The Billionaire's Triplets (A Steamy Contemporary Romance Novel) (13 page)

Once again she came home to the strange and wonderful sight of Julio with his children. He beamed as he fed the children dinner, helped bathe them, and then tucked them into bed.

The boys seemed to respond well to him, and settled right down. “You have kid magic,” she told him when they left the children sleeping and returned to the living room.

“I’ve been around babies enough to admit that this was beginner’s luck. Don’t expect a consistent result from me.”

“You love them.”

“You sound surprised. Did you think I was a baby hater?”

“I thought you were a jet-setting billionaire.”

“They aren’t supposed to be mutually exclusive. That’s not the way my contract reads.”

“Speaking of contracts, a problem came up today. It’s a big one.”

“I’m good with problems. And I’m exploring a new strategy where I wrap them in dirty diapers and toss them out.”

“That doesn’t sound environmentally friendly.”

“Perhaps not. Well, great ideas often need refinement.” He put the baby monitor on the table and sat on the couch. “So pour me a drink and tell me the contract woes.”

“Tom Acker showed up in my office waving one in my face that has Tina’s signature on it. It’s dated prior to the birth of the triplets, and supposedly gives him exclusive rights to my services on the Milan bid.” He nodded. She was certain he understood the ramifications, but spelled them out anyway with him listening carefully.

“So it’s one of those ‘if you won’t work for me, you won’t work’ deals?”

“For the Milan project, at least.”

“And you aren’t sure it’s real?”

“I think it might have been back-dated. Tina was reporting to me while I was in the hospital, and something was definitely up. But her angle was to take my business. She knew I’d catch onto her game sooner or later, so she was stringing things out in talking with Acker, wanting to be able to get the business for herself. No way would she want to sign a contract with him, not even one this bad.”

“Unless he insisted on getting both, or had her sign the one with you as insurance to keep you from working with me. He might have been unsure about her. After all, if she was sleeping with him to get the business, she knew that her qualifications were sketchy.”

“I can’t imagine her agreeing to that. First, it would hurt her pride to admit that keeping me out of the game was necessary. She really thinks she is good enough to take me on head-to-head. She has an entirely different concept of the business, so she’d want a chance to prove herself against me. Also, she is a political creature, and she’d see that having two contracts meant Acker was in control. He might persuade me to work for him, and Tina would believe that I’d work for the highest bidder, and then she’d be out on her ass. She’s far too clever in that sense to give him a club like that.”

Julio rubbed his chin. “Then what happened?”

“When Willa came along and forced her out, I imagine that they told Tina they’d cancel her contract based on some excuse that would be close enough to the truth to hold up in court. I’m sure they could find ways to claim it was because of her incompetence or some fraudulent claim she’d made. Then they suggested that if she went along with this, signing a back-dated contract, then Acker would pay her off.”

“So it would be the lesser of the evils? She’s still out of the game, but has the money to move on to other projects and other clients.”

“And she moves on with no black mark to her name. That makes sense.”

Julio picked up his glass and sat back. “What’s your assessment, oh sexy one?”

She pointed a long finger at him. “No flirting until we sort this out.”

“Then we must sort quickly.”

Lissa sucked in a breath. Her body was ready to stop talking business and get down to business, but she forced her tone to remain on topic. “Julio, I can’t risk getting involved in a legal hassle with Acker. He’d tie me up in knots, and the squabble would be public. He’d make it seem like I didn’t keep my word. That would alienate clients.”

“That seems likely. He has expensive legal people who will know all manner of snares and traps that we mere mortals can only imagine and shudder at.”

“So I suppose I need to talk with Tina. If I’m right, I need to persuade her to give me a signed statement.”

“That would mean you’d win the case, but it would still be too late for the project. We need to move now.”

“But, if I’m right, and this contract is fraudulent, which I’m pretty sure it is, even his high-paid lawyers won’t want to be caught using it to browbeat me.”

“And failing that? If Tina won’t be helpful?”

That wasn’t the direction she wanted her thoughts to go in. “I don’t know. I guess I’m shafted.”

“Willa working with Tom Acker… I never thought that would happen, but then I apparently didn’t know her as well as I thought. Well, you see Tina, and I’ll get some people doing research, and we will find a solution.”

Lissa’s head fell, and the next thing she knew, Julio was beside her, pulling her to him. He looked into her eyes.

