The Owner's Secret (A Secret Billionaire Romance Book 4) Read online

  "Okay, we’ll take a break,” she said, almost too eagerly. “We both have a lot to think about. Guess I'll be in New York while you're in Atlanta for your antique thingie."

  "Maybe we can think more clearly with a few hundred miles between us." Britt made it sound like he was joking and Crystal giggled, despite the fact that he was dead serious.

  "I suppose it's a good thing you didn't bring in my luggage. I'll head back to Baton Rouge and try to catch a flight out before the hurricane hits land in a few days."

  "Shouldn't be more than a day or two—and with luck, you'll be on a plane by midnight." Before he could speak again, Crystal moved quickly to his side, kissing Britt deeply on the mouth.

  His lips parted in surprise and then she quickly slid into her bronze-finished Camaro like a cashmere glove. "Just remember what you're missing, darling."

  "I will," he said, one hand on the car door as she inserted the key into the ignition, but she didn't catch the irony. "Do you want me to drive you back?"

  "That's silly. Then you'd be stranded with no way to return to your beloved White Castle."

  Britt winced at the sarcasm of her words.

  "I should be in Baton Rouge in no more than an hour, if traffic isn’t a bear."

  "Call me if you need anything." He stood at the edge of the gardens and watched the Camaro spit mud as it fish-tailed down the long drive, back to Highway 1 that would take her to Baton Rouge.

  Crystal lifted her hand in a brief wave without turning around to fling a kiss, as per her usual goodbye when they were in New York together.

  Had she taken the sudden break-up in stride, or was her pride just covering up her anger and hurt?

  Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, Britt returned to the house. He let out an unexpected sigh of relief. How could he be so stupid to fall for a woman who was so obviously not right for him? Or to let it carry on for over a year without realizing the truth.

  Their interests and goals were worlds apart. Despite all the glittery fun they’d had attending shows and fancy dinners, those activities weren’t exactly the best way to get to know someone.

  He had so hoped Crystal would fall in love with White Castle as he had. He must be one blind and dumb dude.

  Would he ever find the right woman to share his passions and interests? He was thirty-five and so far, had been utterly unlucky in love. Maybe he was looking in all the wrong places.

  Chapter 2

  ~A Week Later~

  Heavy rain streamed down the windows of the tiny house. It was impossible to see across the street now. With every hour, the hurricane grew louder, more demanding, more sinister, and more frightening.

  Worry tugged at Melody de Lyon as she seized another five-gallon bucket from the windowless garage, hurrying back inside the tiny dark kitchen to stick it under the fresh leak dripping from the ceiling over the sink.

  Her grandmother Mirry needed help. No matter what the elderly woman said to brush off her rapidly declining health, she wasn't doing well.

  Melody stuck the new bucket in the middle of the stove, water sliding along the ceiling and plopping into the plastic container. Another one sat by the back door, and a third sat in the tiny dining room, causing Melody to step over it as she went back and forth between the front room and the kitchen.

  The power had been out for hours and an eerie wind now shuddered about the eaves. "I swear the house is going to collapse in on itself," she muttered, lifting her head to the ceiling to make sure the old bucket was in the correct place to catch the new leak.

  A plop of water hit her squarely in the eye.

  "Guess it's in the right place," she said, trying to keep her sense of humor at the absurdity of raindrops running down her face inside the house.

  She gazed about the various buckets, pots, pans, and bowls around the house—about ten in total. Time to dump the water and start over. Unfortunately, the ceiling was turning brown in all the places where water was leaking through the old shingles on the roof and into the attic.

  Her grandmother's house was old, and living on a small social security check meant that too many repairs had gone unattended.

  Melody had tried to get her to move into an apartment that didn't need maintenance—or move in with her in the little apartment above her bookstore—but her grandmother was stubborn. She had lived in this house her entire life. She had raised her children here, and then her granddaughters, finally tending Melody's grandfather when he’d grown sick and weak after a heart attack more than twenty years earlier.

