Bad Wedding (Billionaire's Club Book 9) Read online

  “Go on,” Laila said when she paused.

  “So, I guess, I’m just thinking that piece doesn’t fit. The killing me piece. Dan thought it more likely that they’d try to kidnap me and force Jackson to hand over the program. Killing me gets them nowhere.”

  Laila nodded, navigating the car up a twisting road. “Okay, I’d agree with all that.”

  “The other piece that doesn’t add up for me is that maybe the Mikhailova’s behavior this morning wasn’t them being careless. Maybe they were told the team was coming in by someone on the inside and decided to act before that back-up came . . .” She trailed off, realizing that she was basically telling this woman she hardly knew that one of her co-workers might be a mole or, worse, a member of the Russian mafia.

  Laila was quiet for a long time.

  For a long, long time.

  For long enough that Molly started to get nervous, to begin considering options for tucking and rolling and getting the fuck out of this car if Laila turned out to be the one who’d betrayed everyone.

  “And now I’m wondering how all of us, how the people who do this for a living, could have possibly missed that.” Laila gripped the steering wheel tightly as they approached a huge metal gate. “We’ve been chasing shadows, dodging and trying to capture an enemy that always seemed one step ahead. And not once did I consider that one of us might be helping them.”

  “It might not be that at all,” Molly said. “I just bake for a living. It’s not like what I’m saying is anything other than a guess.”

  Laila rolled her window down, punched a code into the keypad, and the gate began sliding open. “It’s intuition. It’s logic. And it bears chasing down.” She hit the button to close her window, let the car move forward. “Because if what you said pans out, Molly Miller, then you may have just cracked a federal investigation.”

  “I—”

  “Do me a favor?” Laila glanced over.

  Molly nodded.

  “Don’t mention this to anyone but Dan or myself until we know for sure, okay?”

  Eighteen

  Jackson

  He woke slowly, eyes heavy, every part of his body feeling like he’d been run over by a train.

  But then his thoughts sharpened, focused into one thing:

  “Molly!” he said, voice hoarse, bolting upright in bed and then nearly collapsing right back down to the mattress when the bolt of red-hot pain shot through him.

  Soft hands on his face, a beautiful face he knew better than his own. “Shh. Jackson, I’m here,” Molly said, and helped him lie back down on the mattress. “Easy, baby. You’re hurt.”

  He didn’t give a shit about being hurt.

  He wanted to make sure she was okay.

  And that didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was being a martyr or sacrificing the things he wanted because he thought they were the right thing to do, that if he could be good or kind or brave enough then someone would love him.

  This wasn’t about the monster inside him—or in his case, the little kid who needed approval and understanding from his parents and then the world.

  This was about a man and his woman.

  A woman who’d had a red laser beam pointed at her chest.

  So no, it wasn’t martyrdom or approval-seeking. This was making certain that the woman he loved was unscathed.

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No,” she said, hands running carefully over his face, down his arms. “I’m fine. But, Jackson, you’re not. You need to calm down before you pull out your IV or something.”

  Frowning, he glanced down, saw that he was indeed hooked up to an IV, to several monitors.

  “Where am I?” It didn’t look like a hospital, not with the heavy drapes, the plush carpet he could see peeking out from beneath the bed, which definitely didn’t look like something he’d expect to see in an institutional setting.

  “Dan pulled some strings and had you moved to a private hospital.”

  His brows shot up.

  “Yeah,” she murmured. “Pretty plush for a hospital.”

  “Somehow, I didn’t expect this of the federal government,” he said.

  “I know,” she agreed. “When Dan said private hospital, I was thinking something more along the lines of beige walls and peeling paint.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jackson wanted to sit up again, to tug Molly down onto the bed next to him and hold her close, to physically feel her in his arms, to touch every inch, and reassure himself that she really was okay. But the burst of adrenaline he’d had upon waking was rapidly fading, and the pain was creeping back in.

  “What happened after . . .?”

  “What do you remember?”

  He shuddered, remembering the red dot of light, how it had danced across the embroidered chest of her apron, but the shuddering had him wincing, and then Molly said, “Never mind. Just rest, baby. We can talk more later.”

  No. They needed to talk more now.

  She needed to understand the shift that had happened in his mind. Who knew how much time they had, or if the mafia would come, guns blazing, into this hospital?

  “I love you, Molly,” he said, making sure it was the first thing he told her, in case the world imploded. “I loved you four years ago, but I love you now.” He sighed. “I know that probably doesn’t make sense, but I wasn’t capable of loving you then like I do now.” He took her hand. “You were right. I had something inside of me that kept me carefully separate from the rest of the world. It’s just not a monster . . . it was a little kid, wanting to be loved first, by his parents, then by you. But at the same time, I was too scared to accept that you could truly love me, not when the people in my life who were supposed to do that from day one, couldn’t.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “But you told me that you and your parents had a great relationship, that they had to work a lot, but—”

  “I lied.” He let his head fall to the pillows, exhausted, but knowing he had to make her understand. “I . . . they were neglectful. There’s no other way to frame it. I wanted to call it independence or building character, and I pretended it was for my betterment.” He laced their fingers together. “But it wasn’t. It was for their betterment. Their lives, their careers, even their friends came before me.” He squeezed lightly. “And I did that to you, when we were together. Partly because it was all I knew, a pattern to be repeated, but also because if I controlled our interactions, if I only let you into the carefully crafted pieces of me, then you’d love me and wouldn’t leave.”

