The Billionaire's Desire (A Billionaire BWWM Steamy Romance) Read Free

still right there ,
red and rubbed raw by guilt.

 
    I should have died. Not them. It was me
they were after. It was me they wanted. Not my parents.  

 

 
 
    Chapter Four

 
    Sanniyah

 
 
 
    I open
up another browser tab and then angrily close it down,. Then I smack myself on
the hand for good measure.

 
    "Focus,
Yahya," I admonish myself. "Time for working."

 
    But my
fingers seem to have a mind of their own, and before I can stop myself, I have
a new tab open and I am typing Carter Easton's name into the browser window.

 
    The
results are instant...and lengthy. I scan down the page, feeling my mouth start
to gape.

 
    His
smiling face, startlingly good looking in a way that makes my breath catch, is
everywhere.

 
    I know
who Carter Easton is. Everyone does. But I never realized just how much the man
had been in the public eye a few years ago. I had been struggling to put myself
through business school back then, with no extra time to pay attention to the
lives of the rich and famous, so I had missed out on what a craze he was. Now,
as I scroll through the years of coverage, I feel myself reacting with a
mixture of fascination and revulsion. Fascination with the man himself.
Revulsion at the sheer depth of detail splashed all over the internet .

 
      There were reams of interviews,
snapshots, paparazzi photos. Telephoto shots of him on
the beach, his chiseled torso on proud display, though it is clear he has no
idea he is being watched. Clearly private moments and conversations, a cheek kiss with a woman that caused wild speculation, only
to turn out to be his mother. Details of his dating life, his hobbies, his
childhood home, all out there for me to read at my leisure.

 
    I feel
like a peeping Tom....

 
    Quickly,
I close all of the tabloid articles, hot shame consuming me out of nowhere. I
pause for a moment, thinking that I should really stop right here. I've learned
too much already, stuff I have no business prying into. He is a client now, and
he deserves my professional detachment. I really should stop researching him. I
make as if to shut my laptop.

 
    Instead,
I open up his Wikipedia entry and keep on reading, compelled to know more about
the man.

 
    The
picture that accompanies his article is the same headshot I keep seeing
everywhere, and once again I feel that strange fluttering in my belly as I
stare at the screen. He is handsome in a way that can only be described as
"rugged," as if Bradley Cooper and Chris Hemsworth somehow had a baby
who grew up to be a CEO.

 
    And he wasn't
just your average CEO, not by a long shot. Carter Easton was Easton Ventures.His
annual shareholder meetings brought movie premier levels of excitement, and the
accompanying press was always breathless in its coverage. He seemed to enjoy
stunt appearances too, whether it was the summer he tested out the new line of
mountaineering equipment by climbing all of Colorado's fourteeners himself, or
building a submersible to test the depth resistance of the Easton brand of
diving watches. He started Easton Ventures as a touring company and quickly
moved it into a brand. His brand. He was an adventurer, a maverick and people
wanted to be just like him. And the press loved him.

 
    And
then he just disappeared .

 
    I close
Wikipedia and go back to my search. I scroll back up, wondering if I had missed
something. I knew about the disappearance, but what I didn't know, was why.

 
    And
then I find it. The very first article, oddly enough in the business section of
the local paper, titled rather ominously. "Easton Ventures Founders as
Rumors Swirl Around CEO."

 
    The
first paragraph was terse enough to make my lip curl.

 
    "Easton
Ventures, the outdoors behemoth, took a nosedive in the markets today amidst
rumors of charismatic CEO Carter Easton's nervous breakdown. Easton, 28, has
not been seen or heard from since the night of the fiery wreck that took the
lives of his parents, Annika