Page 34 of Just My Luck

Lincoln…Link. One piece clicked into place. These folks must be looking for Lincoln Kerr, the man the Japanese guy had mentioned. For some reason they thought⁠—

“Hi Maureen,” said a deep voice from behind her. She whirled around. Jim stood a few feet back, his face unreadable.

What the…

Bits of detail flickered through her mind. Jim’s lack of concern about getting fired. The expensive clothes he was wearing today. His presence at the Seaside Paradise. He was probably staying there, not working there. His knowledge of expensive watches. He probably owned one of those Patek Philippes himself, the sneaky bastard.

Something else occurred to her. He’d probably paid her balance at the Urgent Care with his black card, or whatever the billionaire level above black card might be.

This man, the one she’d just kissed, wasn’t Jim Brennan, gardener. He was Lincoln Kerr, billionaire. She felt utterly betrayed.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “You can let them in.”

“Sorry, this is my house and I don’t want them to come in. If you want to talk to them, you can leave. Now,” she ordered, when he didn’t move.

“Zara—”

“Lincoln!” she snapped.

“I can explain.”

“You don’t need to explain anything. I don’t care. I don’t like liars. I’ve had enough of that in my life.” Her voice choked on those words. Her father was an artist when it came to lying. Cons, scams, frauds. He’d even wanted her to lie for him, to give him an alibi, but she’d refused to commit perjury. She’d told him to take a plea that would give him less time in prison, and promised to take care of the kids until he got out. That was how important honesty was to her.

And to think, she’d kissed lying Lincoln Kerr. And really freaking enjoyed it, too.

16

Lincoln had no choice but to leave Zara’s house, although more than anything he wanted to stay until that gutted expression left her face. But he wasn’t the kind of asshole who would go against a woman’s direct request. He might be other kinds of asshole, but not that.

He followed Maureen and her bodyguard through the pelting rain and slid into her Mercedes. She got into the back seat next to him. He didn’t bother to ask where she’d acquired it. She could have purchased it as soon as she landed, or she could be borrowing it from a friend. Money could get you anything.

Most things, he corrected. It wouldn’t get Zara’s trust back, and he couldn’t even contemplate that disaster. Being with her, spending time with her…it meant something to him on a cellular level. Even since that first crash in the jungle, nothing had felt right. Until her.

He shook off his morose thoughts and turned his focus to Maureen. “What do you want from me? You already won.”

When he’d first formed Kerr Enterprises, he hadn’t wanted his half-sister to get involved with the company, but Violet had begged and pleaded, and since she’d invested in it early on with her own millions, he felt obligated. He should have known Maureen would turn out to be a shark.

“You think I wanted to go against you?” she cried. “You refused to listen to reason. I was only looking out for my family.”

They’d disagreed about the family’s role in a just-finished luxury survival bunker, one of the so-called “billionaire bunkers” that were starting to proliferate, especially here in Hawaii. To him, the bunkers made no sense, until he’d realized that he could move his Higher Ground lab there. Maureen wanted to save that space for her own family and accused him of being cold-hearted for refusing her.

She’d launched an all-out battle to oust him, and while he’d been in a coma in the Hawaiian jungle, she’d succeeded. When he’d resurfaced, he’d decided she could have that job—all he wanted was Higher Ground, which she knew nothing about.

“Do we need to rehash all that? You got your space in the bunker. You got everything. Why are you here?”

“You are my brother,” she said with that slight graceful Southern lilt. “Isn’t that enough?”

That question didn’t deserve a response. His sisters had never been fond of him. He represented a rupture in the family, the secret affair that had ended their parents’ marriage. Violet and Charlton hadn’t divorced, because their social status might have suffered. But their relationship had never recovered.

At first Violet had claimed that Lincoln was adopted, but everyone knew the truth, and eventually she stopped pretending. Lincoln had grown up getting side-eyed and whispered about everywhere he went in Savannah. His sisters, both of whom were several years older, had rarely defended him. In their eyes, he was the enemy, along with his father.

“The brother you shafted,” he reminded Maureen.

“I was looking out for my children,” she said through gritted teeth. “Why is that so hard to understand?”

The bodyguard started up the Mercedes and they pulled out into the torrents of rain. He took one last look over his shoulder at Zara’s house, hoping to see her waving him back. But her door was shut tight. It was raining so hard that he could barely see through the mist, as if a waterfall was pouring from the sky.

“Where are we going?” he asked.