Captivated By You (Love in the Heartland Book 1)

by Stacey Lynn

  I let her look. I was proud of my ink, and I liked the attention. She was the only one embarrassed whenever she realized what she was doing, but to me, she was playing right into my hand.

  Shaking her head, the lust in her eyes cleared and she took another sip of wine. Before she set it on the counter, she said, “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who I am, where I come from. There’s a lot you don’t know and I don’t think Karen told you. I’m enjoying my day here, but you might change your mind when I tell you that I’m probably the last person alive who can help you with your image you’re trying to fix.”

  What the hell? My jaw tightened and I took a sip of my own glass of wine before moving to the fridge and grabbing the bowl of prawns. “I need food in me for this, don’t I?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then grab the food. Once we’re settled on the dining table outside, you can tell me what you think will shock the shit out of me so much that I’ll send home the woman I want in my bed.”

  I winked, watched her blush spread to her throat and her hand reached up as if to stop the spread of heat.

  What the fuck ever. She could have killed a man for all I knew and I wouldn’t give a shit.

  I also knew the contract with Infidelity was ironclad. The only way out was through physical abuse for her and since I wasn’t going to lay a hand on Claudia in any way she didn’t enjoy, it wasn’t an issue.

  Whatever the perfectly mannered beauty thought she could tell me wouldn’t matter. It would just make more work for not only my PR team, but Infidelity’s.

  Giving her another moment, I took the wine bucket and prawns outside and flipped on the grill. While the grill heated, I slid the prawns onto skewers, paying attention as she hauled out the rest of the food.

  Instead of sitting at the table and waiting until I was done, she stepped up next to me. “I’ve never used a grill before.”

  “What?” I asked, a bark of laughter escaping me. “Seriously?” Hell, I’d started grilling with my dad every summer by the time I was twelve.

  “Yeah. I had a chef that made all my meals.” Her voice went soft and her eyes looked to the horizon. I could tell she’d grown up with money. Something about the way she carried herself, the way while she was impressed and complimentary about my house, she wasn’t overly blown away either by the size of it or the private plane I’d chartered. This girl grew up in a life not that different to my current one. I settled in, continuing to fill the skewers and waited for her to keep talking about her life when she stilled me with a hand on mine.

  “What?”

  She grinned, lips twitched and for the first time since I’d seen her, uncertainty flared in her eyes. “Will you teach me?”

  “To grill?”

  “Yeah. And whatever you’re doing with the shrimp.”

  “Prawns,” I corrected. “They’re larger and different.”

  “And more delicious, I know.”

  Her soft, warm hand was still on mine. The urge to wrap her hand in mine, entwine our fingers together and yank her against my chest hit me hard and fast like a right hook to the jaw. I focused.

  End goal. Long game.

  “All right then.” Turning off the grill, I started everything over so she could see how I lit the gas flames and then stopped and allowed her to do it.

  As it re-warmed, we worked together, filling the remaining skewers. Claudia laughed and giggled as the seafood slipped through her fingers more than once. Turning to me, brown eyes wide and lit up like the fourth of July, she wiggled her fingers in front of my face. “My hands are messy.”

  “You sound like it’s never happened before.”

  She shrugged and wiped them on a towel. “I don’t think I was ever allowed to get dirty when I was younger.” A frown yanked her brows together and whatever was bothering her, she shook it off. “I’m not sure, despite how much money I had growing up, I really had all that much of a life, to be honest.”

  Her gaze roamed the landscaping along the side of the patio and pool. I nudged her with my hip. “Here. Lay them on the grill like this. Seafood grills fast, only a few minutes on each side so you have to watch it.”

  The thankful grin she gave me that I wasn’t pushing her or asking her more than she was willing to share, sent heat straight to my chest.

  “You can finish up. I’ll refill our wine and bring out the plates and silverware.”

  She walked away from me, doing what she said and when the dinner was done, I joined her at the table.

  I gave her silence while we ate, accepted her compliments like a puppy wanted treats, and basically, acted like a lovesick moron.

  But I was quickly learning. Beneath the girl hiding or running, there was another one…desperately dying to break free.

  And I was going to be the man to bring it out in her.

  ––––––––––

  Dinner was done and our wine was refilled. I’d given her time to gather her thoughts but I was done waiting. Whatever she needed to tell me, she needed to get on with it. The sun was starting to set and after a long day of travel, not to mention cooking, I needed some damn sleep. I also needed to get working on the songs I’d started on the plane ride down.

  “So. You going to keep me in suspense much longer?”

  Setting down her glass of wine, Claudia reached for the iPad I had on the table. It’d been used to play music but with a few clicks and swipes, the music was gone and she was looking something up. “It’s easier for me if you read it.”

  Interest piqued, I leaned forward and set down my glass of wine.

  “You’re constantly on covers of People Magazine and on TMZ and other shows and gossip rags,” she said while tapping and swiping, “but I don’t think you’ve been on Newsweek or The New York Journal.”

  “No. Can’t say I have, sweetheart.”

  She glanced at me, wide brown eyes now narrowed and sad. “Well, I have.”

