Her Superhero Lover: A BWWM BBW Billionaire Superhero Romance (8 page)

"Oh? Didn't know you knew Jim," Renee deadpanned,
referring to Jim "BeatzTown" Garland, one of the other
popular acts in San Diego. He and Renee had once been friends before
professional jealousy had caused him to get snippy with her. "He'll
appreciate the publicity."

"Wise ass," Grady cracked, before whispering. "Okay,
show time."

Coming into the grand ballroom, the first thing that struck Renee
was how purple everything was. Not only the flowers, but the lighting
and the tablecloths all were various shades of purple. The walls and
ceiling had gold and red highlights, leaving her feeling like she was
back in time. "I swear, if Julius Ceasar shows up talking about
crossing the Rubicon, I would not be surprised in the least,"
she whispered. "I feel like I should be wearing a toga."

Grady nodded but didn't answer, instead leading her towards a group.
"Marcus, Sophia!" he greeted two of them, extending his
hand. He shook hands with a black haired man and traded air kisses
with a middle aged, slightly overweight woman, both of them looking
like they were in their late thirties or maybe early forties. "How
are you doing?"

"The golf game's going well, but my putter seems to be wonky
right now," the man replied as he shook Grady's hand. "How
about you, Voelker?"

"Well, you know how it is, I never can get my chip game good
enough to really have to worry about my putter too much. By the time
I've hit the green I'm already over par, so it doesn't really matter.
Marcus, I'd like to introduce you to my date for this evening, Miss
Renee Williams."

"Ah, the DJ I read about in the paper," Sophia said,
extending one bejeweled hand. "Sophia Rutledge. It's a pleasure.
This golf obsessed buffoon next to me is my younger brother, Marcus."

"Thank you, it's nice being here," Renee said. "I
must admit though, I'm totally lost when it comes to discussion of
golf or anything like that. The only golf club I've ever held is a
putter over at a mini-putt range."

"I wouldn't concern yourself with it, dear. It's a horribly
expensive waste of time, in my opinion," Sophia replied. "The
only reason I let Marcus indulge in it is it lets me get on with the
real family business."

"Which is?"

Sophia looked almost insulted that Renee didn't know who she was,
but Grady saved her. "Marcus and Sophia own two hospitals in the
city," he said, taking her arm. "Apologies Sophia, but my
girlfriend is one of the healthiest people I've ever met. I don't
think I've ever seen her even sneeze."

Leading her away, he smiled sheepishly at her. "Sorry. Marcus
is okay, but when Sophia is having one of her moods, she can be a bit
difficult to deal with."

"I can tell. And they are your friends?"

Grady shook his head. "Hardly. Honestly, I can't call any of
these people my friends. They're business partners, social
acquaintances, sometimes rivals, and a few I might even call my
enemy, but no, nobody here is my friend."

Renee thought about it, things falling into place. "It's kind
of like some of the people in City Heights," she said as they
made their way over to the hors d'ourves table. "When I was
growing up, there were a lot of hustlers, pimps, drug dealers and
gangsters. Watching them, I learned a lot about how those groups
operated. Later on, I remember watching National Geographic and
seeing a special on how supposedly young people join these groups in
order to find friends and acceptance, a family. But what I remember
was different. Everyone was distrusting of everyone else. You trusted
your own group just enough to know that if another gang came by,
they'd draw down on them before they drew down on you. But real
friends? No. A lot of homies, bloods, cuzzes and niggaz, but no
friends."

"Sounds like the Heights and Del Mar aren't all that
different," Grady said. "Just the weapons are a bit
different, that's all."

The event started with an hour of hobnobbing and schmoozing. Renee
quickly felt lost, as comments went over her head, perceived slights
were ignored, and through it all Grady seemed to deliver as good as
he got. More than once she saw the tightening of the eyes or the
slight flaring of the nostrils that told her whatever it was Grady
had just said, it had angered the other person, while at the same
time amused the other people around them, or at least was an
unreturnable comment.

