Read Cain for Free Online Page A

her the whole house in
exchange for the fruit, she’d told them it was a gift and not a
trade, but thanked them anyway. At sometime well after midnight,
they settled down to sleep.
    Julie thought about leaving Molly’s
home. She’d felt bad that she hadn’t thanked her. She decided to go
by the hospital next week and tell her so. Julie was sure that had
she stayed, Dr. Waite would have found a way to keep her from where
she needed to be. She couldn’t do that, not now, not
ever.
    The envelope that Rodney had given
Molly was a surprise. Not only had Rodney found out who she was,
but had also kept tabs on Julie’s family. They were still searching
for her. Even after all this time.
    Alyssa Howard was an heiress. Not just
an heiress, but one with a brain. That was what the papers had
called her when she’d graduated from Yale at fifteen with a
business degree. She’d gone on to Brown University as well. She now
had three degrees under her real name and had planned to use them
running her daddy’s company for him.
    Alyssa’s father had been grooming her
to run the company’s holdings when he retired. Howard Incorporated
bought companies and buildings, revamped them, then sold them for a
profit. They also had several hotels all over the world that
catered to the rich, famous, and the small families. When Nathan
Howard died suddenly when Alyssa was seventeen, he’d left her
everything—over eleven billion dollars in company assets alone.
Personal accounts and monies added another five billion, making
Alyssa the youngest billionaire in the world.
    Alyssa’s brothers, Nathan the forth and
Robert, both older than her, and their mother, had gotten an
allowance. And Shannon and her sons were not happy about it. They
were to get just over four hundred thousand a year that they would
divide between them. And Alyssa held the purse strings. Samuel, her
father’s brother, too, was on an allowance, but his had
stipulations. Stipulations that he wasn’t happy about
either.
    So when they approached her with their
“plan,” Alyssa ran. The plan was sick and perverted. Their plan
made Alyssa Howard become a nothing.
    The clippings that Rodney had saved for
her said that there was a reward for anyone knowing about her,
living or dead. She didn’t have to wonder why Rodney hadn’t turned
her in for the money. Two million dollars would have gone a long
way to comfort most people. But Rodney had been her friend, almost
like her father had been to her. Julie wondered what her family
would think if they knew their missing daughter slept most nights
under their noses.
    Looking across the parking lot from
where she slept most nights Julie watched the guard walk the
perimeter of the Howard Building, not knowing that less than fifty
yards away, their boss slept. Julie snuggled down on the cardboard
sheet that Toby had found for her and pulled her coat tighter
around her. That’s when she thought of Dr. Cain Waite.
    Cain had kissed her. She’d been kissed
before, she’d even had sex a couple of times when in a night of
loneliness and stupidity, she’d had a classmate “do her.” Julie
doubted that Cain would “do her” in quite the same way, neither
would it be as clumsy and unsatisfying.
    Cain was gorgeous, sweet, and polite.
Well, not to her really, but she had seen him around others and
knew that he could be. To her, he was bossy, rude, and...well,
really bossy. But he had also called her lovely. No one had called
her that since her father.
    Julie rolled to her back, wincing at
the pain. Cain was going to be so pissed when he figured out she
had left. Even more so when he figured out where she’d gone.
Smiling, she kind of wished she could see the look on his face when
he did. Well, she thought, he’d forget about her soon enough. She
was where she wanted to be, where she needed to be.
    ~~~
    Cain wasn’t mad at Julie, he was
furious. The little twit was gone. And not only was she gone, but
she was hurt too. When he found