The Billionaire's Desire

I should have died. Not them. It was me they were after. It was me they wanted. Not my parents.

Chapter Four

Sanniyah

I open up another browser tab and then angrily close it down,. Then I smack myself on the hand for good measure.

"Focus, Yahya," I admonish myself. "Time for working."

But my fingers seem to have a mind of their own, and before I can stop myself, I have a new tab open and I am typing Carter Easton's name into the browser window.

The results are instant...and lengthy. I scan down the page, feeling my mouth start to gape.

His smiling face, startlingly good looking in a way that makes my breath catch, is everywhere.

I know who Carter Easton is. Everyone does. But I never realized just how much the man had been in the public eye a few years ago. I had been struggling to put myself through business school back then, with no extra time to pay attention to the lives of the rich and famous, so I had missed out on what a craze he was. Now, as I scroll through the years of coverage, I feel myself reacting with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Fascination with the man himself. Revulsion at the sheer depth of detail splashed all over the internet.

There were reams of interviews, snapshots, paparazzi photos. Telephoto shots of him on the beach, his chiseled torso on proud display, though it is clear he has no idea he is being watched. Clearly private moments and conversations, a cheek kiss with a woman that caused wild speculation, only to turn out to be his mother. Details of his dating life, his hobbies, his childhood home, all out there for me to read at my leisure.

I feel like a peeping Tom....

Quickly, I close all of the tabloid articles, hot shame consuming me out of nowhere. I pause for a moment, thinking that I should really stop right here. I've learned too much already, stuff I have no business prying into. He is a client now, and he deserves my professional detachment. I really should stop researching him. I make as if to shut my laptop.

Instead, I open up his Wikipedia entry and keep on reading, compelled to know more about the man.

The picture that accompanies his article is the same headshot I keep seeing everywhere, and once again I feel that strange fluttering in my belly as I stare at the screen. He is handsome in a way that can only be described as "rugged," as if Bradley Cooper and Chris Hemsworth somehow had a baby who grew up to be a CEO.

And he wasn't just your average CEO, not by a long shot. Carter Easton was Easton Ventures. His annual shareholder meetings brought movie premier levels of excitement, and the accompanying press was always breathless in its coverage. He seemed to enjoy stunt appearances too, whether it was the summer he tested out the new line of mountaineering equipment by climbing all of Colorado's fourteeners himself, or building a submersible to test the depth resistance of the Easton brand of diving watches. He started Easton Ventures as a touring company and quickly moved it into a brand. His brand. He was an adventurer, a maverick and people wanted to be just like him. And the press loved him.

And then he just disappeared.

I close Wikipedia and go back to my search. I scroll back up, wondering if I had missed something. I knew about the disappearance, but what I didn't know, was why.

And then I find it. The very first article, oddly enough in the business section of the local paper, titled rather ominously. "Easton Ventures Founders as Rumors Swirl Around CEO."

The first paragraph was terse enough to make my lip curl.

"Easton Ventures, the outdoors behemoth, took a nosedive in the markets today amidst rumors of charismatic CEO Carter Easton's nervous breakdown. Easton, 28, has not been seen or heard from since the night of the fiery wreck that took the lives of his parents, Annika and Dale Easton. Carter Easton blames the paparazzi for chasing his parents' car under the mistaken impression that he was in it. Easton's PR team is scrambling to repair the damage done by a garbled and disturbing press release sent out by Easton himself in which he vows to seek justice in the courts by any means necessary."

I sit back in my office chair and nervously chew on my fingers. Is that all? There has to be more. I search again, this time for Carter Easton latest news, and the very same headline I saw in the checkout aisle pops up again.

"The Broken Billionaire: Why is Carter Easton Hiding?"

The language in this article is much more florid, going into wild, speculative detail about his reasons for disappearing. But one paragraph in particular stands out.

"Cocky, swaggering Easton was once the darling of the glitterati, part of the clique of rarified jet-set explorers who aren't content with the idleness of the rich. Carter Easton was a man of action. Impulsive to the point of recklessness, he still had the magic touch necessary to smooth any ruffled feathers.

But now the ruffled feathers are his own. Sources close to the Eastons say that he spends all of his time in seclusion on his own private island, unwilling, or rather, it seems, unable to set foot on the mainland. Those same sources say he visits the company that bears his name only under the cover of darkness and that he has all but given up control of the company he founded to crusade against the paparazzi."

When I am done reading, I swallow back the sick feeling fluttering in my stomach. A reclusive, paranoid weirdo, and I'm supposed to meet with him tomorrow. On his private island…where I will be completely at his mercy. No one has seen, or heard from him in two years, and yet I'm supposed to just fly off in his private helicopter like a lamb to the slaughter.

I grab my phone and fire off a text to my best friend Tricia. "I'm going to meet with a client tomorrow. I want you to check and make sure I make it home okay."

She beeps back. "You afraid of axe murderers?"

I shiver a little. "Something like that."

Chapter Five

Sanniyah

A private airport!

So that's what this is!

I have my epiphany as I make the turn into off the highway. I must have passed this strip of land a million times in my usual back and forth commute from downtown but I had never considered what it was. It was hidden in plain view, only recognizable to those who could use it.

This is a familiar feeling and once again I have to wonder if I will ever stop feeling like a pretender. No matter the expensive shoes, the prestige makeup, the polish and the poise, I can never truly blend in with my wealthy clients. And try as I might to keep it at bay, the resentment still rears its ugly head. That feeling of being on the outside, looking in will never leave me, no matter how many years separate me from my childhood.

When my mother woke me in the middle of the night and told me to grab my things. When we left the house of the man we had been living with as quietly as we could. The months spent in and out of shelters, my mother's exhausted sobs in the cot next to mine...

That is the part of my story that I gloss over when I speak of it now. When I give my PR statements and press releases, I always emphasize the positive outcomes. The literal rags to not-quite riches part of my life. How we finally scraped enough together for a studio apartment with paper-thin walls. How I hustled to get back to grade level when I was finally able to attend school again. How I succeeded even with the odds stacked against me.

I leave out the difficult bits. Like how I learned to blend in and adapt by planning out every word. How every thing I said and did became scripted and rehearsed. How I would practice in the cracked mirror that sat on my rickety bedside table, miming laughs and smiles; practicing a poise I didn't possess until it was a mask I could slip into and wear comfortably. My mother worked long hours and I was left alone a lot, and I used that time alone to plan. Very soon I was able to fit in anywhere I went. Adults praised my maturity, my poise, my professional demeanor. They didn't know it was the only way I had survived.

I spun those skills into a business. After working at a bridal salon, I set those planning instincts into motion for a client, who hired me to finish everything for her when she suddenly found herself pregnant. That was the first

time and the last time in my business that I was caught unprepared. By the time my bride waddled up the aisle, hugely pregnant, Sanniyah Jones Events was born and I was off and running.

Now I can blend in effortlessly.