She was no longer the impulsive wild child who, within a week of meeting Finn Murphy, moved into his luxurious apartment and married him in Vegas on the three-month anniversary of the day they met.
She was successful. She was confident. She was in control...
At the entrance to the very upmarket restaurant, Beah smiled at the maître d’ and surrendered her coat. Resisting the urge to check that no red curls had escaped her smooth chignon, she looked over the exquisitely decorated dining room, her eyes immediately going to the best table in the room.
As if he could feel her eyes, Finn jerked his head up and their gazes clashed.
Beah’s feet felt glued to the floor and she couldn’t pull her eyes off his masculine, oh-so-handsome face. There was a hint of the nerd he’d once been, in the wire-rimmed glasses over sharply intelligent eyes and a slow-to-smile mouth. A close-cropped, super-short beard covered his cheeks and jaw; his dark blond hair was overlong and could do with a trim but his shoulders were wide in a designer suit, exquisitely tailored for his tall frame.
Finn pushed his way to his feet, unfurling his long, muscled body. He wore a black shirt without a tie and his eyes, a light green, remained on her with laser-like intensity.
He used to look at her like that while they were making love, as he was about to slide into her. Like she was a puzzle he didn’t understand but needed to complete...
“Ms. Jenkinson? Ma’am?”
Beah heard her name being called from a place far away and wrenched her eyes off Finn onto the concerned face of the maître d’.
“The Misters Murphy are expecting you and, I’m sure, delighted to have you join them.” He gestured her to precede him.
Beah forced herself to cross the room, to keep her face impassive. Yeah, she could pretty much guarantee Finn Murphy was not delighted to see her.
She wasn’t thrilled to see him, either.
Fifteen minutes earlier...
It was just another dinner with another client in a swanky restaurant. While he wasn’t a fan of the concept, he’d attended more than a few as an owner of Murphy International.
There was no reason to feel nervous.
Finn Murphy lifted his hand to loosen the tie cutting off his air supply and silently cursed when he realized he wasn’t wearing a tie and the collar to his black shirt was open.
He was not nervous. Stressed maybe, but not nervous. He and his brothers were in the final stretch of preparing for one of the biggest art auctions in a generation and it was his responsibility to ensure every piece auctioned—including paintings by the old masters, impressionists and cubists, negatives by Ansel Adams, and one of the best collections of Jade in the world—was beyond question and reproach. Every provenance for roughly eight hundred items needed to be checked, verified, collated.
If his nerves didn’t play up when he was falling off three-hundred-foot buildings BASE jumping or flying down black-diamond ski runs, then he had no reason to feel jittery while waiting for the arrival of one of the wealthiest art collectors in the world.
And his wife.
Ex-wife, dammit.
Finn picked up his water glass, put it down again and reached for his glass of red wine, lifting the crystal rim to his lips. He would not look at his older brother, not just yet. Carrick could look past Finn’s devil-may-care attitude to the rolling mess below his seemingly steady surface.
He didn’t want to talk about how the thought of seeing Beah again, even if it was just a business dinner, made him feel nerv—a little tense. They’d once been as close as two people could legally be; now they were little more than across-the-pond work colleagues, vague acquaintances.
“Take a deep breath, Finn.”
Finn narrowed his eyes at Carrick. His oldest brother looked calm and controlled, but amusement flickered in his light green eyes. Finn considered, as subtly as he could manage it, flipping off his brother. At fifteen, when he’d been the biggest rebel and pain in the ass, that might’ve been his reaction. At thirty-three, he was way past acting like a child. Or he should be.
But the urge was there.
“Why are you acting like a cat on a hot tin roof?” Carrick asked, picking up his tumbler of whiskey.
“I’m fine,” Finn replied through gritted teeth. “You know I prefer to be left out of these client dinners. I’m not good at making small talk.”
It wasn’t a lie—he really wasn’t. Carrick and Ronan were able to charm and coerce, to make small talk, but Finn tended to be too terse, too abrupt. His bluntness was legendary throughout Murphy International. There was a reason why he preferred to work alone, why he buried his head in books and texts and research. He was better with art and objects than he was with people. Inanimate objects didn’t talk back, dammit.
He was the company nerd, the brain, the Murphy recluse. He had no problem with any of those descriptions. They were all, to a degree, true.
Carrick’s gaze was steady. “You are here because Cummings wants to meet you. Apparently he’s quite a fan.”
Finn snorted. “He’s a fan? You make me sound like the front man of a boy band.”
“He was very impressed that, despite being blasted by every authority on D’Arcy, you refused to cave when the art world insisted you were wrong.”
This again? Years ago, fresh out of college with a PhD in art history, he’d published a paper suggesting the painting Thief in the Night, by the celebrated French artist, was painted by one of his apprentices and not by the master himself.
He’d been called an upstart and arrogant and worse, but he hadn’t cared then and didn’t care now. He knew what he knew and was rarely proved wrong. It had taken a year, and a series of forensic tests, for the art world to accept he was right. The owner of the D’Arcy, whose painting lost millions because Finn refused to budge, was still not a fan. But as Murphy International’s head of world art, Finn’s responsibility was to the art, not to the owners.
