He walked with…confidence, swagger, style, and a quiet kind of manliness that made her stomach twist. Maybe this was why she was sticking to him? She shook her head. She’d be crazy to admit a guy looking like this was…manly. He stuttered in front of her all the time.Or was she…getting attracted to him? She laughed at herself. Unless I’m a fool.And to remind her brain that Cole had nothing on her—and that she had nothing for him—she opened the door and hurried to the back of the building where the dog’s cage was.And there he was…Cole, laughing heartily as he fed the dog.She frowned. Had she ever heard Cole laugh before? No, she hadn’t.As the dog reached forward for the piece Cole was holding, he jerked his hand back playfully. The dog howled.“Come on, get it,” Cole said, laughing.The dog wagged its tail, edged closer, almost knocking him over, and finally snatched the treat. It howled triumphantly, running in a circle around Cole, who laughed so hard his ribs ached.What was so

And to Cole's absolute fucking surprise, Blake looked at him with a frown.“What does he want from you, honey?” Blake asked, voice all stupidly sounding like the most protective boyfriend on earth. And this was a man who wouldn't even be able to save himself by the time Cole was done with him. “He's the ex-con I told you about. He's so scary, tell him to go away from here,” she clung closer to Blake as if that would make anything different.Cole shook his head slowly and resumed descending the staircase. He'd seen a lot of twisted people by now, but Tiffany took the cake. And that Blake bastard — by this afternoon the three-day deadline he’d given him would be over.“I have called the security men to take care of him, let's go,” Blake said, still holding Tiffany, as they pushed past Cole and the crowd of screaming girls.Downstairs, the girls erupted into another uproar when Blake and Tiffany reached them. The noise swelled, a high tide of shrieks and phones.A couple of security men

Blake pursued hot under his heels.The boy didn't stop running until he gets to the lounge. Cole was standing at the end of the lounge, his hands waiting, ready to scoop the boy off the ground.As soon as the boy got near, Cole scooped him off the floor and patted his head. “Good job, kid.”Cole glanced at Elaine. She smiled too. Okay, maybe he'd say he was a bit wowed. Her ability to change her normal voice and act that well on the phone was kind of crazy.“You fucking son—”“Don't swear in front of a kid. It makes you a coward,” Cole cut him off gently.“Do you have any idea—”“Of what I just did?” Cole asked. “I guess I do.” He said with a lazy smile.“You have less than five hours to turn yourself in. I only recused you out there to remind you of the time so you won't end up telling me you got carried away with your new girlfriend.”Blake stormed over to Cole but he was stopped in time by some the security team who grabbed him.“Five hours,” Cole reminded as the security dragged B

Tyler got intel that Amanda was somewhere on this street, and he had immediately dressed in his most expensive suit, ordering his driver to get him here as fast as possible.How the hell Amanda had managed to arrive here before him was still a complete mystery to Tyler.The car slowed as a cop waved them to a stop.The man came over to the window, eyeing the driver first, then Tyler. Tyler straightened his suit. Surely, no cop would dare question him once they saw the hundred-million-dollar, limited-edition threads he was wearing.“Who are you, sir?” the cop asked.Tyler raised a brow. Does this idiot not follow the news? He’d been on national TV twice. “Tyler Whitemore,” he said, suppressing the 101 comments flooding his mind.“And Mr. Tyler, what business do you have here?”Tyler adjusted his suit again. Either this man was profoundly dumb—or hopelessly bold. “Do I have to tell you that?” he asked with a polite, condescending smile.“I’m afraid, yes. No one here gave any notice that

The whole room fell into a grave, almost suffocating silence. The only sound that dared to puncture it was the sharp clatter of a cup hitting the floor, scattering across the marble.“I'm sorry…am I the only one who just heard that?” The man holding the microphone’s voice trembled, disbelief dripping from every syllable. “Three…three hundred billion dollars?”Cole maneuvered through the stunned crowd toward the front, where the artifact rested under its glass case. He squinted at it, trying to decipher its appeal. It wasn’t a toy that would make a child squeal with delight, nor did it possess the kind of elegance that demanded an adult’s reverent attention. Yet here it was, at the center of everyone’s greed and expectation.“I will pay three hundred billion dollars for this,” Cole repeated, louder now, the weight of the statement dropping like a bomb across the room. Every head turned, eyes locked on him, disbelief mingling with envy.Even the sum of all the artifacts combined at this