What He Needs (What He Wants, Book Four) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (5 page)

The statement was so simple, so clear,
that for a moment, I wasn’t sure what to say back.
 

“Nora?” I asked finally.

He flinched at her name, and his face set
again, and I was afraid his walls were going to come back up.
 
But then he nodded.
 
“Nora.
 
My father.
 
My
mother.
 
My brother.”
 

“Oh.” I wanted to ask him if his family
was dead, like Nora, or if it was something else.
 
But I could tell from the pain in his voice that it was
extremely hard for him to talk about this, and I didn’t want to push him too
hard.

“Are you close with your family,
Charlotte?” he asked me.

I thought about it.
 
“I’m close with my sister,” I said finally.
 
“My mother and I have a complicated
relationship.”

“And your father?”

“He died when I was sixteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”
 
It was the standard response I gave
whenever anyone said they were sorry about my dad.
 
It had never made sense to me, people saying they were
sorry.
 
How could they be so sorry
when they never even knew him?

“Charlotte,” Noah said, running his hand
up my side.
 
“I’m sorry about your
father.”

I just nodded, not trusting myself to
speak.
 
I sent a silent prayer that
Noah wouldn’t ask me how my father died, that I wouldn’t have to relive those
horrible moments, even just in memory.

“And your mother? What does that mean,
you have a complicated relationship?”

“It means that it’s complicated.
 
I love her, but I’m not sure I like
her.”

This made Noah smile.
 
“Why don’t you like her?”

“She’s made some life choices that I
don’t agree with.
 
And she expects
me to just accept her for them, and yet when I make choices
she
doesn’t
agree with, she has no problem telling me that I’m ruining my life.
 
Plus she remarried after my dad died,
and I don’t care much for my stepfather.”

“Why? Did he hurt you?” Noah demanded.

“What?
 
No.
 
He’s just sort of … an asshole.
 
I’m supposed to be going to his birthday party tomorrow
night.
 
It wasn’t a good night for
anyone, but he insisted on it because it had to be on his actual
birthday.”
 
I shook my head,
realizing what a baby I sounded like.
 
“Anyway.”

I reached out and touched Noah’s chest,
letting my fingers linger on his pecs, his shoulders,
his
abs.
 
Now that we weren’t caught up
in a frenzy of lust, I had time to feel him, really feel him, and appreciate
how firm and fit his body was.

“I’d like to go with you,” Noah said, his
voice serious and quiet.

My hands stopped at his biceps.
 
“To the party?”

“Yes.
 
If it’s all right.”

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound
nonchalant.
 
“That would be
nice.”
 

He nodded, like it was all settled.
 

I settled back into the crook of his arm,
and he pulled me against him and kissed me on the forehead.
 

“What time is it?” I murmured.

He rolled over and looked at the
clock.
 
“It’s almost two.”

“Crap,” I said.
 
“I have a meeting with Professor Worthington soon.
 
About your case.”
 
I moaned.
 
“I’m so not in the mood for that.”

“What
are
you in the mood for, Charlotte?” he asked,
pulling my hips into his.
 

I felt his erection against my leg and
shook my head, pulling away from him.
 
“You are insatiable,” I said.
 

“Only for you.”

“But if I’m going to get to my meeting on
time, I have to shower.”
 
I stood
up, suddenly bashful about the fact that I was naked, even though obviously
Noah had seen me naked and in many unmentionable positions.
 

I tried to keep the blanket wrapped
around me, but Noah reached over and grabbed at it until it slid into a pool on
the floor.

“I want to look at you,” he said.
 
“Anytime I want.”

I felt exposed and vulnerable as I walked
to the bathroom, but I loved knowing that he liked looking at my body, that he
was so turned on by it that he could get hard just by being close to me.

After I showered, I dried my hair and
dressed in some of the clothes I’d brought from my apartment.
 
It felt a bit weird, wearing different
clothes to see Professor Worthington than what I’d worn this morning, but my
other clothes were strewn about the kitchen, wrinkled and in no condition to
wear to a meeting.

When I got back into the bedroom, Noah
had pulled on a pair of drawstring pajama pants and was checking his emails on
his iPad.

“Will I see you back here later?” he
asked.
 

“Yes.”
 
I nodded.
 
“We
could…
I mean, we could have dinner?”
 
It felt strange, asking him to dinner
after we’d done things that were so much more intimate.
 

“Sure.”
 
Noah nodded.
 
“I
have some things I’d like to discuss with you, too.”
 
His eyes blazed, and I knew what he was talking about.
 
The BDSM stuff.
 
He wanted to talk about the rules, and
I remembered how he’d said that sex was just one part of it.

“Okay.”
 
I said.
 
I was
excited to learn more about what was expected of me.
 
Him telling me what to do, me having to live by his rules,
to exist to please him, to pleasure him, in whatever way he desired was a turn
on.
 
