“Heads up, I gave your number to a client that said you saved her life. Hope it doesn’t cause any problems.”
That didn’t narrow it down to anyone. And frankly, I didn’t much care either way. I’d take the call and then move on.
And then…I thought about it some more. This was very unlike Liam to just give my number out like it was a coupon to a local pizza shop.
Who would have contacted Liam to get in touch with me? It wouldn’t have been anyone overseas. There was only one client that I had worked with who could have had that connection, and it was when I went to Colorado nearly a year ago.
In that case, I didn’t even know the girls’ names. I had only gotten a request from Liam to come help him deal with a bastard by the name of Sean Price. The fucker had nearly kidnapped Kelly, Kelly’s child and her friend, but a well-aimed bullet to the skull ended that motherfucker’s life. And after that…
I disappeared. I wasn’t needed for anything else, so I made my exit. Didn’t leave much of a trace.
It was what I was good at. The rest didn’t matter.
Sometimes I crave a “normal” life.
But what the fuck was that normalcy? This was what I knew. This was what I was good at. This is what I devoted my life to. Anything else was secondary or a distraction. And feelings were certainly a distraction. Distractions that certainly crept up from time to time.
I packed my bags and made my way to the nearest airplane runway where, as Scott had promised, a plane was waiting to take me back to Connecticut. Just before I got on the plane, though, I checked my texts again. I had a new text from a 305 number I did not recognize.
“Hi, Burke. My name is Emily Lorne. A year ago, you saved my life. I would love the opportunity to thank you in person. I also have a lucrative job for you, very quick and easy. Can you come to Miami to discuss?”
That was not what I expected when I had read Liam’s text. Then again, it probably wasn’t fair to expect anything. He’d only said that he hoped it didn’t cause any problems, and while clients never had the fucking faintest idea what made for an easy job and what didn’t—nor did they often understand the definition of “lucrative” to us—it was in Miami. And if all went well, I could have a great time in Miami. Always loved my time there.
The only thing I’d have to do was make sure I got my nuts off before I saw this Emily Lorne. If she looked anything like the girl I remembered from a year ago, she was a smoking hot babe. A little older than I was used to, but that wouldn’t stop me. Hot was hot.
But a client was a client, and while Liam and Scott were free to do whatever the fuck they wanted, I was not. I had to find a beach babe that was submissive, fuck her brains out, and then meet this Emily gal.
“Pilot,” I said when I got on the plane. “Change of plans. Make way for Miami.”
No need to hope that this isn’t a repeat of Scott and Liam.
I’m better than that.
I will not fuck Emily, just do whatever her job is.
…and I’ll bet that’s what Scott and Liam said too.
Chapter 3: Emily
“Will be there at 8 p.m. tonight. Tell me where to meet you.”
When that text message came across my phone, I suddenly got really nervous. I was going to…
To, uh, what, exactly? Ask him to have sex with me so that I could have a baby? Tell him to jerk off into a cup at a sperm donor center so that I could be inseminated?
I had been so hell-bent on getting pregnant and hopefully doing it with Burke that I’d failed to consider any of the logistics. I didn’t know how much to pay him. I knew I’d paid Liam about a hundred grand to get Sean off my back the first time and had forwarded fifty thousand for him to “find” Kelly the first go-around, but this wasn’t exactly dangerous stuff. Well, not in the traditional sense, anyway.
I didn’t even know what I would offer to pay him other than that it was going to be a shitload of money, enough to make it impossible for him to say no. I was thinking a couple million, but it wasn’t like there was an industry standard for “give me your sperm and sign away parental rights to me.”
I felt like the equal of someone who would have asked for a meeting with the President of the USA, gotten it by some miracle, and had just then realized they had no plans for what they would actually say.
But all the same…holy shit. That stuff would probably take care of itself. I was finally going to meet the man. I was finally going to have a conversation with the guy who had quite literally saved my life. It was no exaggeration to say that without him, at best, Charlotte would be missing forever, and at worst, Sean would have come back and killed both of us.
If nothing else, I just wanted to see him and thank him for everything he did. Yes, I knew he’d give some glib line about “just doing my job,” but I didn’t care. He’d see how much it mattered to me.
And maybe when that
