Escorting the Billionaire by Leigh James
Audrey
I didn’t ever wantto talk to James’s mother again, but I really didn’t want her to kill me, either. I was taking a risk with the threat of the letters. A calculated risk, I kept telling myself, but I was still petrified.
Celia Preston could do that to you.
“I’m going to the bar,” I told James. I was wearing a conservative black dress so that when she called me a whore, at least I’d be dressed like a lady. I held up an envelope. “This is what I’m going to show her. I drafted another one. It’s in the bedroom. If she strangles me, please mail it to the Tribune.” I smiled at him, trying to make light of the situation, but James glowered at me as I stuck the envelope in my pocketbook.
“It’s not funny,” he said, his jaw clenching. “I don’t want her anywhere near you.”
“You said it yourself—she’s not going to hurt me here. It’s too close. And you can come, too, but you have to stay with Todd and Cole. And no glowering, at least no more than usual. We don’t want your mother to know that I’ve told about Danielle. Okay?”
“Okay for right now,” James said. He grabbed my hand, and I noticed how very sexy he was looking in his T-shirt and a pair of faded cargo shorts with flip-flops. I loved the man in a suit, but I loved him dressed casually, too. He looked as if he were a mere mortal, not a gazillionaire.
I think the point was I loved him.
“I love you,” I said, stopping him before we went outside. I pulled him in for a deep kiss. “All this family intrigue is really messing with our sex schedule,” I said, pretending to pout and keep our moods light. “I thought we were just going to be in bed this whole trip.”
“I wish,” James growled, running his hands over me. “But we have to deal with this. I can’t have my mother even thinking about harming you. We’ll try this tonight, but tomorrow, I’m calling Danielle’s parents and alerting the authorities back home. They’ll have to reopen the case as a criminal investigation.”
I nodded at him. “Okay. Let’s just see what your mother has to say to me right now.”
As this was a group vacation, and as James’s family liked to drink, everyone in our party was at the bar. The floor-to-ceiling windows had all been opened, so the warm night air spilled in. There was a breathtaking view of the ocean and the moon above it. Someday, I thought, James and I will come back here and have a real vacation. I clasped my fingers around the small, gold necklace that he’d given me before the wedding; I needed it to remind me to be brave. I loved James, and I had to protect him from his mother. Protecting myself from her was secondary—but if something happened to me, if she did something horrible, I knew it would break him.
We had to beat her.
He ordered us drinks, and I gave him a small kiss, leaving him with Todd and Evie and Evie’s sinewy cousins, as I searched the room for his parents. They were seated near the indoor fireplace with several of the older guests.
I took a sip of my martini, hoping it would act as liquid courage, and approached their little group.
“Good evening,” I said, barely able to contain the shakiness in my voice. Celia Preston was wearing an island-appropriate flowered tunic, white linen pants, and orange patent-leather gladiator sandals that probably cost as much as a mid-sized Hyundai.
“Hello, dear,” she said, and I noticed she was drinking a martini, too. So she’d already had some liquid courage.
Not that she seemed to need any.
“May I speak with you for a moment, Mrs. Preston?” I asked politely. “It’s about what we discussed earlier.”
She smiled at me tightly and stood. “Of course,” she said. She motioned for me to follow her to a small table at the corner of the bar, away from everyone else. I was afraid, but I knew she was too dignified and far too premeditated to throw herself across the small glass table at me right here in public. Still, a cold sweat coated my palms, and I felt positively queasy to be so close to her again.
“What is it, Audrey?” Her voice was ice.
“I thought about what you said this afternoon,” I said. “About the Preston luck. I realized something. James had told me about his poor high school girlfriend, Danielle. He was explaining how hard it was for him to get close to a woman after what happened to her. Because that almost ruined him, Mrs. Preston. When Danielle died—I’m sure you know how difficult it was for him.”
“For a senior in high school, he dealt with the tragedy admirably,” she said.
“He said the same thing about you. That you did all the right things, made all the right donations.” I paused for a beat. “The other thing I remember him saying, though, was how inappropriate you were privately. That you told him her death was a blessing in disguise. That you said the ‘Preston luck’ had saved him from a poor match. That really stuck with me,” I said. “And then yesterday, when you mentioned Preston luck to me, I started to piece things together.”
“Audrey, dear, that martini’s gone straight to your head. You’re not making any sense.” She didn’t look vaguely rattled, but I didn’t let myself doubt my gut.
“The thing is, it hasn’t.” I took another big sip, which I desperately needed at this point. “You’ve threatened me several times now. And I finally believe that you mean exactly what you say. So I want to take you up on your offer.
“You offered to pay me. I accept. Except now, I’m dictating the terms. I will accept your payment, Mrs. Preston, in exchange for my silence on this matter. I’ve written several letters to the Boston media outlets—just in case something happens to me, you know? Like a head-on collision with a guardrail? That sort of thing. But if you pay me and you let me follow my natural path toward a happily ever after with your son, I will agree to never speak on the matter. Your secret will be safe with me.”
Celia Preston smiled at me and drained her drink. “You know, dear, I have much more experience with this sort of thing than you do.”
My stomach dropped while I waited to hear what she had to say. I drained my drink, too, wishing desperately that I could wave a waiter over. I already needed another one. I did not have enough courage for this.
“I anticipated something like this from you,” she said. “You might be smart, but you’re guileless. This was the obvious move, and I was expecting it. So in advance of our little impromptu meeting tonight, I called your mother, who is very much alive. We had an excellent conversation.”
My mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but no sound came out at first. “What?” I asked. “What did you say?”
“I said I called your mother earlier this evening. She and I had a lovely talk. About your family, your brother, your wretched treatment of her. And of course, her desperate living situation and her myriad of financial needs.” She smiled at me. “I explained to her that you were being difficult about parting ways with James.”
“Did you explain that you have a nasty habit of killing the girls James loves? The ones you deem inappropriate?”
Celia gave me another unfazed smile. “First of all, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Second of all, we didn’t get that far. What we did cover, however, was the fact that you recently had your mother removed as a responsible party for your brother at his facility. I don’t think you had the legal right to do that, Audrey. So I told your mother I would have my attorney—who’s excellent, by the way—look into the situation. And that you could be removed as his guardian permanently, and your mother could go back to being solely responsible for making choices for him.”
She beamed at me while I tried to catch my breath. “I also told her I’d be happy to put her on salary in exchange for her silence about your profession, as well as the fact that you were ever anywhere near my son. She agreed with everything. She was very accommodating.”
My heart was frozen, and I couldn’t say a word.
I could feel James watching me from across the room; my face must be white, all the blood draining out of it. “You didn’t do that,” I finally said. It only came out as a mumble.
“Of course I did, dear. And that was just a warm-up. I can stop it all, of course, but you have to do everything that I ask. Including not telling my son a word that I just said.”
She smiled at me in triumph as James stalked over to our table, his mouth set in an angry line. “What’s the matter, Audrey?” he asked, looking at my face.
“Nothing,” I responded, too quick and too sharp.
He turned to his mother. “What did you say to her?”
“She’s quite capable of speaking for herself,” Celia said calmly.
“Nothing. We weren’t talking about anything,” I said immediately.
James reached out his hand and grabbed mine. “Let’s go.”
I looked back at Mrs. Preston as he pulled me away. She was looking at me with an expectant smile on her face. “I’m assuming we’re on the same page, dear,” she said.
All I could manage was a nod.