And now that he’d let me in a
tiny bit, now that he’d wanted to go to a party with my family, it just felt…
right.

I
did
trust him.

It wasn’t just words.

One of things that I’d learned about
being a good lawyer was that you always had to trust your instincts.
 
And my instincts said that Noah could
be trusted, that he wasn’t a killer

He was a good man.

The kind of man you could fall in love
with.

I was halfway out the door when my phone
buzzed.
 
I looked down.
 
A text from Julia.

We should talk.

I didn’t really have any interest in
talking to her, so I closed it out and decided to deal with it later.
  
But I noticed my phone battery
was about to die, and I rustled through my bag, looking for my charger.
 
It wasn’t there.
 
I must have forgotten to grab it in the
rush to get out of my apartment.

I walked back to the bedroom and poked my
head in the door.
 
“Hey,” I
said.
 
“You wouldn’t happen to have
an extra iPhone charger, would you?”

“In the drawer in the office,” he
said.
 
“If there’s not one there,
have Jared stop at the store on the way and run in and get you one.”

“Jared?” I asked, surprised.
 
“Your driver?”

“Yes,” Noah said, looking up from his
iPad.
 
“I won’t have you riding the
subway or taking a taxi, Charlotte.
 
It’s far too dangerous.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he held
up his hand to stop me.
 
“My
rules.”

I nodded, knowing it was useless to argue
with him.
 
“Where’s the office?”

“Down the hall, second door on the left.”

I hurried down the corridor and into the
office.
 
The room was painted in a
calming shade that was somewhere between blue and slate grey.
  
On the walls hung framed black
and white prints of the city.
 
A
huge marble desk stood in the center of the room, with a desktop computer
sitting on it, with a screen saver that showed the logo of Noah’s firm, Cutler
and Associates.

The room was beautiful and sleek, but it
wasn’t exactly the kind of room I’d want to do any work in.
 
There was nothing warm about it –
no half-full coffee mug on the desk, no family photos, no books on the
shelves.
 
The only bookshelf was
filled with books with covers in shades of grey and white to match the décor,
and the only other furniture was a dark oak filing cabinet and an uncomfortable
looking grey chair.

I crossed the room to the desk, opening
the drawers carefully one by one.
 
Everything inside of them was
neat, meticulous, paper
clips
sorted into little containers, binder clips neatly arranged, a
fresh pad of post-its and a full jar of pens.

But no phone charger.

I was about to leave and have Jared stop
at the store on the way, as Noah had suggested, when my eyes fell on the file
cabinet in the corner.
 
Could Noah
have meant the charger was in there?

I went over and tried the top drawer, but
it was locked.
 
The middle drawer
was locked as well.
 
But the bottom
drawer was open slightly, like someone hadn’t pushed it completely shut the
last time they’d used it.

I crouched down and slid it open, but it
was filled with forest green file folders, all of them hanging neatly.
 
I ran my hands over the labeled tabs,
wondering if they were cases Noah had worked on.
 
I wondered if he’d let me read them.
 
I’d been so focused on Noah as a
client, that I’d forgotten he was a lawyer in his own right, and a very
successful one at that.
 
I could
learn a lot from him.

I was about to shut the file cabinet and
head out when I saw it.

Her name.

Katie Price.

It was written on one of the file
folders.

It must have been a coincidence, I told
myself.
 
Maybe Noah kept files on
all his employees, filled them with performance reviews and that kind of thing.

My hand flew to the folder, and I pulled
it out.
 
I sat there on the floor for
a moment, just staring at it.

Don’t open it.
 
It’s not your business.
 
It has nothing to do with you.
 
You said you trusted him, and you do.
 
If it’s true, if you really mean it,
you won’t open the file.

But I couldn’t resist.

It was sitting there right in front of
me.

I opened it.

And gasped.
 
The folder was filled with pictures of Katie, shot from a
wide angle
lens from far away.
 
Katie leaving her apartment.
 
Katie coming out of a
coffee shop.
 
Katie walking
into a bar, dressed in a
halter top
and tight black
pants.
 
Katie
leaving Cutler and Associates.
 
Katie ducking into a cab.

Whoever took the pictures must have been
following her.

The back of each picture was marked with
a date and a time.
 

I flipped through the pictures, one after
another,
dozens
of them.
 
Finally, in the back of the file folder was a slim stack of
printed out pages.
 
Each one listed
where Katie was at a certain time of day, right down to the minute and making
note of the exact address.

Someone had been tracking her movements.

Someone wanted to know where she was,
every second of every day.
 
Someone
was figuring out her routines, so they would know where she was.

It must have been Noah.

I sat there, the horrible realization
washing over me.

I had thought I could trust him.

But the truth was, I couldn’t.

I couldn’t run from the truth any
longer.
 
Noah was a murderer.
 
And the sooner I got away from him, the
better.

The
End Of Book Four