Billionaire Unknown: The Billionaire's Obsession ~ Blake Read online

  He shot me a disappointed glance that made my stomach roll even more. “I’d never do that, Harper. That night meant a lot to me.”

  My eyes grew moist with tears as I realized how badly I’d judged him when he wasn’t guilty of anything except bad communication. And honestly, not picking up my phone when he’d called so many times was my fault. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Don’t be. We were dumb kids. I should have spoken to you myself.”

  I smiled weakly. “I didn’t make myself all that easy to find.”

  “You didn’t answer your phone,” he rumbled.

  “I couldn’t. I was…hurt.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me.”

  “I didn’t know you weren’t doing a gorgeous brunette the moment we separated,” I answered weakly.

  “I don’t know how you couldn’t tell that I was crazy about you,” he answered, his voice sounding slightly injured.

  “I didn’t know,” I confessed.

  Had I known back then what I knew now, I would have sought him out. Lord knew it had taken me forever just to keep myself from reliving that night with him every single day for years.

  The truth sunk in. I’d slept with US Senator Blake Colter, and not his brother Marcus. There were so many questions I wanted to ask him now that I had no real reason to hate him. He’d tried to contact me, and my feelings had been pretty raw back then. For years, I’d tried not to remember how betrayed I’d felt by the first man to show me sensual pleasure and an intimacy I’d never experienced again.

  “Blake,” I murmured, just to hear his name on my lips, testing it to see how it felt.

  “That’s the first time you’ve said my name since we were kids,” he answered with a grin.

  “I was mean to you,” I admitted reluctantly.

  “Yep. I liked Dani better back then. She was nicer.”

  I smiled back at him. “She always was. Running away was an eye-opening experience for me. I was a spoiled brat.”

  “Don’t expect me to argue,” he replied in a teasing voice.

  “I don’t.” I knew exactly what a bitch I’d been before I’d discovered the world didn’t revolve around me at the age of eighteen. Everything had been about me. Thinking about how I’d behaved as a child, and then as a teenager, made me shudder in horror. “I did grow up,” I assured him.

  “Beautifully,” he said smoothly.

  My face actually flamed with heat as his eyes traveled over me. I hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time during the last decade caring about how I looked or trying to catch a guy. My entire focus had been on my career and my cause to help the homeless.

  “So what do we do now?” I answered helplessly. “I’ve spent twelve years hating you. Well, hating Marcus, I suppose. Then suddenly, everything I thought was right is wrong. In fact, Marcus hardly even knows me. And I’m sure you hated me, too, since you never actually did anything wrong.”

  “I never hated you, Harper.”

  “Why? In your mind, I was blowing you off.”

  He shook his head. “I thought you were angry or disappointed that I wasn’t Marcus. I guess you had a right to be. I never told you the truth. But it never occurred to me to doubt that you knew who I was until you called me Marcus right before you ran into the house the day we came back from Denver.” He paused before adding, “I think I’ve been…waiting.”

  “For…?” I was prompting him to answer.

  “You. For another chance.”

  His answer threw me into a tailspin. I didn’t know what to say or what to believe. “It’s been twelve years, Blake. It was just one night.”

  “Maybe for me, that was all it took. I told you that night was special for me. I meant it. Maybe I wasn’t consciously waiting for you to come back, but I think some part of me has always kept some hope alive that I’d see you again.”

  A single tear dropped onto my cheek, and I mourned for what might have been had I not been so quick to jump to conclusions, or had I just once answered his call. I knew I couldn’t have a serious relationship with him, but maybe we could have been friends. Maybe the bitterness between us would have been resolved years ago. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry again,” he requested. “You have nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t realize until Marcus told me what you’d said to him that you’d seen him with somebody else. It would have hurt me back then. I’m sure it was painful for you.”

  I nodded as I swiped the tear from my face. “It did. I guess it was because you were my first.”

  “You’ll never know how much that meant to me, or how much it tore me up that you wouldn’t talk to me again,” he answered huskily.

  “I wanted it to be you,” I said in a barely audible voice. “I knew the feelings were right. I never regretted it, Blake.”

  “Even when you thought I was playing you?” he asked.

  “Not so much what had happened, but why,” I admitted. “I might have been destroyed when I thought you weren’t the man I imagined you were, and I thought my judgment had sucked, but I never really regretted what happened. It was all there for me. The pleasure. The emotions and the pure joy of being intimate with you.”

  “It was there for me, too,” Blake said hoarsely. “Deep inside, you had to have known that.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think I ever wanted to dig that deep after I hurt so badly when I saw you with another female. But I’m glad I know that now. I’ll never regret that you were my first. You made it perfect.”

  We were both silent, and I watched as Blake took a slug from his drink before setting it on the coffee table.

  Finally, he asked, “So tell me why you decided to try to save historic buildings and incorporate them in new facility designs—which I think is brilliant, by the way.”