  Melody picked her way around the dinette set, bumping her hip into the edge of a chair. Through the small kitchen window, glowering black clouds pressed down like an iron fist. Her heart was in her throat listening to the pounding rain and wailing wind.

  Dishes and clutter piled along the counters. When she came to visit her grandmother, she spent a couple of hours cleaning, but today she couldn’t use the water or electricity to run the vacuum. Utilities were off.

  She lit a second kerosene lamp and carried it into the sitting room where Granny Mirry lay on the couch, her paper-thin eyelids blue with tiny veins.

  Another drop of water hit Melody's head. Her hair was getting wetter by the minute just maneuvering around the house.

  "Think I'm in a losin' battle, Granny," she said, forcing a cheery tone. She didn't want to alarm her grandmother, but they should have left. Melody had no idea her granny was so ill—not until she had arrived after work to check on her.

  After twenty-four hours, the rain was still coming down. The street was beginning to flood, water creeping like spiders up the steps of the front door.

  A funny slurping sound made Melody stop in her tracks. She stared at the front door. Not two seconds later, slivers of water slipped under the threshold of the door, moving like an alien across the floor. Soaking the rug instantly. Rising from a fraction of an inch to a full inch within two minutes.

  Melody sucked in a breath, her heart hammering in her chest. “We can’t stay here. I’m calling nine-one-one.”

  “Melly,” her grandmother croaked from the sofa. “Go,” she whispered.

  Melody raced to her side, putting a hand to her grandmother’s burning forehead. Her eyelids fluttered as she strained to stay conscious.

  “You’ve got a fever,” she said in a calm voice, not wanting to alarm her. Quickly, she punched the numbers on her phone, grateful there was still cell service.

  “Emergency services,” the switchboard said.

  “I’m on Old Melon Road,” Melody said quickly. “My grandmother is very ill and our house is flooding, I need an ambulance.”

  From the other side of the room her grandmother tried to lift her hand, shaking her head. “No ambulance. Go to White Castle.”

  Rushing over, Melody said, “What do you mean, Granny? What’s White Castle?”

  “Ma’am?” the emergency operator said on the other end of the link. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here! At the rate the floodwaters are coming in, we’re going to be submerged in the next couple of hours. My grandmother is eighty-seven years old. I can’t move her by myself. I need help. Please.”

  Her oldest sister, Avery, who was a wedding dress seamstress for a high-end store in Chicago, had been pestering Melody to put their grandmother into a nursing home, but Melody couldn’t abide ripping her beloved grandmother out of the only home she’d known. In fact, this house was mostly the only home Melody had ever known.

  When their parents were killed in a car accident, the three girls had moved in with their grandparents. Melody had only been three and her two older sisters, seven and ten.

  Mirry was not only her grandmother, but her mother, the woman who had rocked her to sleep and tended all the bruises and growing pains of her life.

  Up until the last few weeks, Mirry had been healthy and active, but this puzzling fever kept returning. Once she got her out of this flooding house and into a hospital, Melody would demand more test
s from the doctors, but right now the imminent flooding of the house was paramount.

  The dispatcher’s voice came again. “We have emergency personnel in boats near your neighborhood. I’ll radio them to stop by your house. Hopefully you’ll see them in the next hour.”

  “Good,” Melody said, relief flowing through her. “I’m at number two twenty-one directly after the sugar cane fields on the right side.”

  “Are there any other health concerns we need to know about that I can pass along to the paramedics? Do you know what her temperature is right now?”

  “Five minutes ago it was one-oh-three point five. She’s been running a fever off and on for several weeks.”

  “Put an ice pack on her forehead and make sure she’s comfortable. Call me back if anything changes, and watch for the emergency boat.”

  Melody hung up and slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans.

  Moving quickly, she scurried to the ice bin in the freezer, but there were only a few melting slivers left. Sweat dribbled down her brow, and into her eyes. The house was hot as an oven without the AC running.

