THE BRAVO BILLIONAIRE Read online

He listed to the left, and went on listing, until he was lying on his side. He tucked his arm under his head. Better. And then he closed his eyes.

  The next thing he knew there was movement at his back – the door swinging open. He didn't even have to look. He knew she was there. Who the hell else would it be?

  And besides, he could feel her there, right behind him, looking down at him. He could smell her, as well. Dewy roses…

  "Jonas? Are you all right?"

  He rolled to his back and blinked up at her. "Hi."

  The light was dim, provided by low-wattage bulbs in wall sconces placed at intervals along the hallway. But he could see her just fine. That gold and silver hair formed an enchanting sleep-mussed halo around her face and she was wearing one of those little skimpy bits of nothing she always wore to bed – a hot pink bit of nothing, to be precise.

  He wrapped his arm around her smooth bare ankle and laid his hand on her foot. It always felt so good, just to have his hand on her somewhere. He had a very nice view, up over her shins and her knees, her strong thighs to the hot pink hem of the little bit of nothing. It was kind of shadowed, beyond that, but he'd seen what was up there. It was burned into his brain.

  She said, "Looks like you and Ledger had a real good time."

  He nodded and idly fiddled with her toes. "We did. Drank too much."

  "No kidding."

  "I've been thinking…"

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah. There are some negatives you should know about."

  "Well, okay. Shoot."

  "I'm a bad sleeper."

  She looked puzzled.

  So he elaborated. "Restless, you know. I might hit you, steal the covers, that kind of thing."

  A soft smile bloomed on her mouth. "It doesn't matter."

  "It doesn't?"

  She shook her head.

  He said, "Well then, the truth is, I came here to sleep with you."

  "You did?" Her face got softer. Damn. What a woman. A disgusting drunk said he wanted to sleep with her and she got all soft and sweet over it.

  "Yeah. But then I thought … too drunk, y'know? So I was going to leave. But then I decided to sit down for a minute…"

  She knelt, which meant she was closer. Hey. Fine with him. "Come on…" She slid her hand under his neck as if she wanted him to sit up.

  He wasn't so sure about that. He looked at those gorgeous breasts of hers, which were very close to eye level right then. "Come on where?"

  She had her arm under his shoulders now. She gave a gentle nudge. "To bed."

  "Ugh." All at once, he was sitting up. He didn't like it much. But she had said something interesting. "That would be … your bed?"

  "That's right."

  "Oh. Well, then. Let's go."

  It was not easy, but he was properly motivated now. With her help, he found himself on his feet. "Ugh," he said again.

  "Come on, don't stop." She wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tucked herself up tight against his side.

  They were through the door – she shoved it shut as they went by – past the sitting area and weaving at the foot of the bed in no time. As usual, the Yorkies were sitting among the tangle of sheets, waiting for instructions, apparently. Emma clicked her tongue at them and gestured with a toss of her head. They jumped down from the bed. He didn't see where they went next. He really didn't care. The black-and-white cat was curled on a chair by a bureau. It looked up, yawned, and rested its head back on its paws.

  Emma got them turned around. "Okay, sit." They dropped to the bed together. When he got there, he just went on falling. He would have taken her with him, but she let go of his arm, so he went down alone.

  Flat on his back, he stared up at the chandelier overhead. It twinkled and swayed, though he knew very well that it was not really moving.

  She slid off the bed and started fooling with his feet – taking off his shoes and socks, he realized after a minute. Once she had that handled, she came up on the bed with him again and started taking off everything else.

  He let her do it, not helping her much, lifting various parts of himself whenever she told him to, letting those same parts flop back to the bed as soon as she pulled free whatever piece of clothing she was trying to get off him. She had him down to his briefs in very little time. Then she made him move to the side so she could get the blankets out from under him.

  "Emma?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Can we stop moving soon?"

  She settled the sheet over him. "Yes, Jonas. We are stopping. We are stopping right now." He turned on his side with a groan.

  She switched off the bedside lamp and slid in beside him. He reached for her. She came in against him, curving her back and bottom into the cradle he made by bending his thighs.

  "You left my damn underwear on." He breathed the accusation against her hair.

  She laughed, a low laugh. "If I take them off you, there will be more movement.

  "Oh," he said. "Don't want that."

  "I didn't think so.

  "Emma?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Want to make love … don't think I can."

  She felt for his hand, kissed it, tucked it between her breasts, so he had a handful of her all wrapped in silk. Hot pink silk…

  "Good night, Jonas."

  "Yeah, Emma. It is now."

  * * *

  Jonas woke at a little after ten in the morning with a doozy of a hangover. Emma rang for Palmer and ordered a pitcher of ice water and some extra-strength Tylenol.

  They agreed that the trip to the zoo could wait until Sunday and spent most of the day in Emma's rooms. She pampered him. He enjoyed that. She brought him cool wet cloths to put over his eyes and urged him to drink lots of water. She ordered them brunch in the early afternoon. He didn't eat a lot of it, but what he did eat helped. The hangover seemed to be passing.

  By four, he felt almost normal. There remained that shaky, edgy sensation to remind him of why he usually had sense enough to drink sparingly, if at all.

