The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 3 (14 page)

“Yeah, well, his secrets are big enough that even the most mature adult could be overwhelmed by them.”

“Then, that’s my business, isn’t it? Mine and Logan’s?”

I shook my head again, turning to stare at him. At least he looked properly ashamed. I just wish he’d looked that way before he did whatever it was that led to that look, to the affection I could clearly see had grown between the two of them.

“I knew this was a bad idea. I knew I should never have allowed—”

“You didn’t allow anything, Madison,” Annie said. “And it’s pretty arrogant of you to think you can control my life to that degree. You’re not my mother, no matter how badly you want to be.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, but I could see that it made no difference what I said now. She was already done listening to me.

“She’s tired,” Rawn said, moving up behind me and slipping his arm around my waist. “I should take her back to the hotel.”

I jerked away from him. “Don’t patronize me.”

Rawn’s eyes narrowed, and I knew I’d pushed my luck. Even Logan took a step back when Rawn grabbed my arm again and jerked me back against him.

“Thank you for the meal,” he said curtly. “We’ll show ourselves out.”

I waited until we were outside before I pulled away from him again.

“How dare you do that? You don’t have to cover for me!”

“Someone had to. You were acting like a fool in there.”

“He lied to me! Am I not allowed to be upset about that?”

“You’re more than welcome to be upset about anything you want to be. But questioning another couple about their private relationship? Yelling at your best friend about something you don’t even know all the details about, something you didn’t bother to ask her about? Going ballistic over a relationship that’s none of your damn business?”

“It is my business! I told him that she liked him. I told him that it wouldn’t take much for her to fall in love with him. I told him he couldn’t…” I stopped, as my own words played back in my mind. Anger and regret built in my chest until I couldn’t catch my breath. I stepped back, pressed a hand to the center of my chest. My muscles were suddenly all bunched up, my nerves registering pain in places that should not have hurt. “Not now.”

“What?” Rawn was instantly in front of me, his hands brushing the sides of my face. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He rushed me to his rental car and sped away, taking me straight to the hotel and the only things that could help now: my medications and a nice, soft bed.

***

Annie

“They’re arguing,” Logan said, turning from the kitchen windows that looked out over the driveway.

“Serves her right,” I said, dropping a handful of dishes into the sink before I finished the little bit of wine left in the bottom of one of the glasses. “She has a lot of nerve, yelling at us like that. She’s always thought she could control my life.”

“She’s just concerned about you.”

“But our relationship is really none of her business.”

Logan leaned against the table, watching me with that expressionless mask that was sadly becoming all too familiar to me.

“You’re lucky to have a friend who cares about you as much as Madison does. You are always her first thought, do you know that?”

I turned away from him. I knew he was right. I was lucky to have Madison as a friend. But that didn’t make her right when she tried to interfere in my relationship with Logan.

I picked up the bottle of wine and poured the last few drops into a glass, quickly swallowing that, too.

“What was she talking about?”

“What?” Logan asked, clearly distracted. He came up behind me and dropped a couple more plates in the sink. “I should go talk to Rawn. Do you know what hotel they’re staying in?”

“Why do you want to talk to Rawn?”

“I’ve caused enough trouble for him and Madison. I don’t want them to fight because of me.”

I looked at him, feeling a little incredulous. “What is going on between the two of you? What promise was Madison talking about? And what secrets do you have?”

Logan walked away. But I couldn’t just let him leave it at that. I needed to know what was going on. Why was Madison so focused on Logan? Why did she accuse him of breaking a promise? Why did she keep getting so irate whenever it looked like Logan and I were getting close? It had never bothered her before, my crush on Logan. She even encouraged it, albeit cautiously. So why this protest now?

“What was she talking about?” I repeated when I found Logan in the main hall, digging through the bowl of keys for something—probably the key to the beautiful Porsche parked in the house’s five car garage.

“If she wanted you to know, she likely would have explained herself.”

There was something about the coldness of his tone that cut through me more than the words themselves. I stepped back and crossed my arms, watching him as he continued to dig.

“What about your secrets? What secrets do you have that she knows and I don’t?”

“Don’t start getting all possessive.” Logan turned, the car keys in his hand. “What happened to, ‘All I want is one night in your bed?’ You got that. What more do you want?”

I felt as though someone had just shoved me into a frozen lake. I couldn’t catch my breath and felt like I was drowning, and my chest hurt so badly that I was pretty sure my heart had just decided to quite beating.

Logan studied me for a minute, completely unreadable.

“I’ll be back.”

He brushed past me, disappearing down one of the many long, dark hallways that led into the bowels of the house. After a measure of time I couldn’t begin to guess, I heard the roar of a sports car speed over the stones of the driveway.

He was gone.

Maybe I should take a page out of his book.

***

Madison

Rawn gently rubbed my calves, trying to relax the muscles that had suddenly decided to bunch up and tear at all my joints with undefinable pain. I’d taken a muscle relaxer, but it had yet to kick in.

“We should call your doctor.”

“He’ll only tell you to do what you’re doing,” I said, turning into the pillow to hide the tears that refused to obey my command to stay in my eyes. “I shouldn’t have taken that drive.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“Thanks.”

He shrugged. “It’s the truth…” He worked my calf a few minutes more then switched to the other. “You’re flying home on the jet with me tomorrow. I’ll have someone drive your car back to Portland.”

I’ll felt like I should argue, but the way I felt right at that moment…I was pretty content to face a slightly frightening two-hour flight over sitting in that car for fourteen more hours and face another night of this pain.