“We’ll get this sorted, I promise.”

His tone was comforting, but not as comforting as the feel of his mouth on hers.

They kissed for a long moment, and the months of loneliness and the pain from rejection that had never occurred faded away.

She opened her mouth to him, and passions took hold, taking the blood from her brain and erasing all other thoughts.

Without another word, they moved to her bedroom and locked the door.

They made love urgently, quietly, not wanting to wake the babies or alert Joan to their activity. When they’d reached the point of a mutual climax, as he spilled his seed into her even as his fingers swirled frantically over her swollen clit, she couldn’t stop the cry of pleasure that broke from within her. He bent down and swallowed most of her sounds with his kiss as their bodies rocked together.

Breathing heavily, Julio pulled out of her and positioned his body to face her on the bed. “I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered as he placed a soft kiss on her cheek. She closed her eyes and he moved his hot mouth to her eyelids. She groaned as her body seemed to melt from his heat.

“I’ve missed you too, Julio.”

They lay in each other’s arms for a long time after that, listening to the sounds in the apartment: a television program droning on from Joan’s bedroom and the snores of the babies, like rain falling, from the baby monitor. Their babies.

For just a moment in time, Lissa and Julio were both thinking the same thing: All was right with the world.

# # #

A baby’s cry woke Lissa from a deep sleep. She glanced at her clock. Three in the morning.

As her head cleared, the night came rushing back. No wonder she was groggy. Her body still tingled from Julio’s lovemaking. Although they’d been fast, and careful not to make any noise, he’d still managed to arouse her to heights she hadn’t thought possible. No man she’d ever been with had been able to get her body to respond the way he could. His tongue, his fingers, how they made her nerve endings tingle, how he could make her nipples erect, how he could make her oh so wet. Even now, as she realized she was alone in the bed. He must have left while she was sleeping, which was probably a good thing, but still, the memories, his smells, and the odors of sex still clinging to her body, to her sheets… She let her fingers slide down her belly towards her slickening heat.

A baby crying in the distance broke her mood. Muffled voices reached her as she put on a robe and headed for the nursery. She opened the door and saw one baby sleeping soundly, undisturbed. The other two beds were empty.

Half-awake still, Lissa staggered towards the voices, into the kitchen. There she found Joan and Julio, each holding a baby, bouncing it and talking. She smelled tea—Joan’s favorite herbal tea.

“Good morning, more or less,” Joan said.

“Some little person or two seem to think it is. We still have one person in the family who wants to lie in.”

“The family.” She’d said it that way without thinking. It had seemed right, and Julio had smiled when she said it. Joan too.

Julio brought the baby over to her. “Ryland, tell Mom you didn’t mean to wake her,” he said.

“But he did mean to wake her,” Joan protested. “That’s how they remind parents who is actually in charge. If they are awake, then they must be attended to.”

“You seem to have an agitator in the nursery,” Julio teased. “Whose side are you on, Joan?”

A new cry came from the nursery. “I guess he finally realized he was being left out,” Lissa said.

As Lissa went to get the Hunter from his crib, she understood part of what was troubling her. It was easy to slip into this idea of a family. It was comforting and reassuring. And it frightened her. If she let herself get used to it and believe in it, then she could lose it one day. The pain would be far worse than the pain she’d felt when she’d lost Julio, after Switzerland. She hadn’t opened her heart to him completely because of that. Wanting and enjoying too quickly became needing, and it was hard enough to manage the things that were in your control.

Lissa found Abby waiting for her when she got to the office.

“We haven’t found a sign of that contract on our server,” she said. “I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but we can’t prove it’s a new document.”

Lissa cupped her hands around her coffee cup. Getting into the rhythm of business after the night—well, the start of the day—came as something of a jolt. The safe, warm feeling of being around her babies and her lover, their father, lingered tantalizingly. “Okay. That was a long shot. I’m sure you’d have found it if it were there.”

“Well, I do have some good—or at least interesting—news. You wanted to talk to Tina. She called this morning asking to meet with you. I made an appointment for this morning. I hope that was okay.”

“Sure. That’s probably good. Odd, though. She’ll be after something. Did you tell her anything?”

“No. She told me she wanted to discuss the contract for the Milan project. I suppose the word is out and she sees some kind of opportunity to make hay.”

