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

and Dale Easton. Carter Easton blames the
paparazzi for chasing his parents' car under the mistaken impression that he
was in it. Easton's PR team is scrambling to repair the damage done by a
garbled and disturbing press release sent out by Easton himself in which he
vows to seek justice in the courts by any means necessary."

 
    I sit
back in my office chair and nervously chew on my fingers. Is that all? There
has to be more. I search again, this time for Carter Easton latest news, and the
very same headline I saw in the checkout aisle pops up again.

 
    "The
Broken Billionaire: Why is Carter Easton Hiding?"

 
    The
language in this article is much more florid, going into wild, speculative
detail about his reasons for disappearing. But one paragraph in particular
stands out.

 
    "Cocky,
swaggering Easton was once the darling of the glitterati, part of the clique of
rarified jet-set explorers who aren't content with the idleness of the rich.
Carter Easton was a man of action. Impulsive to the point of recklessness, he
still had the magic touch necessary to smooth any ruffled feathers.

 
    But now
the ruffled feathers are his own. Sources close to the Eastons say that he
spends all of his time in seclusion on his own private island, unwilling, or
rather, it seems, unable to set foot on the mainland. Those same sources say he
visits the company that bears his name only under the cover of darkness and that
he has all but given up control of the company he founded to crusade against
the paparazzi."

 
    When I
am done reading, I swallow back the sick feeling fluttering in my stomach. A
reclusive, paranoid weirdo, and I'm supposed to meet
with him tomorrow. On his private island…where I will be completely at his
mercy. No one has seen, or heard from him in two years, and yet I'm supposed to
just fly off in his private helicopter like a lamb to the slaughter.

 
    I grab
my phone and fire off a text to my best friend Tricia. "I'm going to meet
with a client tomorrow. I want you to check and make sure I make it home okay."

 
    She
beeps back. "You afraid of axe murderers?"

 
    I
shiver a little. "Something like that."

 

 
 
    Chapter
Five

 
    Sanniyah

 
 
 
    A private airport!

 
    So that's what this is!

 
    I have
my epiphany as I make the turn into off the highway. I must have passed this strip
of land a million times in my usual back and forth commute from downtown but I
had never considered what it was. It was hidden in plain view, only
recognizable to those who could use it.

 
    This is
a familiar feeling and once again I have to wonder if I will ever stop feeling like
a pretender. No matter the expensive shoes, the prestige makeup, the polish and
the poise, I can never truly blend in with my wealthy clients. And try as I
might to keep it at bay, the resentment still rears its ugly head. That feeling
of being on the outside, looking in will never leave me, no matter how many
years separate me from my childhood.

 
    When my mother woke me in the middle of the
night and told me to grab my things. When we left the house of the man we had
been living with as quietly as we could. The months spent in and out of
shelters, my mother's exhausted sobs in the cot next to mine. ..

 
    That is
the part of my story that I gloss over when I speak of it now. When I give my
PR statements and press releases, I always emphasize the positive outcomes. The
literal rags to not-quite riches part of my life. How we finally scraped enough together for a studio apartment with paper-thin
walls. How I hustled to get back to grade level when I was finally able to
attend school again.   How I
succeeded even with the odds stacked against me.

 
    I leave
out the difficult bits. Like how I learned to blend in and adapt by planning out every word. How every thing I said and did became scripted and rehearsed.
How I would practice in the cracked mirror that sat on my rickety bedside
table, miming laughs and smiles;