Stranded with the billio.., p.1
Stranded with the Billionaire, page 1
Stranded with the Billionaire
Filthy Rich Bachelors, Book 2
R. B. Fields
Copyright 2023
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, scanned, or transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise without written consent of the author. All rights reserved.
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Distributed by Pygmalion Publishing, LLC
Contents
FREE SHORT STORY
1. Anne
2. John
3. Anne
4. John
5. Anne
6. John
7. Anne
8. John
9. Anne
10. John
11. Anne
12. John
13. Anne
14. John
15. Anne
16. John
17. John
18. Anne
19. John
20. Anne
21. John
22. Anne
23. John
24. John
25. Anne
26. John
27. Anne
28. John
29. Anne
30. John
31. John
32. Anne
33. John
34. Anne
WORKING FOR THE BILLIONAIRE
TAKEN
BECKONED
FREE READER BONUSES
QUEENS WILD
PRETTY AS A PICTURE
Also by R. B. Fields
About the Author
For those who crave the silence.
Chapter 1
Anne
Late November appeared shrouded in embers. The walkways blazed orange and red, the air hissed, biting at her face like flames—violent. But perhaps that was just her mood. Even the clatter of Anne Backstrom’s rolling suitcase sounded entirely too much like footsteps.
She swallowed hard, the hairs on the back of her neck vibrating. He’s not following you, Anne. He has to be tired of that game by now. But did rich men ever tire of hurting those who crossed them?
Anne shoved her curly dark hair off her face; the wind blew it right back into her eyes. She could tell herself that Charles was done with her over and over again, think it until her brain turned to mush, but that didn’t make it true. She’d been wrong more than her share.
And she was still paying for it.
The hairs on her neck vibrated harder, tension screaming along her spine. Icy air whispered through the leaves, sending them scratching over the cement. She paused on the walk and turned, scanning the wide street.
Hurry, Anne, you’re going to be late! But her boots were glued to the pavement—better to be sure, right?
Cars lined both sides of the road, parallel parked in neat rows amidst the fallen leaves. Cardinals argued shrilly atop a delivery truck. A woman with short blonde hair stuffed beneath her woolen hat carried a Yorkie under her arm, the leash clutched in her other hand. Poinsettias bloomed on apartment stoops.
Strings of holiday lights winked from living rooms, cords wrapped in strangleholds around bristly evergreens. From the sidewalk to her right, barren branches rattled, clawing at the sky. A big orange tabby cocked its head in Anne’s direction, meowed, then took off between the parked cars.
Anne sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. Charles wouldn’t come here himself—he was much too important to do his own dirty work—and she saw no one else suspicious. No window dressings twitched as she scanned the buildings. No angry-looking goon with beady eyes and a swollen neck peered at her from a parked car. One of those assholes had approached her in the grocery store last week, but she knew better than to believe he was interested in yogurt. She’d seen that same man at the laundromat the week before.
Maybe whoever Charles had sent would not be so overt this time. A man like Charles could pay women to walk past with tiny dogs under their arms. Maybe the orange tabby was a fake, a robot sent to spy on her.
She almost laughed—would have laughed if she hadn’t seen stranger in her years working for O’Connor Media Enterprises. As head legal counsel, she dealt with O.M.E.’s team of private investigators on a regular basis. And those bastards were sneaky. More than sneaky enough to build a ridiculous robo-cat with cameras for eyes.
Enough, Anne. Just go. You have enough to worry about today.
Anne turned on her heel and hustled up the walk, away from her apartment that didn’t really feel like home these days. Adrift—that was the best word for it. Drowning little by little. Every time Charles sent some thug to watch her pump gas or buy yogurt, it felt like another stone had been added to the bag attached to her ankle. Tugging her beneath the waves.
Which is it, Anne? Is the world on fire, or are you drowning? But any woman who has experienced a man like Charles Duffy knew full well it could be both—that you could drown while you burned from the inside out.
The wind whipped harder, another dark curl flying into her eye, scratching her cornea. Water pooled in her vision. Anne shoved it away and marched on, shoulders square. Her best friend Cara had always said that Charles was an asshole. If only she’d listened before the wedding—before she started drowning.
Now, Anne’s work with O.M.E. was a buoy. Being needed, being useful, had built her back up after her marriage collapsed. It would be better if her ex didn’t have a voting stake in the company she worked for, but very little in this world was perfect.
She hooked a right around the corner, leaving the blonde woman, the little dog, and the orange tabby behind. The prickling along her spine relaxed. But as she put more distance between herself and her apartment, irritation bloomed in her guts.
