Blush Page 30
“If there’s any connection, they’ll find it,” she told him, her chest indicating that, like him, she was having a hard time not panting like a wolf in heat. “I—I do know that Basson and Candice opened the faux Blush factory in China and were selling knockoff Blush products to Chinese markets. Then they saw an opportunity for Candice to impersonate me so I’d be discredited and vilified in the press, scheming to ensure Blush’s stock prices plummeted.
“What brought in Interpol was Basson getting sick and greedy with an Internet kiddie porn ring run out of the factory. They closed in yesterday— a joint task force, intersecting with the police investigation, and also the information from the private security firm I hired.”
“I doubt your father left Candice in the poorhouse. What did this woman really want? Was it financial?” People killed for five dollars. It was a case of supply and demand, and it wasn’t always the people who worked their asses off who got the big payday. Others stole and/or killed for it.
“Candice had the shares left to her by my father, and a place on the board. But she wanted more. Wanted to be the face of Blush. Knowing her, I speculate that she wanted the fame more than the fortune. She and Basson had been having an affair soon after she married my father. Okay. I have to admit, that was a freaking shocker! I had no idea, no clue that they even knew one another to say more than hi to. For three years she’d been seducing or coercing board members to side with her, claiming I was squandering stockholders’ money with my wild schemes and do-good projects.”
He’d surmised most of what she was telling him, and while Black Raven Security hadn’t breached client confidentiality, Cruz got just enough to add the new info to what he knew, or what he suspected. “Investment company being prosecuted?”
“Hell yes. The people responsible have already been rounded up and taken into custody. You saw Miles being taken out in cuffs. On his way to prison. He’ll be tried for conspiracy to commit murder with Candice and several board members as accomplices.”
“Class A felony. Solicitation to commit a violent crime. Solicitation to commit murder. Several counts, and international child pornography? ” He shook his head. “They’ll have the book thrown at them.” Cruz placed his hands on her narrow back. For a strong woman she felt almost fragile in his arms. Her strength was her will, and her inner capability. But no matter how indomitable she might be, she was no match for a well-placed bullet.
She blinked, and murmured, “Ow.”
“Sorry.” He’d squeezed her too tightly, and she gave him a questioning look. Cruz relaxed his fingers spanning the small of her back, but didn’t drop his hands as he dragged in a shuddering breath, then held it for several beats, and he was shocked at how badly it ripped at his lungs. His chest felt constricted, and that had nothing to do with Mia’s weight surrounding him like a warm satin blanket. Cruz shut his eyes for several moments as he gathered himself. “She bled out in my arms. I thought your stepmother was you.”
Her soft mouth trembled, and her eyes welled in sympathy. “Oh, Cruz—”
“I died on the sidewalk this afternoon, Mia. I was gutted. It was . . . devastating. Soul-wrenching. I remembered the way your eyes lit up when you looked at me. Blue fire, so pure, so good, it was hard to live up to the person you saw me to be. I remembered the taste of your mouth, and the words you didn’t need to say because you showed me how you felt every time we made love. I remembered the silky slide of your hair against my belly as you gave me everything, in every way I never imagined I wanted. I remembered your compassion, your humor, and the dizzying fragrance of your skin. . . . I will never smell a tuberose without my brain and heart being filled to the brim with . . . you. And I realized, as I held her, that the woman in my arms wasn’t—couldn’t be—you. She didn’t feel like you, didn’t smell like you—I raced through your building like a madman. Your staff was afraid I was a deranged madman come to kill you. An irony of monolithic proportions,” he said dryly, using his thumb to wipe away a tear shimmering on her eyelashes. “When I finally made it to the boardroom—when I realized I was being given a second chance—it was as if the sun went supernova and poured into every cell of my body.”
“You are a romantic.”
“I’m not. Never have been. But then I’ve never met anyone like you.”
He relaxed and let her lead, and they came together in a sweet, deep kiss, slow and erotic as hell, as she knelt over him and took him in her small, cool fingers and led him home.
They rose and fell together like the tide. Time stretched as they slowly made love.
When they were both replete, he brushed a kiss to her temple and settled her on top of him, her long legs tangled with his. “Hey,” she complained, eyes closed, as he reached out to snag his pants off the floor where he’d dropped them.
“I’m going to frame it in our bedroom.” He told her, smoothing out a torn piece of yellow notepaper on his chest.
Mia smiled. “You kept my to-do list? You really are a romantic. . . . Wait, some of these are new.” Big blue eyes, rimming with laughter, met his. “FILWEH?”
He closed the few inches between them and kissed her softly, then dropped his head back to the seat cushion. “Fall in love with ex-hitman.”
Touching her tongue to a fingertip, she drew an imaginary line in the air. “Cross that one off the list.”
Cruz stroked his hand down her back. “There’s no way in hell we should ever have met. No way in hell that this should’ve worked. But it just . . . does. Read number forty-three.”
“MEHWLYBR?”
“Marry ex-hitman who loves you beyond reason. Marry me, Mia. I’ll give you beautiful babies, and we can live here in San Francisco. Whatever you want.”
“I want babies with you, but I’m not the stay-at-home-mom type.”
“I think I’d be a damn fine stay-at-home dad. But there’s something I think I should tell you before we start making babies. I have a couple more names to add to our mix.”
“You mean Phoenix, the world-renowned artist?”
Cruz gave her a startled look. “How could you possibly know—”
Mia cupped his face. “Because I was determined and vested. I took every little drop of information—Chicago, construction, your artistic ability—added them together, then gave what I knew to Black Raven. They told me you’d buried it so deep that, without the few crumbs I knew, they would never have put two and two together.”
