The Friendship Series begins with The Billionaire’s Masquerade and concludes with The Sheik’s Beautiful Intruder. The series is available on Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Google Play.
Brianna stepped out of the cab while smoothing the embarrassingly clingy fabric down over her hips. She balanced carefully, not used to the four inch heels that were already making her feet ache. She handed the cab driver some money, making sure to not bend over too far. The ridiculously expensive dress she’d bought for tonight’s mission didn’t have a great deal of fabric to the tush area, an uncomfortable circumstance, but necessary to capture her prey. “Thank you,” she said sweetly to the driver. “Have a good night.”
At least it wasn’t a cold night, she thought, trying desperately to find a silver lining to her crazy adventure. The late fall weather meant that the humidity had left the air but it was an abnormally warm autumn this year. Thankfully, the night air still hadn’t cooled down to the point where she’d need a coat. It was coming though. She could smell something in the air, could feel the warm front moving out of Washington, D.C. and wool coats would most likely be coming out very soon.
The cab driver looked into the soft, green eyes of the beautiful woman and hesitated. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” he asked, not sure that this gentle lady was prepared for what went on inside this particular nightclub. He’d never been in there himself, but he’d heard rumors. It wasn’t open to the public and only the very elite knew of this place. It was where the wealthy of the world came to play and they partied hard inside the benign looking edifice.
Brianna warily looked up at the building, then back to the cab driver. Was she okay? She could honestly say she’d never been more frightened in her life. But fear was not going to deter her tonight. Turning back to the worried looking driver, she forced herself to smile brightly. “I’ll be fine,” she replied quickly, more to reassure herself than the cab driver. “But thank you for asking.”
With that, she turned around and took a deep breath, not sure what to do next. The building didn’t look like a decadent nightclub patronized by the decadently bored and wealthy. In fact, it looked like just a normal office complex, although it was very elegant looking.
“Coeur Tombe?” a tall, previously hidden man asked.
Brianna looked in the direction of the voice, startled to hear anything at all. The darkness seemed to be abnormally quiet tonight. “Yes,” she replied, relieved that she was in the right place after all. She’d been expecting a long line of people trying to get into the club, calling out to a heavily muscled bouncer, begging for entry. The streets were empty and she’d been wondering if she’d gotten her information wrong.
“This way,” the man said and opened the door, pressing a button that was basically hidden behind something on the cement wall of the building.
A moment later, a pair of doors opened up and a warmly lit elevator appeared. She stared at the interior for a long moment, her heart racing and her mind telling her to run down the street to the brightly lit diner at the corner where it was safe. Instead, Brianna stepped through the door and took a deep breath. Looking around, she noticed only one button instead of a series of buttons that would take her to the various floors of the building. The strangely silent man pressed that button and the doors closed. She was startled, not sure what the button might be for. It almost felt like he was signaling someone but that didn’t make sense. Who would he be signaling?
She found out a moment later when the elevator doors opened up again and she tentatively stepped through the next doorway. Instead of the peaceful, hesitant quiet of the night air outside, she found herself enveloped into a pulsating, throbbing darkness that was interspersed with flashing neon lights and a thick, blue and green mist rising from the floor somehow.
As soon as she took a few steps forward, the mist enveloped her legs, adding a sense of mystery to the eerie atmosphere. She looked down, astonished to discover that she couldn’t see her feet any longer.
So this was the fancy nightclub everyone was talking about, she thought as she stepped through the doors. There wasn’t a cover charge at the door like she was expecting. There wasn’t a big, beefy guard standing sentry. But there were probably hundreds of people, all glammed up and writhing on the dance floor, waitresses walking by with neon colored cocktails held high up in the air and a bar on each side with a well-lit backdrop, luring customers to the multiple bartenders where drinks were being served up with astonishing speed.
Her eyes took it all in, her mind whirling at how insane the whole atmosphere seemed to be. She took several steps forward, wishing desperately that her best friends Nikki and Rachel were here with her now. It was always terrifying to be alone at a bar, but this was beyond frightening. This was….mind numbing. Nikki would look at all of this insanity and make some joke, Rachel would grab her hand and squeeze it gently to give Bri some encouragement and then the three of them would find a corner, grab some drinks and make up silly stories about the other patrons. When the three of them were together, Brianna always felt invincible and had since the first time they’d met back in elementary school. They were alike and yet so completely different from one another. Their personalities complimented each other while their fears, hopes and dreams connected them almost closer than sisters.
But Nikki and Rachel weren’t here, she told herself firmly and squared her shoulders, digging deep inside of her to find some strength. In fact, her friends didn’t even know she was doing this. She’d kept her mission to herself, afraid Nikki would try and talk her out of it or Rachel would demand to come along.
This wasn’t a girls’ night out. Tonight was all about work, about breaking out of her comfort zone. She had a job to do and she had a limited amount of time in which to accomplish her mission. She had to do this on her own. As a reporter, she had been floating along, content with covering weddings and garden parties or any other fluff piece her editor handed out. If she had any chance of breaking out of the wedding circuit and being considered a real reporter, she had to take risks. She had to get out of her comfort zone and find some breaking news, something that would stun the newspaper readership and her editor with the incredible impact of her report.
She was tired of the snarky little comments about her work from the other reporters in the newsroom, teasing her about how she wasn’t a real reporter. Her editor wouldn’t give her anything but fluff pieces no matter how much she begged for something more substantial. He repeatedly told her that she was good at the fluff and should stick to what she did well.
So if she could just get one story, one fabulous report that would show her editor, as well as everyone else, what she could do, she would never have to report on the billowing folds of a wedding gown or the tantalizing curve of a tulip again!
