Rescued By the Billionaire by Lisa Kaatz

8

Imean to tell her everything. Right there. But then she said that thing about me being honest with her since the very beginning. If I’d told her the truth then, she would have hated me all over again. Would have left, and left my life. Would have left New York. And I would have never seen her again.

I couldn’t have that. Not when life had brought us together for a second time. The first time could have been chance. But twice?

Even the way she cried did something to me. I had a rescuing complex, I knew that. But with Abby it was worse than ever before. Out of control.

I wanted to hold her. I wanted to take her home with me.

And tonight, she let me.

“Where’s your car?” she asked after we climbed into the back of a different cab and I told him the directions.

“Didn’t want to drive tonight,” I said. I opted for honesty - from now on, I was going to be honest. Except for what I’d already lied about, I wasn’t going to lie again. “I wanted to be able to get wasted tonight.”

“Do you drink a lot?” Abby asked quietly.

“I do since I met you,” I said, taking her hand in mind. It was small and featherlight. And soft.

“I make you drink?” she asked, turning to me with a frown.

“You make me insane,” I said. “Especially when you do things like give my money back and ignore all of my calls for days on end.”

“Oh,” she turned away from me.

“Hey,” I whispered. She turned back to me, and had fresh tears in her eyes. “Did that really bother you that much?”

“No,” she waved her hand like she was swatting a fly away. “I just remembered...I just lost another job. I don’t know what I’m going to do. My landlord…”

“He wants his money?”

“He scares me,” she said quietly. “He’s kind of a creep. I told him I’d give him some pictures if he could give me an extension on my rent.”

“What pictures?” I asked, though I felt like I already knew. A slimy landlord and a desperate woman. It didn’t take a genius.

“I don’t want to say,” she said, looking down. “I wasn’t really going to give them to him. He was threatening to kick me out and I didn’t know where I’d go. So I negotiated this extension because I knew I started this job soon. I thought I could get my paycheck from this job and use it as a deposit for another place. And then I could just...leave the other place.”

“You should have kept my money,” I said darkly. My thumb stroked the back of her small hand, gentle and soothing. But inside, I was seething.

I’d fix this. No question.

Stop rescuing.

The voice was in the back of my head again, but quieter than ever and easy to ignore.

“I don’t want that money,” she said. “It’s not right.”

“Then stay with me,” I said. “I have spare bedrooms and I’m hardly ever there. I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want. And Trudy won’t bother you.”

“Trudy?” Abby asked.

Shit.

“My...maid,” I said sheepishly.

She looked at me flatly.

“She was on vacation the week that I hired you,” I continued. “So technically I did need the help.”

“Well, that makes sense. Trudy is one hell of a cleaning woman,” she said finally, with a smile. “Military precision.”

“She’s good,” I agreed, relieved. She didn’t appear to question why I had the ability to hire a maid. But after the car and the apartment, a maid probably wasn’t too shocking.

And not for the first time, I wondered whether Abby ever questioned how afforded my lifestyle.

And how she hadn’t Googled me, yet.

I mean, I’d Googled her. It was what I’d been doing in my office before she’d barged in on me that night. I hadn’t found much, though. She didn’t seem to have any social media at all. There was one mention of her in a local newspaper - she’d played soccer in high school.

There was also a eulogy for her mother.

We got to my place.

“Hey, Gus!” Abby waved at him as we walked to the elevators.

“Good evening, Miss Abby,” he said, bowing his head slightly.

Abby snickered and I shook my head. She was in a good mood now. At least there was that.

When we arrived on my floor, she waltzed inside, spinning around in a circle with her head back and her hair falling down in pieces.

“This place is so huge,” she said. “Why do you have it if you’re never here?”

“It’s a good investment,” I said with a shrug. It wasn’t untrue. “I don’t want to live here forever. That wasn’t the plan.”

“What is the plan?” she asked, turning back to me.

I paused.

“I don’t know,” I said. Again, it was the truth. I used to think that I had a plan for everything. But lately, I wasn’t sure. Something had changed. Maybe it was Abby.

“I don’t know either,” she said with a grin. “I came to this stupid city with a plan. You know? But now...I don’t have a plan. And I don’t really care.”

“You don’t?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Because it doesn’t matter. The art scene here isn’t for me, and that’s okay. I’ll find another waitress job. Or not. Maybe I’ll move back home and try again somewhere else.”

I felt that familiar pain in the pit of my stomach when she mentioned moving.

“You know,” I said slowly. “I was serious when I said you could stay here.”

She shook her head.

“I’ll figure it out,” she said.

I reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her close to me. To my surprise, she reached out and hugged me around the middle, laying her head against my chest.

Whatever this strange, happy mood she was in was, I was okay with it. I wrapped my arms around her and rested my chin on the top of her head, closing my eyes for a moment.

“I can’t let you go back home,” I said quietly. “Not when that creepy landlord is there.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

“I don’t like that, either,” I said. “How long have you been taking care of yourself for? You’re so young.”

“Not that young,” she said. “And not that long. You worry too much.”

“Don’t go home,” I said again. “Stay here. Stay with me until you find a place.”

“I can’t move in with you, Lincoln,” she said, pulling away to look at me. “But...I will stay the night with you.”

“You will?” I asked, raising my brows.

“Yeah.”

She had a shy grin on her face, and she looked away.

“I’m starving,” she said. “Do you still have that pizza in your freezer?”

I laughed.

“I don’t think that thing is edible. We’d better order out.”