  Her face was soft. “Jackson, hon. We don’t have to do this now. You should rest and—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “We need to do this now, because this morning I was getting up out of a stool, coming over to tell the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, the woman I love more now than I ever could before . . . that she was right. That I’d been hiding.” He lifted his free arm to cup her cheek, and it took way more effort than it should have. “And then I saw that dot on your chest, and I knew—I fucking knew that I’d missed my chance to tell you.”

  Yes, he was choked up.

  Yes, maybe it was from the drugs, from the injury.

  But also, yes, it was because he’d almost lost this woman again, and that was unbearable.

  “You done?”

  He chuckled in disbelief at the sharp edge of Molly’s tone.

  But that chuckle was short-lived because it was immediately punctuated by a groan. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I wasn’t trying to,” she snapped. “What I was trying to do was to get the dumb ass man that I love to rest after he took a bullet for me, after he almost lost his spleen and then spent several hours in surgery to control internal bleeding.” She pulled her hand free, paced away. “Internal bleeding!” she exclaimed. “Do you know how serious that was? How scared I was that I might lose you when we were finally finding our ways back to each other, and it was so much better than before?�
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  Hands on her hips, she spun back to face him and glared.

  “Mol—”

  Her jaw ticked.

  “You love me?”

  She softened, eyes gentling, fury disappearing from her expression. “Yeah.”

  “But Mol . . . you actually really do love me?” he asked. “The man who’s kind of a wreck, who’s only just figuring out that the way he’s lived his life for the last thirty years was shit? The same one who’s going to have to figure out how to move forward without repeating the same horrible pattern?”

  Her feet were silent as they trailed across the carpet, bringing her back to his bedside. “I love the man who ordered me llama-printed scrapers because he thought they would make me smile, the same one who remembered my favorite wine, who knows my preferred brand of ice cream.”

  She sank into the chair next to the bed, bringing their gazes more level.

  “I loved the man from four years ago, deeply, irrevocably, but this man, the who cares about my likes and dislikes, who gives freely, who tells me the truth even when it’s scary, and says he’s proud of me, this man has the potential to be loved so much more deeply.” She trailed her fingers over his jaw. “Because you’re not doing it to punish yourself or alternately, dolling bits of your heart out bit by careful bit. You’ve given me you. And Jackson, I know exactly how precious of a gift that is.”

  He was frozen. Her words washing over him, filling him to bursting.

  He was terrified and relieved, both in equal measures.

  Because they had a fresh start.

  Because he might screw up again.

  He lifted his hand, cupped it over hers on his jaw. “I’ll do my best to not fuck it up.”

  “Don’t you see?” Molly leaned down and brushed her lips across his. “Don’t you understand by now that neither of us is perfect? That we’ll both definitely fuck up.” Another brush of her mouth. “Plus, it’s the making up that will be the most fun anyway.” She straightened, smile escaping. “Only this time, I won’t have to throw sheet pans at your head to test your reflexes.”

  Jackson chuckled then groaned. “No more making me laugh, remember?”

  “I remember.” A beat. “Only, I’m so funny, I think that’s impossible.”

  He snorted but held back the laughter. “So, it’s this easy? We just declare ourselves and move forward?”

  “What do you mean?” Her head was tilted to the side in question and ridiculously cute. But then again, he found everything about this woman adorable, including her uncanny ability to throw large metal objects.

  “We had all this hurt and history and bad memories.” Jackson started to shrug but caught himself. “So, we just pretend it didn’t happen and move on?”

  “No.”

  He frowned.

  “We remember it. We don’t go back. We move forward and build something better.”

  “I can do that,” he nodded.

  She propped her head on her hand, resting her elbow on the bedrail. “I know you can.”

  “And you’ll be able to do it?” he asked. “You’re able to believe I’ve fallen back in love with you?”

  “You took a bullet for me,” she said matter-of-factly, though her eyes were warm. “I don’t think there’s much clearer of a gesture of true love.”

  His mouth tipped up. “So, I could have just done that in the first place? Get shot?”

  Molly sighed, shook her head. “You’re an idiot.”

  “I’m your idiot.”

  Another sigh, though this one was trailed by a smile. “I’d take your brand of idiot any day of the week, Jackson Davis.”

  “Good,” he murmured, lids heavy. “Because I’m not letting your brand of special go.” He let his eyes slide closed, sleep beginning to close over him.

  “Plus, baby,” she said, sounding just as tired. “I think the truth that neither of us were willing to admit a month ago was that years might have passed, but we both never stopped being in love with each other.”

