by Fiona Brand
“Let me get this right. If I don’t share the house with Allegra, I lose shares in my business.”
The edge to Tobias’s statement underlined his annoyance that there was a lot more at stake for him than for Allegra, courtesy of the fact that he was the CEO of a multibillion-dollar security firm. She was also aware that the shares that Tobias’s grandfather had left to Esmae several years ago weren’t just ordinary shares, they were a crucial chunk of voting shares. That meant that whoever held them had the right to vote on matters of corporate policy.
She had no idea how much they would be worth. Although, given Tobias’s bread-and-butter security products like house and car alarms, his extremely expensive detective agency and VIP security service, and other whispers about military contracts and satellites, she guessed the figure could be in the millions.
Phillips, who had an ex-military look himself, with a short crisp haircut and a square jaw, flipped a page, as if he had to refresh himself on the type of clause that no lawyer was likely to forget. “That’s correct.”
Allegra coolly redirected Phillips’s attention back to her. “And if I don’t live in my great-aunt’s house for a month, I’ll lose shares in my business to Tobias?” She wasn’t worth millions, or even billions like Tobias. Her net worth was more in the six figures range, if you counted her mortgage, but even so... “Madison Spas is important to me, and it’s not, exactly, worth peanuts—”
Philips gave her the kind of politely disbelieving look that signaled that, at some point in the proceedings, he had joined Tobias’s wolf pack. “The terms set for both sets of shares are there in black-and-white Miss Mallory, clause 16 C.”
Tobias, who had moved to prop himself on the edge of the lawyer’s enormous mahogany desk, crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not exactly interested in picking up shares in your beauty business—”
“It’s not a beauty salon.” Aware that her voice was just a little too clipped, she forced herself to do a silent count to five.
When it came to dealing with strong alpha males like Tobias, responding in emotional ways was a complete waste of time. Knowledge and logic were what counted but, according to her mother, there was another, even more effective, tactic. It contained no logic whatsoever: you just looked for an opportunity to say no.
She met Tobias’s gaze squarely and tried to ignore the fact that his expensive masculine cologne was having an annoyingly distracting effect on her. “As I’m sure you know, Madison Spas is an exclusive spa and retreat center specializing in de-stressing therapies and holistic living.”
“Which is exactly my point. It’s not, exactly, my line of business.”
“I’m glad you made that point,” Allegra said smoothly, “because producing homogenous boxes of car alarms and door locks doesn’t exactly interest me, either.”
There was a brief silence. “Hunt Security does more than make locks and alarms.”
“Oh, I forgot...you also have some kind of a detective agency.”
JT made a muffled sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh.
A gleam of something close to amusement surfaced in Tobias’s gaze. “I guess that’s one way of describing Hunt Private Investigations.”
Allegra suddenly realized that fighting with Tobias was just a little too...exhilarating. The last thing she needed was to open the door on a dangerously addictive attraction that was officially stone-dead.
She sent him a chilly smile. Tobias might be rich and powerful now, but her family, despite being cash-strapped for the last couple of generations, had once been wealthy and successful, too.
JT, who, until that moment, hadn’t taken any part in the conversation, caught her eye, which was startling, because for the past twenty minutes, despite the fact that he had been quite friendly to her in the past, he had studiously ignored her. “Maybe you should give Allegra a break, Tobias. You know what Esmae was like...headstrong, unpredictable—”
“If you’re trying to suggest Esmae might have had dementia,” Phillips interceded, “forget it. She had a test just a few months ago to confirm that she was of sound mind, just in case anyone tried to overturn the will.”
JT frowned. “If she didn’t have dementia, why write a will like that?”
Allegra didn’t miss the implication. If Esmae was of sound mind, then someone else had to have applied pressure on her to write those crazy, eccentric clauses into the will. And, since Tobias would never willingly choose to share a house with her, of course, she had to be the culprit.
Over the innuendoes and veiled insults, she returned her glasses to their case and tucked it in her bag, then rose smoothly to her feet. If there was ever a time to deploy her mother’s “no” tactic, and get some power back, this was it. “Contrary to what you all seem to believe, I don’t know what on earth possessed my aunt to put that clause in the will, because she knew chapter and verse that I’d rather be stranded on a desert island than spend one night under the same roof as Tobias.”
She shot Tobias a chilly look, just to make sure he had gotten the no message. That not only that she didn’t want him, but that she would never want him. “Literally, wild horses couldn’t drag me. Ever.”
A heated, distinctly sexual tingle shot through her when she noted that his gaze was narrowed and glittering and fixed on hers. As if somehow her complete denial had had the complete opposite effect she had intended. That instead of being offended, he had liked what she had said.
As if her total, utter rejection had turned him on.
Three
Tobias frowned. “If Esmae knew there was no point putting us in the same house together, why bother?”
It was the wrong question to ask. Two years ago, Allegra had been vulnerable and off-balance after what had happened in San Francisco, and too trusting of Tobias. Now, she was older, smarter and a whole lot more ticked off. “Maybe Esmae put that clause in her will for your sake, not mine.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Okay, I’ll play. Why did Esmae think I needed to live with you for a month?”
