A Billionaire's Redemption

“Where are we going?” she finally asked.

“I thought you might like a bite to eat.”

Although it was a little early for supper, her stomach was roiling ominously. “I couldn’t possibly eat—” she started.

“Nonsense. You’re thin as a rail, and I bet you haven’t eaten a decent meal in two weeks.”

It was kind of him not to mention her father’s murder. But Gabe was right. Neither she nor her mother had been able to eat much since John Merris’s death. “I’m fine,” she mumbled.

“No, you’re not. You’ve had a lousy day and a big scare, and you’re pale. You look on the verge of fainting.”

“I don’t faint!” she retorted indignantly.

He flashed her a brief grin that knocked her indignation into the next county over. “I recall that about you. You’re a lot stronger than you look. I’ll never forget the way you and that crazy horse of yours ran me into the ground.”

He remembered that fox hunt? She’d been seventeen, so that would make it eleven years ago. He’d made some snarky comment about girls not being able to keep up with the boys, and she had bet him a dollar that she would beat him in the annual cross-country race.

“Speaking of which, you still owe me a dollar,” she declared.

“Double or nothing at next spring’s fox hunt,” he retorted jauntily as he guided the car through downtown Dallas.

She made a face. “I haven’t ridden a horse since I left for college. I’ll just take my winnings and call it good, thank you.”

He stopped the car and a valet opened her door for her. Good grief, where were they? She looked up and was shocked to see he’d brought her to the Rosewood Mansion Hotel on Turtle Creek, known locally as simply, The Mansion. Its restaurant was routinely selected as one of the top ten in the world. He handed over the keys and joined her, offering his wool-suited forearm to her.

“This is a bit more than a bite to eat, Gabe.”

“How better to tempt a reluctant eater than with the finest food on earth?”

She had to admit that every time she’d ever eaten here the cuisine had been nothing short of exquisite. “I’m not dressed properly—” she started.

“Balderdash,” he declared. “I’ll get us a private dining room, and no one will see or care what you’re wearing.”

She couldn’t decide whether to ask where he’d learned the word balderdash or if The Mansion really had private dining rooms, and ended up merely following him in disbelieving silence.

Of course, a billionaire with more money than sense was clearly the sort of customer who rated a private dining room, which was fine with her tonight. The main dining room was a place where people went to see and be seen. In spite of the city’s size, Dallas’s elite social stratum was actually a fairly small and tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone else. The last thing she needed was to be seen sharing an intimate meal at The Mansion with her father’s archenemy.

The maître d’ led them down a small, dim hallway. They passed briefly through the lobby of the hotel proper, and were ushered into a beautifully furnished room that looked like the parlor of a fine European estate. Floor-to-ceiling French doors overlooked a formal rose garden even her mother would envy, and beside the doors sat a linen-covered table set for two.

“Will this be satisfactory, Mr. Dawson?”

“It’ll do, thank you.”

Willa was startled when Gabe stepped in front of the maître d’ to hold her chair for her. She sank into the upholstered Queen Anne chair with a murmur of thanks. Gabe sat down across from her, and suddenly, she was vividly aware of just how frighteningly alone she was with this big, masculine man.

“Would you mind if I were completely frank with you for a moment, Willa?”

“By all means. I always prefer honesty.”

“You look a little apprehensive, as if I’m about to leap across the table and devour you.” He added wryly, “And if we’re being honest, I feel obliged to add that, contrary to your father’s opinion of me, I’m not a raving lunatic.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she replied tartly, embarrassed that her trepidation showed.

“Hey, I’m the good guy. I rescued you from the press, remember?”

“You’re the guy who abandoned my father’s oil company and rubbed salt in my family’s wounds when he died.” She was a little shocked she’d said that. But they were being honest with each other.

Gabe planted both elbows on the table and glared at her. Immediately, fear spiked inside her. Why had she provoked a big, strong man like him? In a similar situation, her father would have started drinking. The old, frozen terror rolled through her. When Daddy was drinking, it was best to hide in her room and not come out. Not get in his way. Not even cross his path.

