The Millionaire Meets His Match

by Kate Carlisle

  “Is something wrong?” Cameron asked.

  “I-I don’t know.” But suddenly she recalled where she’d last seen that man and his prune-faced sneer. It was at the construction site where she’d gone to beg someone-anyone-from Duke Development to put a stop to the imminent destruction of her home. At the site, she’d had the unfortunate luck to deal with Stan Strathbaum, the man who’d insulted her, threatened her and tossed her out of his office.

  The same man who was talking to Adam. He was even sneering now as he pointed his accusing finger right at her.

  Trish’s blood turned to ice and her world flipped upside down.

  Filled with dread, she pushed away from Cameron. “I have to go, I’m so sorry. Good night.”

  She quickly threaded her way off the packed dance floor and ran from the room.

  By the time Adam made it up to the suite, she’d already called the concierge to arrange transportation back to Dunsmuir Bay. She’d packed away her beautiful dress and hurriedly changed into jeans, boots and a sweater.

  He stormed into the bedroom. “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am,” she said wearily, tossing her underwear into her suitcase.

  “No, I don’t,” he said. “Not anymore. Was that guy right? Did you threaten to destroy my company?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Trish, you went tearing off the dance floor the minute you saw me talking to Strathbaum. What else am I supposed to think?”

  “You’re supposed to trust me,” she said weakly, as she threw her toiletries into a small bag and stuffed them into her suitcase.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to stop. “Trish, answer me. Did you threaten to take down Duke Development? Not that you’d ever have a snowball’s chance, but did you?”

  She exhaled resignedly. “Yes, I suppose I did, but it’s not what you think. I-”

  “Not what I think?” he shouted. “Hell, you just admitted it to me. What else am I supposed to think? Somebody tells me you were threatening my company a few months ago, then lo and behold, you’re on my payroll. What the hell? Were you honestly trying to destroy me?”

  “No!” she cried, pulling away from him. “I just needed something to-”

  “What did you need?” he demanded. “Money? Is that it? Are you actually the gold digger I thought you were all along?”

  She stopped and stared at him. “You thought I was a gold digger?”

  He shook his head. “That’s not the point.”

  “You thought I was a gold digger?” Trish repeated more loudly, then came up close and jabbed him in the chest with her finger. “Let me tell you something, you arrogant jerk. I don’t care anything about your money! Your company demolished my home. You destroyed my neighborhood, my grandmother’s store, her livelihood and everything important in her life. You left us with nothing but rubble. My grandmother had a heart attack and died when you tore down the Victorian Village.”

  “Wait. Victorian Village?” he said, bemused. “I remember that place. It was like a landmark.”

  “Yeah,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “It was. Until you showed up. I grew up in that landmark. That was my home. The home your company demolished eight months ago. And why did you do it? Because Duke Development needed a parking lot.”

  “What? That’s not true.”

  “Oh, yes, it is,” she said heatedly. “You bulldozed our beautiful homes and shops and replaced them all with an ugly block of concrete. You gave us thirty days’ notice, then you evicted us. You threw my grandmother and all of our neighbors out into the street. They were good people, good friends I’d known my entire life. And for what? For a slab of concrete! My grandma died of a broken heart and I hated you for that.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “No.” She gasped for air and realized that tears were streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them away angrily as she rounded the bed and pulled the rest of her clothes from the chest of drawers against the wall.

  Adam followed her every step. “Wait a damn minute. I don’t do business that way.”

  “Oh, really?” She looked up at him, saw confusion in his eyes and wished she could believe in it. Wished she could believe in him. But the facts were there. She’d lived the truth of how he did business. Maybe if she showed him that she had proof, he’d stop the ridiculous pretense of innocence.

  She grabbed her purse, pulled out the Vista del Lago disk and thrust it at him. “You take a look at this, then talk to me again about how you do business.”

  “What is this?” he demanded, holding up the disk.