  Soon after I’d become an architect, my name had gotten out there in my field when I’d done a design that saved the charm of a historic building, yet allowed for building around it to complete a much-needed structure to get the company progressing.

  History versus progress.

  Because the company was huge internationally, my design had become well-known. I had inadvertently become the go-to architect for large businesses that wanted to keep some of their history while adding the new facilities that were needed.

  I explained the beginning of my story to him while he listened intently.

  “You know your charity work is well-known, too,” Blake pointed out after I’d finished telling him about my architectural career.

  “They’re just buildings.” I built homeless shelters and supported them wherever I could. “It’s not like I need the money, and it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy anymore. I left that spoiled teenager behind a long time ago.”

  Honestly, I got more satisfaction from knowing I’d helped some people sleep warm and dry at night than I would having all that money sitting in the bank. My parents had been as wealthy as the Colters, and they’d left everything to me, Danica, and our three brothers.

  While our brothers had taken their money and started high-powered careers, Danica and I had chosen jobs that made us happy.

  “Don’t pretend like it’s nothing,” Blake insisted. “Most rich people don’t give a damn about the homeless.”

  I knew what he was saying was true. Some did. Some didn’t. I just happened to be a rich person who did care. “Most rich people don’t care about government service unless it benefits them, either,” I pointed out. “You do good things, too, Blake.”

  He grinned at me. “Maybe. When I don’t want to knock some heads together. It’s frustrating.”

  Considering the political climate, I was pretty sure the atmosphere in Washington was anything but pleasant. “I would have been happy if you’d beat some sense into the Congress members who
wouldn’t approve the funds for mental health care for the homeless,” I said lightly.

  “I tried,” he answered irritably. “Most people have other priorities.”

  Unfortunately, he was one of a minority who hadn’t opposed the funding. “We’ll keep trying to get it passed,” I said in a mock warning voice.

  “I’ll help you all I can,” he vowed.

  I was surprised how comfortable our discussion had become, like two friends getting to know each other again.

  Problem was, we were never really friends. We were just two people who’d taken pleasure in each other’s bodies when we were young and hormonal.

  Now, I was all grown up and terrified that my sister was never going to come back home. Unable to avoid the subject any longer, I asked anxiously, “Do you think Marcus and Tate will really be able to help Dani?”

  I could hear the fear in my voice, an uncertainty that was not natural for me.

  His gray eyes darkened. “They’ll try everything they have to get her out if she’s still alive.”

  That was the possible truth I didn’t want to utter, the one thing I couldn’t accept. “She can’t be dead.”

  I said the words because I desperately wanted them to be true.

  Blake rose and came to sit beside me, taking me into his arms like it was perfectly natural for him. “I hope she’s not.”

  The comforting tone of his voice finally made me crumble. I’d worried for weeks, wondering if Danica was still alive. The stress fracture in my heart finally cracked wide open, and I wept.

  Blake

  I felt fucking helpless because all I could really do was hold Harper in my arms as she sobbed out every bit of fear she’d held inside her about her sister’s safety.

  Hell, I couldn’t promise her that Danica was still alive. The international correspondent was in a world where nobody would give a damn if she was beheaded and bled out every ounce of blood into the dirt. Harper’s sister lived with that kind of brutality and reality every day while she reported from some of the most hostile destinations on Earth.

  The only hope I could give the woman in my arms was a small thing. “There’s no official news of her death. If rebels had her and killed her, I think it would be public by now. I’ve called every damn government official I know to get any news. There’s nothing, Harper. Not a single damn word about her fate. Right now, that’s actually a good thing.”

  Her heartbreaking sobs ended, and she rested against my chest as she asked tremulously, “You called?”

  “Of course,” I answered calmly.

  “Thank you for helping. You didn’t really need to get involved, and neither did your brothers.”

  “I wish we’d hear from the bastards who took her,” I answered irritably.

  To my disappointment, she sat up and swiped the tears from her face. “I haven’t heard a thing since they stopped communicating. That worries me.”

  It scared the hell out of me, too, but I wasn’t about to tell Harper about those opinions. This kidnapping hadn’t really become public, and I was hoping it didn’t. I wanted Marcus and Tate to be able to swoop in and out of there quickly. Dani’s best hope was a covert mission that didn’t draw attention to the incident at all. “I’ll hear from Marcus soon,” I assured her, keeping an arm around her trembling body.

  I hated this shit. I hated seeing Harper hurting and worried.

  “What if he can’t get in contact? It could be a remote area.”

  “He has one of the best satphones ever designed.”

  My brother had a satellite phone that could work nearly anywhere. In addition to being a thrill seeker, Marcus loved his spy toys.

  I felt Harper’s body relax. “Okay. So we wait.”

  Honestly, I’d rather be off rescuing than waiting, but I had a part to play in Dani’s rescue. “My family all knows what Marcus is doing. They’ve known every time we’ve switched. We might be identical, but our mom and siblings can tell us apart. Outside of the immediate family, it would be better if nobody knows I’m not my twin.”

