Bubblegum Blonde

by anna snow

  * * * * *

  FREE EBOOK OFFER

  Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about our new releases, special bargains, and giveaways, and as a bonus receive a FREE ebook!

  Sign up for the Gemma Halliday newsletter!

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  BUBBLEGUM BLONDE

  by

  ANNA SNOW

  * * * * *

  Copyright © 2015 by Anna Snow

  Cover design by Estrella Designs

  Gemma Halliday Publishing

  http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  To all of my readers old and new, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope you enjoy Barb and the girls!

  And to my husband, John. Thank you for being there for me when I need you and for helping me work things out when I've written myself into a corner. I love you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It's entirely possible to have both boobs and a brain.

  It's not like I'm walking, talking, sex-on-a-stick or anything, because really, I'm not. I'm just your typical, barely five-feet tall, a-little-too-curvy (due to my love of caramel macchiatos and pizza) girl next door. But for some reason, a blonde woman with a little extra in the chest area tends to throw off the opposite sex, especially when I mention that I'm a private investigator.

  When I opened Jackson Investigations I never imagined how judgmental some people could be.

  My PI firm wasn't a big affair like some of the other firms in town. I'd just finished my training and dumped a cheating ex when I opened the office. Financially, I was still a guppy in a tank full of sharks. But my company was slowly growing.

  As far as employees went, my besties, Kelly and Mandy, were it. Mandy acted as receptionist and assistant, while Kelly worked cases with me. She'd often go undercover to bust a cheating spouse without a second thought.

  We'd been hard at work trying to make a name for the company for close to three years now, but so far the only cases we'd been trusted with were your run-of-the-mill cheaters. Still, I couldn't complain. These clients might not be high profile or bring in bank, but they paid the bills…barely.

  Despite only making just enough to pay the light bill, I wouldn't trade my job for anything in the world. I loved what I did, even if it meant eating ramen noodles a few nights a week.

  A knock sounded. Then my office door opened a few inches.

  "Barb, there's someone here to see you."

  I glanced up from the screen I'd been staring at for what felt like a century and spotted Kelly closing the office door behind her. Kelly was loud, sarcastic, and wonderful. She was a great girl and my all-time best friend. We'd met when I first opened the business three years ago and over the years had become so close an industrial-sized crowbar couldn't pry us apart. She was brilliant, witty, and didn't take crap from anyone.

  I wanted to be Kelly when I grew up.

  Kelly was tall and thin, sported a number of tattoos, loved the color black, and was amazingly pretty with her own set of full lips, high cheekbones, and short black hair.

  She had men falling at her feet, while I stared at my feet when confronted by a handsome man. She was the polar opposite of my petite, slightly round, blonde self. But the physical differences never mattered to us.

  We were sistahs from anotha mistah.

  Her words, not mine.

  "Who is it?" I blinked my eyes in an attempt to bring the room around me back into focus. Watching a surveillance camera did a number on a sleep-deprived person's eyes. At the moment I wondered if I'd ever get my vision back to normal.

  I blinked and then rubbed my palms against my closed eyes.

  "How should I know? I'm not Miss Cleo." Kelly shrugged with one palm pointed toward the sky.

  Did I happen to mention that Kelly took sarcasm to a whole new level?

  I slowly opened my eyes and cocked a brow at her.

  "He said his name is Jason King and that he needs to speak directly to you about his situation." She air-quoted the word situation, which told me that she thought this guy was a total tool.

  "That's about all he would tell me. He's determined to see you and a bit of an arrogant ass, if I do say so myself."

  "You didn't tell him that he's an ass, did you?"

  She smiled sweetly. "No, but the night's still young." She pressed her black-framed glasses up her pert nose with the tip of her index finger and waited for my response.

  I shook my head. "You're a handful, you know that?"

  She nodded. The smile never left her face.

  I bit my bottom lip. "Jason King," I said while trying to dredge up where I'd heard the name before, but nothing came to me. "The name sounds familiar, but I can't place it right off the top of my head. Did you recognize him at all?"

  She shrugged her shoulders. "Nope." She shook her head. "He looks just like every other businessman in this town."

  I'd lived in the city since conception, and at times all the businessmen milling about appeared carbon copied.

  Suits, ties, shiny black shoes, and there was often either a shiny bald head framed by thinning white hair or a full head of over-gelled hair sitting on their shoulders. Neither of which I found the least bit attractive, but hey, whatever floats their boats, right? The look obviously did something for the gorgeous women on their arms. Or maybe it was their money not their appearance the women found attractive. Who knew?

  "Do you know if I have any other appointments today, Kelly?" I asked.

  "Nope. I checked the schedule book before I came in here. You're all clear today. You're only supposed to review some tapes and return a few calls," she answered.

  This mystery guy had piqued my interest, so I relented.