  “Why?” I attempted to tease. “Were you involved in some foreign espionage or something?”

  “Not me,” she mumbled. “But it wouldn’t surprise me at this point. Here.”

  She turned the iPad screen toward me and the first thing I saw was Claudia. Front and center on the screen, dressed in a fitted black dress that stopped just at her knees. She had on a black, wide-brimmed hat, eyes covered with large sunglasses. Her hair had been curled and bounced right on her shoulders, lips painted a deep, dark red. She held one single white rose in her fingers as well as a white handkerchief. Dressed like that, lips pressed into a frown, she was almost the startling image of a young, Jackie O.

  “What the hell?” I asked as I read the headline.

  Daughter of Georgia Supreme Court Judge

  Attends Funeral of Family’s Murder-Suicide.

  And below the thick bold letters was a smaller, but still bold tagline.

  Judge Keith Townsend and his wife, Sheila Townsend, were laid to rest today. Townsend took his life after murdering his own wife. Investigators believe the murder-suicide is connected to Judge Townsend’s relationship with Alton Fitzgerald and crimes both of have been accused of in recent months.

  My ribs tightened around my heart, making breathing difficult. Holy fucking shit.

  Across the table, Claudia had become a statue. Spine straight, lips pressed so tightly together they almost disappeared. Her gaze was on the iPad in my hands and even when I set it down, she didn’t turn away from it.

  “Alton Fitzgerald is part of the Montague dynasty in Savannah. They essentially ran the city, the state, hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Alton thought he could run the country for as powerful as he was. He was also connected, and one of the men connected to him was my father.”

  “The judge?” I asked but it was unnecessary. The image of Claudia on the screen was now burned into my mind’s eye forever.

  “As Alton’s dynasty began crumbling, multiple crimes he’d had covered up over
the last decade were revealed. At the center of many of them, my father was implicated.”

  Her quivering chin was the only emotional glimpse this was killing her to tell me. Fucking Christ. I’d known she was hiding something, but nothing could have prepared me for this.

  “Three months ago, my father sent me to the spa. Said I should have a day off to relax because he knew how much the stress of our life disintegrating had been on me.” She laughed sadly, wiped beneath her eyes even though she hadn’t shed a single tear. “I came home to our house surrounded by police cars and ambulances and a fire truck.” Dark, swirling chocolate eyes settled on me, and a chill doused my spine. “He’d called them after he shot my mother, before he took his own life. I learned later he even told the dispatcher he didn’t want me to be the one to find them.”

  “The fuck?”

  It was all I could say. There were no sympathies I could give this woman in front of me. Nothing I could say to take away the gut-wrenching pain she was dealing with, had been living with.

  She shook her head and looked away, despair in her eyes but still the perfect posture, like she was afraid of being weak.

  I scanned the article, learning everything I could in the silence that followed, and then I clicked on another dozen of them, scanning those.

  Her father had shot her mother and killed himself because, from what sources said, neither wanted to continue living under the scorn and shame Judge Townsend had brought to his family. What a fucking dick.

  Her proper manners and the way she carried herself started making sense. Claudia Townsend had been raised in wealth and prestige. She’d been raised to be perfect, a socialite among some of the wealthiest citizens of Savannah. Hell, if the courts hadn’t seized most of her father’s wealth, she wouldn’t have had to worry about working a day in her life again.

  But they did seize her family’s wealth, most of it, anyway.

  And she did have to work.

  “This why you came to Infidelity?”

  “No.” She shook her head again. Her laugh a little less sad and the smile on her lips remained a moment before she turned back to me and sipped her wine. “I came to New York to get away from the gossip and the scandal and wanted to blend in with millions. Plus,” she shrugged, “Karen is my mom’s sister. And my last remaining relative.”

  “Karen is your aunt?”

  “Her assistant is out on maternity leave so she offered me the temporary job there until I could get settled. Paid for my apartment for a year and furnished it.”

  Which explained why when I was dealing with all the contractual bullshit, the living expenses had been drastically less than I’d considered they would be.

  “So why are you here, then?” She didn’t need the money. Not twenty grand a month. She certainly didn’t seem all that impressed with my lifestyle. My body, maybe, but not my life.

  Her tongue swiped her lips and my gaze stayed focused on hers while she rolled them together. I could practically see her debating what to tell me when she turned, pressed her palms to the glass tabletop.

  “Because I needed the money to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. Because I had the perfect upbringing to be on some wealthy man’s arm for a year. And because I wanted to experience life outside the life of country clubs and societal expectations of me.”

  That was part of the truth. Not all of it. “What else?” I pressed.

  Her pause told me what I needed to know. What she wasn’t telling me was the crux of what she was looking for. What she wanted.

  As her cheekbones turned a raspberry shade of red, I never, in a million years expected her answer to be what she said.

  “Because I wanted to do something stupid and get rid of my virginity and I figured this was the safest way to do it.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  CLAUDIA

  He gaped at me.

  I’d done it. I’d completely thrown myself at his mercy and at his feet. Heck, I’d practically thrown myself at his cock, and all he could do was gape at me. I already knew the outcome of this.

