Blush(104)

At 9:00 a.m., two of her personal lawyers, Chris Deacon and Roslynn Carpenter, plus her CPA, Claire Fine, were included in the conference Skype call. They made damn sure she had the highest bid, and that the bidding was officially closed.

Blush was hers.

She crossed the successful leveraged buyout off her list as if it were butter on a grocery list.

A billion-dollar tub of butter.

The security people wanted to stay with her until they ascertained who had hired the hit men. Yes, the buyout was a done deal, but anyone that strongly motivated might have another agenda. They’d stay until they figured out the who and why.

They were there, but unobtrusive.

There was no time to think about Cruz, although her body had muscle memory and she ached for him. She was on full-speed, hyper-CEO mode. Things had to be resolved systematically, and once and for all, before she could think of the future without the man she loved.

She was trying damn hard to get over him.

The police, waiting for word from her, closed in at the investment company to investigate where the illegal leak had come from and to establish who made up the black pool. From that black pool would come whoever had put out the hit on her, Amelia was certain.

It took her three days, and dozens of phone calls, before she was ready to go down to the executive floor. The news of her return spread to the other thirty-nine floors, and to the press, like wildfire. Within an hour, practically everyone who was anyone knew she was back.

Returning to Blush headquarters turned out to be anticlimactic. People told her she looked well rested after her vacation. Some said she’d been missed. She had a long list of things she wanted to accomplish in the first week, and in typical Amelia Wellington-Wentworth style, she got right down to it.

Mia had more agents from the private security company come into Blush to “work closely” with her own people. They were there to observe and report. She was done with this shit of jumping at her own shadow and sleeping with one eye open. Having that many killers after her did that to a girl.

Security was doubled while she, Black Raven Security contractors, and the police closed in on who had hired the hit men. Black Raven was taking a much harder look at some of the players. So far there was no definitive proof, but they assured her they’d have something solid for her in a few days. The police, too, were looking at the same information Amelia had given them the day after arriving back in San Francisco.

The Black Raven agents with her had handed her an envelope with the report on Cruz. The envelope, still sealed, was in a drawer next to her bed. She wasn’t ready to look inside. Would whatever was in the envelope make him love her? He wasn’t capable of love—realistically she knew that. But did an I care about you trump living a life without him?

Before she dealt with anything related to Cruz, she had to take care of herself and Blush, and that meant talking to Todd.

“Welcome home, honey!” Her cousin strode into her office with arms outstretched, his gray suit immaculate, his hair just long enough to be sexy, his blue eyes, so like hers, bright with concern. While they were never demonstrative in the office, her door was closed, and she walked into his arms, crazy happy to see him.

“God,” he said thickly. “It is so damn good to see you. I’ve been worried sick.”

If he had an inkling of what she’d gone through in Louisiana, he’d have a coronary. “Are you crying into my hair?” she teased, giving him an extra squeeze around the waist before forcing a wobbly smile of her own.

“Who wouldn’t cry into this hair?” He let her go but held her at arm’s length, critically inspecting her from head to toe and back again. “Dear God, was it chewed off in a fit of passion by that sexy lifeguard at the beach?”

Her hair had been halfway down her back when she left. “No beach. No sexy lifeguard. But that’s a whole other story.”

Perched with her hip on her desk, a large, raw-edged slab of black granite, she turned to take in Todd’s sartorial splendor. As always, he was a sight for sore eyes. She’d missed him. He was cousin, brother, father confessor, best friend, and then all his other hats for the company.

Her right-hand man.

She didn’t need a written report to assure her of his loyalty to both her and the company. He was the one person in this whole mess she’d trusted unequivocally from the start.

Tall, elegantly thin, her cousin had the Wellington aquiline nose and the Wentworth blue eyes, and gorgeous, thick, wavy blond hair. Mia smiled. “No matter what, you always look like a Jane Austen hero.”

“I don’t believe in having tragic love affairs, but I’m more than willing to hear the salacious details of yours.”