Who’d have guessed James Ward would turn out to be the very same way? Except now that she thought about it, she didn’t remember him drinking that night. What had set him off, then? Had she done something?

She watched with intense relief as Gabe visibly corralled his irritation. Maybe he wasn’t like James Ward, after all. James had lost control and never reined himself back in. And she’d been the one to pay the price.

When Gabe finally spoke, his voice was surprisingly calm. “Let’s address those accusations one at a time. First, I didn’t abandon your father. He fired me from Merris Oil. I showed him what I believed to be an entirely new method of discovering oil, and he declined to invest in my theory.”

“I’ve heard it all before. Believe me.” She’d lost count of how many times her father had ranted about Gabe’s disloyalty in taking his theories to someone else to profit from.

Gabe shrugged. “I lined up my own investors and proved my theory correct. Your father could’ve been in on it, but he made a bad business decision. That doesn’t make me the villain.”

She’d wondered that very thing in private over the years, but in her family’s household, nobody would dream of contradicting the word of John Merris. If her father had declared Gabe Dawson a disloyal bastard who’d ripped him off of hundreds of millions of dollars, so it was.

He continued, “And since we’re being brutally honest tonight, let me just say your father was not a nice man. His business practices routinely skirted the edge of outright illegality, and he didn’t hesitate to crush his competition not only professionally, but personally. He routinely used his political office for his personal advantage and for the good of his private oil business.”

“Those are serious allegations.”

“Admit it. You know they’re not just allegations. They’re the truth.”

Part of her agreed with Gabe. But loyalty to family and never giving a negative sound bite to anyone had been pounded into her for so long she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. “I stayed out of my father’s business and political affairs. I couldn’t comment on his ethics or lack thereof.”

Gabe snorted. “Take my word for it. Your old man had the ethics of a junkyard dog.”

She sighed and took a sip of ice water. “My father is dead. It no longer matters if he was good or bad, right or wrong.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Willa.”

She looked up sharply at the smooth timbre of his voice. He wasn’t mocking her, was he? His gaze was dark and direct and didn’t waver as she met it with her own startled stare. Nope. Not mocking. It looked like seduction, if anything.

Whoa. Gabe Dawson was putting the moves on her? There must be snowballs flying every which way in Hell at this very moment.

A frisson of delight rippled through her before memory caught up with it. Memory of fear and weakness and helplessness at the hands of a man not so very different from this one. A rich, privileged, handsome man whom women fawned over and society adored.

She stared down at her fingers, twined so tightly in her lap, they ached. A waiter came in to take their orders, but she hadn’t even seen a menu. Gabe murmured that they would have whatever was being served at the chef’s table tonight.

The waiter left and Gabe sighed. “Will you please talk to me? What are you thinking? I can’t read you.”

“I was thinking about how society loves you.”

That earned her a disbelieving grunt. “Hardly. I have committed not one, but two, unforgivable sins according to your people.”

Her people? Hah! They were her mother and father’s people, but not hers. She’d tried to break away from high society. To be a normal person. A kindergarten teacher, for goodness’ sake. But her father kept forcing her to come back. Insisting on political appearances. And dates with the sons of Dallas’s richest and most influential families. It had been nothing short of mortifying.

Gabe continued grimly, “Not only did I have the gall to get rich and not stay on my own side of the social tracks, but then I’ve repeatedly declined to marry some vacuous, shallow bitch and make her one of the richest women in Dallas.”

Amused in spite of herself, Willa tsked. “Scandalous, Mr. Dawson.”

He grinned and all but knocked her off her chair with that megawatt smile. His sex appeal had only magnified over the years, and it had been off the charts a decade ago. If only she were more experienced. More savvy about men. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so out of her league around him. It wasn’t that their twelve-year age difference was so great, but she’d lived a sheltered, awkward social life. And he… Well, he hadn’t.

The waiter brought their first course, and she looked over it at Gabe. “So what have you been up to with your life besides getting filthy rich and shunning the good ladies of Vengeance, Texas?”