She honestly tried to keep up. However, she quickly felt like a
toddler stomping around in her mother's high heels while pretending
to be an adult. Every verbal step she took felt awkward and wrong,
either too much or not enough. If she didn't say anything, at least
she could pretend that whatever was said didn't affect her, or she
could hide behind a polite smile. It was a flimsy defense, and when
they finally sat down for dinner, she was on edge. Their table was
shared with four other people, one of whom she recognized, the
television reporter Maria Mendoza from Action Five. "Maria, it's
good to see you again," Grady said, leaning over to whisper in
Renee's ear. "Don't be jealous, I didn't arrange this. But I
dated Maria for a few weeks back when we were in high school."

"Okay," Renee replied, not surprised but also not jealous.
It wasn't like she expected to go her entire time with Grady without
meeting at least one ex-girlfriend of his. "It's nice to meet
you, Miss Mendoza. I enjoy watching your work on Action Five."

"Really? Thanks," Maria said, giving her the first genuine
smile she'd seen all night. "I have to admit, I caught one of
your shows last year, it was really good. When I saw that you and
Grady were seeing each other, I was surprised, but then again, him
and I were an unlikely pair for a while too. Sorry Grady, did I let
the cat out of the bag?"

"Hardly Maria," Grady
said with a well worn groan. "I do think though I'm going to get
a t-shirt for these events that says
Yes, I did date Maria
Mendoza for three weeks.
It
would save a lot of time."

Maria chuckled and shook her head. She leaned over, closer to Renee,
and lowered her voice. "To be honest, I love just getting his
goat like that. The unflappable Grady Voelker, taken down by a woman
like me. It's fun."

"Well, he is cute when he's turning red," Renee said back,
smiling at Grady. Sitting up, the two women smiled more comfortably
than she had all night. "By the way, I've really been enjoying
your series on The Horseman. How'd you get the story?"

"Honestly? Pissed off my editor," Maria said. "He
wanted to assign me to a muckraking story, but one of the companies
involved is my grandfather's. I couldn't do that, and I told him to
keep his lies to himself. Because of that, he put me on the crank
story beat for a month. The Horseman story just dropped into my lap
while I was on that desk, and I ran with it. To be honest, that video
of him doing his thing really made the story, and took the story from
one local interest piece to real news. With it already in my lap, my
editor couldn't pull it from me without a real reason, and he didn't
have it. I'm looking forward to him really eating crow when the
SCalies come out in December."

"SCalies?" Renee asked, puzzled.

Maria nodded, not offended in the least. "Southern California
News Media Association Awards. They tried calling them the SCNMAAs,
but calling an award something that sounds like a cross between skin
and enema just didn't work. So, SCalies it is. Still a stupid name,
but who knows? I may get out of San Diego and into one of the
national beats from The Horseman. My agent already got a call from
MSNBC."

"Wow, best of luck," Renee said. She could see Maria on
cable news, she had the looks that the stations wanted. However, she
didn't look the MSNBC type, in her opinion. CNN or FoxNews with their
trend towards knockout news anchors was more her guess. "So any
guesses as to who The Horseman is?"

"None," Maria said. "I'll be honest, I've had to edit
some of what I've put on the air about him as it is. I mean, some of
the stories I've heard, they say he could fly. If I put that on the
air, you know I'd be back covering dog adoptions and other hard
hitting news before the show even finished. Until I get video of this
guy doing anything other than kicking street gang ass, I'm playing it
very conservatively in what I say. But yeah, I'd love to meet him
some day. To be able to interview a real life superhero? If he's half
the man some of these stories say he is, he'd make the Olympic
decathlon champion look like a first grader playing against the NFL."

"Perhaps some day you will talk with him," Grady said,
"but I think they want to start the auction."

The auction turned out to be more fun that Renee had expected.
Starting with the lower value items (her session, unfortunately, went
third in the auction. On the other hand, she did get five thousand
for it), each item was brought up, with the main rules being that
nobody could bid on an item they themselves had donated. There was
apparently some sort of top donor award up for grabs, and the
organizers didn't want someone to bid themselves into the award.