“Francesca Messena,” she said succinctly. “And her twin, Sophie...although, not so much.”
It occurred to her that Francesca Messena had been relaxed, vivacious, the kind of woman men were naturally drawn to and loved to date. On the other hand, Sophie had had a reputation for being distant and controlled, more interested in business than men. More like herself.
The sudden thought that Tobias had never truly been attracted to her because, like Sophie Messena, she was not his type, made her feel even more annoyed. If she was not Tobias’s type, that meant the one-night stand they had shared had been even more meaningless than she had thought.
Tobias pinched his nose. “Why are we talking about the Messena twins?”
Jaw tight at the conclusion she had just drawn, that Tobias had slept with her without even liking who she was, Allegra plowed on. “Do I have to paint a picture? You pursued both of the Messena twins—”
“I wouldn’t call it pursued, exactly.”
“We can split hairs all day long,” she said coolly, “but the point is that, just a few months ago, both sisters got hitched in a double wedding to other men.”
“I recall the wedding, since I was a guest.”
“Which is exactly what I’m getting at. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Esmae knew that your love life had, shall we say, hit a downward slope. Clearly she was concerned that you were having trouble finding someone—”
“So she decided to give me a little help.”
She rewarded Tobias with the same kind of professional smile she gave her spa clients when they reached a fitness milestone. “Just a theory.”
Phillips cleared his throat, the noise punctuating the tense silence that had descended on the room. “As riveting as all of this is, you can’t leave yet, Miss Mallory. There’s, uh...more.”
; Allegra blinked, for a moment she had been so consumed with correcting Tobias that she had forgotten about the will. Even worse, she had done the one thing she had promised herself she would not do—she had become emotional.
Adrenaline still humming through her veins, she sat down.
Almost immediately, Phillips began working his way through the fine print of the will, dealing with special bequests. The Hunt jewelry, apparently a massive haul of soulless diamonds that were kept in a bank vault, went to Tobias. When Phillips mentioned a box of Mallory keepsakes, and a painting of Alexandra Mallory, Esmae’s mother and Allegra’s great-grandmother, she frowned.
She hadn’t known a painting existed. Neither had she thought anything was left of Alexandra’s life, because the family fortune had been wiped out. “Are these keepsakes also in the bank vaults?”
Phillips consulted a separate page sitting on his desk. “No, they’re not. I assume the items are memorabilia and of no particular value, because your aunt stored them in the attic of the beach house.”
As fascinating as it was to hear that Esmae, who had been Alexandra’s only daughter, had preserved some memorabilia, the final dry clause made her stiffen.
Esmae had, of course, left her five-star resort, the luxurious Ocean Beach Resort, which she had built with Hunt money, to Tobias, with a catch. Unless he personally managed it for the first month, the exact time she and Tobias had to share the beach mansion, ownership, in full, was transferred to her.
For a moment, Allegra was too stunned to react. The “living together” clause had made it look like she was trying to trap Tobias into marriage; this one made her look like a scheming gold digger on the make.
She was abruptly spun back two and a half years, to the moment her financial career had crashed and burned because two executives at the firm she had just started at had both accused her of trying to trade sex for money, promotions and even jewelry, and all because she had gotten tired of the usual singles dating scene and had made the fatal mistake of trying an online, “executive” dating site.
Admittedly, she had dated one of them, Halliday, once. She hadn’t known that he was an executive of the firm that had employed her, because he had been away from the San Francisco office for a number of weeks setting up the new San Diego branch, and he had been using a fake name. Even though he was married, to the boss’s daughter, he had been trolling online, pretending to be single. Annoyed when she had uncovered his true identity and then had said an absolute no to an office affair, he had then made a preemptive strike to protect his career and his marriage by claiming on social media that she had offered to sleep with him to get a promotion.
If that wasn’t bad enough, another executive of the same firm, Fischer, a close friend of Halliday’s, and a nephew of one of the partners, who was also married and using the same dating site, had then cornered her and propositioned her in her office. When he had refused to take no for an answer, because, apparently the fact that she was an ex-beauty queen meant that no didn’t mean no, she had been forced to fend him off with a large stapler.
Unfortunately, the glancing blow to his jaw had left a bruise and drawn blood from his lip. To make matters worse, he had reeled back, tripped over a chair and ended up on the floor. At that point, maybe he would have slunk away and said nothing, but another new intern had walked in on them. Face red with embarrassment, Fischer had stormed out, then proceeded to also smear her online, claiming that she had attempted to seduce him and had wanted expensive jewelry in payment.
As a result, she had been hauled before the firm’s disciplinary committee. Even though their findings had been “inconclusive,” because there was no evidence, apparently the scandal had made her position at the firm a “problem.” She was pretty sure the “problem” part of her employment had been locked in when she had used the forum to give the managing partners a piece of her mind.
