Romancing the Billionaire (Billionaire Boys Club #5)(56)
Author: Jessica Clare

She snorted, twisting her hands together as she stared at the painting in his hands. “If you call handing over all your money ‘well,’ then yes, I guess it did.”

“That’s pocket change.”

For him, maybe. For the rest of the world, it was a life-changing amount. She shook her head and focused on the picture. “Is there anything on the back of the painting?”

“Not that I see. We’ll pull it apart once we get back to my room. Our room,” he corrected. “I want you moving into it tonight.”

That was high-handed of him. “You haven’t asked me,” she said in a light voice.

“That’s because you’re mine, and I plan on licking you for hours to ensure that you know it,” he said, that intense look on his face again.

All right, that convinced her. “Well, then.” Violet fanned her flushed cheeks with her hand.

The elevator dinged and they returned to their floor. She wanted to run for the room, her anticipation sky-high, but she forced herself to walk slowly and steadily next to Jonathan, who didn’t seem to be in the same anxious hurry that she was.

But then, a few moments later, they were in his room. Jonathan set the painting down on the bed and it was almost identical to the painting in their room. This one was a different angle of the pastoral scene, and the water-wheel dominated most of the picture.

“This has to be it,” Violet said excitedly.

Jonathan turned it over and ran a hand along the cheap cardboard backing. “Let’s see if we can’t pull this off.”

Violet watched anxiously as he pried up the tabs on the back and slowly removed the backing. There, on the underside, taped to the mat, were two envelopes with a single word written on the cover of each. The handwriting was familiar. Violet. Jonathan. One for each of them.

“That’s it,” Violet breathed. She reached for the envelope with her name, tracing her fingers over her father’s handwriting. On the back, she could feel her father’s wax seal. He’d gone to so much trouble for all of this. She didn’t understand. In her experience, her father was a man who was interested in little beyond his own personal wants. To arrange all of this for her to discover—with Jonathan at her side—after his death? It made her wonder if there would only be the stele and journals at the end of this scavenger hunt, or if there would be something more meaningful.

Jonathan picked up the envelope with his name. “Do you want to open yours first?”

She ran a finger along the edges of the thick envelope, curiously hesitant. “Ten bucks says it’s another poem,” she told him, trying to keep the teasing note in her voice and failing. For some reason, she was oddly emotional. What if this was the last envelope? It would be the last tie to her father. A man she’d never been close to, yet who, after his death, had wanted to involve her in this enough that he’d dragged Jonathan into it.

She didn’t know how she felt about any of this. Steeling herself, she broke the wax seal on the envelope and pulled out the paper inside and began to read.

“I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And Thou shalt not writ over the door;

So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.”

Violet blinked as she finished reading it. “Wow. That’s . . . grim.” She looked at Jonathan. “What do you think?”

His mouth tightened. “Seems to me that it’s about the loss of love.”

Of course it was. Was this another slap from her father beyond the grave? Violet examined the writing but didn’t see anything bolded or out of the ordinary. She shook her head and folded the note, returning it to its envelope. “I’m not sure what I make of that.”

“Perhaps it makes more sense with mine,” Jonathan suggested, and ripped open one end of his envelope, removing his own slip of paper. He scanned it quickly, then made a sound in his throat.

“What?” Violet asked, scarcely breathing. “What does it say?”

Wordless, he held the paper out to her.

She plucked it from his hand and read it. There is a latch under my gravestone that opens a secret compartment. You’ll find the answers you seek there.

Violet felt cold. Goose bumps rose on her arms. He was sending them back to his grave? His grave was in Detroit. At home. He’d sent them to England and New Mexico, and now Greece . . . all so she could go back home? “I don’t understand.”

“Violet,” Jonathan said softly. He reached out and stroked her arm. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. It was an honest response, too. She didn’t know how she felt. Part of her was furiously angry, and part of her was disappointed. “He sent us all over the place just to have us turn around and go right back to Detroit? What was the point? Why not just send us there in the first place?”

“Maybe there was a message, a meaning of some kind, in each of the locations and the poems.”

Her lip curled with anger. “Each poem basically sounded like it was berating me for being a bad daughter who ignored her dear old dad. If that’s his message and I’m supposed to be shamed by it, he failed.”

“It’s all right,” he soothed her, pulling her against him in a one-armed hug. “We’ll figure it out once we go to his grave. The note says that all our answers are there.”

She pulled away from Jonathan, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go.”

“What?”

“This is nothing but manipulation. All of this.” She gestured at the letters “It’s just another one of his stupid games. What are we going to find at the end of this? A copy of his favorite lecture? His favorite book?”

“I’m hoping to find my stele,” Jonathan said quietly. “His notes would be a bonus, of course, but I want to take the stele back to the excavation in Cadiz.”

She shook her head. After all this emotional turmoil between herself and Jonathan, after being dragged from country to country, only to find out that her father just wanted her to visit his grave? She felt manipulated by him once again. “I don’t want to go.”