An hour later,we were sitting at the dining table with a pizza box between us and a bottle of wine.

“I never sit in here,” I commented.

Abby laughed.

“Why is that funny?” I asked.

“You have this ridiculous apartment,” she said, gesturing to the hand-painted walls of my dining room, where the previous owner had commissioned a renaissance style painting to be done - naked cherubs and all. “And you never even use it. It’s just...I don’t know, it’s funny.”

“It was an - ”

“Investment property,” Abby rolled her eyes and took another sip of wine. “I know. You told me.”

“Do you really hate my home this much?” I asked, half joking.

“I don’t hate it, Lincoln,” she said with a sigh. “It’s just… I don’t know, it’s just not what I expected from you. I mean, I’d expect some boring CFO type of person to live here. Not...someone like...well, someone like you.”

“I think that’s a compliment?” I said.

“It is,” she nodded. “I mean, I knew you were a bit of a snob. You had your car, and your phone, and your watch. All of that fancy rich guy shit.”

She rolled her eyes again.

“But… I don’t know, once I talked to you, you just seemed...different than the others, I guess,” she finished.

“Different,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Like there’s more to you than just suits and spreadsheets and money.”

“Not a lot of people say that to me,” I said quietly.

“Oh yeah?” she said, raising a brow and taking another bite of pepperoni. “They must not know you very well, then.”

“No,” I agreed, thinking of Dani. “They don’t.”

“What about you?” I asked, changing the subject.

“What about me?” she shrugged. “You already know everything.”

“No I don’t,” I said. “Tell me about your family.”

Her face changed.

“I mean,” she said. “I picked up and moved to New York as soon as I had the chance. I don’t call them. You can fill in the blanks.”

“You don’t have a good relationship with your parents?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t prodding too much.

“My dad is an alcoholic,” she said.

“And your mom?” I asked.

She looked away.

“My mom...passed away,” she said after a moment. “Suicide. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to reach out and hold her, but she looked prickly and closed off. I had a feeling that trying to comfort her would make her run away. Or maybe even evaporate into thin air.

“What about you?” she asked, turning to me. “I mean, one little brother, obviously. Any other siblings? Mom, dad?”

“I never knew my dad,” I said. “And my mom died of cancer when I was fifteen.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “I’m really sorry to hear that, Lincoln.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

“Who raised you after that?” she asked.

“The state tried to find relatives to take us in,” I said. “But most were dead, and the ones remaining were distant. They’d never even heard of us before. And they didn’t really have the room to take us in.”

“So, foster homes?” she asked softly.

I nodded.

“Until I was seventeen,” I said. “Then I was emancipated. Got legal guardianship of Harrison, which wasn’t easy to do.”

“So you raised him,” she said.

“Sort of,” I said. “I was in too much trouble to really look after him the way I should have. Sometimes, it was the other way around and he was looking after me. We took care of each other, I guess. We were brothers.”

“At least you had each other,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I would have died without Harrison. He gave me something to live for. A reason to try to do better. When I went to jail, Harrison had to go to a foster home again. It was only for a few days, but Harrison hated those foster homes. They scared the shit out of him. When I got out, he wouldn’t speak to me for a month. After that, I cleaned up my act. I didn’t want Harrison to ever go back to a foster home. I saw how it scared him. Being alone. Being in strangers’ homes.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. She reached out and touched my arm. Normally I hated shit like this. Opening up and getting the pitying stares and sad eyes. It was why I’d quit every therapist I’d ever been to.

With Abby, though, it felt okay.

I took the wine glass from her hand and set it on the table, pulling her closer, into my lap. She sat down on top of me and wrapped her arms around me, kissing my cheek.

“I like you,” I said simply. Because it was the only thought that came to mind.

“I like you too,” she said back with a smile.

“Don’t go back to Maine,” I said suddenly. The words had been on my mind all night, but I’d held back. I couldn’t anymore.

“Lincoln…”

“Stay here,” I said. “I will find you a job. Harrison’s got that contract work he needs help with..”

“I can’t depend on you for everything, Lincoln,” she sighed. “A place to live. Career help. What happens if I take that contract? What happens after the work is done? Then I’m right back where I started. Besides, my rent is already past due. It’s game over.”

She sighed and continued.

“You’ve got your own life to deal with, Lincoln. Your own problems. You don’t need to go out of your way to rescue me. I got myself into this mess and I’ll figure my way out of it.”

“It’s no trouble, Abby,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I’d never met a woman who told me no before. Never met a woman who refused my help before.

“Look, I can give you tonight,” she said. “Like I told you. One night. And there is something you can help me with tonight.”

“What?” I asked.

She bit her lip and looked away, but I turned her chin back to me.

“What is it?” I asked. “Don’t be embarrassed, Abby. I want to help you. Let me help you.”

“It’s not that kind of favor,” she said, looking down. “It’s more of a...I don’t know how to explain it, really. It’s weird. I don’t want you to judge me.”

“I won’t,” I vowed.

She turned to me and took a deep breath. Looked at me and opened her mouth, like she was about to say something. Then closed it again. Took another breath.

“Whatever it is, I’ll do what I can,” I said.

“Lincoln…” she sighed. “I’m...a virgin.”

Silence filled the air.

“And…” she continued after a few moments. “I don’t want to be one anymore.”

I stared at her.

“So I was hoping you could...you know,” she said, turning redder and redder with each word she said. “I was hoping you could help me with that. You know. Um, as a favor to me before I leave.”