Taking On The Billionaire (Redhawk Reunion #1) - Robin Covington Page 0,1
between glossy auburn curls. “What did you guys do to get busted by the cops?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“I can find out, you know.” She murmured, “It is my job.”
Tess touched the photo and Adam watched her. The way she moved so confidently in his space was mesmerizing. Tess was gorgeous, her body curvy and sexy, but it was the way she owned her place in the world that kept him awake at night. It was her take-no-prisoners bravado that kept him hard and wanting anytime she was near. When she straightened and looked at him over his shoulder, he almost forgot that they were in an office exposed to all of his employees. The office where he was supposed to be running his billion-dollar company and not yearning to kiss this woman, to taste this woman, to possess this woman.
What was this thing between them? Tess Lynch was not the kind of woman who usually caught his eye. She was secretive and elusive, mouthy and brash, and owned her blatant brand of sexuality. She was also decisively stubborn but also changed her moods and mind as quickly as a hummingbird flew. Tess Lynch was a walking danger sign that he should heed but spent way too much time figuring out ways to ignore. She did not fit in the way he wanted his world to function, but he found himself caring less and less.
A few months ago he’d taken the referral from a friend of his and hired Tess to find his younger brother and sister. They’d all been taken from their parents and separated in an illegal adoption twenty-four years ago, and now he’d finally made good on the promise that six-year-old Adam had made to himself and his ancestors. Tess had been successful and located both Sarina and Roan and now she was here to deliver the final report.
But while the job he initially hired her to do was over, he was glad to have another reason to keep her around a little while longer. Which was insane because if he was right, the problem he needed her to help solve could take down his company and everything he’d fought to achieve.
Adam needed to focus. He’d asked for this meeting because he needed to take quick action if he was going to save the company he created. Adam turned away from her, needing to break the connection and regroup.
He spied the folders on the desk and tapped a finger on the papers. “What’s this?”
“The final report...” she paused, tilting her head to the side, watching him closely “...and copies of everything I found while I was searching for your family. Court records. Newspaper clippings. Educational, job and criminal records. The last twenty years condensed on paper and a USB drive.” He raised an eyebrow in question and Tess shrugged. “I know you didn’t ask for all of that extra stuff but I thought you might like to have it. It might connect some dots.”
Damn. Well, he’d asked. And wasn’t this just like jumping from the corporate frying pan into the fire of messy family relations?
His hand hovered over the top folder while he played chicken with his past. He’d spent a ton of money and a lot of time to find his lost brother and sister and the answers to all of the questions that had tormented him for the last twenty-four years were sitting on his desk reduced to words and pixels.
Finally forcing himself to open it, he was greeted by his own face looking back at him in two pictures. The first was his current headshot and the other was when he was six years old, the photo his adoptive parents had first seen when they were picking out a kid to give a better life to. Hardened brown eyes that knew way too much about the shit life could throw at you stared back at him from the page. Adam shut the folder. He knew the rest of his story.
The other two packets contained similar but completely different histories. His brother and sister, Sarina and Roan, flashed across his line of vision in a stream of photos and facts and data about what had happened to them after they’d been separated and sent to different families. Different states. Different lives. Different trauma but the same hard expression stared back at him in the photographs. He was anxious to read every word and sickened by the sensation that he was prying into things he had no business