Going Down Fast (Billionaire Bad Boys 2)

And to his credit, he didn’t try and convince her to let him handle the handoff on his own despite his feelings on the matter. Her respect for him multiplied each time he allowed her the space to grow and to be herself. Each time he proved how different he was from his brother.

She couldn’t deny she loved the man. Considering the depth of her feelings for him for years, she hadn’t had a long way to fall. Trusting the feelings was another story, but all she could do was take things one day at a time and hope nothing happened to cause a seismic shift in the happiness she was currently experiencing.

“Ready?” Lucas asked as they met up at the front door.

“As I’ll ever be.” She held out the USB drive.

He eyed it warily but didn’t ask for her to hand it over to him. Hands linked, they took the elevator downstairs and stepped out into the bright sunshine of the cool November day. The man Lucas had hired as security stood in his dark glasses by the revolving door to the building.

Maxie shaded her eyes and looked down the street while Lucas glanced in the opposite direction.

“Figures. No sign of Bernardi,” she muttered.

“There’s always this afternoon,” Lucas said, sounding as fru

strated as she felt.

He pulled his car keys from his pocket. “Let’s go back inside and get my car.” They’d need to take the elevator down to the parking garage below street level.

Lucas nodded to the security guard, and he turned to follow them inside.

Maxie took one last look down the street as Vincent Bernardi strode out of the market on the corner. “Lucas, wait. There he is.” She pointed directly at the big man, her stomach turning over as he met her gaze and started walking toward them.

Lucas put up a hand, indicating the security guard shouldn’t step in.

“Are you looking for me?” Bernardi said as he walked up to them, coffee in hand.

“Possibly. First I want to know what your plan is once you have what you came for,” Lucas said.

Maxie was only too happy to let him lead the exchange. She wanted to be here in person. She didn’t care if she ever spoke to the man again.

Bernardi frowned. “None of your damned business. I’m assuming from the way you were looking around for me that you have my property?” He glanced at Maxie.

She straightened her shoulders and nodded. “I found the flash drive.”

He extended his arm palm up. “Hand it over.”

Lucas stepped forward, pushing Maxie away from him. “First I want your word we’ll never see you again.”

Bernardi let out a chilling laugh. “That’s your issue? Man, hand it over and I’m out of your life for good.”

She shoved her hand into her pants pocket and pulled out the drive, smacking it into his beefy hand. He accepted the drive and walked away. Out of their lives for good.

* * *

A week had passed since Maxie had turned the flash drive over to Vincent Bernardi. She couldn’t help but keep a lookout, check all the usual corners and places he’d been lurking. But no one was around, no tail, no big man making his presence known. He had kept his promise and disappeared.

Still, Lucas had kept the security detail on Maxie and his family through last night, until he finally felt comfortable letting them go, and she appreciated him being extra cautious. But she could finally breathe easily on that score, at least.

There was another matter that had her completely panicked, and she’d had a very difficult time hiding her emotions from Lucas. But tonight he’d gone to the gym with Derek and Kade, so she stopped at the drugstore on the way home and bought a pregnancy test. Panic didn’t begin to describe the feelings swirling inside her, from the butterflies in her stomach to the actual nausea still plaguing her to sheer fear.

She didn’t want to be pregnant. She was petrified of going through another almost full term, getting attached to the life inside her, only to lose everything to something beyond her control. To be plunged into the black hole of depression once more.

Alone in the bathroom, she pulled out the box with shaking hands and proceeded to follow directions, although she’d done this before. She knew it was smarter to take the test in the morning, but she was alone tonight, so she was going to get this over with. She’d been nauseous long enough, her breasts hurt, and she just had a gut feeling. Still, she needed confirmation before she fell apart.

The waiting took forever. She couldn’t even kill time online on her cell phone, checking the clock every few seconds.

Finally, the timer went off.