  "All right, I'll see him since I have some time, but I want you in here on this one. Who knows what this guy's story is." I looked up at the clock and found that it was only a little after ten o'clock in the morning. "Follow him in please."

  Kelly gave me a two-finger—which was much more polite than her one usual finger—salute and left the room.

  I stopped the surveillance disk I'd been reviewing for a client and powered off my monitor, then leaned back in my oversized desk chair and frowned.

  I'd already seen all that I needed to see on the disk in order to know the guy I'd been tailing for the last week was cheating on his wife. The last thing I needed was for some busybody to come in my office, take a look at the computer monitor, and see his bare bum bent over the hood of a car before I told his wife that her husband was indeed having an affair with his assistant…his very male assistant.

  "Jason King. Jason King. Jason King." I repeated the name as I tapped my bottom lip with the tip of my pen. I tried like crazy to figure out why that name sounded so familiar, but nothing came to me. I couldn't pin the name to a face.

  If I'd had time, I would've done a quick Google search, but Mr. Pushy was already in the lobby demanding an audience. That alone was enough to make me consider telling the guy to hit the
road, but like I said before, I had bills to pay, and just because the guy was pushy didn't mean I could tell him to hit the road before I met him. I have to admit my curiosity was a big deciding factor for meeting him.

  My Aunt Mona often warned me that curiosity killed the cat, but I couldn't ever seem to help myself. When a puzzle presented itself, I had to solve it.

  A few moments later, Kelly opened the door, and the bottom dropped out of my happy little world.

  "Barb."

  My legs shook. I stood slowly and stared into the eyes of the one man who'd always sent my brain flying out the window.

  "Jason?"

  We stared at each other, taking in the other's appearance for what felt like a silent eternity. He was the same as I remembered, tall, with a broad chest, brown eyes, and perfectly auburn hair. For a moment all those old feelings, the ones I'd shoved in a drawer in the deepest, darkest, better-off-forgotten recesses of my mind, came rushing back. It took everything I had in me to squash those damaging feelings before they roared back to life and consumed me all over again.

  Jason and I had ended more than five years ago, and I had no interest in reviving that little misstep of my life. That relationship was one of those times when I should've listened to my dear, sweet, nosy-as-all-get-out Aunt Mona and run in the opposite direction. She saw Jason for what he was. A liar and a cheater. I, on the other hand, only saw a hot, successful man who was interested in me.

  I'd been an idiot, and no matter what he was selling, I definitely wasn't buying.

  "You're Jason. You're Barb, and I'm Kelly." Kelly interrupted the moment. A grin spread across her face. "I thought you didn't know him."

  It took a minute for me to regain my bearings, but I finally found my words. "I don't. I do. I did," I stuttered. "We knew each other a long time ago," I reluctantly admitted.

  "And you just forgot his name?" Kelly looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head.

  "No." I frowned at her. "When I knew him, his name was Jason Charles. Not Jason King." Jason's mother had kept her maiden name when she married. I guess that's why his name change had seemed so familiar. I just hadn't picked up on the reason why before he walked through my door.

  He chose that moment to break out the gorgeous boyish smile that could melt a woman's panties in two seconds flat. The urge to slap him for even thinking about walking back into my life like nothing had ever happened, for that sensational smile that had always had the power to do me in, rolled through me. But instead of smacking him, I listened to what he had to say. I needed to know what he wanted from me because there was no doubt that he wanted something.

  "I started using my mother's maiden name when I opened my business."

  I cocked an eyebrow at him in question.

  "I'm sure you heard about my father's misstep a few years ago," he half explained.

  "Misstep? Do you mean the embezzlement accusations? I'd say that was more than a misstep."

  "Call it what you want. No one is going to want to do business with an accountant whose family has a history of embezzlement. So, I changed my last name," he said with a slight shrug.

  "Makes sense if you want clients," I said with a nod.

  "And we knew each other seems a bit mild, doesn't it, Barb? After all, we were engaged for more than a year," he said with a frown.

  "Engaged?" Kelly gaped and looked back and forth between the two of us. "You were engaged to him?" She pointed at Jason where he stood, still leaning against the doorframe.

  "It's a long story." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "One I absolutely do not care to repeat," I hedged.

  I caught Kelly gaping at me out of the corner of my eye. I decided that if I was that transparent I needed to get my stuff together. There was no way on planet Earth I would allow this guy to get under my skin. Not again. I'd been burned by Jason once before, and I wasn't about to let it happen a second time.

  I tamped down the old feelings threatening to bubble up inside me at just the sight of him and regained my composure.

  "Well"—I released a pent up breath—"I have to assume that you're here for a reason. Have a seat, and we'll get started."

  I directed him toward one of the chocolate-brown leather chairs situated before my cluttered desk and took my seat. Kelly situated herself and her notepad in the matching chair next to Jason's.