Maybe she should have zipped it, but she didn’t like injustice, and the reluctance of her bosses to actually investigate, because of nepotism, had been the last straw. If they lied and covered up for their own executives, she could not recommend that anyone trust their money to them. Using that same logic, she could no longer entrust her career and her talents to them, either, so she had quit.
Unfortunately, her victorious exit had been somewhat marred by the manifestation of a mysterious medical condition called SVT, supraventricular tachycardia. That was a complicated term for the fact that, every once in a blue moon, her heart would pound out of control and, if it didn’t naturally regulate itself, she needed medical intervention to bring it back to its normal rate. It was a condition that had started up when she had been in college and which her doctor had told her was probably due to the fact that she was a type A personality. In layman’s terms that meant she had control-freak tendencies and didn’t handle stress well.
She registered that Tobias had said something short and flat, and that JT was lodging his protest with Phillips in succinct lawyer-speak. But, in that moment, she wasn’t concerned about either Phillips or JT.
Her gaze clashed with Tobias’s. “There’s a simple solution. I’ll get my lawyer to draw up a document that relinquishes all rights—”
“Take a look at clause C,” he said. “If you give up your rights to the hotel, and then if I fail to manage it for the next month, it goes to the eldest of your next of kin who is, I believe, your brother, Quin.”
She read the next clause, and her stomach sank. There was no way Quin, who already owned a very successful boutique hotel in New Orleans, would release Tobias from the clause. He would take the Ocean Beach Resort in a New York minute.
She fixed Tobias with a level look. “I have no idea what’s going on here. The only conversation Esmae and I had was about the shares she held in Madison Spas, and that was because I wanted to buy her out four months ago—”
“So the whole thing about living together wasn’t your idea?”
She froze in the middle of refolding the will. “Hmmm, let me see... Go and live in an isolated, overstuffed mansion with the last man on earth I would ever want to share any personal space with?”
She rose to her feet, hooked the strap of her handbag over her shoulder and checked the sleek white smartwatch that encircled her wrist, which indicated she had missed an incoming call from Janice, her receptionist. “That would be no, and no.”
Tobias didn’t bother to hide his disbelief. “In other words, Esmae thought this up all by herself?”
“Yes.” Out of nowhere, her heart began to pound and her stomach tightened around a cold, hard lump of dread that, once again, her reputation was going to be shredded for something she hadn’t done. That the lies and deceit that had destroyed her financial career would somehow taint her new business enterprise and destroy that, too.
Although, that wasn’t likely to happen, she thought crisply. She was her own boss. This time no one could pressure her to leave.
Although, Tobias could refuse to renew her lease.
That would create difficulties, because she would have to relocate the spa. She was currently looking at new premises for a second spa, but that would take months to set up. If she had to move the business in the next few weeks, she wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
Taking a calming breath, she did a slow, internal count to three. If she could retain her current premises, that was definitely the best option, which meant she needed to correct Tobias’s false assumption.
She pinned Phillips with a cool glance. “Have you ever seen me before?”
He froze, as if he was under cross-examination. “Uh, not that I can remember.”
“That’s right, because we have never met. And why would we? You were my aunt’s lawyer dealing with her private, personal affairs. Things that have nothing at all to do with me.”
Tobias’s brows jerked together. “The fact that you didn’t meet with Phillips doesn’t prove a thing.
”
Allegra transferred her gaze to Tobias. “You think I took advantage of Esmae while she was on her sickbed and influenced her to change her will. But, if that was the case, why didn’t I ask for more, and outright? Like the house and the diamonds, for example? Very expensive assets that she left to you.
“And, before you ask, no, I don’t want the house, and I definitely don’t want the diamonds—I’m quite capable of getting my own—and I don’t need to prove anything about the will. Maybe you should start remembering that I’ve lived in Miami for just over two years. During that time we’ve been in the same room, maybe, five times total. Two of those occasions have happened within the space of the last few days—at Esmae’s funeral and now. If that’s your idea of pursuit, then your love life must have flatlined.”
She shoved her copy of the will into her handbag.
Maybe she should have ignored what Tobias had said, but his statement that she was pursuing him had cut too close to the bone because she had pursued him, past tense, and been rejected.
On top of that, this whole situation, of being in a room with men who seemed to view her as a woman prepared to use her sex to get what she wanted, was an unpleasant reminder of what she had gone through in San Francisco.
She started for the door, but Tobias reached it first and held it open.
The gesture reminded her that, even online, Tobias had a reputation for being honorable to a fault, and a gentleman. Not that she had experienced that side of his personality.
She sent him a fiery glance and tried not to notice the mouthwatering cut of his cheekbones, or the intriguing hollows beneath, the scar that ran across the bridge of his nose, as if he’d been caught in a bar room brawl or, more likely, been involved in some form of hand-to-hand combat. Unbidden, her stomach tightened at the thought of Tobias in warrior-mode. On the heels of that, a vivid memory of lying in bed with him, their limbs entangled, sent heat flashing through her. Then, she pulled herself up and she was back. “You’re pointing the finger at me, but maybe you were the one who influenced Esmae?”