“Work, mostly. Exploring for oil has taken me to every corner of the planet. For some reason, oil always seems to come from boiling-hot or freezing-cold places.”

“Favorite place you’ve visited?”

“While looking for oil? Malaysia. While just traveling? Gotta go with Paris.”

“Paris, huh? I didn’t peg you for a romantic.”

That earned her a cynical look. “My ex-wife stripped out what little romance there was in my soul a long time ago.”

“Is there any news about her? A ransom note from kidnappers or something?”

Gabe’s facial muscles tightened in stress. “No. Nothing.”

He clearly cared deeply about his former wife. Willa’s natural empathy bubbled up in spite of her reservations about this man, and she reached across the table to lay her hand on top of his. “I’m sorry.” But then shocking heat scalded her palm and she jerked her hand away.

“What have you been up to since you grew up?” he asked carefully.

She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a snot-nosed kid anymore, thank you very much. “I graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in elementary education. I’m a kindergarten teacher.”

“Kindergarten? So you have a death wish?”

She laughed. “Five-year-olds are actually pretty great as long as you draw clear boundaries for them and stick to them. I love my job.”

“Are you on a leave of absence from teaching right now?”

She sighed. “I am. And the school year was just getting started, too. But there was so much to do to arrange the funeral, and I’m the executor of his estate. I have no idea how I’m going to wade through all the business matters my father left behind. It’s a nightmare.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

It was nice of him to offer, but she didn’t trust the man any farther than she could throw him. Still, he’d rescued her from that mob of reporters and was feeding her in rather spectacular fashion. He hadn’t once behaved like a slimeball toward her. She supposed she should cut him a little slack.

“After Melinda, you never found another woman who turned your head?” she asked.

“Circling back to my love life, are we?” he murmured, amused. “Nope. I guess she ruined me for any other woman.”

The one time Willa had met Professor Melinda Grayson, the woman had intimidated her so badly, Willa had barely been able to form coherent sentences. So, he liked his women aggressive, huh? Count her out, then.

“Actually, no,” Gabe commented. “Aggressive isn’t my style in women.”

Oh, Lord. Had she asked that question aloud? She would just crawl under the table and hide now. Her cheeks fiery hot, she searched frantically for a distraction. “The garden is beautiful.”

Gabe looked outside, and she followed suit. Twilight had descended over the rose garden, softening its hues to muted tones of maroon and mauve.

“Shall I open the doors?” he murmured.

She nodded, and he rose gracefully to throw open the double doors. Even wearing jeans and a casual sport jacket, he cut an elegant figure. He must be, what? Forty? The man was in shockingly great shape for his age. His coat bulged with muscle and his face was smooth and youthful. He was going to be one of those incredibly annoying men who looked fantastic at sixty and beyond.

The sound of crickets chirping swirled into the room on the perfume of roses and the day’s spent warmth. The light of the twin candles on their table began to take over as night fell around them. The waiter brought the main course—spit-roasted quail, crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, that literally melted in Willa’s mouth. The wine was smooth, her companion smoother, and the combination relaxed her in spite of herself.

For his part, Gabe spent an inordinate amount of time studying her over his meal. Finally, she couldn’t resist asking, “Is something wrong?”

“No. It’s just strange to see the little girl all grown up. It’s like I’ve walked into a time warp where you aged overnight.”

“I got old when you weren’t looking, huh?”

It was his turn to roll his eyes. “You are emphatically not old. You’re stunning. That’s what’s got me staring at you. The promise of this kind of beauty was always there, but it’s impressive to see it in full bloom. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable.”

“Uhh, thank you,” she mumbled, flummoxed. He thought she was pretty? Well, then.

“The boys must have been all over you in high school and college,” he commented. “Any of them still around?”

Was he actually fishing to find out if she had a boyfriend? Shock made her choke on a sip of water. She eventually recovered enough to croak, “I’m the only kid in my high school who went up to Lover’s Point to be alone.”

He laughed lightly, disbelievingly even, at her quip. Little did he know how dull her love life had truly been.