  She stared at the disk. “It-it’s something I was going to hand over to the newspapers.”

  “Then why are giving it to me?”

  She laughed sadly and wiped away more tears. “Because even though you hurt me ten times over, it turns out I could never hurt you. I wanted to, Adam. I really did. But I just can’t.” She zipped her suitcase closed and stood it upright, pulled out the handle, threw her purse over her shoulder and started to leave the suite.

  “You’re not leaving,” he said. “I want to talk about this.”

  “No more talk,” she said, her world crumbling with each step she took. She stopped at the door and shook her head in misery. “You don’t understand. I’ve betrayed my grandmother’s memory by becoming involved with you. I’ve let down my friends and neighbors, the people you ruined.” Her voice dropped another notch. “I can’t believe I fell in love with a man who could do that to anyone.”

  His eyes were arctic blue as he stared at her in disbelief. “Do what?”

  “That,” she whispered, pointing to the disk, then she grabbed her suitcase and walked out.

  Eleven

  Adam had never considered himself a coward but he’d been avoiding doing something for more than a week and it was starting to eat him up inside.

  He stared at the CD on his desk. The one Trish had given him. He’d put off viewing it for so long now, he was beginning to feel like a damn fool.

  At first he hadn’t wanted to look at it because he was just plain furious. At Trish, naturally. But also at himself for being sucked in by a woman who’d lied the entire time she’d been with him, then tried to blame him for her lies. He refused to accept that he’d been hurt by her betrayal. That was his mother’s brilliant theory, once she realized Trish had left. Adam had less than politely cut her off, tersely explaining that no, he’d just been righteously pissed off.

  The night Trish walked out on him, the night of the Fantasy Mountain gala opening, Adam had barely managed to return to the party where he maintained a semblance of civility-until he was ready to crack.

  Once he was back home in Dunsmuir Bay, he’d buried himself in his office and worked day and night on other projects, other resorts, other deals. He had a business to run and didn’t need some beautiful, treacherous woman running around distracting him. Even though every time he passed the desk where Trish usually sat, something inside him fisted in pain-that wasn’t the point.

  He knew his mother was concerned about him, but he couldn’t deal with that right now. His brothers were another story. They’d made no bones about wanting to smack him out of this mood he was in, so they would occasionally show up at his house and drag him out for beers or otherwise try to cajole him into having some fun. One night, they showed up in his office with a twelve-pack and proceeded to berate him into easing up on the senior staff, some of whom had apparently been whining that Adam was taking out his problems on them.

  Adam’s solution had been succinct. They could suck it up. That’s why they got paid the big bucks.

  And besides, Adam wasn’t the one with problems.

  Meanwhile, Marjorie had quietly replaced Trish with Ella, a perfectly competent older woman who’d been with the company for ten years. She did her job, but didn’t go out of her way to excel or make his life better. She didn’t make him laugh. She never ordered him a healthy dinner on the nights he worked late.<
br />
  “Like tonight,” he grumbled, and reached for the phone to order a pizza. After three rings, he hung up the phone.

  “Hell.” Maybe he should order something more healthy from that upscale place Trish had found. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Should he be eating more chicken? Or maybe a steak. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but it wasn’t pizza.

  The damnable woman had even managed to screw up his eating habits.

  He shoved his chair back and stood by the window. Out on the bay, the full moon was reflected in the rippling water and the harbor lights twinkled in the distance. He swore under his breath.

  It wasn’t food that he wanted. It was her. He wanted Trish. Wanted her soft curves pressed up against him. Wanted her exquisite lips and tongue on his skin. And okay, he even wanted her clever mind solving his problems.

  There, he’d admitted it. Satisfied? He slapped his hand against the wall of glass, then blew out a heavy breath. No, he wasn’t satisfied.

  Damn her for making him want.

  He turned around and once again stared at the disk lying on the desk next to his laptop. He hadn’t viewed it yet and he wasn’t sure if he ever would. Why should he? She’s the one who’d lied to him. So why should he believe anything he might see on that disk?

