The Billionaire's Island Reunion
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Susan Meier
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
THE HOUSE, A five-bedroom Colonial in Oilville, Ohio, with six bathrooms and an elaborate backyard made for entertaining, was a symbol of everything wrong with Cade Smith’s childhood. His parents had made him a pawn in their protracted divorce as they battled over a bunch of two-by-fours and furniture. Neither had really wanted the old-fashioned monstrosity. They just hadn’t wanted the other to have it.
At eighteen, he’d prayed for a Solomon-like judge who would cut it in two and ruin it for both of them, then realized they’d already done that to him. With the way they’d ranted about each other to him and torn him up over the choice of who to spend every holiday with, they’d split his life right down the middle, making him live in two different worlds.
He shoved open the door of his rented SUV, stepping out in the chilly April morning air, shaking his head, as he strode to the front entry. He was over all that. Thirty years old and a billionaire with his partners, Trace Jackson and Wyatt White, he’d gotten beyond his mom throwing dishes and his dad buying a gun. He was even over the heartbreak he was sure they caused him with his first love.
He snorted. Did anybody really want to be dating the kid whose parents fought on Main Street, made the preacher cry and put hidden cameras in each other’s bedrooms looking for dirt they could use in court?
Reese Farrell hadn’t wanted to. That’s for sure. When she’d dumped him, she’d shattered his heart so thoroughly, there were days he didn’t think he’d survive.
But he had. And he had a great life in Manhattan. So why was the pain of his past roaring through him like the winds of a category five hurricane?
He paused at the door to draw a long, life-sustaining breath, deciding that returning to his small town after twelve years away had to be bringing back all these memories. He hadn’t even thought about Reese in at least ten of those years. His dad and the gun? As long as Martin Smith still owned it, that was something Cade would have to monitor. No forgetting that.
He pushed open the door of the Colonial. Blaring hip-hop music greeted him, along with a totally remodeled downstairs. The open floor plan allowed him to see the whole way into the white kitchen that sat beside a family room decorated with a mishmash of furniture. Very Bohemian. Of course, his dad’s most recent ex-wife had been about twenty-two—
He rolled his eyes. He had to stop being snarky. His dad had had a stroke. His current trophy girlfriend had run like a rat deserting a sinking ship. His mother didn’t give a damn. As always, Cade had to stand in the gap.
“Dad?”
The music swallowed his call. With a sigh, he headed to the den, where the controls for the sound system used to be. Finding another remodeled space, this one an odd shade of green with beanbag chairs his father would never be able to sit in, he scanned the buttons and ended the music.
He walked to the high-ceilinged foyer again. “Dad?”
Muffled voices came from a closed-off room to the right—where the dining room had been when Cade had moved out to attend Harvard. He started toward it, but the door popped open. A woman wearing black yoga pants and a tank top barreled out. Her red hair had been pulled into a short, bouncy ponytail and her green eyes spit fire.
Recognition poured through him like a bucket of ice water. “Reese?”
She halted as if she’d walked into a brick wall. “Cade?”
His heart stopped, along with his breathing. Surely to God she wasn’t dating his dad!
She pushed past him. “Did you turn off my music?”
He pivoted to the right, his gaze following her as she marched to the den. Taller now, with full breasts and a perfect butt, she found the controls and in seconds the house filled with hip-hop again.
She stormed out, breezing by him on the way back to the former dining room.
His stomach couldn’t take it anymore. He had to ask. “What are you doing here? Are you dating my dad?”
Her eyes widened as her mouth fell open. “No! I am not dating your dad! I’m his nurse. His physical therapist gets here in ten minutes. He has to be stretched by then.”
The picture that formed in Cade’s brain almost made him gag. “You’re stretching him?”
“Most of last week I also helped him into the shower. Wanna yell about that too?”
“I wouldn’t have to yell, if the music wasn’t so loud.”
“It’s his motivation. Like torture. I don’t turn it off until he’s done the work.”
Relief and humor hit at the same time. He snickered, then chuckled, then out and out belly laughed. “Now, that’s worth four plane rides and a forty-minute drive from the airport.”
“Yeah. I can see you really raced to get here. He had his stroke over a week ago.”
“The doctors said he was fine.”
“Your concern is touching.”
He could have told her that there’d been an accident in one of his company’s warehouses and he’d been in Idaho, answering to OSHA. It wasn’t possible to get away, especially not when one of their employees had died. Plus, his dad’s doctor had told him the stroke had been minor. Now that the plant manager would be taking over the rest of the details in Idaho, he’d been able to leave. But he didn’t feel like sharing that information with a woman he no longer knew. Even if it would exonerate him of not rushing home, it was none of her business. From the day she dumped him like a hot potato, like someone who didn’t deserve an explanation, everything in his life became none of her business.
His dad stepped out of the former dining room, which was now God only knew what if it had been set up so he could stretch and do therapy.
“Cade.”