There was a knock on the door.

“It’s a little late.”

“I ordered some hot tea from room service. You’re always talking about how healing chamomile is, I thought it couldn’t hurt.”

“That’s thoughtful, but the muscle relaxer is starting to kick in. I don’t think I’ll be awake long enough to drink it.”

“Well, try to hold on until I come back.”

I smiled as I watched him slip out the bedroom door to the sitting room beyond. A minute later, Logan’s distinct voice drifted in to me. At first, I thought it might be a side effect of the wine and the muscle relaxer—that I was hearing things. But then I distinctly heard him say my name.

I rolled off the bed and grabbed the complimentary bathrobe to cover the shorts and t-shirt I was wearing, stumbling a little unsteadily toward the door.

“What’s going on?”

Rawn was immediately at my side. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“Why’s Logan here?” I said slowly, trying desperately not to slur my words.

“He was concerned he was causing problems between us.”

I tried to shake my head, but it kind of bobbed and weaved instead.

“You should go back to bed.” Rawn took my arm and turned me toward the bedroom. “You’re going to fall down.”

“Is she okay?” Logan asked.

“She took some medication,” Rawn started to explain, but I chose that moment to move away from him and nearly landed flat on my face because of it. “Madison—”

“I’m fine,” I said, holding up my hands so he could see how fine I was. I turned back into the sitting room and was going to sit on the couch beside Logan, but when my feet refused to land on the floor where I wanted them to, I fell into a chair that was closer to the bedroom.

Rawn stared at me a minute. Logan looked from him to me and back to him. Rawn finally shrugged and came to sit on the couch.

“Where’s Annie?”

Logan rubbed his palms on the legs of his jeans. “The house.” He glanced at me. “We kind of had words before I left.”

I wanted to say I wasn’t surprised and I hoped he had set her straight on everything, including his secrets, but I was afraid it wouldn’t come out clearly.

“You said you wanted to talk to me?” Rawn started.

Logan nodded. “I thought it was time I came clean with everything that’s been going on. I don’t want my stuff to come between the two of you, not when Madison’s been such a good friend.”

Rawn reached over and touched my hand, but he didn’t say anything.

“She’s been keeping a secret for me,” Logan began, wiping his hands on his jeans again, like a rebellious kid sitting in the principal’s office. “Annie told me about Madison’s sister, about her MS. And then I had that seizure and it kind of freaked me out. I thought Madison would be the one person who would understand why.”

He looked at me—and I must have been a sight with the muscle relaxer pulling my facial features all out of whack and leaving me feeling as though I’d had much too much to drink. I lifted my hand to brush a piece of hair out of my face, but it wouldn’t obey my command and ended up flopping back onto the chair’s arm. Such an example I was.

“I asked for her at the hospital because I needed someone to know the truth since I knew it would impact the way the doctors treated me. But I didn’t want to just tell some random nurse who might leak it to the press. And then I started to feel the effects of the drug—I’ve had oxy before, I know what it feels like—and realized what must have happened. That’s when I knew I had to get out of there before the doctors could do their tests and find it in my blood stream, along with all the other medications I take.”

“Medications?” There was a certain level of surprise, but also skepticism in Rawn’s voice. “Aren’t you—”

“A recovering addict?” Logan chuckled. “Can you believe there was once a time when it seemed preferable to be seen that way than to let the world know the truth?”

“And the truth? What’s that?”

Logan looked at me, and I managed an encouraging nod that didn’t go too awry.

“I have what’s called Wilson’s disease. It’s a condition where too much cooper builds up in the bloodstream, and it can cause a whole array of neurological and mental symptoms.”

“Oh, wow,” Rawn said softly.

“It turns out that I was adopted. My biological mother tracked me down some years ago while I was a student at Princeton just so that she could tell me about my family history of Wilson’s. It killed her grandmother and her mother, and she was pretty sure it had affected several cousins and aunts, as well. She said she didn’t put the information in the adoption paperwork because she didn’t want me to end up in an orphanage, unwanted by prospective adoptive parents. By then I was at the age where the symptoms often begin to show up, and she thought I should know.”

Logan leaned forward, not looking at anything except maybe the creases on his knuckles. “I had this huge falling out with my adoptive mother over the fact that she never bothered to tell me she wasn’t my biological parent. And then I came to Hollywood after consulting several doctors and learning that this disease is almost always debilitating later in life. I thought I could work as an actor for a few years, make a good amount of money, and then retire in obscurity.” He chuckled again. “I was pretty naïve.”

“The rehab stories?”

Logan glanced at Rawn before focusing on his hands again. “I was on the set of that space movie one day and I tripped over my own feet. And not in a comical, I-wasn’t-paying-attention sort of way. I literally tripped over myself. Then, the next day, one side of my body simply wouldn’t respond. I called my agent—who already knew about my potential diagnosis—and he got me admitted to a private hospital where my doctor was able to treat the symptoms and start me on the medications that reduce the cooper in the blood. But it took a while to get all the dosages right and to deal with the side effects. So, when the press began to wonder where I was and why the movie production had been delayed, my agent said we could tell them it was either a drug addiction or a mental illness. I figured drugs were the most benign of the two.”

Rawn studied Logan with a new appreciation in his eyes.

“I told Madison that day at the hospital in order to get her help in dealing with the doctors, but I made her promise not to tell anyone. That’s why she’s been acting so—”