  She was right.

  Though, that shouldn’t be surprising with his Molly.

  She had a knack for being right.

  But then there was no more thinking.

  Sleep tugged him under.

  And the events that were about to crash into them would prove that Molly’s knack for being right was even more honed than Jackson had given her credit for in that hospital room.

  Nineteen

  Molly

  Funny story.

  There were contractors that specialized in bullet holes and blood stains.

  Okay, so maybe that wasn’t funny per se, but it was interesting. And despite the bullet holes in the kitchen and her wall of ovens, along with two that somehow had ricocheted inside the walk-in to hit the Freon line and cause the whole thing to have to be replaced, the holes had been filled, the stains cleaned up, and the front of house had gotten a facelift with new tables, paint, and a larger glass case.

  All expenses she’d been planning on.

  All expenses she’d been planning on in a few months.

  But Dan had smoothed the way with the insurance company, and they were covering the replacement of the walk-in while the tab for the industrial cleanup of her kitchen was going to be covered by Dan’s budget for the venture.

  Which she was starting to suspect . . . okay, was beyond suspecting and had moved into near certainty, that Dan and Laila didn’t actually work for the federal government. For one, they seemed pretty free and lose with the rules—getting the insurance company to cover something they’d initially refused to, using their so-called federal dollars to clean her place up, the fancy private hospital, being able to install cameras and microphones that were absolutely undetectable, all in the span of a couple of days.

  Molly thought that meant they had big bucks.

  And she didn’t think big bucks and a federal investigation mixed, especially with all of the budget cuts she’d been hearing about lately.

  So yeah, she intended to press Dan for details, and use her instincts Laila had praised, to get to the bottom of the mystery.

  And soon.

  But right now, she was waiting for Jackson to wake up.

  He’d slept through the night, through the checks on his wound, his blood pressure, his temperature with a scary sort of intensity . . . as in, he didn’t groan or move or show any indication that someone was touching him. Instead, he just slept on, and it would have been seriously frightening if not for the fact that the nurses and doctor who checked on him were not concerned in the least.

  But Molly didn’t think she’d rest easy until he was back to feeling more like himself . . . and acting less like a Sleeping Beauty.

  Knock-knock.

  She glanced up and saw Laila was standing in the doorway.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yes, of course.” Molly closed her laptop with a sigh of relief. She’d been trying to weed through the spreadsheet Shannon had sent with the bakery’s finances while attempting to appear as though she weren’t counting every breath that Jackson took.

  Laila had a bag from a fast food restaurant in one hand, a tray with two coffees in the other, and Molly wasn’t going to lie, her stomach rumbled.

  Yes, it was fast food.

  Yes, she would have turned her nose up at it just the day before.

  But today, coffee paired with an egg sandwich and greasy hash browns sounded just about perfect.

  She reached for the bag then stopped when Laila held it against her chest.

  “This isn’t for you.”

  “O-oh.” Molly’s cheeks went hot. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  Laila grinned then held out the bag. “I’m just fucking with you. I’m guessing this is utter shit when compared to the stuff you make in your bakery.” She set the tray on the small table next to the bed. “Wasn’t sure how you take your coffee?”

  “Just black,” Molly told her. “I have enough sugar throughout the day.”

  Lai
la handed over a cup then proceeded to dump no less than six sugars and four little containers of cream into her own coffee. “What?” she said when Molly stared at her, eyebrows raised—because, seriously, Laila gave off tough, military badass vibes. She did not give off six sugars and four creamers vibes.

  “Nothing,” Molly said. “You do you.”

  Laila took a sip and sighed in pleasure. “I will. Also, let it be noted for the universe that I do not get enough sugar throughout the day, so I stock up on it first thing.”

  “Well, next time you’re in the neighborhood, and when our little mafia problem is solved, come into the bakery, and I can provide you enough sugar to jumpstart your system for the day.” She nudged the other woman’s shoulder. “I also promise that it’ll be tastier than a fast food coffee and breakfast sandwich.”

  Laila snorted. “Twist my arm why don’t you?” A beat. “You make croissants?”

  “Chocolate-filled and traditional, every single day,” Molly told her. “Flakey pastry, buttery layers—”

  The egg sandwich was an inch from Laila’s mouth, but at Molly’s words she set it back down on the paper wrapper and frowned. “No fair, Ms. Baker.”

  “Hey, I’m the one promising you tasty treats.”

  “But you’re not the one with tasty treats,” Laila said. “So, eat your breakfast sandwich, drink your coffee, and tell me when exactly you’re going to relax enough to sleep so that when this one”—she pointed at Jackson’s still-sleeping form—“wakes up, he won’t kill me or Dan for letting you run yourself into exhaustion.”

  “Um. That’s not . . . ” She trailed off when Laila’s brow lifted.

  Okay, so maybe she was counting breaths and freaking out about Jackson and the possibility of infection, or the chance of some stitch coming free and him bleeding out, or maybe that the surgeons had missed something—