Free BILLIONAIRE (Part 7) by Juliette Jones

 
     
     
     
     
     
    BILLIONAIRE
    Part
7
    $
    by
Juliette Jones
     
     
    Copyright © 2013 Juliette Jones
    All rights reserved.  No part of
this work may be reproduced, distributed or scanned in any electronic or printed
form without permission.
    BILLIONAIRE is a work of fiction.  The
characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.  Any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely
coincidental.
    Cover art photo used under license
from Shutterstock.com
    First Edition: November 2013
    $
     
     
    BILLIONAIRE (Part 7)
     
    Lila
     
    He
looked so much like Alexander.
    His
hair was a glossy dark brown instead of midnight black and his expression was
less controlled, more youthful in the emotion it revealed.  But no less
intense.  Alexander’s intensity was disciplined, masked by cool, skillful
awareness.  Jake’s was wilder, much closer to the surface.
    And
I could read the thoughts running through Jake Wolfe’s mind as his rapt gaze
locked onto me.  A few of his friends laughed and called to him, throwing out a
lewd comment or two as he shut them out, focusing his undivided attention on me. 
He was shocked to see me here, intrigued and also wary, not of me but of
everything around me.  Like Alexander was, too: protective in an over-zealous
way.  I understood this.  Maybe that’s what childhood traumas do to a person
and the people who care about them, who know about the layer-upon-layer of
damage inflicted.  You get wary.  You get suspicious and distrustful.  You end
up morphing into a hyper-vigilant mess of untouchable yet deeply vulnerable
paranoia.
    I
had no idea what Alexander had told him about us, about the extent of our
fiery, immediate bond.  Whatever Jake knew or didn’t know, he was already
dedicated to the job at hand.  Clearly, caring for his brother’s “assistant,”
found as she was – alone, drenched and half-clad – was now his most pressing
priority.  He approached me, spearing me with a stern, searching expression.
    At
first I thought I was imagining him.  Like my wishes had taken form.  But then,
if wishes came true it wouldn’t have been Jake Wolfe who was standing next to
me in this almost-seedy bar on a rainy, red-tinted night.  It would have been
his brother.  Reassuring me and making promises that might somehow heal my
brokenness.
    Jake
looked bigger than I remembered him.  His black leather jacket was well-worn
and added to the barely-there flicker of danger he exuded, the one I’d detected
the first time I’d met him.  The aura of his darkhorse demeanor was even more
pronounced tonight.  He was, like his brother, a stunning-looking man.  His
irises were so dark they looked black, like Alexander’s, and his eyes were
shadowed with that bruised vulnerability I recognized.  He looked like a
badboy.  A successful one.  One with a turmoiled past and maybe even a record. 
I couldn’t help thinking that if Jake Wolfe didn’t have an older brother who
guided him, employed him and bankrolled him, he’d probably either be in jail or
holed up in a mansion as an heiress’s moody gigolo.  His eyes sparked with a volatile
unpredictability.  In his world, this glimmer promised, rules didn’t apply.
    Jake
pulled out a chair and sat down next to me, his eyes taking in every detail of my
clearly-distressed state of mind and my borderline-inappropriate state of
dress.  It was the concern in him that made me want to climb onto his lap, to
drink in the shelter of him.  He could take me back to Alexander.  He could
buffer me from the cold winds of my fear and my loneliness.  At the same time,
I felt the conflicting urge to run away from him as though my life depended on
it.
    My
sense of equilibrium hadn’t exactly fled me, but instead was shadowed by a
spiked recklessness, like my survivalist instinct couldn’t quite tell which way
was up.  Jake’s resemblance to his brother affected me as a visceral, physical longing. 
I