A Billionaire's Redemption

chapter 1

...We commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the ground—earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...”

The preacher’s voice droned on, but Willa Merris’s heart hurt too much for her to hear the rest. Her father, Senator John Merris, was dead. Truly gone. Murdered. And even though his body had been discovered nearly two weeks ago, the finality of it had waited until this exact moment to slam into her like a ton of bricks.

Despair weighed on her until she could hardly breathe. What were she and her mother going to do? He had always been the center of their universe, the two of them pale moons orbiting his brilliant life.

A thud startled her. Her mother had just tossed a tightly balled clod of red Texas clay on top of the casket. The dirt in her own hand was cold and moist, squishing out of her clenched fist. Blinded by tears, Willa tossed her clod of dirt into the hole that contained her father’s mortal remains.

She shuddered as dozens of other mourners stepped forward to toss handfuls of dirt on her father’s grave. Some of them appeared genuinely sad, but the majority ranged from indifferent to covertly satisfied to bury the bastard. She had no illusions that her father had been a saint. Far from it. He’d been a mean man in a mean business—two mean businesses—a wildcat oilman carving a fortune out of the oil sands of West Texas, and a United States senator, brawling in the halls of Congress.

A comforting arm slipped around her shoulders. She leaned into the embrace for a moment, but then caught a whiff of the aftershave and stiffened. No. Surely not. Horror flowed through her. That, and sheer, frozen terror. She glanced up at the sympathetic face of James Ward, the son of her father’s longtime business partner.

Get away from me this second,” she cried. “Don’t touch me!”

The people around her jolted, shocked by her outburst. She slipped out from under Ward’s arm as he stared at her, dumbfounded. Right. Like he didn’t know exactly what she was talking about.

Flashes of his big hands tearing her clothes...viciously slapping the fight out of her...shoving her to the floor of her living room...and, oh, God, the pain of his big body slamming into hers over and over. His grunts...the maniacal gleam in his glittering blue eyes...the humiliation and utter degradation of it...

She’d wanted to die. Right there where he’d left her on the floor like some piece of tossed-off garbage. She’d wished desperately to disappear, to just cease to exist. But no such luck. Instead, her father had checked out of his mortal coil and left behind the mess of his life for her to unravel in addition to hers.

Honey,” Ward murmured, “you’re overwrought. Let me drive you home. Put you to bed.”

Overwrought? Something inside her cracked. She’d show him overwrought! “Get away from me!” she screeched.

Backpedaling from him with her hands outstretched to fend him off, she registered vaguely how everyone had gone stock-still around her. It was as if time had stopped with everyone in funny poses, staring at her slack-jawed as if she’d grown a second head.

I swear, if you lay a hand on me again, I’ll kill you!” she shouted at Ward in rage she didn’t even know she had inside her. “Do you hear me? I’ll kill you!”

The vignette unfroze all at once with a rush of reaching hands and concerned faces closing in on her like macabre, black-clad clowns. Camera bulbs flashed, cell phones whipped out to arm’s length, pointed at her. Even the local news reporter frantically gestured at her cameraman to get all this on film.

Appalled, humiliated and so irrationally furious she scared herself, Willa batted away the hands, shoved through the crowd and broke into a stumbling half run toward her car. The grass and her high-heeled shoes were a lethal combination and she nearly broke her neck before she fetched up hard against her car door breathing heavily. She felt dirty. A driving compulsion to wash away the feel of James Ward’s filthy touch overwhelmed her. She had to get home. Take a hot shower. Scrub herself clean.

Willa stabbed at the car’s ignition button and nearly ran down the news reporter as she accelerated away from her father’s disaster of a funeral, frantic to escape this nightmare from which there was no waking.

* * *

Gabe Dawson watched the slender, black-veiled woman race away from John Merris’s grave. What was that all about? He hadn’t been close enough to hear the commotion, but it had been hard to miss. An angry buzz of gossip hummed around him...something about the senator’s daughter threatening to kill someone....

Quiet little Willa Merris? Alarm blossomed in his gut. Was she in danger? The girl he remembered wouldn’t say boo to a mouse. But then, he hadn’t seen her in over a decade. She’d been a skinny, awkward teen the last time he’d visited the Merris home. Before his falling out with John Merris. Before the two of them became mortal enemies.

At least Willa’s outburst had drawn the attention of the rumormongers away from his arrival at the funeral. As it was, he was sure to be topic number one in the gossip columns for showing up at John Merris’s grave. He would probably be accused of coming here to gloat. In point of fact, he hadn’t wished the old man dead. Plenty of suffering and failure, yes. But not death.

The preacher mumbled a few more words into the suddenly circuslike atmosphere, but no one was paying attention. Seeming to sense it, the minister cut short and wrapped up the graveside service with unseemly haste. Gabe watched in sardonic amusement as the good ladies of Vengeance, Texas, wasted no time texting and calling their friends to report the latest scandal surrounding the lurid death of John Merris. Vultures.

He jolted as a microphone materialized under his nose. “Have you got any comment on Willa Merris’s outburst, Mr. Dawson? You’re Senator Merris’s former business partner, are you not?” a female reporter demanded.

She looked as avidly entertained as the vultures. More so.

No comment,” he growled. He strode away from the woman, but she walk-ran beside him, continuing to shove that damned microphone in front of him.

What do you have to say about John Merris’s murder? Some people are saying you’re more pleased than anyone that the senator is dead. Is it true you two had a violent argument just a few weeks ago?”

He stonily ignored the reporter and her sleazy innuendos.

Is it true that the police have asked you not to leave town, and that you’re a person of interest in the senator’s murder?”

He stopped at that, turned slowly and gave her the flat, pitiless stare that had earned him his reputation as a hard man among hard men. The reporter recoiled from him with a huff. Smart girl.

What did you say your name was?” he called after her as she stomped away from him.

She half turned and snapped, “Paula Craddock. KVXT News. Are you going to give me a statement?”

Nope. Just wanted to know who to sic my lawyers on the next time you harass me.”

The journalist’s gaze narrowed to a threatening glare.

Yeah, whatever. Better women than she had tried to get a rise out of him over the years. But he wasn’t the founder and CEO of a billion-dollar oil conglomerate for nothing. He chewed up and spit out self-serving leeches like her for breakfast.

Meanwhile, the alarm in his gut refused to quiet. What had caused Willa Merris to blow up at her own father’s funeral? She and her mother were always the souls of decorum, quiet props in the background of Senator Merris’s many public appearances. Willa had been trained practically from birth how not to draw attention to herself. It was unthinkable that she would cause a scene, ever, let alone in public, in front of the press, and most definitely not at a somber occasion like this.

What had gotten into her?

Worry for the unpleasant conversation he had yet to have with young Willa flashed through his head. Maybe he should wait awhile to break his own bad news to her and her mother. But it wasn’t like there was ever going to be a good time to tell them John Merris’s last, nasty little secret.

He sighed. Lord, this was going to suck. He might as well go find Willa Merris now and make her misery complete.