Page 38 of Recruited By the Billionaire

But toward the end of their second month together, his trips out of town became fewer and fewer. So few that in one week alone they had spent three consecutive nights together. A record for Robert. And on the morning after that third night, he made a decision.

“Get up,” he said to her. “I want to show you something.” He kissed her on the lips and then began getting out of bed.

They didn’t have sex at all that night. They just wanted to hold each other. But also because Robert had been soul searching all night. He woke up several times throughout the night watching Frankie sleep so peacefully in his arms while he thought about where in the world could this possibly lead. And the very thought of it consumed him. He still didn’t have an answer to that main question, but he knew one thing for sure. He wanted her around him no matter what. And he had to look out for her. No matter what.

Why he felt such an obligation, he was still working out in his head. But he felt it stronger than he’d ever felt anything before. Francesca Clark was his responsibility. He just knew she was even if he didn’t know why she was. Frankie washis.

But Frankie was confused. “What do you want to show me?” she asked him as he got out of bed.

“Just get dressed, you’ll see,” he said as she heard him in the bathroom letting out his loud morning pee.

And she smiled. She was expecting a wham, bam, thank you ma’am kind of night, since she knew Robert had to go out of town yet again today, but nothing of the kind happened at all. He had been, during the entire two months of their relationship, a complete gentleman with her. He was treating her, up to that point, better than any man ever had.

But as she got up and headed to the bathroom, too, so that she could get dressed and prepare for whatever it was he wanted to show her, she kept emphasizing in her head that all was wellup to that point. Because everything was contingent on later. How was he going to treat her later down the road, when they were out in the public sphere together, when they were no longer under cover of darkness and in a secret relationship they both knew was best early on? Because if her past with men informed her future with Robert, she already knew she was in for a bumpy ride.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

RJ Marris stopped his Porsche behind the abandoned, long-shuttered shoe factory and waited for them to arrive. Everly was seated on his passenger seat, and she leaned back and put her feet up on his dashboard.

“Are you out of your mind,” he yelled at his kid sister and flung her feet down. “That’s stitched leather you’re flopping your dirty feet up on!”

“Oh please! You’re just copying Daddy anyway.”

It was no secret that RJ purchased a Porsche because his father drove a Porsche, although he purchased the sportier 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet rather his father’s Panamera 4 Executive. He even dressed like his father. But he would deny it to anybody’s face that he was in any way following in his father’s footsteps.

“This car cost way more than Daddy’s car,” RJ pointed out. “So who’s copying whom?”

Everly looked at her older brother and shook her head. She loved him to death, but he was so jealous of their father that it sickened her. “Who in their right mind would believe Daddy was following anything you’re doing? And a prime example is us out here in these boondocks waiting on these crooks. And we both had to ditch our security to pull it off. For what, RJ? Why are we even here?”

“None of your business,” he said. “You’re the one insisted on coming with me. I didn’t ask you to come.”

“I wanted to make sure you weren’t about to get into any trouble you would regret. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

“Get out,” said RJ. “Me and you both know the only reason you followed me was so that you could ditch your security for later. When you go off into the sunset of your mind with your druggie friends. So don’t even go there,” he said as an SUV with full tinted windows drove up. He unbuckled his seatbelt. “Just wait here,” he said, and got out of his car.

But what he didn’t understand was that Everly was nobody’s fool. Their father didn’t think that highly of her intelligent, especially after he gave her the job of being RJ’s deputy grounds supervisor when there was nothing much to such a job, and RJ didn’t think she had any brains at all. But she had plenty. And she had enough sense to slap a pen that looked like an ordinary pen that was actually a recording devise into RJ’s jacket pocket. And she turned on her cell phone to hear his conversation.

RJ got into the back seat of the SUV where the man he knew as Nelso Trabelsi sat.

“Figured it out yet?” Nelso asked him.

“I told you I would,” RJ responded.

Nelso looked at him. “How?”

“The night before opening day. All of the practices are over. Everybody, including security, have gone home. And I bring in the crew of my choosing to do a final sweep.”

“You always pick the crew?”

“For every late-night sweep before every game since my old man hired me two years ago, yes.”

“Every time?”

“Every time. This will be no different. Except I’ll bring in all your guys, and none from any of our contracted companies. They won’t know the difference. If they don’t get the call, they’ll figure one of the other companies got the call.”

“But wouldn’t the members of your crew that didn’t get the call get suspicious?”

“How could they? They’re all hired by outside contractors like I just told you. I decide which contractor I want to use for the sweep. I’ve decided to use you.”

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