“I think you’re right.” Lissa grinned. “I’ll be at my desk, fortifying myself with coffee and grinding my teeth.”

“Is the situation that bad?”

“Frustrating more than anything. Maybe Tina will tell me something I can use to get out of the contract. Then I can work with Julio. For now, I’m marking time, and I’m not good at that.”

“How is it going with Julio? I can’t wait to meet him.”

“He comes over to visit the kids.” Then she grinned. “But yes, he stayed. He was even up at three this morning with the kids.”

“Wow. Then he wants to get to know them?”

“I think he wants a lot more than that.”

“Is he a good dad?”

“I think he thinks so.” So did she. It was easy to see how much he loved them. He acted like he loved her too, but how would that work? They worked well together, and he was an unbelievable lover—Abby got that right, too. It was the family thing that had her brain in turmoil. She still grappled with the idea that she was a mother to three boys—how she would deal with that, much less how she might have the energy for a relationship with Julio, was more than she could deal with.

She would have to deal with all of it sooner or later, though. The future was vague, and although it was exciting, having all these people in her life added more variables, made it easier for things to go wrong. Joan might not want to be a child-care person her entire life. What would she do then? At some point she’d have to think about schools, about all sorts of things for them. It was beginning to look as if her life was going to be constantly adapting to their changing needs.

For the moment she needed to think about getting this project.

# # #

Tina seemed a lot more upbeat and cheerful than she’d expected. “I bet you want to know about the contract with Acker,” Tina said.

“The one you signed for my company?”

“Yeah, that was important to him when I was negotiating with him. You came back and I was working my way out the door. I wanted to get in on the Milan project, and he said he’d give me the job if I came up with a way to make sure you couldn’t work with Julio. The idea had him shaking in his boots. So I came up with this idea. We wrote the contract and backdated it. The asshole. Him and his kinky games. I’m glad to be out of it all.”

“You admit it’s a fake? Why?”

“Because I’m pissed. He screwed me—in every imaginable sense. He and that bitch Willa.”

“He paid you off, though.”

“None of what I did was about the money, Lissa. Think about it. I’d have made more working for you than he paid me. I wanted to be in on the project—an international operation, working with a European consortium. That was exciting. And he left me with a little money and no work. He tossed me out in the cold. Willa saw to that, after she made sure Julio wouldn’t hire me. She made me think that she wanted me working with her and Julio, but when we met, she set me up. I didn’t know she was working Acker as well. She surprised me with that.”

“Would you be willing to sign a statement about what happened?”

“I talked to a lawyer.” She opened her briefcase and took out a document. “Read it, but it says you won’t press charges against me for anything I did regarding any of your projects.”

“A get-out-of-jail-free card?”

“And I want ten grand.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

She took out another document. “I’ve done a lot more than just thinking. My lawyer wrote out this statement for you. I hope you can fry his ass with it. My lawyer notarized it. Hand over a check and sign my little note and it's yours.”

Lissa read the waiver of liability, as the document was titled. It was a simple declaration that she wouldn’t press charges against Tina. She didn’t care to anyway. She took out a ballpoint and signed it, pushing it back to Tina. “We can go to the bank and get the money, if you have the time. Neither of us really wants a check involved, do we?”

Tina smiled. “Good thinking.”

“Abby, watch the store for a while. Tina and I need to go to the bank.” As they went out the door, Lissa took Tina’s arm. “When this is over, I never want to see you again.”

“Fine,” Tina said.

When Lissa had taken out the money and it was safely in Tina’s purse, she closed it with a
click
. “I’ve been offered a job with an ad agency,” Tina said. “It’s a small but up-and-coming company. They understand that with my connections I can get them a few serious industrial accounts.”

“You know what? I think you just might do well in advertising.” She was feeling good. The statement would mean that if she had to go to court, Tom Acker wouldn’t stand a chance. “You know that Tom will try and make things difficult for you now.”

Tina smiled. “I considered that possibility. But Willa and I think that, under the circumstances, he’ll think it’s funny.”

“What circumstances?” The mention of Willa’s name sent off alarms. Somehow she was becoming an unpleasant thorn in Lissa’s side.

“The contract has to do with doing work on the Milan job. Without that, there isn’t any point to any of this.”

“You aren’t making any sense.”

“Everything will be clear soon enough. Now I’m off.”