  Emma had dinner ordered up to the nursery. They ate with Mandy, a picnic on the playroom floor. Then they hung around for bath time and to take turns reading her a bedtime story. They left the nursery at about eight-thirty.

  From the nursery, he took Emma to his rooms. "Because you wanted to see them."

  She stroked the curved arms of the Biedermeier chairs and admired the view from the terrace. "Very nice," she said, rather shyly. "Thank you for showing me."

  And they returned to her rooms.

  She told him that night that she'd gone on the Pill and that it would be safe, at least as far as pregnancy was concerned, to stop using condoms. They kicked their shoes off and sat on the bed together, each of them cross-legged, facing each other. She said that there had been two men so far in her life: an actor named Ridley and a high school sweetheart.

  "I never messed up with Ridley," she told him. "We always used protection. I did mess up once or twice with Elton, and it worried me, you know, that I hadn't been careful, even though we were so young and Elton always swore there was never anyone before me, and we lived in a small town where folks generally considered themselves immune to things like sexually transmitted diseases. But Aunt Cass pretty much drilled it into to me. She always used to say, 'I'm not gonna try to tell you that you should never do what comes naturally. But when the time comes, you put a raincoat on it. Women are always getting pregnant when they thought it was a safe time and AIDS doesn't care if you're a nice girl or not." She wrinkled her nose at him. "I suppose you're going to tell me someone else said that first."

  "Not on your life."

  "Well, good. Anyway, Aunt Cass was real big on bein' safe in order not to end up bein' sorry. And since there were those few times with Elton that were not safe, I had a test, a couple of years ago, just to check. It was negative."

  She looked at him hopefully and he realized it was his turn to lay it on the line as regarded his sexual history.

  He cleared his throat. "The
re have been more than two," he confessed.

  She groaned and rolled those almost-green eyes. "Yes, I know. And you don't need to go rattlin' off a list of their names. It will only depress me. And it could take half the night."

  He wanted to defend himself a little. But what could he say? She already knew what she needed to know on this point, that he had bedded a lot of women in the past and that none of them had mattered much. They might as well leave it at that.

  "All right," he said. "I won't go get the list."

  She looked at him narrowly for a moment – and then it hit her that he was kidding. "Oh, you…" She fisted her hand and lightly punched him in the shoulder.

  He said, "There is some good news."

  "Hit me with it."

  "I have always practiced safe sex."

  She made a low noise of disbelief in her throat. "Oh, come on. Always?"

  "All right. I seem to remember one indiscretion."

  "Oh, holy cow. Just one?"

  "I don't like the way you said that."

  "Well, pardon me. But I am impressed. I mean, with all the opportunities you've had, to have only messed up once. Jonas. That is just excellent."

  "Well. Thank you."

  "You are welcome."

  He explained, "I was nineteen. It happened under the stands at a football game – Stanford/UCLA, I believe it was."

  "People get way too excited at sports events."

  "Don't they? After that, though, I have made it my business to always be prepared. And I have not, as you put it, 'messed up,' again."

  "Well, then." She looked very pleased – with herself. With him. "Don't you think that, as long as we agree that there won't be anyone else for the time that we're married…" She hesitated, her cheeks turning the most enchanting shade of pink. "I mean, that is, if it was just going to be you and me, while we are married, then we probably could…"

  He reached out, hooked his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her mouth right up to his. "We could what?"

  She was blushing furiously now. "But then, maybe we should just … play it safe, anyway. Maybe that's the responsible thing to do."

  He took pity and gave her a little distance, letting go of her smooth, warm neck, sitting back on his side of the bed. "Maybe it comes down to … do we believe each other and can we trust each other?"

  "Yes." Her face seemed to light up from within. "That's right. That's what … married people have to do. Believe. And trust. And, though we are only married for a year, it is still a real marriage, isn't it? For as long as it lasts?"

  He nodded.

  She said, "Well. I believe you. I can't say as I trust you, Jonas, not about everything. You are a difficult man and you like to be in control and sometimes, I think, if it's to your advantage, you might stretch the truth a tad. But about this, well, I have no doubts. I just know you are bein' straight."

  He felt absurdly pleased at her confidence in him – even qualified as it was. He returned the favor, said, "I trust you on this." And he did, which stunned him a little, now he thought about it. He'd never trusted any woman to take care of contraception. He never planned to have children, and the last thing he needed was to have some ex-lover slap him with a paternity suit.

  "Well," she said. "Okay then…"

  He echoed, "Okay."

  They were still sitting cross-legged, facing each other. He leaned forward and so did she. She sighed when their lips met, opening for him instantly, her tongue meeting his, wrapping around it. After the sigh, she moaned.

  So did he.

  They undressed, kissing as they did it, buttons slipping from holes, zippers sliding down. They were naked in no time, their clothes strewn around the sides of the bed.

  He guided her down among the pile of pillows. And then, for a while, they just lay there, on their sides, facing each other, kissing some more. It was slow and lazy and very, very good. Maybe they could just go on like this forever, lying together on the white bed, mouths permanently fused.