She’d taken one ecstatic bite of the most incredibly delicious crèe brûulée she’d ever experienced when Gabe’s cell phone rang, shattering the quiet between them. She raised her eyebrows at the sappy country tune of his ringtone. Not a romantic, huh? He was such a liar.

“Hello,” Gabe said. He frowned, listening in silence for a few seconds and then startled her by saying, “She’s right here, sir. Of course, sir.”

Who would Gabe Dawson call “sir” in that tone of respect? Even God probably didn’t rate that tone of voice from him. She took the phone Gabe held out to her. “Who is it?” she mouthed. He merely grinned and wiggled the phone at her. She took it cautiously.

“Hello?” she said even more cautiously. “This is Willa Merris.”

“Good evening, Miss Merris. This is Wade Graham. I’m sorry to disturb your evening. My people had quite a time tracking you down.”

As in Governor of Texas, Wade Graham? Holy cow. “Uhh, hello, Governor Graham. What can I do for you?”

The governor wasn’t of the same political party as her father, and the two men hadn’t been close, to her knowledge. It was decent of the man to express his condolences. Except she recalled her mother making some vague reference to having received a sympathy call from the governor last week. Why was the man tracking her down, then?

“I spoke with your father’s attorney this morning,” the governor explained. “As part of Senator Merris’s will, he left a letter expressing his preference for how his senate seat should be disposed of in the event of his death.”

“What does this have to do with me, sir?” she asked, confused.

“As you may know, it’s not unusual in the event of a senator’s untimely demise for the senator’s surviving spouse to take the seat until the end of that term.”

Horror blossomed in Willa’s gut. Her mother was flighty at best, and when she’d been hitting the pills hard, Minnie was barely conscious. Her mother wasn’t remotely fit to fill her father’s senate seat.

“In a few cases, however, the senator may request that someone else fill the seat. A trusted colleague or staff member, for example.”

Larry Shore was going to be thrilled. The guy was ragingly ambitious, and barely containing his fury that John Merris, whose coattails Larry obviously had planned to ride to the top, had had the ill grace to go and get himself murdered. Larry had briefly been a suspect in his boss’s murder, but he’d been released on bail and was supposedly no longer a primary suspect.

“… his letter, your father recommended that I appoint you to serve in his stead until a special election can be held. Of course, the regular election is in six weeks, and Congress is in recess so its members can return home to campaign. So, this will be mostly a ceremonial appointment….”

Her? A United States senator? “But, sir,” she blurted, interrupting the governor. “I’m a kindergarten teacher.”

“Nonetheless, your father thought you were the best person for the job. He named you in his sealed letter as his choice to finish out his term.”

Frantic, she blurted, “But I’m only twenty-eight. You have to be thirty to be a senator.”

“I’ve already spoken to the president. He’s given permission under these special circumstances for you to finish out your father’s term. The White House Counsel says there have been two senators seated at age twenty-eight in spite of the Constitutional mandate, so there’s a precedent.”

She didn’t know what to say. Shock barely scraped the surface of how she was feeling.

“I’m going to fly up to Dallas tomorrow for a press conference at around noon to make the announcement and formally appoint you. My assistant will give you all the details. You’ll need to prepare a brief statement. Given your recent loss, I doubt the press will expect to grill you too hard. Your father’s chief of staff can help you draft it.”

The line disconnected, and she stared at the cell phone like it was alien technology. A tanned male hand lifted it gently away from her.

“What was that all about?” Gabe asked quietly.

She looked up at him, stunned as the reality began to sink in. “My father requested that I fill his Senate seat until the next election. The governor’s going to appoint me to the position tomorrow.”

“Congratulations!” Gabe exclaimed.

She frowned. “But I don’t want it.”

“There’ll be nothing to it. You raise your hand, take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and then you sit tight until next January.”

“Next January?”

“The election is in November, but your successor won’t be sworn in until next January. You’ll get to serve in a lame-duck session of Congress if you want to.”

Appalled at the size of the task her father had just thrust upon her, she exclaimed, “But I don’t know anything about being a senator!”