  She lit a kerosene lantern and set it on the kitchen table, cluttered with plants and books and papers she’d picked up from the floor. The water level was now five inches deep and she sloshed through it like a wading pool.

  Placing the last few ice cubes into a plastic bag, Melody zipped it closed while hurrying into the front room. She shoved the two front windows up so she could hear any approaching boats.

  Turning toward her grandmother, she placed the cold bag on Mirry’s forehead and then perched on the edge of the sofa, holding her hand. Should she call her other sister, Crissy? Too much was happening all at once. Mirry’s illness—and now the flooding in the aftermath of the actual hurricane winds that had torn up the city.

  At the moment, her grandmother appeared to be sleeping, though her breath was shallow and raspy as if she had asthma, and her skin was hot and dry.

  The next moment, her lips parted and she tried to speak. “Crissy … Avery? My babies …”

  Melody spoke in a soothing voice, stroking her hand. “Crissy isn’t here, Mirry. She lives far away, remember? I’m here and you’re going to be just fine as soon as the hospital boat gets here.”

  Unfortunately, Crissy, the middle sister, couldn’t get herself out of Louisiana fast enough. She’d visited every big city across the country to find herself, until she’d finally settled in the Big Apple several years ago. She and Avery didn’t see much of her, and her phone calls to check in were rare and short. Even though she had divorced her first husband two years ago, she already had her eye on another man.

  Straining her ears for any sound from outside, Melody noticed the neighborhood was eerily quiet. Had all the neighbors left already?

  If only she’d had a four-wheel drive truck, Melody would’ve tried to transport Mirry by herself. The house was dank and dismal and every inch higher the water rose, her panic rose with it.

  Peering out the window, Melody easily realized that there was no way driving in the high flood waters would be safe. The truck would be flooded and they’d easily be carried away to their deaths. Already the neighboring lawns and yards had disappeared under the dark, murky water.

  Used to working nonstop each day at her bookstore in downtown New Orleans, Melody wasn’t used to sitting still, and the constant brown water seeping under all the doors was unnerving.

  Punching numbers on her phone again, she muttered, “Pick up, pick up.”

  Finally, a male voice answered. “Melody?”

  “Vince, yes, it’s you! Thank goodness. Mirry’s house is flooding, I’m waiting for an emergency boat, but it could be hours. She’s ill, and running a fever. I’m ready to jump out a window and start swimming. Can you come and get us in your boat?”

  “Huh?” her boyfriend said, shock in his voice. “There’s no way. I’m ten miles from you, flooding’s everywhere, and it’s getting dark.”

  “All the updates on my phone tell me to evacuate, but I don’t dare put Mirry into my car only to get swept away. I’m getting scared and I’m about to go crazy.”

  Vince didn’t respond to her pleas, or seem particularly worried. “How bad’s the flooding over there?”

  “Up to my knees, and dirty and cold. I’m terrified of snakes coming in from the cane fields and worried about Mirry. She’s really sick and I can’t move her by myself.”

  “You say you got a boat coming to get you?”

  “I called nine-one-one. You sound funny, what’s wrong?”

  “I was at the bookstore an hour ago. It’s gone.”

  Melody’s throat went dry. “You mean my bookstore, Books on the Mississippi? How is it gone?”

  “Water’s closing in on the rafters all over downtown.”

  Melody could hardly speak, images of destruction running past her eyes.

  “Books floating up to the ceiling,” Vince went on. “Water’s two feet deep in the apartment.”

  The store was Melody’s livelihood, her home, everything. “That means my entire life is gone.”

  “Pretty much,” Vince said. “Sorry.”

  Melody’s gut tugged with fresh anxiety. “You sound funny, Vince. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then he cleared his throat. “Figure this is as good a time as any to tell you. I’m clearing out of New Orleans. Lived through two hurricanes over the past two decades and I can’t take it no more.”

  “Where are you, Vince? Right this minute? Surely not at the bookstore.”

  “Nope, I cleared out. I’m with Roxie.”