This was her chance. And she was here tonight to hunt down her prey - none other than the elusive, illustrious and disgustingly wealthy Rocco Antoniv who was currently in town. Brianna was determined to reveal the real man behind the charming, suave billionaire. She’d been at his press conference earlier this afternoon, gritting her teeth as she watched him answer questions, charm the more hard core reporters with his wit and jokes. Sure, he might be an astonishingly handsome man with black hair and that scary, dangerous Russian allure as well as that sexy accent that probably sent shivers down other women’s senses. Not hers though! She’d been immune to that charm and sex appeal and his accent didn’t do a thing for her!
Okay, she might be lying just a tad. That accent had caused some flutters in her stomach every time he’d answered a question but she’d just told herself it was indigestion.
She’d watched him carefully during the press conference earlier today, trying to understand his personality, to give herself a better advantage at discovering his true nature. He was taller than the average man, but not scary tall like so many other people asserted. Of course, she was in the back of the conference room and hadn’t been able to compare the man to another person since he stood on the make-shift stage but he hadn’t seemed abnormally tall. As for the “buffness” everyone drooled on and on about? Who knew? He was wearing an expensive suit that looked nice enough, but she had no clue if the man underneath the clothes was muscular or just thin and well built.
He looked impressive. He had charm and humor, he answered all the reporters’ questions with intelligence and was able to control the room with ease. No one left offended and everyone seemed to think they “knew” Rocco Antoniv.
But she’d seen something in his eyes, something hard and unyielding. Even from a distance. As he answered questions about his latest project, she’d watched him carefully. He was hiding something. She just knew it!
There was more to this man than he was revealing and she was going to be the one to break it to the world.
She’d seen it in his eyes while he was talking to the others. There was something more to the reason he was here in Washington, D.C. Something he wasn’t telling the other reporters that they weren’t seeing because he had them all convinced he was just in town for a tedious museum opening.
Okay, so it was his museum! And it was possibly the most impressive museum she’d ever seen besides the Smithsonian. The extraordinary pieces he’d donated were astonishing. How a man only in his mid-thirties could have acquired so much wealth and so many significant historical pieces was not really much a mystery since the man was a financial genius. She’d researched his path to billionaire status and it was quite breathtaking. The man was ruthless in business, merciless about buying up one company after another and incorporating their products or intellectual knowledge into his empire. Everything served a purpose, everything was another piece of the puzzle that was quickly growing to an enormous picture.
But she just knew that there was more, that something big was happening. She could tell by the look in his strange, golden eyes, he was up to something. The museum opening was just a front.
She suspected that he was out to buy yet another company. And if that were the case, she was going to warn all the workers as quickly as possible about his eventual takeover. The man had come from nothing, being an orphan from Voronezh, Russia. He’d started buying up companies there, multiplying his wealth exponentially every year. No one could stop him. He came in, bought up a company that was hurting, fired half the staff and pulled all the others into his massive corporation.
If she could warn just a few of those people, then they wouldn’t be floundering to pay their mortgage next month. She had a duty as a reporter to not just report the news, but to help others with the information on which she was reporting. She’d seen firsthand what horrors could be wrought when someone didn’t have anything to live for. Her father hadn’t been able to handle life after her mother died of cancer and he’d lost his job. She’d only been five years old when he’d decided to take his own life versus….she stopped her mind from going down that path. She couldn’t think about her father tonight.
To that end, she found herself here, in this crazy nightclub where the women were showing more skin than they were covering, men and women were writhing to the obnoxious music and drinking alcohol at a rate that would put her in the hospital if she were ever to try it.
As she looked around, her entire body was tense, feeling abnormally insecure and self-conscious. She desperately wanted her friends here. Just someone to talk to or, at a minimum, help her feel less conspicuous. She looked around and felt like she was wearing too much clothing even while she was painfully aware of how short her dress was and how much it revealed. She never would be caught wearing something like this if she thought she would run into anyone she might know.
“Can I buy you a drink?” a man said, leaning close and blocking out some of the irritating neon lights.
Brianna jumped slightly and moved away from the leering man, irritated that he would even dare to approach her. Men simply didn’t do that to her so she wasn’t sure how to react when it happened now. Men hit on Nikki and Rachel all the time. Nikki was the pretty one while Rachel was the sexy one. Nikki was the one men approached, asked out. Rachel was the one men ogled as she walked by with her red shoes and a smile that challenged men. Brianna, on the other hand, was the quiet, mousy girl who preferred reading a good book to glamming it up and hitting the town. Not that Nikki ever noticed any of the men trying to get her attention. And Rachel simply ignored most of the men who panted after her. Nikki was too busy barreling through life to notice silly things like men and Rachel couldn’t be bothered, too intent on her job and her clients. Well, and her wonderful husband now.
Brianna shook her head, trying to keep herself in the present, remind herself that she was just as strong and capable and she had a story to hunt down. “I’m fine,” she told the stranger, trying to step around the still-leering man.
“Where are you off to?” he said, trying to block her path. “Let me get you a drink, we can dance and get to know each other.”
Brianna looked into his dark eyes and cringed. He was already plastered from alcohol and probably something more potent, she suspected. “I’m looking for someone,” she told him with what she hoped was a polite smile, yelling over the music that went from one vibrating, irritating song to the next, never stopping.
“You’ve found me!” he joked.
Brianna considered just smiling so she could get rid of him, but she was too irritated with him now. “I’ve really got to find my friend,” she told him and, with a firm hand, pushed his arm out of her way. When he grabbed her arm, she was already anticipating his move and her fingers twisted quickly. She might be naïve and scared about this new adventure, but she definitely wasn’t a wimp! Nor was she about to allow a stranger to take liberties with her!