  Yes, I said notepad. Kelly was what one would call technologically challenged. She was the complete opposite of my receptionist and dear friend Mandy. Kelly's last attempt at using an iPad to help me with research wound up with her neck-deep in the depths of a nudist site for the elderly. She'd sworn off electronics until further notice.

  Jason glanced over at her, then back at me. "I was kind of hoping we could speak in private."

  "Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of Kelly. She's my assistant, so she's going to hear all of the ins and outs as to why you're here anyway."

  He cleared his throat and cast another furtive glance at Kelly, then back at me. "I understand that, but I'd feel more comfortable speaking to you alone this first meeting. Please, Barb? This is important."

  For the love of… Enough with the puppy dog eyes already. I was afraid that if he kept batting those obscenely long lashes at me he was going to take flight.

  The last thing I wanted was to be alone with Jason, but if shooing Kelly from the room was the only way to get what he wanted out of him so he could hurry up and be on his way, then so be it.

  Kelly gave me an almost-imperceptive nod.

  "Um, sure. Kelly, its fine. I can handle this."

  Kelly winked at me and left the room. She knew the moment that he left my office I'd tell her everything he said anyway. We didn't keep secrets from each other, except the one sitting before me, but as I said before, he was a part of my past I had no desire to dredge up.

  The second the door closed behind her I knew I was in trouble.

  "I've missed you."

  "Is that why you're here? Because if it is, you're wasting your time." I ignored the needy look in his eyes.

  "Time with you is never wasted."

  Boy, was he full of crap or what?

  "That's obviously not what you thought when we were together, or you wouldn't have spent your every waking moment on top of your secretary."

  "I apologized for that." He frowned. "I was immature, stupid even. I'm different now."

  Different?

  Yeah, and the sky was red, wine was nasty-stinky-poo-poo water, and turkey bacon tasted better than the real thing.

  Different, my butt. The only thing that appeared different about Jason was that it looked like he'd lightened his hair color half a shade.

  "Jason, is this why you're here? To rehash our past? If it is, then I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I have work to do, and our past relationship is a part of my life I'd rather never again revisit."

  I started to stand. Jason held up a hand to stop me.

  "No, that's not why I'm here," he said quickly. "I really do need your help, Barb. This is serious."

  I took in his expression. He really did look like he was having a hard time. Against my better judgment I sat back down and asked, "What exactly do you need my help with that's so serious? What's going on? Are you in some kind of trouble?"

  He released what sounded like a frustrated sigh and ran his hand through his normally immaculate hair. For the first time since he'd walked into my office, I studied him. He looked exhausted. Faint bags sat dark beneath his tired brown eyes. His hair was slightly disheveled, his body strung tight with tension, and his dress shirt and black slacks were starting to rumple. The man seated before me with his less-than-perfect appearance was not the Jason I knew. Something was definitely up. But did I really want to know what was causing his distress? Did I want to step in the middle of whatever he'd gotten himself into? Because if he was in fact in the middle of something nefarious, there was no doubt in my mind that he'd gotten himself into it.

  I didn't want to find mysel
f mixed up in any of Jason's schemes.

  Were I a vain, conceited woman, I would've let myself believe that his tension was due to the fact that he was sitting across from me, a woman he was lucky to have had but screwed over and lost…but I wasn't that kind of girl. As much as I sometimes wished I was that girl, I just wasn't.

  "Jason?" I prodded.

  "Yeah. Kind of."

  "Care to elaborate?" I pressed. "Because in my line of work, kind of doesn't cut the cake."

  "You know I started my own accounting firm four years ago?" He leaned his elbows on his knees.

  "Yes." I nodded. If there was one thing Jason was good with, it was numbers.

  "I do a lot of business for individuals as well as some larger companies. One of those companies in particular being Hatchett Enterprises."

  "Hatchett?" I interrupted. "As in modeling mogul Robert Hatchett?"

  Robert Hatchett owned and operated the biggest modeling agencies in the United States. His models were everywhere—television, movies, magazines, and billboards. Hatchett was the name in modeling. If you wanted to be the next Naomi Campbell, Hatchett Enterprises was the agency you tried to land.

  "The one and only."

  "That's a pretty big deal," I said. "How'd that happen?"

  "Mr. Hatchett came into my office six months ago, chatted me up, said he heard great things about me from a colleague, and hired me on the spot to work as his personal accountant. The money he offered was just too good to pass up."

  "I can imagine." I shook my head. "Personal accounts? As in illegal?" I asked.

  "No, no, nothing like that." He waved a hand in the air. "The modeling agency has its own accounting company, due to the fact that it's a multi-million-dollar business. All agency accounts are dealt with by another firm, but Hatchett has more going on than the modeling agency. He has charities and such, and that's what he hired me to keep track of."