Ensnared (The Accidental Billionaires #1)(56)

As I’d watched her sleep like an angel, exhausted from getting very little sleep during the night, my heart hadn’t allowed me to wake her up, even though I knew we needed to talk. So I’d gone into the office to catch everything up so we could spend more time together and talk about everything we should have discussed a long time ago.

Jade was mine, and I sure as hell knew I was hers. If I wanted to get real, I’d known it almost from the first minute we’d met. My Butterfly had grabbed my balls and my heart from day one. I’d just been having a very hard time accepting that I deserved a woman like her, and that she’d be stuck with me for life if I acted on those emotions.

But I was done fucking fighting my fate. I’d never wanted to in the first place. My only real apprehension had been saddling a woman like her with a guy like me, so I’d found every excuse possible not to do it.

Truth was, I’d been a major dick, and it had taken some kind of come-to-Jesus moment like I’d experienced last night to snap me back into reality.

I needed her, and I just hoped to hell she felt the same way. Screw the fact that I didn’t deserve her. I’d make her so damn happy that she’d never regret taking me on.

I fumbled for my cell phone in my pocket.

She needed to know how I felt.

I wanted her to know.

But the synapses in my brain weren’t quite connecting all that well, and the flu medication I’d taken didn’t seem to be helping much. One moment I was burning hot, and the next I was cold to the bone.

Just the exertion of reaching for my cell phone had me hacking and coughing so hard that my ribs ached.

Need to call Jade.

But I don’t want her to come here, because I’m currently contaminating my entire home.

Not sure I could even hold a conversation at the moment, much less tell Jade everything I wanted to say, I tried to focus on my phone, and just texted exactly what I was feeling. Then I dropped the cell on the bed, my energy spent just from typing some words into a text.

I rolled over onto my back with a groan. My entire body felt like it was on fire, and I hurt from the top of the head to my damn toes.

All I wanted was to escape being miserable, and I got my wish when the medication I’d taken finally kicked in and I fell into a restless sleep.



“She still hasn’t answered?” I asked my mom in a hoarse voice as I lay in a hospital bed seven days after I’d initially gotten sick, my body being pumped with fluids because I was dehydrated.

As if the flu hadn’t been bad enough, I’d ended up getting a secondary bacterial pneumonia that had delivered the knockout punch. My damn cough had gotten so bad that my chest and my ribs felt like I’d been slugged repeatedly with a baseball bat in those areas.

My mother glanced at my phone and said, “I don’t see any new text messages.”

“Shit! What if I got Jade sick, too? She was with me the night before I left the office because I was coming down with the flu. Maybe something happened to her.”

“She’s fine, Eli,” my mother said as she ran a gentle hand over my sweaty forehead. “She just texted me yesterday to ask a question about one of her investments. She’s not sick.”

Jesus! I felt like a kid again with my mother keeping watch at my bedside. And I hated it. I was a grown man, and it was deflating to be so damn weak that my mom had to help out.

“So she isn’t pissed or angry at you,” I confirmed. “She just isn’t talking to me.”

That hurt like a bitch. I was sure I’d let Jade know that I didn’t want her to rush to San Diego for me because I was sick. In fact, I’d been trying to make certain she didn’t, because I hadn’t wanted to infect her. But she could have at least answered my texts.

Something.

Anything.

Although I was glad that she wasn’t ill, I desperately needed some kind of communication from her. I’d been on her list of people to ignore once before, and I hadn’t liked it.

Because I felt like I was constantly hacking up a lung, I probably couldn’t talk. But I could text.

Sort of.

My mother gave me a suspicious look. “Why would she be angry at you?”

“No reason,” I muttered, wishing I hadn’t said anything to her.

My mother could be like a hunting dog on the fresh scent of game when she wanted to be. She’d chase down an answer if it killed her.

I started to cough again, and the pain that shot through my ribs felt like somebody was nailing me with a hot knife. “I hate being sick,” I grumbled irritably as soon as my body had calmed down.

My mother smiled. “You’ve always been a bad patient. Luckily, you don’t get ill very often.”

I was relieved that she didn’t seem ready to hound me about Jade.

“I have your pain medication, Mr. Stone,” a friendly nurse said as she breezed into the room.

“I don’t want pain medication,” I said like a petulant kid. “It screws with my head.”

I’d just woken up from the previous dose. The last thing I needed was to conk out again.

The nurse looked at me disapprovingly. “If you don’t keep your pain level down, you won’t be able to do the deep breathing and coughing like you need to do. That means the pneumonia could get worse than it is right now.”

I weighed my choices with a frown, and then took the pill cup from her hand, tossed back the medication, and swallowed it with some water.