Billionaire's Bargain

He stepped out from behind Terri and the woman sort of skittered sideways to keep out of his path. Sienna couldn’t really blame her. Adam was intense.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, slanting the other woman a look. “Privately.”

Two (#u4d2c756d-bb06-5c29-b449-2f8e75f28458)

Giving orders again. Sienna shook her head. The man hadn’t changed a bit. The last time she’d seen him, he’d begun their meeting by telling her exactly how to handle her divorce from his brother. He’d worked out a financial settlement that would have had most women flinging themselves at his manly chest, thanking him profusely. Instead, Sienna had told him what she’d told his brother. She didn’t want the Quinn money. She just wanted the marriage to be over.

Now here he stood, two years later, still trying to take charge. Well, she’d hear him out, then go back to her life. The sooner she could put out the fire slowly boiling her blood, the better.

“Terri,” she said, “would you mind?”

“Sure,” the woman said, but added, “If you need me, I’ll be right up front.”

Sienna stopped her smile before it could get too big. Good to have friends. Even though the thought of the older woman trying to rescue her from Adam was ludicrous. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Terri left, closing the door behind her. When she was gone, Adam asked, “What does she think I’m going to do?”

“Impossible to say,” Sienna admitted. “But you do look scary and she has an excellent imagination.”

“Scary?”

Well, she mused, he didn’t look happy about that. “To someone who doesn’t know you, yeah.”

“So I don’t scare you.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and watched her, waiting for an answer.

“No, Adam. You don’t.” But, she added silently, you worry me.

“Good to know.” Frowning, he glanced around what she called her “shoot room.” While he looked, so did Sienna, seeing it as he did.

This was by no means her dream studio, but it would do for now. The images that came to life here shone when the building itself didn’t. It was a plain room, really, the walls were a cool cream and unadorned. There were props stacked neatly on a series of shelves—everything from silly hats to baby blankets to old-fashioned slates that children scrawled their names on with chalk to be held in their photos. Right now, a sturdy table with the lemon yellow throw draped over a series of small pillows took up the middle of the set, with the lights focused down on where the baby had been lying. There was good light from the wide windows and when she had a night shoot, there were literally armies of lighting scaffolds scattered around the room.

Sienna studied him while he was unaware. To her, he looked way too good, and instinctively, she lifted her camera. Light and shadow played on his features, making him an irresistible target for her lens. In the late afternoon, she was losing the light, but there was enough to make him look almost dangerously alluring as he stood, half in shadow. She took two quick shots of him before he slowly swiveled his head to stare at her.

“I didn’t come here to pose for you.”

“I figured that. So why are you here, Adam?” She glanced down at the screen on her camera. Even the photo of him was hypnotic. Oh she was in bad shape.

“I need your help.”

Surprised, she looked up at him. That, she hadn’t expected. “Really? That’s so unlike you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“You’re just not the kind of man to ever ask for help.”

“Know me that well, do you?”

“I think so,” she said. As well as anyone could know him, she hedged silently. Sienna was willing to bet that not even his ex-wife could claim to know him completely. Adam Quinn kept his thoughts and his feelings to himself. He had the best poker face in the universe and trying to see past the shields in his eyes could give you a migraine.

After she and Devon were married, she’d met Adam for the first time and thought then that two brothers couldn’t have been more different. The fact that she’d also felt a quickening inside her for the quiet, stern-faced Adam was something that had embarrassed her at the time and was strangely even more mortifying now.

Tipping her head to one side, Sienna looked at him from across the room and wished she could flip the lighting on so his eyes wouldn’t be in the shadows. “I was sorry to hear about Devon,” she said abruptly, as a niggle of guilt pinged in the center of her chest. “I thought about calling you—after. But I didn’t know what to say.”

“Yeah.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and reached down to pick up a tiny stuffed rabbit she’d used in the photo shoot with little Kenzie Johnson. He turned the soft, brown animal in his hands. “I get it. Devon didn’t exactly treat you well.”

Regret jabbed at her in twin stabs with the guilt. As much as she’d like to completely blame her failed marriage on her ex-husband, she just couldn’t. Her mom always told her that it took two to make or break a marriage. So she had to accept her own share of the blame.

“It wasn’t entirely Devon’s fault,” she said. “I wasn’t what he wanted, either.”

One eyebrow winged up. “Awfully generous.”

“Not really,” she said. “Just honest. What’s going on, Adam? It’s been two years since I’ve seen you, so why now?”

He tossed the little rabbit onto the table, then turned to face her dead-on. “I had a visit today from Devon’s latest woman.”

That news didn’t even sting, which told Sienna as nothing else could have that she was truly over Devon Quinn. Heck, he’d had other women while they were married.

“And?”

“And,” he said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck in a gesture of complete irritation. “She sold me Devon’s son.”

“She sold her child?” Sienna said it again because she could not believe what she was hearing. “And you bought him? You actually paid this woman for a child? Your own nephew?”

Adam stiffened and his features went even more grim. Eyes narrowed on her and she noticed a muscle in his jaw twitch as if he were grinding his teeth.

“I can’t believe this. My God, Adam.” She thought about little Kenzie Johnson and the love that had surrounded her. How her parents had practically beamed with pride and adoration. She actually winced, thinking about Devon’s son being sold off like a used car. “You actually bought your nephew.”

“What the hell choice did I have?” Adam sounded furious and seemed to be asking himself the question as well as her. He started pacing, in quick steps fueled by rage. “Was I going to leave the boy with her? Jesus, she hardly looked at him the whole time she was negotiating.” He snorted and repeated the word. “No, she had a price, demanded it and waited for me to pay it. It wasn’t a negotiation. It was extortion.”

Watching him quieted her own anger in sympathy for his. He’d lost his brother and then six months later, his brother’s only son had been held hostage by a mercenary woman with her own agenda. Sienna was almost too stunned to speak. Almost. The reality was hard to get past. “She sold her child. Her own child.”

A tiny ripple of pain washed through her. When she’d married, she’d assumed that she and Devon would have a family eventually. But that was one of the things that had driven them apart. He’d flatly refused, saying he didn’t want kids slowing down the “fun.” He hadn’t cared how Sienna felt about it. His dismissal of her told her more than anything that their marriage was doomed.

Now he’d made a child with a woman who clearly didn’t deserve or want the baby.

“Fifty thousand dollars.” Adam snorted again, but there was no humor there. Through gritted teeth, he added, “Apparently motherhood was getting in the way of her career.”

“You shouldn’t have paid her a dime.” What kind of woman would sell her own child? And what kind of man would pay her price?

His head snapped up and his gaze pinned hers. For a split second, Sienna felt a jolt of white-hot fury sizzle in the air between them. His expression was thunderous and maybe she should have been intimidated. But she wasn’t. Maybe that expression worked on his employees, but not her. A second or two later, he seemed to understand that.

“What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

She threw her hands up. “Oh, I don’t know. Have her arrested for trying to sell a baby? Take her to court? You’ve got legions of lawyers at your beck and call, and instead you wrote her a check.”

He scrubbed both hands over his face and she could feel his frustration. “All I was thinking about was getting Devon’s son away from her. This was the fastest solution.”

Okay, she could see that, but her insides were still fisted and her heart pounding. “And what keeps her from coming back for more? For haunting that poor baby’s life, constantly letting him know that he’s nothing more to her than a bargaining chip?”