay here forever?”

“Happy too.
 
I’ve got no reason to go back.”

“I’ve got work,” Nicole said.
 
“As it is, they’ll be furious at me for
bailing on them three days in a row.”

“Screw them.
 
You and I will just start our own
company.”

Nicole looked at him to see if he was
joking.
 
He was toasting another
marshmallow and this one was on fire too.

“Red, are you being serious right now?”

He blew the marshmallow at, glanced at
her, and then popped the whole thing in his mouth.
 
“Mmmmhmmm.”

“Is that a yes?”

He nodded.
 
“Mmmm.”

“Red.
 
Are you really going to start another company?”

He chewed for a long time and finally
swallowed.
 
“When you came back into
my life yesterday, it was like my whole system got a jumpstart.
 
Until you showed up, I’d just been
chopping wood and taking walks, swimming, fishing.
 
I tried hard not to think about what
might be next for me.
 
I didn’t feel
like there was a next without you in my life.”

She blinked, tried not to shed any more
silly tears.
 
“Oh.”

“But the moment you were back with me, I
felt all of this energy.
 
And today,
for the first time, I really wanted to get back in the mix,” he said, twirling
his stick in his hands and staring into the flames.
 
“Kane Wright will be officially
acquiring Jameson International next week, and when he does, I’ll be sitting on
a mountain of cash.
 
Not what it
could have been or should have been,” he clarified.
 
“The stock’s down and with all the bad
news, Kane Wright was able to get it for a song—relatively speaking.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Well, it’s a great deal for him.
 
Jameson International is still a
fundamentally sound company and so Kane will be bringing it back to prominence
if he can.”
 
Red continued to look
at the fire as if hypnotized by its glow.
 
“But today I got to thinking.
 
Fuck him.
 
Maybe I should
start my own company—a new company from the ground up.
 
And maybe I’ll kick
his
ass, this time.”

Nicole wasn’t sure she liked the sound of
this.
 
It sounded like Red was
preparing to go back into battle and maybe risk everything.
 
“And you—I mean we—we have
the money to finance it?”

 
Red sat back in his chair.
 
“Babe, we’re going to have something on
the order of half a billion dollars when the buyout is completed.
 
It ain’t what I used to have.
 
I lost almost two-thirds of my net worth
because of everything that went down with the EU and Germany.
 
But I still have a whole lotta
money.”
 
He looked at her and
grinned.
 
“And I’m getting back in
the game.
 
I’m going to make Kane
Wright wish he’d never laid eyes on me.”

***

The next day, they decided it was time to
return to the real world and started out just after ten in the morning.

Nicole was grateful when the ride back to
Brooklyn finally came to an end.
 
They’d been on the road over five hours, and both of them had had to
take their own cars, so it had been a lonely drive.

They’d stopped on the way to grab a quick
bite and spend a few moments together.
 
And then they’d stopped again to return Nicole’s rental car.

Danielle still hadn’t called back and now
Nicole was truly getting worried.
 
Nicole had called and texted her half a dozen times and still…nothing.

At around three-thirty in the afternoon,
they arrived at Nicole’s apartment building.
     

“She’s not home,” Nicole said, as she
opened the door and stared at the clearly empty apartment.

“It’s a weekday.
 
She’s probably still at work.”

“I tried her store on the way here.
 
They said she’d called out sick the last
couple of days.”

“Uh-oh.”
 
For the first time, Red looked
concerned.

“You think something happened?
 
I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll call Kane Wright and ask him point
blank if he’s been in touch with her or bothered her in any way,” he said,
after some thought.

“I feel like this is all my fault.
 
If she’s in trouble right now, it’s
because I got her involved in this mess.”

“Look, everything’s going to be fine,
Nicole.
 
I swear.”
 
He took her by the shoulders and kissed
her deeply.

She kissed him back.
 
“Will you call him right now?”

“Yeah.”
 
He didn’t look happy about it, but he
pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number.
 
A moment went by and then someone picked
up.
 
“Kane.”
 
Pause.
 
Red made a disgusted face.
 
“Yeah, it’s me.”
 
Long moment.
 
Nicole couldn’t hear anything but a
vague mumble from the other line.
 
“We’re looking—hold on, let me fucking talk.
 
We’re trying to get in touch with
Nicole’s roommate and she seems to have disappeared.
 
Have---wait—what?”
 
He strained to listen.
 
“Kane, what the fuck is going on?”
 
Again, straining to listen.
 
Red seemed totally baffled by whatever
Kane Wright was telling him.
 
“Yeah.
 
Fine.
 
Fine.”

He hung up, shaking his head in dismay.
 

“What happened?
 
Is something wrong?
 
What did he do to her?”

“I have no idea, Nicole. I’ve never heard
him in such a great mood,
 
I could
hardly get a word in.
 
He must have
really done something shitty.
 
That’s what seems to make him happiest—when he does something
really nasty and underhanded.”

“Does he know where Danielle is?”

“Yeah, apparently so.
 
He said they’re together right now and
she’s going to be home in the next couple of hours.”