Jennifer Greene - The Billionaire’s Handler

He poured her coffee, urged her to sit and started in. “I’ve got a list for you…”

He had a plan, beyond keeping her busy with coffee and thick slabs of French-bread toast. He was going to give her lots to do. Lots to think about. And no time to think of anything personal about him, or them, for damn sure.

“First, here’s a list of good lawyers. Then another list of financial and bank people. Before going with any, you should interview them, talk to them, make sure you’re comfortable communicating with them. It doesn’t help to have smart, good people if they’re speaking Russian to your French. And then…”

She made several hmm sounds, verifying that she was paying attention, listening. But she didn’t stay sitting long. She got up, pressed a hand on his shoulder, started a fresh pot of coffee.

No one had told her where stuff was in the kitchen, but she seemed to guess that spoons would be in the drawer by the sink, mugs in the cupboard above. Maybe women were born knowing this stuff.

And maybe she’d forgotten about that other night, Maguire thought. It didn’t seem possible, when the sex had been so earth-shattering. But she was walking around the kitchen, her hair a little tangled, her face with no makeup, barefoot, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

She opened a bottom cupboard in the pantry, found a box of brownie mix, lifted it to read the back.

Her fanny was probably the finest he’d ever seen. The sweatshirt completely concealed her figure, but that was the thing. She moved, with that light lithe grace, and there it was-a hint of her breast when she turned, the curve of her hip when she bent down. Promise. Every damn thing about the woman was a capital P promise.

For the right man.

Not him.

But for the right one.

“Every time I’ve seen you lose your hearing, Carolina, it’s clearly because you hit a stressor. The last couple of times, it seems the stress trigger was seeing someone emotionally hurt, or feeling beat up on, or being yelled at. So that’s what we’re working on next. We’re going to set up life situations where no one can do that to you.”

“Do you like your brownies with nuts or not?”

“I like homemade brownies any way I can get them. Are you listening?”

“Yes, sir.” Another squeeze on his shoulder, just a whisper of contact, but by the time he whipped around, she was fussing around the kitchen again.

So he started talking faster. “One of the things you’ve been clear about is wanting to share your wealth. Wanting to use some of your money to just plain give away-”

“Darned right I do.” Just for a second, there was a flash of fire in those soft blue eyes. “There are so many causes and people with huge needs.”

“I know, buttercup.” The stupid “buttercup” word just slipped out, but Maguire stayed firmly on course. “That’s exactly the point. You need a way to handle that, where people aren’t battering down your door all the time. So here’s what you do. Decide how much you want to give away to worthy causes in a year. Put that money into a type of account or trust. Then hire someone-part-time, you can make it a single mom or someone who needs to work from home, so you’ll get to do your do-gooder thing that way, too. That in-between person hears all the direct requests, studies the causes, then reports to you-you and you alone decide which ones to give to. But you’re able to stay separate from the people making demands of you. No hounders get to you directly. So…”

He’d been lecturing great guns, until she suddenly turned around. She’d been pouring the brownie mix into a pan, was still scraping the bowl with a spoon. But she had chocolate-just a tear-on her cheek.

She walked over, with that dripping spoon and the chocolate kiss on her cheek, and kissed him on the forehead. Just like that. Got chocolate on his brow. On his knee. She didn’t even notice.

Hell. He didn’t either.

“Maguire,” she said gently, “I’m not telling you often enough how much I appreciate all this. You’re teaching me tons. Giving me ideas I would never have had without you. You really get it. That I wasn’t doing a good job of protecting myself. That I didn’t know how. But I keep wondering…”

“What?” His tone came out snappy for no reason at all.

“Do you ever let anyone protect you?”

The question was ridiculous. Why would he need protecting from anyone or anything? He didn’t know what she was getting at, only that she was increasingly starting to…worry him. He felt like a cat in a thunderstorm who couldn’t sit still, just wanted to restlessly prowl and snap and worry.

She was messing with his head. He just wasn’t sure how. Thankfully the strange moment ended abruptly with several exuberant knocks on the front door. Seconds later, Henry-looking beleaguered-piled in along with Tommy, Maguire’s ex-sister-in-law, Shannon, and Tommy’s dog. The dog was named Woofer, a disreputable cross between a St. Bernard and a Newfoundland-which meant that it stood table high, shed hair in buckets every hour, produced ropes of drool, and weighed in somewhere around two hundred pounds.

Tommy and Woofer both galloped straight for Carolina. “Miss Cee! It’s me! Tommy! ”

“I can see that! I’m so excited to see you again!” As if she was used to horse-size dogs, she gave Woofer a kiss and Tommy a monster-size hug. The dog aimed promptly for the brownie mix, which Carolina swooped out of reach just in time. The pan went in the oven, and Carolina settled on the floor with Tommy, the dog, and quickly abandoned jacket and gloves and shoes. “I think you’ve grown a foot since last summer.”

“I did! Everybody says. Miss Cee. Do you remember saving my life?”

“I remember being in that big noisy ambulance with you.”

“I remember that, too!”

“I remember your telling me that you didn’t like doctors. Or shots. And I don’t either. So it’s a good thing we could do that together, huh?”

“Yeah. I remember that whole day.”

“Me, too.”

Henry gave a shudder as he passed the dog, honed in on the coffeemaker, filled a mug and retreated to the library, as far away from dog hair and confusion as he could get.

Maguire’s ex-sister-in-law beelined straight for him. “I’m glad you could spare the time,” Shannon said.

Since Shannon only called him about problems with Tommy-and she knew he’d move heaven and earth for his brother-she had no reason to be surprised. He didn’t like interrupting his plans with Carolina, but there was no answer he could have given except “of course.”

Shannon was one of the few things his older brother had done right-and divorcing Jay was one of the things Shannon had done right as well. She looked like an expensive socialite, from the crown of her red head to her designer socks-but she had heart. Staying with Jay any longer could well have killed it. And although she liked living high-which caretaking Tommy enabled her to do-she’d loved the boy from the start and vice versa. “He really wanted to see her,” Shannon said, referring to Carolina. “But I sure didn’t expect this.”

Neither did Maguire. Tommy hung back from people outside his household. Especially in the last few years he’d become aware that he didn’t talk “right,” so in public he tended to keep silent, not wanting others to realize he was different.

With Carolina, he turned into a babbling brook. When he was excited, his speech became more incoherent, but Carolina just slowed the pace of her own conversation, and seemed to understand his excited gibberish just fine.

Tommy had grown ten inches since the summer before, was taller than Carolina now, looked like a normal all-American kid of twelve. His blond hair was styled with cowlicks. He was all arms and legs, with huge blue eyes and a smile that’d win over anyone, anything, any time.