She hadn’t taken anything from her ex in the divorce, despite the fact that he was from one of the wealthiest families in the country. Okay, the patriarch’s second family—a Duffy, not an O’Connor. When she’d married him, she never imagined that she might one day work for O’Connor Media Enterprises. Charles had been furious when she’d taken the job with O.M.E. after their divorce—his half brothers, his nemeses, ran the organization.
Charles would never get over that. The man lived on grudges and pure hate. He even insisted that people call him “Charles Junior,” though he wasn’t technically a junior: Charles Duffy did not share the O’Connor name with his father. But he’d do anything to piss off the O’Connors.
Which was the reason she was going on this trip to begin with.
Anne checked her watch and picked up her pace. O’Connor Media Enterprises had been under attack since the patriarch died. The Duffy children were trying to force their way into the fold, most of all Charles. His father had willed his shares—and the voting rights that went with them—to those of his offspring, whether Duffy or O’Connor, who married and had kids of their own.
Ridiculous but legal—she’d helped Charles O’Connor write the will herself… under duress. The man had offered her a choice: craft the will and keep her job with O.M.E. or get fired. But there had been more at stake than employment. She had not been willing to make an enemy of the O’Connors and the Duffys both.
Charles O’Connor had known that all too well. She had seen the man disregard any human cost to his business decisions, seen him twist shareholders to his will. But those skills had been honed to razor-edge precision in his personal life, where he did not have to placate investors. Every trick her ex-husband knew about gaslighting and manipulation, he learned from his dad. By the time she realized that, it was too late to walk away. From either of them.
Now, the only way for her to get out from under her ex’s thumb was to stay connected to a family that hated him just as much—protection by association. She could only hope they hated Charles more than they hated her. After all, the will she’d drafted had given the Duffys an opening to take over the company.
She tugged her scarf tighter around her throat, then shoved her free hand into her coat pocket, the other still trailing the rolling case. If she hadn’t drafted that will, someone else would have. Before Anne had signed on, the patriarch had gone through attorneys like water. That was one reason she’d demanded a voting share when she’d taken the job—he could not fire her if she had a voice in the company.
To this day, she was shocked that Charles O’Connor had agreed. She had been even more shocked that he’d pursued her for the position in the first place. But she’d never know why he made those choices. Dead men didn’t answer questions.
Anne sighed. Her fingers ached around the handle of the rolling bag.
Two weeks in Austria. Two weeks to delay whatever Charles Duffy was planning. Her boss’s words echoed in her brain: “We don’t have time to waste on lukewarm promises. Get those assholes on our side. This war isn’t over.” Desmond O’Connor had a penchant for the dramatic and was a bit of an asshole—most billionaires were. But unlike his father, he was no liar.
The coming battle for company leadership was going to be a bloodbath. In the CEO’s words: a war. And she was caught in the middle, with her psycho ex, Charles Duffy, on o
Keep your head down, Anne. Meet with the shareholders, make them happy. Undo whatever Charles has done. The rest isn’t your business.
But that little voice in her head was wrong. Because despite the ruling from the medical examiner that Charles O’Connor had died of natural causes, his death had not been an accident. She knew exactly who had killed him.
And if she told a soul, life as she knew it was over.
Chapter 2
John
ONE BILLIONAIRE BROTHER DOWN. THREE MORE TO GO.
The headline screamed at John O’Connor from the morning’s paper. His older brother Desmond smirked up at him in black-and-white, his new wife on his arm. Front and center, as if to proclaim his importance to the world. It was fitting—only right to give the Head Dick in Charge job to the man who’d raised him and his siblings while their father was off with his second family.
He wasn’t sure why his mom had kept banging their dad—why John and his younger siblings existed at all. Dad must have been packing some magic below the belt. A weird thing to think, perhaps, but it was better than assuming his mother was a gold digger. Especially now. These days, Siobhan O’Connor couldn’t recall that she’d ever had children at all.
John sighed, and the noise hissed back at him through the quiet plane. All the pre-flight preparations had been completed before he arrived, as requested. John hated the bustling, the constant chatter. The people, all lost in their own worlds, all yearning to be somewhere other than where they were. If he had his way, he’d work from home every day for the rest of his life, but Desmond worried when he went full hermit. Mostly because Desmond believed that meant he was drinking… again.
He wasn’t. But he sure as shit wanted to, and not only because he was in a tiny metal tube about to barrel a thousand miles an hour through the sky. People were not meant to exist in little metal tubes. They were not meant to be hurled willy-nilly into the stratosphere. And they most certainly were not meant to spend every waking hour cleaning up other people’s messes.
John leaned back and recrossed his legs, then adjusted the newspaper in his lap. The private jet was huge, no concerns about legroom, but his foot was bouncing so hard that his calf had begun to cramp—hot and sharp. The tarmac outside the window was black as pitch, a smooth and faceless void. But at least the tarmac was stable, unlike the clouds.