“Anyway, Paris Cummings was impressed by your research and your steadfastness under intense pressure.”
Finn picked up his wineglass and swirled the liquid around the bowl. “I don’t regret sticking to my guns but I do regret the bad PR around that incident.”
His arrogant attitude hadn’t helped. Back then he’d been particularly impressed with himself, thinking his double degree in art and forensics, and his ability to speak a half dozen languages, made him special, and he’d liked his reputation for being something of an art genius. He most definitely hadn’t liked being questioned. Admittedly, he’d been a bit of an ass.
These days, after a failed marriage and a decade to grow the hell up, he wasn’t so quick to tell people he was better, smarter, quicker. He’d come to realize that while he was smart in certain areas—he excelled at anything book-based and was naturally sporty—he was shockingly bad with people.
Unlike his brothers, he wasn’t emotionally intelligent. Concepts were easy; people weren’t.
People, and their sticky, complicated psyches, were a complete mystery to him. He didn’t think that would change anytime soon.
Finn leaned back in his chair and glanced at his oldest brother. His brother and Sadie—the art detective he’d hired to do a deep delve into a painting that might be a lost Homer—were engaged and besotted with each other. The air crackled whenever they were in the same room and the glances they exchanged were blowtorch-hot.
Ronan, the middle Murphy brother, was also currently distracted by his, so he said, inconvenient attraction to Joa, his temporary nanny.
Finn’s brothers’ preoccupation with their women suited Finn; it took their attention off him—BASE jumping, Finn, are you mad? Shark diving without a cage? You take too many risks—and he was grateful for the reprieve. They didn’t understand his need for adrenaline, his willingness to push the envelope.
He didn’t understand why, after experiencing div
orce and death, they were even flirting with love and commitment, so he considered them even.
To Finn, handing over his heart was the biggest risk of all. Allowing oneself to be vulnerable was, to him, the most dangerous thing one could do.
He’d tried love once but hadn’t allowed himself to go all the way, to risk everything, with Beah. And, not surprisingly, their marriage had crashed and burned.
Carrick pulled back the cuff to his designer jacket to check his watch. “Cummings will want to talk art with you. He’s a bit of an art history and science buff. Just go along with it. Beah and I will jump in if you start getting...impatient.”
Finn knew Carrick wanted to add irritated.
But holding an intellectual conversation with one of the world’s wealthiest collectors of art, in front of Beah—the woman who still starred in his every sexual fantasy—was going to be a challenge.
“I saw your email saying you are wanting to take some vacation time in a few weeks. Where are you going?” Carrick asked.
“Ice climbing in Colorado.”
Three, two, one...
“Is that safe?” Carrick asked, frowning.
Well, no. Because if it was safe, Finn wouldn’t be doing it. Half the fun of adventure sports was the risk. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, risk his heart, but he had no problem putting his body on the line.
Because when he stood on the knife-edge of danger, that was when he felt most alive. And, yeah, he liked the excitement of achieving something exceptional. The complete focus the sports required also switched off his washing-machine brain, and it was his way to stop thinking, analyzing, planning.
And the dopamine rush kicked ass...
“Aren’t you scared something will happen?”
Finn considered the question. Sure, it was a factor, but he didn’t let fear stop him. “You know we can’t control the future, Carrick. Bad things happen.”
Carrick didn’t reply and Finn knew he was thinking of their past, the many tragedies the Murphy siblings had been forced to handle. The world saw them as this successful, rich, we-have-the-world-at-our-feet family but people rarely remembered the hell they’d walked through, hand in hand.
But they’d stuck together and yeah, here they were. Scarred, battered, but still a unit, still stronger together than they could ever be apart.
Yet their pasts had shaped them, had molded him. All his siblings had their issues; Finn didn’t like how love made him feel vulnerable and he knew it was better, easier, less risky, to hold back than to love someone completely.
It was better, safer, to keep his distance than to love someone and lose them.
Rolling his shoulders, Finn sent Carrick a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry so much, Carrick. Nothing is certain, so we might as well live in the present and not worry about the future. Besides, I plan on being around for a long time, if only to keep annoying you and Ronan.”
“Cummings is here,” Carrick said, standing up. “Play nice.”
Finn rose to his feet and buttoned his suit jacket. He rearranged his face into what he hoped was a genial smile as he watched the tall, thin man cross the room. Catching a flash of cobalt blue behind him, Finn moved his gaze from the art collector to the bold redhead talking to the maître d’, wild curls pulled back into a ruthlessly tight chignon.
Her makeup was perfect, hiding the spray of freckles on her nose and cheeks, and her once-lush, curvy body was fifteen pounds lighter.
Finn felt his stomach twist. Beah looked older, sleek and sophisticated, every inch the successful London businesswoman. Wildly attractive but cool, remote...
He couldn’t help wondering whether anything remained of his arty, curly haired, impulsive wife.
Ex-wife.
You speak many languages, Murphy, you can remember she’s your ex-wife.
Copyright © 2020 by Jules Bennett
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ISBN: 9781488062964
Scandalous Engagement
Copyright © 2020 by Jules Bennett
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Scandalous Engagement Page 16