  And speaking of lies, why should he believe she’d meant it when she told him she loved him?

  Disgusted with his line of thought, Adam swept a piece of scrap paper off his desk and into the trash can. No, Trish didn’t love him. No way. How could she love him and lie to him at the same time? Simple. She didn’t love him, never had. Not that any of it mattered, he told himself. He didn’t do love. Remember? Oh sure, he had cared for her. A lot. A small, pitiful part of him probably always would. But caring for someone wasn’t the same as loving her.

  And hell, it was a damn good thing he didn’t love her because her betrayal would’ve hit him even harder than it already had. Not that he’d taken it that hard. It’s just that, it could’ve been worse.

  He eyed the disk again. Maybe he should throw the damn thing away. Or maybe he should return it to Trish. But he didn’t know where she lived. Hell, he’d been sleeping with her and he didn’t even have her address. He’d never picked her up for a date, never dropped her off, never kissed her good-night in front of her house. Didn’t matter now.

  He could probably get her address from Marjorie, although she’d been pretty annoyed with him lately. Still, he was the boss. He could get anything he wanted. Of course, even if he got Trish’s address, it’s not as if he’d go running after her.

  “Oh, man,” Adam muttered, spearing his fingers through his hair in exasperation. Knowing he wouldn’t be getting any work done in his current state of aggravation, he shut down his laptop and left the office for the night.

  That weekend, Sally Duke insisted that Adam come over for a special afternoon party she was throwing. He arrived an hour late to find the back patio deserted. When he walked into the kitchen, the only people he saw were his two brothers. Brandon stood at the stove, stirring and tasting Mom’s homemade barbecue sauce.

  Adam put the six-pack of beer and a bottle of white wine for his mother into the refrigerator. “Where’s Mom?”

  “She’ll be out in a few,” Cameron said.

  Adam took a beer out and popped it open, then glanced around. “Anyone else show up yet?”

  “Nope, this party’s all about you, bro,” Cameron said. Slouched against the kitchen counter, he took a pull of his longneck bottle of beer. “You’ve got Mom all freaked out. She can’t stop worrying about you.”

  “Well, hell.”

  “Yeah. Which means we’re going to have to kick your ass.”

  Adam rolled his eyes and drank his beer. “That’s what this is all about?”

  At the stove, Brandon shrugged. “Nothing personal you understand. It’s our job.”

  “I do understand that,” Adam said, picking up his car keys and slipping his sunglasses back on as he moved toward the kitchen door. “Enjoy the beer I brought. Say hi to Mom. I’ll see you all around.”

  Brandon grinned. “And here I thought you’d be grateful for a chance to share your feelings.”

  “When pigs fly.” Adam stepped outside and tried to close the door behind him, but Cameron caught it.

  “You can run, but you can’t hide,” Cameron said calmly and stepped through the doorway.

  “This should be fun,” Brandon said, chuckling as he followed his brothers outside.

  Adam stopped near the heated pool and turned to face his two closest friends in the world. “Guys, I love you, but if you come any closer, I’ll have to kill you.”

  “Love you, too, bro,” Cameron said, approaching him cautiously from the right. “But you’re being an ass and we’re tired of Mom bugging the hell out of us about it.”

  “See,” Brandon said, taking a step toward him on the left, “it’s a matter of facing you down or dealing with Mom. You be the judge.”

  Adam had to admit they had a point. “Fine,” he said, splaying his arms out. “Take your best shot. But I warn you, I’m taking you both down with me.”

  “As long as you go down first,” Cameron said and rushed forward.

  The explosion of water set off a mini-tsunami in the pool as all three brothers plunged into the deep end.

  After some flailing and splashing and dunking of heads, Adam finally surfaced. He wiped his eyes of excess water and eventually focused on the pair of pink flip-flops standing at the edge of the pool. He looked up and saw his mother glaring down at him. She wore a goofy hat but her lips were set in a grim line and both hands were bunched up into fists perched on her pink shorts-clad hips.