He drew his gaze back to the paper. Beside Desmond, their brother Finn grinned with that cocky half-smile, the tallest of them—taller than most everyone. Six foot seven to John’s six foot four with thick arms like tree trunks, a hulking gym rat. Archer, his rock-star brother who hadn’t bothered to come to their father’s funeral, had his own separate photo: him on stage, too-long hair slicked back, a microphone at his jaw, looking every bit the tattooed rebel.
Then there was John himself. His face peeked around Finn’s shoulder from the left edge of the shot. All the O’Connor brothers had strong, square jaws and emerald eyes, but the rest of his siblings had dark hair. John’s own dirty-blond locks made him stand out even more than Archer. Why couldn’t the paper have left him out of this? They weren’t harassing his sister.
But he already knew why. Sabrina would ignore it the way she did the rest of the company—surgeons didn’t suffer fools. And foolish or not, John and his brothers couldn’t argue with success; the “Billionaire Brothers Need Wives” storyline had been selling a lot of papers. The public had always been greedy for insight into the lives of the O’Connors, owners of O’Connor Media Enterprises. None of them were much for the public eye, not even Archer, who left his band’s publicity to the hired help.
But the current situation was juicy enough to spark interest… and controversy. What other billionaire would will his shares—and ultimately control of his empire—to whichever of his children got hitched and had families?
He frowned at the photo of Desmond’s wife. Shannon should have been able to kill this Billionaire Brother bullshit—she was head of their news sector, right under John himself. But she had let it ride, and he’d thought it bad form to muzzle the press. Besides, the company’s lawyer should have been able to stop this nonsense from happening in the first place.
They wouldn’t even be here if not for Anne Backstrom.
Sure, his father would have hired someone else to write his will exactly the way he wanted it or simply done it himself—Dad had been a lawyer first, after all. But none of that stopped the incessant whisper in John’s brain that Anne was supposed to be on their side. That she’d fucked them over.
Anne might be screwing them over again by conspiring with her ex. They’d been seen together at breakfast mere days before this shareholder nonsense came up.
John drew his gaze back to the tarmac. He had reasons to think Anne and Charles were in cahoots, but he hadn’t yet decided what to do about it. Desmond had made it clear that the lawyer was his problem, though. Whatever is going on with Anne, you need to figure it out—we need to know yesterday. We can’t keep her on if she’s screwing us.
His brother thought she might be working with Charles Jr.—that she’d encouraged their father to alter the will in order to increase the Duffy stake. But how would that benefit her? It wouldn’t… unless Charles and Anne were back together.
Would Anne consider remarrying her ex for a boon of voting shares? A ten-figure payday would certainly be compelling. And it could not have been easy working for his father; perhaps the move was motivated by spite. Besides, she had to be at least a little fucked-up since she married Charles in the first place.
John tossed the newspaper to the table in front of him. Unlike commercial airplanes that boasted fold-down tray tables and two inches of legroom, this one had four plush leather seats around a marble dining table and a long couch across the way with a flat-screen television that rose out of the back. The lap of luxury. But he could not get his brain to settle.
He’d worry about Anne when he got home. No, it wouldn’t be yesterday, as Desmond had requested, but he had bigger things to dwell on. This week, he had to deal with shareholders in Austria.
One thing at a time.
One thing at a time, or he’d lose his goddamn mind.
A scuffling sound from the front of the jet drew his attention. John looked up, squinting. The flight attendant had boarded, uniform crisp, long legs and plenty of curves. Pretty, with a heart-shaped face and short, dark hair.
He smiled. She smiled back, blue eyes crinkling at the corners, and his heart stuttered. She kinda looked like…
He drew his gaze away. No, John, you are not doing that again. His ex had taken up enough space in his head in recent months. Every time something went wrong, he thought of her and their last night together—a night that had ended exquisitely poorly. It was no shock that she’d crept back into his headspace after his father’s death, that she’d stuck in his gray matter like a thorn during the mayhem that followed. It wasn’t so much the woman herself that was triggering this; it was the feeling of being out of control.
Fuck. He glanced at the paper, at Desmond’s smiling eyes. This week’s excursion should go well enough, but it was infuriating that he had to deal with it at all. Charles Duffy, the eldest child of his dad’s stripper mistress, had undermined shareholder confidence by browbeating the men John was flying off to see now. Charles had tried to convince the shareholders that the Duffy clan would soon be in charge of O.M.E.—that they’d need to start doing things his way. Implying that these men, investors from the outset of the company, were beholden to Charles and his whims.
