The Billionaire's Game(2)

He grimaced as he stretched his body out on the bed. His lame right leg was aching from two months of nonstop searching for a woman who he was beginning to think was nothing more than a phantom, an illusion. But he knew Asha Paritala existed, that she was real, and he was determined to find her. Maddie and Max deserved to know if this woman was their sister. Never mind that he hadn’t even gotten one tiny glimpse of Asha. He would. Soon. In some ways, he almost didn’t want the search to end. He’d felt more alive in the last two months than he had since his accident. Matching wits with the unknown female was a challenge, and there was nothing Kade loved more than winning a difficult game. Gut instinct told him that she knew he was looking for her. The question was…why was she running away? It wasn’t like he wanted anything except information from her, and it could gain her two siblings who she’d never known existed. There weren’t many people who wouldn’t want to be related to Max and Maddie, seeing as they were two of the richest people in the world— in addition to being two of the kindest individuals Kade knew.

“I’m not sure why I’m so damn impatient. It isn’t like I have anything else to do until Travis needs me,” he said to himself grimly, admitting that his twin rarely called on him for anything, and Travis never needed anyone. And it had left Kade feeling useless, restless. His days as a pro football player were over. His stint as a star quarterback for the Florida Cougars was nothing more than a memory, the one thing he loved having been torn away from him almost two years ago when a drunk driver had failed to see him on his motorcycle. His leg had been mangled all to hell when the inebriated idiot had moved into his lane and caught Kade’s leg between his truck and Kade’s bike. He didn’t remember much of the accident. But one of the first things he remembered with crystal clarity was waking up in the ICU, his longtime girlfriend, Amy, frowning at him as though he’d disappointed her. And obviously…he had. She’d dumped him right then and there, letting Kade know in no uncertain terms that she refused to be with a cripple who wouldn’t be a celebrity anymore.

Trying to slam his mind shut on the unpleasant and painful memories of his accident, he focused on the belongings he’d dumped on the bed: a few articles of worn clothing, a hairbrush, a toothbrush that had definitely seen better days, a large pad of paper and some well-used charcoal blocks and pencils. Pushing the other articles aside, he opened the pad of paper, mesmerized as he slowly flipped the pages, studying each drawing before going to the next.

Each image nearly leaped from the page, so real that it almost seemed as if they could jump from the paper and come to life in front of him. The drawings were fanciful—many of them looking like mythological creatures or animals—in the first part of the collection.

She’s an artist. A fucking amazing artist.

“Damn,” he whispered in an awed voice as he skipped some blank pages and came to another section, revealing her portraits. He didn’t recognize any of the individuals she had drawn. Obviously, they were ordinary people going about their daily activities, but he could feel every emotion on a drawing of an elderly woman’s face, a woman who looked like she was sitting on a bench at a bus stop, and he could almost share the joy of a group of children playing on a playground. Flipping through the rest of the pictures of people, he was dumbstruck by Asha’s talent. He was no artist, but the drawings could touch even his emotions, and he wasn’t a particularly emotional type of guy.

Kade felt his mouth go dry, and his gut lurched as he revealed the last picture, a man and a woman poised to engage in a passionate embrace. The male’s face was shaded, his head turned to the side, but the woman’s desire was so potently drawn that he could feel her naked longing, her desperation as she waited for the man she was embracing to kiss her. Long, silky hair cascaded down her back, her head tilted for his kiss, her face revealing unguarded need.

The words scrolled beneath the drawing hit Kade with a visceral reaction:

Someone! Someday! Somewhere!

Damned if Kade didn’t want to be the mystery man in shadow, the guy to kiss the woman breathless, provide the passion he could sense she desperately wanted. He knew exactly how she felt; he’d felt the same way. In fact, he still felt like that every time he saw his little sister Mia and her husband Max together, or his friends, Sam and Maddie, and Simon and Kara. All of them had found their mates, the person who made them feel whole, and the happiness that surrounded those couples was almost ball-bustingly painful for a man like him who felt so alone, so solitary. He was damned happy for all of them—every one of them deserved to be happy—but it wasn’t easy not to feel lost, not to mention a little odd, when he was around them. He just didn’t roll that way, and he kept his emotions in check. He’d been conditioned to keep a grip on himself since he was a child, and he’d learned to keep a handle on himself throughout his football career. It was too vital for him to stay cool and detached. Letting his emotions rule him would have meant mistakes, and he’d rarely made errors when he was on a football field. Besides, a guy coming from a father as crazy as his had to have control. He and his siblings had all tried to never do anything that could be misconstrued as the least bit emotional or out of the ordinary. It was their way of trying to separate themselves from their sire.