  “Hey, Mom, you’re looking good,” Adam said.

  “Adam, I want to talk to you.”

  “Ouch,” Brandon said. “She’s mad.”

  “Yeah, that’s going to leave a mark,” Cameron agreed.

  Adam sighed in resignation. He’d seen his mother’s eyes before she walked away. She wasn’t angry with him. She was worried. And that knowledge cut him in ways he couldn’t begin to understand. He gripped the side of the pool and pushed himself up and out. Grabbing a towel, he followed him mother inside and found her in the kitchen, stirring the barbecue sauce on the stove.

  “Everyone says you’ve turned into a bear at work,” she said nonchalantly after a few moments.

  “I’ve had a lot on my mind.” He walked to the fridge and pulled out another beer, then sat down at the kitchen table, popped the top and took a long sip. “We’re really swamped right now. Just opened Fantasy Mountain and now we’ve got Monarch Dunes opening in three months.”

  Sally sat down at the table next to him and Adam knew she was through beating around the bush. “Adam, what happened to Trish?”

  He tried several ways of skirting the subject but eventually she wore him down, as she always did.

  When he was finished telling his side of the story, she sighed. “Sweetie, even as a child, you didn’t want to trust in love. But you’re not a child any longer. Are you going to let Trish walk away, knowing you’ll never be whole without her? Or will you find a way to convince her that you truly are the good man she once thought you were?”

  “Let’s get it straight, we’re not talking about love.” He realized his knuckles were turning white and loosened his grip on the beer bottle. “Besides, she lied.”

  “Maybe she had a good reason to lie. Did you ever ask?”

  His jaw worked as he stared out at the wide expanse of grassy lawn that stretched all the way to the cliff. “No, I never asked. How could I trust her to tell me the truth?”

  “Oh, Adam,” Sally said. “Of the three of you, you were always the one who had the hardest time giving your trust.”

  “I trust you, Mom.”

  She sniffed a little and her eyes glistened. “Thank you, darling. I hope you always will. But more than anything else, I want you to trust yourself.”

  “I trust myself,�
� he muttered. “It’s the rest of humanity I have a problem with.”

  She laughed. “You’re going to have to let that go.” Sitting forward, she grabbed his hand. “Honey, if you want Trish, you have to dig deep, find out what happened there. Maybe it won’t bring the two of you back together, but at least you’ll be able to go on, having found out the whole truth. Until you do, I don’t know if you can ever be happy. And if there’s one thing I want in this world, it’s for you to be happy. And you know I always get what I want.”

  Adam chuckled as he squeezed her hand with both of his. “You scare me to death, Mom.”

  “Oh, honey.” She jumped out of her chair and gave him a tight hug. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  He didn’t go straight home but stopped at the office instead. It was a quiet Sunday so he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. Sitting down at his desk, he picked up Trish’s disk and stared at it. “Vista del Lago” was written on it, probably by Trish, and he absently rubbed his finger over the script.

  Swearing under his breath, he shoved the disk into his laptop and viewed the two pages of scanned documents.

  When he was finished, Adam swiped his hand across his face. What the hell?

  The letterhead was Duke Development’s but he didn’t recognize the name of the letter writer, Peter Abernathy. He logged in and used his special admin password to look up Abernathy’s employment background and his record with DDI. The man had been president of Abernathy Construction up until a few months ago when Duke bought him out.

  While Adam was logged on, he decided to look up the same information on Stan Strathbaum. Turned out, Strathbaum had a background similar to Abernathy’s. He’d been head of his own small company, Strathbaum Ltd., until Duke bought him out eight months ago.

  After reading both men’s employment histories, along with the DDI due diligence reports, Adam spent some quality Google time in order to get more information on both men and their business practices, as well as some details regarding certain historical landmarks in Dunsmuir Bay.