  He touched her as he kissed her. Touching her gave him limitless pleasure. He liked to run his index finger down her spine, tracing each bone. He liked to cup her bottom, to curve his palm over the silky swell of her hip.

  She stroked him in return, her soft hand moving down, finding him, closing around him. He groaned into her mouth.

  And then she was pulling at his shoulders, urging him to cover her. He put his hand on her, delved in. She was slick and wet and ready. He wanted to taste her.

  But she wasn't having that. Not right then. When he tried to lower his head, she dragged him back up and claimed his mouth once again.

  She wrapped those incredible legs around him and at that point, he couldn't have held back if he'd wanted to. In one sharp stroke, he was inside.

  She froze. So did he. He pulled his mouth from hers, and he looked at her. She stared straight back at him.

  They started to move, at first slowly, then picking up rhythm, faster and faster – then slowly again. She was so tight and so wet around him. He thought, with whatever part of his brain still able to function, that this was the best place to be in the whole of the world.

  The rhythm picked up again. He looked down into her face, watched her climax break over her, her mouth going so soft, eyes far away and dazed.

  The sight finished him. He stiffened. She pushed herself tight against him, her body bowing right off the mattress.

  The pulsing of his own release began.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, she pulled the white sheet over them. He wrapped his arms around her. They slept.

  He woke at six-ten the next morning and realized he had slept over eight hours straight through, which just might have amounted to some sort of record for him. Emma told him he had slept peacefully, as far as she knew.

  "You didn't hit me or kick me," she declared. "You didn't even steal my covers. You did just fine."

  He could hardly believe it. "I did?"

  "Yep."

  "Well, what do you know?"

  She leaned over and kissed him. He kissed her back and that led where it usually led – to soft moans and tender sighs.

  They had breakfast together out on the loggia, the long roofed gallery not far from the pool. And at ten, they took Mandy and left for the zoo. The weather was perfect – the kind of weather L.A. has always been famous for, bright and beautiful, the temperature in the low seventies.

  Mandy had a ball. She rode on Jonas's shoulders a lot of the day, pointing and crowing in delight as she recognized the various animals. "Oh, look! Giraffe! See that? Monkeys!"

  The best part of the zoo trip was what didn't happen. No one seemed to recognize them. Or if anyone did, they behaved like civilized human beings and respected their privacy. Not a single shutter-happy reporter stuck a camera in their faces the entire day.

  They got back to Angel's Crest at a little after three. Mandy had fallen asleep in the car, so they took her right up to the nursery and turned her over to Claudia.

  Jonas had a few things to deal with at Bravo, Incorporated, things that just couldn't wait another day. "If I'm lucky, I can get back by nine or so tonight."

  Emma kissed him and told him she'd be waiting for him, whatever time he returned.

  * * *

  He entered her rooms at nine on the nose. She had ordered a light supper for them. They ate and then they showered together, ending up making very wet love under the shower spray.

  Jonas fell asleep in Emma's arms some time after midnight.

  Some time after that, the dream came for him.

  He woke as he always did when the dream got him – sitting bolt upright, the sweat streaming off of him, shouting the word, "No!"

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  «^»

  "Jonas?" Emma was sitting up beside him. His heart was beating like a trip-hammer. He could not breathe.

  "Jonas, what is it?"

  He shoved her gentle hand away, threw back the sheet and jumped
from the bed.

  "Jonas…"

  With superhuman effort, he tried to suck in air. It was like breathing through a flattened straw. Relax, he thought. Easy. It's all in your mind…

  He bent at the waist, put his hands on his thighs, waited for his windpipe to open – or to pass out.

  All in your mind. Bad dream. Not real…

  Still, his windpipe felt smashed flat. He sank to his knees. If he was going to lose consciousness, the closer to the floor the better.

  Slowly, over a period of seconds that felt like years, his windpipe began to relax. The air started getting in. He sucked in one slow, careful breath. And then another.

  All right. It appeared that he would not pass out this time, after all.

  Carefully, he straightened to his height.

  Emma was standing, very still, about two feet from him. He hadn't even heard her leave the bed.

  "Better?" she asked softly.

  He managed a nod – and concentrated on the job of drawing one breath after another. It got easier with each one.

  She waited, standing so still, naked as he was, her body like a white flame in the darkness, until he could breathe close to normally again.

  Then she asked, "What can I get for you?"

  He could smell himself – the sour, cornered-animal smell of pure terror. His skin was still clammy with it, with nightmare sweat. "Shower," he croaked in a voice not his own.

  "I'll get the water goin'." She turned and left him.

  As soon as he was certain his legs wouldn't give out on him, he followed her. She had the water running. When he entered the bathroom, she pulled open the shower door. Welcoming steam billowed out. He got in there, in the heat and the steam, let the water cascade over him, even drank a few gulps of it, to ease his shredded throat.

  When he got out, she was waiting with a towel. She dried him, massaging as she wiped the water away. By the time she was done, he felt almost human again.

  "Come on." She took his hand, led him back to the bed. The Yorkies were there, sitting among the tangled sheets, looking up at them, tails thumping out a hopeful rhythm. They never gave up trying to reclaim the privilege of sleeping with Emma. Inevitably, they headed straight for the bed any time it was vacant.