The Millionaire's Secret Wish by Leanne Banks Read Free Book Online Page B

Alisa approached Grant, who was holding court at the other end of the room. Grant looked at him, but might as well have looked right through him. For some reason tonight it didn’t bother him.
    As soon as Grant finished talking, Dylan walked directly in front of the man. “How are you tonight, Grant?”
    Surprise glinted in the man’s eyes. “Fine, and you? We’re surprised you attended, since you’ve never come before.”
    “Change can be good,” Dylan said.
    “Some change,” Grant said.
    “Grant Remington, I’d like you to meet Alisa Jennings.”
    Grant nodded and murmured a pleasantry.
    “Another Remington,” Alisa said with a smile. “Half brother?”
    Grant went perfectly still. His nostrils thinned as he took a quick breath. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “Really?” she said brightly. “It occurred to me how lucky all of you are.”
    Grant swallowed. “All of who?”
    “Well, you and Dylan and your sister and your other brother. What’s his name?”
    “Walter,” he said, looking at Alisa in confusion. “Lucky?” he echoed.
    “Yes,” she said. “Think about it. You could have ended up with an ax murderer or some subintelligent bum for a brother. Instead you got an extremely intelligent, motivated man who’s an asset to the company.”
    Dylan squeezed her hand to signal her to stop.
    Grant flexed his jaw. “Is that so?”
    “Yes, it is,” she said. “But Dylan tells me you’re a smart man, so I’m sure you already know that. And in Dylan’s case, he got lucky because he could have ended up with two brothers and a sister who were so insecure they couldn’t see the good in him. Instead he got you,” she said.
    Dylan was going to kill her.
    Grant gave a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “How kind of you to point all of this out to me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
    “Torpedo two. Time for us to go,” Dylan said, shaking his head and guiding her from the room. He didn’t trust himself to speak, and she must have sensed it since she didn’t say a word on the drive home.
    As soon as they entered the front door, he rounded on her. “Why in hell did you do that?”
    She shook her head as if she were unable to explain it. “I don’t know. I probably need to talk to the hospital shrink about it.”
    “What?” Dylan asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said, wincing. “It must go back to our childhood. I have this overwhelming urge to protect you.”
    Dylan stared at her. “Do I look like I need protecting?”
    “No,” she admitted, taking in the length of him in a way that told him she was very aware of him as a man. “But the longer we were there, the more upset I got about the situation. It should be different.”
    “Lots of things should be different,” he said with more than a trace of impatience “That doesn’t mean they are.”
    “Maybe things aren’t different because nobody does or says anything to change matters.”
    “This is none of your business.”
    “I know,” she agreed wholeheartedly. “But this is wrong and someone needed to say something.”
    “And it had to be you.”
    She stared at him a long moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know what made me do it. It isn’t rational. Maybe there’s some kind of weird karma thing going on.”
    “Weird karma?” he echoed. Heaven help him.
    “I feel like I owe you.”
    Her statement blew him away. He took a breath to clear his head. “Because I’m letting you recover at my house.”
    She frowned, shaking her head. “It goes back further than that. I just have this feeling that you didsomething so special or so important to me that I owe you.”
    Dylan immediately remembered how he had hurt her during college, and his stomach dropped. “You don’t owe me,” he assured her. “You’ve never owed me,” he said, and left her staring after him. He had to escape her searching gaze. He had to escape his own disgust with himself.
     
    Alisa felt incredibly foolish. After donning a nightgown,