Lissa watched as Tina caught a cab, wondering why she insisted on being so mysterious. Then Lissa walked back to the office thinking about a more intriguing question. Why were Willa and Tina still working together after what Willa had done to Tina? Something stunk.

# # #

After work, Lissa went to meet Julio at an office he had rented. She was looking forward to seeing him, but when she came in and he stood up from his desk, she saw a sadness in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

He picked up a sheaf of papers. “The project is off. Milan is dead.”

“Off? Why?”

“The consortium discovered a problem. They sent out a memo to all the bidders, but some clerk sent mine to my Barcelona office. I can bitch about Willa, but she never would have let this happen.”

“What happened?”

“It got misplaced in the office on Friday and wasn’t found until today. So everyone has known about this but us.”

“I think Willa is still running your Barcelona office.”

“What do you mean?”

She told him about Tina approaching her, about paying the money. “She mentioned that Willa told her to come to me. I think Willa arranged for that notice to be delayed. It’s another way of sticking a knife in me for getting back together with you. But that isn’t important. I still don’t understand how they can cancel the project. It must be serious, as they’ve already invested heavily in the damn thing, and put a year of planning into it.”

“I know. Everyone was eager to get working on it. It’s a huge setback for an ambitious group of people.”

“What happened?”

“The initial site-mapping studies missed something significant.” He unrolled a map of the site. “It’s a nice spot for the purpose, almost perfect, except for one problem. Apparently a few hundred years back, the city built an underground aqueduct right under this spot, right here in the center of the proposed building. They think it might have been part of the
navigli
, the network of artificial waterways that were built around the city. It probably redistributed water to or from the Po River. Anyway, there is no way the ground at that point will support the structure they wanted there.”

“I can’t believe they missed that.”

“The story is that right after it was built, it partially caved in. It was abandoned and forgotten about. It’s narrow, and somehow the surveyors missed it—either there was bad documentation or just some sloppy work, but this is serious enough that it will undoubtedly put this project in the courts for a long time while everyone involved sues everyone else.”

Lissa thought quickly. “If it was just an aqueduct, why can’t it be filled in?”

“That’s possible, but the new information suggests that there might be some sort of fault or sinkhole there. Very localized.” He handed her the report. “You can read the details for yourself, but their conclusion is that the cost of verifying the precise location of whatever is wrong and working out a fix would be enormous and prohibitive, even for a project of this scale.”

“And it can’t be relocated?”

“Possibly. I don’t think the consortium has the heart for starting over on scouting locations, and they’ll have bankers and governments breathing down their necks to make decisions fast.”

“So they aren’t willing to give us time to come up with options.”

“They’ve called a meeting. I need to go to Milan tomorrow. I’ll know more about the options after that.”

“And just in case the project is actually on, I can’t go unless I represent Tom Acker because of that damn contract.”

“I’ve talked to a contact with the consortium. Tom and Willa are arriving tonight.” He sighed. “I need to go to the hotel and pack. It’s an early flight.”

Lissa felt her heart flutter. They were just beginning to get to know each other outside of the bed, and now he was being called away on urgent business. This had happened before and been disastrous. She wanted to cling to him, either get on a plane and go with him or keep him from going.

This was business, and he hadn’t caused this. She didn’t blame him, but somehow he was being taken from her for a second time.

“See if you can stall them while I take a close look at what we know. There has to be some way to make this project happen. I’m willing to bet I can come up with a fix that will make the project even better.”

“That American optimism. Okay, I’ll do my best.”

She knew she sounded desperate, but something inside Lissa made her feel that the fate of the Milan project and her relationship with Julio were entwined, that they would sink or swim together. She didn’t know if that was good or bad or even true, but it felt that way.

Conflicting emotions tore at her. She wanted him to fly to Milan and fight for the project, but having him pulled from her again for business dragged up bitter memories. She wanted to go with him, but that might compromise his bid if nasty legal wrangling came up. Sometimes there didn’t seem to be any entirely good days.

Their parting kiss was disappointing, but then neither of them wanted to say goodbye. At least
she
didn’t. Sometimes she still wondered how he truly felt. It was one thing to love the children, and to like making love to her, and another to take it to the next level. And she had to wonder about her own feelings for him. She wasn’t used to wanting a man that way, feeling empty when he was gone. It made her feel weak.