  “Roxie?” Melody echoed dully, her throat swelling with emotion. Roxie??

  “She’s the waitress I told you about.”

  Melody had an urge to punch him through the phone. “You mean the waitress at the diner who gave you a free meal for fixing the belt on her truck?”

  “Yeah, that’s her.”

  The air left Melody’s lungs and her chest tightened. Her boyfriend was deserting her. For some flirty, floozy with a chest the size of Lake Pontchartrain. Her bookstore—her livelihood and her home—was destroyed. Melody wavered on her feet, trying to take it all in.

  “You’re leaving me?” she finally said, her voice cracking.

  “Um, yeah. Sorry Melody.”

  “Wow, Vince, apologies were never your forte, but in three sentences, you just told me that you’re running away with another woman and my entire life is destroyed.”

  A buzzing static came over the phone and Vince was gone. Whether he’d hung up on her or the connection was lost due to the weather, Melody would probably never know. She wanted to scream at him. She deserved a moment of satisfaction to tell him off, but he’d denied her that.

  Ironically, she had recently thought Vince might be getting ready to propose so they could start a family. After all, she had turned thirty last year.

  Melody bit back the tears of frustration that threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn’t think about Vince or her bookstore. Mirry was all that mattered right now.

  She took Mirry’s temperature again. It was still over 103, and getting close to 104. Growling in her throat, she sloshed through the knee-deep water, kicked at a floating bucket, and then yanked the curtains apart again.

  Down the road, a boat was in sight. “Hallelujah!” she cried, going into high gear. Splashing through the living room, she jerked at the front door trying to open it, but the door wouldn’t budge from the water on both sides.

  Letting out a low curse word, she raced back to the window, soaking herself in the process and creating waves that splashed over her torso. Her teeth began to chatter.

  Popping out the screen, she leaned along the ledge, waving her arms frantically.

  “We’re over here,” she yelled. “We’re stuck inside!”

  The emergency officials saw her and accelerated the engine, forming a deep V in the water behind the boat.

  “I ca
n’t get the door open,” she shouted when they got closer to the front door. “My grandmother is ill, almost comatose.”

  Two huge men with broad shoulders jumped out of the boat, sloshing through the water in thigh-high waders. “Stand back from the door,” they warned. “We’re going to try to break it down.”

  A second man wearing the uniform of a paramedic climbed out next, carrying an emergency first aid bag. “What are your grandmother’s symptoms?”

  “High fever, pale skin, raspy cough.”

  “Anything I should know, like diabetes, high blood pressure, previous strokes, heart disease?”

  Melody shook her head. “Nothing like that. She’s eighty-seven, but healthy.”

  “We’ll get her to the hospital right in a jiffy, ma’am,” he told her.

  Melody gave him a tremulous smile. He was young, probably not more than twenty-five, but if he had medical training, she wouldn’t argue. She felt such relief at one of her worries being taken care of that tears pricked at her eyes.

  Within minutes, the front door was off its hinges, the paramedic had done a quick exam on Mirry, and they had loaded her onto a stretcher, carrying her to the boat and lifting her up with careful hands.

  “I’m coming, too!” Melody shouted, grabbing a rain slicker, a jacket, dry socks and shoes to replace her squishy ones that were a horrid mess after wading around in waist-high water for the last few hours.

  Earlier she had packed a backpack with two sets of clean clothes and a few toiletries. Snatching both her handbag and backpack off the top of the fridge, she double checked that she had her wallet and credit cards and shoved the purse in the top of the backpack.

  One of the rescuers helped boost her into the boat and she toppled ungracefully inside. Melody held Mirry’s cold hands in hers as the speedboat revved its engine and they cut through an ocean of water that covered the landscape as far as she could see.

  Chapter 3

  Hanging onto Granny Mirry’s hand, Melody caught sight of the staggering devastation before them. Homes half under water. Fields flooded with only the tips of sugar cane stalks above—about a month before the harvest season.