  There was no way he’d be willing to risk going public with me. Not after he spent several minutes reading what my life and my family had become. It was easier to show him than tell him. There was no way I could speak the words without breaking down and that wouldn’t happen.

  “You…What? I’m sorry…can you repeat that?”

  His shock was almost humorous. I didn’t smile. “In my life, my sole purpose of being raised was to become a wife and a mother. I wasn’t allowed to have a career after college but was forced into volunteering for a variety of organizations. Some of them were actually important to me,” I said. Some had been. Some like domestic abuse and rape crisis centers would still receive my money if I could no longer give them my time. I had enjoyed those nights when I knew the dirty money of the rich was going to help others who envied us but would despise us if they knew the truth.

  And now they did…and no one envied me.

  I was okay with that loss.

  His tongue was pressed against his teeth and he continued to shake his head. Like rattling his brain could make any of that make sense if he tried. The harder he worked the more confusing it all became. I waved a hand in the air to try to dismiss the importance of everything.

  “It doesn’t really matter, though. You’re in this position based on a scandal. And I should have told you, ensured Karen told you before you ever demanded I be your employee.” He all but snarled at the world, but I was getting used to thinking of myself like that. He’d bought me. I’d give him me. In a year…whatever…it didn’t matter anymore. “Had I known it was you that wanted to hire me so quickly, I wouldn’t have agreed. But Karen assured me I wouldn’t be unsafe—”

  “You won’t be.” He hit the button on the iPad and blanked the screen, shoving it out of his way with more force than necessary. “And I don’t give a shit about your family. Marker Entertainment has the best PR team in the country, even if they haven’t proven it lately with me. And I know of Infidelity’s team. We’ll figure it out because there’s no way in hell you’re leaving. Not after that bombshell you just dropped in my lap, sweetheart.”

  He was thinking with his dick. Not entirely unexpected, just disappointing.

  “It does matter. If you let me stay here, someone finds us and it gets leaked, you’re not on the verge of being ruined, you’ll be destroyed. Your purpose with Infidelity was supposed to save your reputation. Not set it off like a bomb. Think about this, Liam.”

  “Oh. I’m thinking about everything you’ve said to me.”

  I all but rolled my eyes and filled my wine glass. Taking a sip larger than proper, I then pushed off my chair and paced to the grill.

  He’d taught me to cook. It was simple. Not even a full lesson, but it’d been fun. I grew up with chauffeurs and housekeepers and chefs and nannies. I hadn’t had to fold my own laundry or wash my own clothes or dishes until I went to college, and even then, I usually took it home and let someone else handle it. I was useless, really.

  No one had really taught me much in life other than how to be perfect and mannerly and poised.

  My hand brushed over the front of the grill. “You don’t mean that.”

  The heat of his front hit me swift and hard, like I’d thrown the flames on the grill on high. “I do mean that.” He was behind me. Chest brushing my back. Hands on the outside of mine on the grill. He’d caged me in before I knew he was coming and I didn’t even want to push him away. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean, so learn that lesson first, Claudia. Second, everything you’ve told me tonight explains why Anne phoned me last night having a shit fit about my plans to bring you here.”

  “What?” I spun so quickly, wine sloshed over the rim of the glass. Then I realized my mistake. I was now facing Liam. Chest to chest. My eyes jumped to his. “You knew?”

  “No.” He brushed a hand through his hair and his grin was disarming as he shrugged. “
Ignored her call. I didn’t feel like listening to her bitch, but I can guarantee you that right now, she’s working her ass off to uncover anything related to you or your family, and she’ll have a plan of action the next time I speak to her.”

  “Impossible. There’s not a good way.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  My mouth snapped shut. Opened. Closed again. I had nothing left to say. And he wasn’t asking me to leave. Not yet.

  Lifting a hand, his finger settled at my ear and he took a chunk of my hair in his fingertips. “See the thing is, I’m pretty used to getting what I want, and before you even told me that delicious morsel of information about you, I’ve already decided I was going to have you. But now I know, my plan was right.” His gaze shifted to me. I was stunned. Silent. Molten lava was bubbling all over my lower stomach, making me hot and shivery at the same time.

  “What plan?”

  “My plan to seduce you. To move slowly. Trust me, everything you give me in return will be reward enough for your company.”

  “What?” I cleared my throat. God, it was dry and he was so close I couldn’t bring my wineglass between us. “What are you going to do?”

  He drifted closer. His chest brushed against mine. Something else of his brushed against my stomach. My breath caught and I couldn’t move away from him. He smelled like coconut and aloe, the sweet hint of wine on his breath as he dipped his mouth toward me. He skated his lips over my cheek, to the corner of my mouth, back to my ear. “Whatever I want. Whenever I want. I’m going to tease the hell out of you, drive you crazy with need until you decide I’ve earned the right to be the first man to sink inside of what I already know will be the hottest, tightest, and sweetest pussy on the whole damn planet. I won’t take that until you offer it, but make no mistake, at some point before we leave this island, you’ll give yourself to me.”