Grady joined in on some of the bids, never actually winning any but
driving up prices on items she knew he had no interest in just to get
others to bid more. One time, she leaned over to him as he raised his
hand, increasing the bid on a steel and copper sculpture and
whispered in his ear. "That is the ugliest damn thing I've seen
all year. It looks like a dog met a Mack truck while it was hunched
over pooping."

"I know," Grady said
soto
voce
. "But Sophia doesn't
want to lose to me, and the guy who donated it is actually a decent
person. So, I'm going to drive the price up to about seventy five
thousand, then drop out."

His instincts were perfect, as she could see Sophia wince as she
raised her hand, agreeing to eighty thousand for the ugly chunk of
metal. She turned to congratulate Grady on his adept bidding when
suddenly the main doors to the banquet hall exploded in a hail of
fire and smoke. "Good evening ladies and gentlemen!" a man
bellowed over the surprised cries of the group. He was short, maybe
five foot seven, and wore a Guy Fawkes mask with his black military
style clothing. With him he carried a pump action shotgun, while the
three others with him had submachine guns. "I'd love to say I
represent some revolutionary group that is here to alleviate the
world of the one percent or something, but the reality is me and my
boys are just here for the money. So if you all sit down and shut up,
nobody gets hurt."

Renee couldn't help but notice that somebody already was hurt, a
waitress who was holding her arm and crying out weakly. She looked
like she may have been caught by the blast of the door, or perhaps a
piece of shrapnel, she wasn't sure which. "What should we do?"

"Exactly what he says," Maria replied. She reached for her
purse, laying it on the table. "I know about these guys. They've
taken down quite a few jobs in the area over the past six months. And
yes, they'll use those guns."

Renee nodded, and laid her hands on the table. The gang went around
gathering cash and certain jewels, tossing them all into messenger
bags. Things were going well until someone, Renee couldn't tell who,
started arguing with one of the gang members about taking his gold
ring. He struggled with the gunman, wrestling over his weapon until a
short burst of shots rang out, the hall filling with screams. Renee
felt something hit her in the chest, and darkness swallowed her up.
The last thing she saw was Grady kneeling over her, his face filled
with fear and concern.

The first thing Renee was aware of was a bright light in her eyes.
She wondered if she was dying, and it was the fabled 'light at the
end of the tunnel' so many near death experiences talked about. She
didn't think so, after all she was cognizant of her body. At the same
time however, she didn't think she was in a hospital. It had been
years, but she'd been in hospitals before, and the one thing she
remembered was the constant electronic and machine noise. Whether it
was ventilators hissing, heart monitors beeping or just the constant
sound of squeaky shoes on linoleum, she had never known a hospital as
quiet as she thought it was right now.

"Renee?" a voice asked, and it took her a moment to place
it. It was a familiar voice, one she had come to enjoy, one she had
come to trust. She thought it was one she could say she had even come
to love..... "Renee? It's Grady."

Grady! Of course! Her eyes snapped open, only to blink shut again at
the bright intensity of the overhead fluorescents. "Where am I?"
she said, reaching up to shade her eyes. "What happened?"

"You're in my lab," Grady replied, standing next to her.
She looked down, and could see that she was still in the cocktail
dress from before, but Grady had ditched his coat somewhere. "I
brought you here after you got shot."

"Here?" she asked,
looking around. The lab was done in eggshell white, and looked like
something out of a futuristic computer lab. She thought it kind of
looked like the starship
Enterprise
.
"If I got shot, why'd you bring me here, and not to a hospital?"

Grady came around to sit beside her, and she could see the blood
that still soaked his shirt. "Is... is that my blood?"

Grady looked at his shirt and nodded. "You were hit in your
aortic arch. After the shooting, the gang ran like hell, and I jammed
a popped balloon into the wound. I carried you out of there, saying
you couldn't wait for an ambulance, my Lotus was faster. I brought
you here because even in the car, you technically died on me. I heard
your heart stop, and even though I did everything I could, you were
dead for four minutes before I could get you on the table. I was
desperate, and did the only thing I could."