“My God. Nobody knows who Phoenix is.”
“I know. Not even your New York agent who just mounted your London gallery showing knows who he is. I hate to tell you, but I’d never heard of Phoenix until two days ago. As soon as I knew, I looked you up on the Internet. I was stunned.”
“You hate my work?”
“Phoenix is famous, for God’s sake! That’s so bizarre, it boggles my mind. The most closed, secretive man I’ve ever met has an alter ego that’s wildly exciting, flamboyant, and a romantically shadowy public figure of some repute. You must admit, it’s a bit surreal. I love your work. I don’t know how I could not have heard of you. Everything that you are is on those incredible canvases. Larger-than-life. Brilliant, glorious colors. Humor. Passion.”
Something inside him broke apart at her insightful words. Yes, he’d heard them from critics. But this was the woman he loved. She didn’t just see him, she saw everything he was inside. He’d never had that in his life. It was staggering. “You could tell all that from the images online, could you?”
“Cruz, your work is magnificent, powerful. Quite extraordinary. Which you must know—it’s why your canvases sell for a small fortune.”
“They’re very big canvases with a lot of paint on them.”
She smiled, extending her hand. “Mia Hayward, Amelia Elizabeth Wellington-Wentworth.”
“Oh, boy . . .” He slid his palm against hers. “Cruz Barcelona, Phoenix, Jon Smith, Brian Strong, Pete McCord, Doug Stanford, Dave Bay—” Mia raised a brow at the laundry list of aliases. There were many m
ore, but he cut to the chase, squeezing her hand. “Aiden Cross. Pleased to meet you.”
“It’s going to be pretty hard to come up with a boy’s name, since you’ve apparently used every one in the baby-naming book,” Mia laughed, then sobered, her gaze intent on his face. “I’m going to give more responsibility to Todd; he says he doesn’t want it, but I believe he does, and he’d be a magnificent CEO. That will give me more time for my foundation, and those babies. I’m still going to work sixteen hours a day, six and a half days a week. That’s who I am. Babies will be a bonus. Eventually. I want us to get to know each other first.”
“I might have to become a priest.”
Her eyes widened and she gave a choked laugh. “You want to be celibate? Are you even Catholic?”
“No. But I’ve made God so many promises, I owe Him one.”
“I have no doubt you owe Him more than one,” Mia told him dryly, combing his hair off his face with gentle fingers. “You can start by stopping killing people. Any people. For any and all reasons.”
An easy promise. “I can do that, unless of course they threaten you or the babies; then all bets are off. You were to be my last job. I was off to Brazil to get ready for my LA showing in six months.”
“How convenient, then, that I have loads of space for your studio right here in San Francisco, and we’re so close to Los Angeles.”
“You seem to have all the answers but one.”
She gave him a surprised look. “I think we’ve covered the Q and A. What else is there?”
“Marry me. We have the rest of our lives to get to know one another better than we do now.” She started to speak but he placed his finger on her lips. He didn’t want to hear anything she had to say except yes. His heart pounded. His entire life had been on hold until this moment.
“I don’t want to wait. I love you, Mia.” He replaced his finger with his mouth for a tender, sweet, gentle kiss. He wanted her to know the love he felt for her was more than the hot, grinding sex they shared. It was soft and emotional and real. “I love you more than I’ve loved anyone in my life.” His voice was just above a whisper. “I never knew this kind of love existed. But I don’t want to waste a single day anticipating the rest of our lives together.” He brushed a tendril of hair from off her cheek and then brushed his lips on the same spot. “I want it all, Mia. I want it now. I want it with you.”
His throat tightened. He knew that if she rejected him now, he would be shattered just as he’d been when he thought she’d died in his arms. Cruz realized the enormity of how good things were and how in mere seconds they could slip through his fingers from one breath to the next.
“I promise I’ll be a good father. I’ll be faithful. I’ll protect you. I love you. This is my vow to you. I’ll be your rock, your sanctuary, your partner.” He smiled, but it was fear, not joy, that he felt at this moment as he waited for her to answer him. To say yes to him handing her his heart, to giving her his life so they could have a life together. Yet, looking in her beautiful, intelligent, loving eyes, he had hope she would say she’d be his.
“I can’t live without you, Mia. Is that too dramatic?” His heart was beating too fast, his mouth dry. “But without you I’d wither and die. No pressure.”
Mia wrapped her arms around his neck. “I love you to the moon and back, Cruz. The answer is yes. Yes, I will marry you, and give you beautiful babies who’ll inherit the goodness and integrity of their father, who’ll paint wild and exciting paintings. We’ll travel the world and, if we have to be apart, rush home to each other as quickly as possible.” She brushed his lips with hers. “We have so many names between us; which should we use?”
“How about ‘Cruz’ and ‘Mia’ in the bedroom, and ‘darling’ everywhere else?”
About the Author
© B. Cobb
CHERRY ADAIR a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, has won numerous awards for her innovative, action-packed romantic suspense novels, including the Lodestone series. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her website at www.cherryadair.com.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Cherry-Adair
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Also by Cherry Adair
Black Magic
The Lodestone Series
Hush
Afterglow
Relentless
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Cherry Adair
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COVER IMAGE BY LELAND BOBBE/STONE/GETTY IMAGES
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adair, Cherry, 1951–
Blush / Cherry Adair. — First Gallery Books trade paperback edition.
pages ; cm
I. Title.
PS3601.D348B58 2015
813'.6—dc23
2014041177
ISBN 978-1-4516-8434-6
ISBN 978-1-4516-8435-3 (ebook)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
About the Author