The hushed reverence in his dad’s voice almost made Cade feel bad. Almost. His gun-toting, rabble-rousing father had been cleared by his doctors and he looked fine. Sure, his head was bald, and the tank top he wore over sweatpants displayed a pot belly. But, as the doctors had said, the stroke was minor. Two days in the hospital proved there were no signs of aftereffects. He appeared good enough that he shouldn’t need a nurse. Though, perhaps whoever ordered the nurse recognized his dad needed a keeper.
Shouting to be heard over the music, his dad said, “Come on! Give your old man a hug.”
He stepped forward as his dad did. What began as an awkward squeeze filled with emotion. Damn it. He did love the old coot. If he hadn’t been in Idaho dealing with an accident and grieving coworkers, he’d have been here the day the doctors called him, no matter how minor they’d said the stroke had been. His parents might be nuts, but he loved them. Which was the real paradox of being a child. Parents could be bat-smack crazy, and you’d still care for them, protect them, love them.
Unfortunately, his particular parents couldn’t be in the same room without fighting. Which was why he never came home—and why he hadn’t thought about Reese in over a decade. He’d been more than occupied at Harvard. Then the risky partnership with Wyatt and Trace, that made all three of them billionaires, had taken every ounce of his concentration. Now, the new business needed all their energy.
Cade and his father pulled apart. His dad wiped away tears. Cade blinked his back. He was so relieved to see with his own eyes that his dad was fine that he could barely squelch the emotion.
“You still have five reps of the last stretch to do.”
He peered at Reese, strange feelings rumbling through him. He didn’t remember her as being so bossy. She’d been happy, the highlight of his senior year in high school.
Funny how he’d never thought of her. He tilted his head. That wasn’t entirely true.
He’d thought of her on his wedding day, right before he’d stepped out to the altar where the preacher stood. And the thought had been only a weird, fleeting something. Not a fully formed memory or wish. More like his dating past flashing before his eyes.
His dad made one final pass over his cheeks to dry them before he looked at Reese. “Aw, come on! My boy is here.”
Reese caught his arm and led him toward the open door. “I don’t care. You might be okay with getting yelled at by Yolanda, but she scares me. Get back on the mat.”
Cade leaned in and saw the room that had once hosted his birthday dinners was now a home gym.
As his father lowered himself to the mat, Cade said, “You two finish up. I’ll go make myself a cup of coffee.”
Reese grabbed his father’s leg and stretched it over his shoulder. “Whatever.”
Cade closed the door and ambled to the kitchen. The weirdness of seeing his first love shuffled through him. If he closed his eyes, he could picture her at sixteen, feel the tingles that always whooshed through him when she was around.
He groaned. Juxtaposed against his worry over his dad’s stroke and the emotions rolling through him over losing an employee, thinking about how attracted he’d been to Reese was just plain wrong. He had bigger things to focus on, ponder, examine. A twelve-year-old breakup shouldn’t be popping up on his radar. Even if the woman who had broken up with him was in his space for the first time since the quick conversation where she’d given him back his locket.
His brain filled with confusion, as his heart filled with pain. He’d been so stunned and hadn’t really understood it was over until she’d refused to take his calls—
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
Rehashing all that was foolish on so many levels that he took his coffee outside to the huge stone patio, pulled out his phone and called Wyatt to see how things were going in Idaho.
Reese Farrell relaxed her hold on Martin Smith’s foot and slowly lowered his leg to the mat before she lifted it again for the second of five stretches that she would do on each leg. Though the work was easy, it required concentration, which prevented her from thinking about Cade. How good he looked as an adult with his pretty yellow hair and piercing blue eyes. How his golf shirt displayed the muscles of his shoulders and chest and showed absolutely no sign of fat around his middle.
Cade’s dad grunted. “You know, it’s hard for me to breathe when you press my leg over my shoulder like that.”
She shoved the picture of Cade out of her head. After five days of coming to Martin’s house every morning, cooking him a healthy breakfast and helping him with his exercises, they’d created a rapport that allowed him to be grouchy and her to be sassy about it because they genuinely liked each other. Five years ago, he’d been the investment counselor who’d advised her on the kind of loan to get to start her business. They’d talked on the phone once a week for about a year, until her company had hit the point where it supported itself. So when he needed a home nurse, he’d called her. Rather than send an employee, she’d kept the job herself. They were friends. Friends who teased each other, but still friends.
“You know, if you’d lose that lump of stomach, stretching wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Nurses and trainers. You’re all alike. Always know what’s best for everybody while your own life is in shambles.”
She gaped at him. “My life is not in shambles. I run a successful home nursing agency.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. You’ve got some cash. Don’t we all?”
“No, Scrooge McDuck. Most people don’t have a lot of cash. Myself included. You’re the one who taught me to reinvest most of my profits back into the business until I hit the level of income I want.”
“Is that why you wouldn’t take ten minutes to talk with my son?”
She stole a quick breath to mask the shiver that rolled through her. She hadn’t seen Cade in so long there were times she could almost forget he was part of her life. Which had actually been for the best. The night she’d needed him the most, he was at Harvard. Not answering her calls. Probably at a frat party.