Gabe leaned back in his seat and took a sip of brandy. “That’s not true. You’ve lived around a senator for years. You know how to handle yourself in a crowd, and you’re smart.”

She snorted inelegantly. “And as soon as the national media gloms on to the fact that I accused a man of rape today, the scandal will dwarf my father’s murder.”

“Rape?” Gabe echoed ominously.

“What did you think I was doing at the police station? You heard the questions the reporters were shouting at me.”

“I thought Ward assaulted you. Like he hit you and you fought him off.”

“Oh, he did hit. And I did fight,” she replied bitterly. “Not that it helped one bit.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked seriously.

“Nope.” At the end of the day there wasn’t much to talk about. She’d been dumb. Trusted someone she’d known for a long time. Let down her defenses. And he’d turned out to be a rapist.

Gabe’s eyes narrowed to a deadly glare. “Remind me to show you some self-defense moves,” he commented grimly. “There are a few things all women should know about how to take out a bigger, stronger assailant than them.”

She studied him with interest. He looked really mad. Why did he give a darn about what happened to her? She was the enemy. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

His spoon stopped in midair. It paused for a long moment, then reversed course and landed lightly on his plate. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”

“Because I’m my father’s daughter. And let’s be frank. My father hated your guts and went out of his way to cause you trouble. He loved nothing better than making you spitting mad.”

The corner of Gabe’s mouth quirked up. “The feeling was mutual. I’m gonna miss the old bastard.”

She sighed. Was it just her father and Gabe, or were all oil wildcatters this cussed? Maybe someday she’d find a nice, pleasant guy who knew nothing about the oil business to settle down with. These force-of-nature-personality men were so not her thing.

But then a flash of blond, charming James Ward made her blood run cold. Everyone thought he was a nice, pleasant guy, too. He would never hurt a flea, let alone viciously attack a woman, right?

“Are you done with your dessert?” Gabe asked, startling her out of her grim recollections.

“As delicious as this crèe brûulée is, that phone call killed my appetite.”

“Let’s get out of here, then.” Gabe came around the table to pull back her chair. The old-fashioned gesture surprised her. The young man she’d known had been brash and unpolished, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who certainly hadn’t held chairs for ladies.

Since when had she become such a snob? So, somewhere along the way, he’d picked up a few points of etiquette. Probably his wife had taught him. Polite behavior did not make the man.

Lord knew James Ward had been plenty polite up until the part where he tried to kiss her and then went crazy on her. She would never forget that strange and violent look that had come into his eyes. He’d tried to kiss her neck and she’d stepped back from him, and he’d done a no-kidding Jekyll and Hyde before her very eyes. It had been, bar none, the scariest thing she’d ever seen.

“Willa? Are you all right?”

She realized that she’d just been standing there like a zombie, staring at nothing. “Sorry. Went wool gathering for a second.”

“Good wool?”

Her throat too tight to answer, she shook her head. Gabe held out his forearm to her and waited expectantly until she looped her hand around it. Wow, he really had gone old-school in the past ten years.

He led her out to his SUV, which a valet had pulled around for them, and Gabe handed her into the vehicle. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the headrest. A United States senator. Her. The thought just wouldn’t compute. Even if the title was purely for appearances and she never did a darned thing, she would still go down in the history books as having served in the United States freaking Senate.

In a few minutes, Gabe slowed his car and turned a corner. Her eyes snapped open to see an underground parking garage. Panic tightened around her chest. “Where are we?” she forced out.

“I keep a place in Dallas for when I have business in town. Since you have to be here for a press conference tomorrow, I figured it would save you hassle to stay in town tonight. And, it has the fringe benefit of foiling those pesky reporters camped out waiting to pounce on you in Vengeance.

“But my clothes are at home—”

“You have power suits befitting a U.S. senator in your closet at home, Ms. Kindergarten Teacher?” he asked skeptically.

“Well, no.”

“Exactly. And that means you have to go shopping in the morning. Here, in Dallas. Correct?”