Beauty and the Billionaire

“Oh it looked like the bullet went straight through the shoulder; he should be fine as long as they get the bleeding stopped.”

Gunner seemed like a pretty laid back guy to be in whatever this business was. Although, Chris also was pretty laid back and was shot in a hospital right now. Perhaps being laid back in their business wasn’t the best personality trait.

His light brown hair was shaved tight on the side of his head with some wavy length on the top. I found it difficult to take him serious with the two large dimples on either side of his perfect smile. Gunner seemed like a pretty intense guy, his eyes looked at me with a powerful desire. But he stayed away from showing any of that desire. It dawned on me that Gunner had said he knew who I was. I wondered how much Chris had told the guys about me.

“You seem like you’ve seen plenty of shootings,” I said with a little bit of a laugh.

Gunner didn’t look like he was going to respond at first. Then, perhaps because he knew I was friends with Chris, Gunner told me a little more than I could have imagined.

“Yes, I have seen some pretty horrible stuff. Saw a friend get his neck cut once. Many of us have had other injuries like gunshots or being stabbed or something like that.” Gunner said.

“Why do you do it? I mean it’s obviously a dangerous job. Why keep putting yourself in the middle of things?” I wanted to know. Did it pay really well?

Did this job help with the ladies? Why would any man choose a job where he could see his friends murdered?

“We are saving people. You can’t beat knowing that you are taking these bad guys off the street and they won’t have anyone to lead their cause.”

Their cause? I wondered who these people are that they are taking them off the streets. It sounded like Chris and his friends worked as bounty hunters or something like that. Maybe that was why they could afford to travel on a private jet instead of like normal people. Or maybe they had some big person who financed their operation and paid for things. I wasn’t going to keep trying to get information out of Gunner though; he needed to get back to cleaning up the crime scene over at Chris’ house.

“What are you guys going to do with those two dead guys?”

Gunner just smiled. It was one of those smiles that said to me, I didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

“I’m going to get back. You alright?”

“Yes, I’ll be alright. Thank you.”

Gunner let himself out of the house and I got up to look at him out the window. He was much more my type of guy than Chris was. His age and appearance fit more with the type of guy I found attractive. But that was because Chris was beyond the type of guy I thought I could ever date. I never, in a million years, would have thought a guy like Chris would be with a girl like me.

Now I was sitting and shaking while I worried about him. I had no idea where he was taken or which hospital. I didn’t even know his last name! It was going to be really hard to get any sort of update on his health.

Hopefully Gunner would come back and give me the news as soon as they figured out what was going on. I also desperately hoped that Gunner was right and the bullet went through Chris’ shoulder without having any permanent damage.

Chapter 32

I fell asleep out of exhaustion and didn’t wake up until the middle of the night. I had a nightmare and was sweating when I sat up straight. I looked around the room and could feel my heart beating out of my chest. Beads of sweat filled my brow and I needed to check to make sure all the doors were locked.

I got up and went to the front door which had been left unlocked from when Gunner had left earlier in the day. My anxiety got instantly worse. Slowly I walked from room to room, flipping the lights on and then searching the room before moving onto the next. My body could not relax until I had searched every corner of the house and was assured that there were no intruders.

I’m not sure what I expected to do if I had found an intruder, but surely I would have thought of something. When I sat back down on the couch a flood of emotions filled me. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to find out where Chris was so I could go see him. It was too late to go back over to Chris’ house and I’m not sure I wanted to be back over there at all. Knowing that two dead bodies had been on the floor in the living room was enough to make me never want to go to Chris’ house ever.

The television offered a little distraction, but I just couldn’t seem to get my mind around everything that was going on. I use to be a lonely woman hiding away in my family’s home and grieving the loss of my one true love. Now I sat staring at the television and trying to get over seeing three men shot, one of whom I was starting to have feelings for.

I wanted to reach out to Rebecca and tell her everything that was going on, but I didn’t know if Chris would like that. His job seemed pretty secretive and I didn’t want to put him at risk by telling people what I thought he did. In fact, I didn’t really know at all what he did for work, so I should probably wait until I talked to him about it anyway.

Suddenly my heart started to race as I heard a noise coming from behind my house. It dawned on me that those men who had come to Chris’ house had been there to murder or hurt him. Now here I was sitting there without any protection at all. What if they had come back to finish Chris off? What if they knew I was involved now?

My body shook again with fear.

I tried to take a deep breath, but my lungs just couldn’t fill up. I closed my eyes, and I tried again to get a full breath, but it would not come. I heard a knock at the back door and almost screamed. Surely no one would be coming over to my house at this hour of the night; it was almost four o’clock in the morning.

I didn’t want to go to the back door. I didn’t want to see who it was because then they would be able to see who I was. I breathed in as deep of a breath as I could gather and I slowly walked toward the kitchen.

I peeked around the corner and I could see a male figure standing on my back porch. Because I had all the lights on in the house, it was difficult to see who was standing there. But since he wasn’t trying to break in or anything like that, I decided to move closer.

“Chris!” I screamed as I realized it was him.

I moved quickly to unlock the door and was about to fling my arms around him when I realized he had his arm in a sling.