The emptiness of how alone she’d been that night still stung. It had taken him four days to call her back. Four days. An eternity to a teenager who’d been raped and needed to talk to the man who supposedly loved her.
By the time he finally did return her call, she’d been tongue-tied and confused. She genuinely didn’t know how to tell him that someone they knew had violated her in the worst possible way. She’d said nothing and he didn’t press, as if he couldn’t hear the pain in her voice and didn’t realize something terrible had happened to her. The few calls they had after that were filled with talk of his studies, his new friends and, of course, his crazy parents.
When he returned for Thanksgiving vacation, she’d given back his locket—a better symbol of their love, he’d said, than a ring—and he hadn’t argued. He’d shoved the necklace in his jeans pocket, walked away and simply never came home again. Not because of her, she was sure. Because of his gun-toting dad and crazy-like-a-fox mother.
And she’d been alone—facing therapy sessions that did help her recover—but still alone. When he’d promised—promised—he’d never leave her. He’d said that even away at school, he’d find a way to keep them close.
And the one time she really needed him, he hadn’t answered his phone.
Was it any wonder she’d put all that in a box of memories and never opened it?
“When we’re done, you’re having coffee with him.”
“I have other clients to get to.”
“No, you don’t. You told me that every Friday at noon, you’re off the clock because I’m your last client.”
She gritted her teeth, ignoring him.
“Come on,” he cajoled, then grunted again when she stretched his leg over his shoulder. “One cup of coffee can’t hurt.”
She said nothing.
“I always felt bad that you and Cade broke up.” He winced. “I might have been oblivious in the past, but even a small stroke makes a guy think. You dumped him because he never came home from university when my ex and I were throwing barbs at each other across Main Street.”
“And sometimes plates.” That wasn’t how their breakup had happened, but there was no need to correct Martin. He didn’t know the truth. Some fast action on her parents’ part and the county district attorney had kept the situation quiet. Plus, Finn McCully wasn’t sixteen. The court records had been sealed. Martin had no idea—no one in town had any idea—that Finn and his parents hadn’t moved away for a new job. They’d relocated so they could hide that Finn was in a juvenile detention center.
Martin laughed. “Yeah, we were nuts through that divorce.”
She gaped at him. “You cannot believe your behavior was funny.”
He sobered. “Everything is funny once a few years have gone by.”
Her stomach turned and she eased his leg to the floor, finishing the last of his stretches. Unwanted memories flitted through her brain—
Refusing alcohol from Finn, after he’d lured her under the bleachers at a Friday night football game.
The horrible realization that she was being followed as she walked home alone when her friend Janie veered off onto the driveway for her house.
The anger in Finn McCully’s voice—“You think you’re so special...”
She closed her eyes, pulled in a deep breath and dispelled the rest of the memory as it tried to form. She never let herself think about that night. She relegated it to a box as her therapist had told her and locked it tight, so it couldn’t hurt her anymore—
But the image of the box, though powerful, worked only to a point. The trauma and damage of being raped rippled through her life, manifesting as a cautious streak so strong and so tight her rules for dating and sometimes simply living were ingrained to the point she didn’t even have to think about them anymore. They subconsciously guided her life, her choices.
No one would ever hurt her again.
She took a breath, forced herself back to the present and Martin Smith. “Not everything becomes funny after a few years.”
“Sure, it does!” Martin insisted as he did his three-part maneuver to get his roly-poly self off the floor: get on all fours, hoist butt into the air, pull torso upright.
He let out a “Whew,” then said, “Cade never visiting probably was painful. But he was a kid trying to get control of his life. He couldn’t do that here with me and his mom making a circus of our divorce. Plus, over a decade has gone by. I think you two need a fresh start.”
“I don’t.”
Finn would have never come within ten feet of her had Cade been home to go with her to the football game. Even if Cade hadn’t been home, if he’d returned her call that night, she could have opened up to him, sought his support about her rape. But no. He wasn’t around Friday night or Saturday or Sunday. Her calls to him all went to voice mail.
When he finally returned her call, she’d frozen. Lost her nerve. Couldn’t tell him any of it—
Damn it!
She’d worked with a therapist to forget all this and one five-minute encounter with Cade in Martin’s foyer had it tumbling through her like an avalanche.
To get that memory out of her brain, she picked up the mat and rolled it, then remembered Martin’s physical therapist would need it and spread it out on the floor again.
Luckily, the doorbell rang. “And there’s Yolanda now.”
Martin huffed out a sigh. “Send her in.” He grinned. “Then go get that cup of coffee with Cade.”
She left without answering and walked to the foyer, where she opened the door for Yolanda. They shared a few pleasantries, then she grabbed her jacket and sneaked out without a goodbye to Martin or another word to Cade.
They had nothing to say to each other and all he did was remind her of the worst night of her life. So, no. She wouldn’t have coffee with him. If that meant not saying goodbye to Martin, so be it.