  “I won’t say a thing. I promise,” she said in a strong, determined voice. “I’d do anything to save Dani.”

  “Including selling your body?” I asked with more than a little annoyance that she’d even consider that a possibility. But she obviously had since she’d mentioned it sarcastically.

  “Yes. If necessary,” she answered firmly. “And in my defense, I did think you were Marcus. I didn’t know what you wanted. So I guess you didn’t ever find another obnoxious virgin?”

  “I haven’t had anybody offer me up their virginity since you used me,” I joked, trying to get a rise out of her. She was so damn sad that I wanted to distract her.

  “I did not use you,” she answered indignantly.

  I laughed, a loud booming sound that hadn’t come out of my mouth in a long time. “Did you think I was actually going to be able to resist when you practically draped yourself over me, half naked? I was twenty-two.”

  “I was dressed in one of your shirts,” she answered defensively.

  “Yeah. And very little else,” I reminded her.

  “Okay, maybe I was a little inexperienced,” she admitted reluctantly.

  “Are you sure you don’t regret it?” Damn! I hadn’t wanted to ask that question because I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear if her answer changed. But for some odd reason, it was important that I hear her say she didn’t have any regrets one more time.

  “No.”

  Her voice was certain and sure, and I let out a large breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “Good.” I was pretty damn glad she hadn’t answered differently.

  “Do you?” she ventured hesitantly.

  “No, Harper. Back then, I considered myself the luckiest bastard on the planet.”

  “And now?”

  I grinned at her. “I still consider myself the luckiest bastard on the planet to have been your first.”

  “I’m glad it was you,” she said in a solemn tone.

  I sure as hell couldn’t say that Harper was the only woman I’d ever had. I’d been a horny little shit before I’d met her. But I could say being with her had profoundly changed me. After Harper, and the way I’d felt with her, no woman could ever touch my soul in the same way.

  Covetous emotions seized my heart, squeezing it like it was in a vise as I thought about Harper being with any other man. It didn’t matter if a dozen years had gone by without me seeing her.

  What in the hell was it that made me feel like she belonged to me just because I’d once made her scream and tremble in a violent climax?

  Seeing her again was making me lose my fucking mind.

  I stood up suddenly, worried that I couldn’t control my caveman instincts to drag Harper away as my very belated prize. Holy shit! I was a respected public servant, and all I could think about was getting Harper naked again and keeping her all to myself.

  “I’d better get back to my place. I’ve got some things to work on.” In truth, I didn’t have a damn thing to do right now except act like Marcus. But being close to Harper was dangerous for me.

  I felt like a completely different man when I was around her, and I didn’t have a possessive side. Well, I hadn’t thought I had one until I saw her again. Now I was fighting emotions I hadn’t ever been aware existed inside me.

  It was a pretty fucking scary experience to realize I had personality traits I’d never experienced before.

  Harper was emotionally drained and anxious about Danica.

  Now was not the time to be thinking about making her come until she screamed my name. And damn…did I want to hear that. I craved her like a drug, and everything inside me wanted to hear my own name while I was fucking her hard and fast, until we were both satiated and too exhausted to move.

  She jumped up off the
sofa. “Blake?”

  My chest ached as she said my name aloud. “Yeah?”

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  I didn’t want her to thank me. “You don’t have to thank me for doing the right thing.”

  “I think I do,” she murmured, moving closer and planting a light kiss on my cheek.

  I clenched my fists, keeping them at my side when all I wanted was to pin her up against the wall and nail her just as hard as I possibly could. Harper made me feel just a little insane, and I wasn’t sure I could control my primitive instincts.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I answered as I abruptly stepped out of her reach.

  “I’ll make sure I don’t give your identity away.” She hesitated for a moment before she asked, “Are you okay?”

  I turned to look at her. “Yeah. Why?”

  “You seem…uncomfortable.”

  Maybe because I want to fuck you more than I want to take another breath!

  I certainly wasn’t going to blurt out that little fact at the moment. “I’m fine. I guess I just want you to get to know…me.”

  At least I was telling her the truth. She’d always seen me as Marcus. I loved my brother, but I didn’t want to be him. Least of all to Harper.

  “I always knew you,” she answered. “I just never knew your name.”

  Maybe it sounded weird, but I knew exactly what she was saying, and it made me feel just a little bit lighter. “I don’t exactly enjoy being Marcus.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. Is keeping your own identity a problem when you have an identical twin?”

  “We’re different, even though we look alike.”

  “I know. I could feel the difference.”

  “Then you’re one of the few who can. Everybody else just looks at us superficially and assumes we’re just alike.”

  Not that there was anything wrong with my brother. In fact, he went out of his way to help the government by being a CIA informant because he thought it was the right thing to do. In his own way, Marcus did his own public service.

  I just didn’t like it when nobody saw us as separate individuals just because we looked exactly alike.