Seduction on the Sand (The Billionaires of Barefoot Bay #2) by Roxanne St. Claire Page B

they’d been saved?”
    He stroked her hair, not saying anything or passing judgment on her bitterness.  
    “They didn’t have to be there that day,” she whispered. “They were supposed to be at my school, but some big multimillion-dollar client was coming in that afternoon and at the last minute, they bailed on the school meeting.” She closed her eyes, remembering that last breakfast, the punch of disappointment because, once again, money trumped everything else. Not even one of them would pick school over a client, so she’d lost them both.
    “And they could be alive if they could have been somewhere else, and they would have been if their priorities had been in order.”  
    “Everyone who died could have been somewhere else, Frankie.” His voice was as calm and sweet as the fragrant soap he’d washed with, but the words did nothing to help her.  
    “But they should have been somewhere else,” she insisted, clinging to the regret and anger that always bubbled under the surface. “I’ve forgiven them, but...”
    “Not if there’s a but you haven’t.”
    Well, she’d tried. It had been thirteen years and she wasn’t angry at the world anymore. “But I’ll never be a fan of anyone who is motivated by the desire to have more. That’s what drove my parents—the need for more. More money, more things, more status, more success, more multigazillion-dollar deals.” She puffed out a disgusted breath. “They died to have more.”
    He didn’t respond—how could he? He was a billionaire who no doubt worshiped at the altar of More Is Never Enough. But his gentle caress on her back felt like that of a kind, caring man, so she tried to forget that he was cut from the same cloth as her money-hungry parents and let him soothe away the old beast of bitter who reared his head more often since Nonno had died. So maybe it wasn’t bitterness that had her blue, maybe it was just a far too familiar sense that she had no one.
    She closed her eyes and rested on his powerful shoulder, practically purring at how good he felt.  
    “I came here after it happened,” she finally said, not wanting to talk about her parents anymore. They weren’t why she wanted to hold on to this land. It was because of her savior, Nonno. “To live with my grandfather.”
    “Was he your only relative?”
    “No, my mother’s sister in Long Island also wanted me, but according to my parents’ will, I was supposed to live with Nonno. So I left a four-thousand-square-foot apartment on the Upper East Side and a private school, driver, and a life of pure luxury to move to a goat farm in the middle of a swamp island.”
    It was his turn to back away and look at her incredulously. “That must have been horrible.”
    She fought a smile. “I loved it.”
    “Really?”
    “Well, not immediately, no. I mean, it was a bit of a culture shock and I was a typical teenage brat full of denial and anger, but Nonno? Boy, he just loved me like I was another one of his darling does. He was just the most amazing, sweet, terrific guy in the whole world. My grandmother had died a few years earlier, and the farm was fading, but only because he needed a second pair of hands and he was too stubborn to ask for help. His middle name was stubborn,” she said, trying to make light of the character trait that had nearly cost her that last goodbye. “But once he started teaching me how to do things, I really, really loved the life.”
    “You lived in this trailer?” he asked.
    “Oh, no. We had a little ranch house, but it was messed up badly in a hurricane that hit the island a few years ago. He put this up temporarily.”  
    “I guess it was a great escape from the pain of what you’d gone through in New York,” he said.
    Everyone thought that, and it made sense. “It didn’t seem like that to me at the time. I enjoyed the animals and loved Nonno and he loved me. Completely and wholly and unconditionally. Way more than my parents did, or at least than