Dynasties:The Elliots, Books 7-12

by Various Authors

  No, neither his MBA training nor his legendary management skills were going to do the trick here. He’d need to resort to something more ingenious, something a little trickier and lot more appealing.

  “You know, Jess.” He leaned forward a bit. “I’m just not buying this.”

  This time there was no doubt that some blood drained from her cheeks. “You’re not?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not telling me something.”

  Behind the tinted lenses, he saw her eyes widen. If he was right, and she was a mole from Pulse or Snap or even The Buzz, then one of Finola’s family had picked a lousy liar for the spy job.

  He’d get the truth out of her. He just needed to take down her defenses a little.

  “Tell you what.” He put his elbows on the desk and lowered his voice. “Why don’t you meet me for a drink after work, and we’ll talk about it in some friendlier surroundings? Maybe you need a little time to think about it.”

  “A drink?” She backed up ever so slightly.

  Now he had her disarmed. Lying about something, and not sure if she had just been asked out on a date by the magazine’s executive editor. “You know the Bull and Bear? At the Waldorf?” When she nodded, he said, “Good. Then we can talk about the shadow assignment there.”

  He held her gaze for a moment too long. Which wasn’t difficult at all, because he’d been fighting the urge to flirt with the redheaded dynamo from the minute he’d first interviewed her. But professionalism demanded that he never, ever date employees of the magazine. That would be a serious mistake.

  However, this wasn’t really a date. This was the only way to get a woman to confess everything.

  Jessie Clayton was hiding something, and he intended to find out what it was and how it would impact his magazine.

  “What do you say, about six o’clock? In the bar?”

  “I don’t know….”

  He winked at her. “Come on, Jess. It’s just a drink.”

  She straightened her glasses again. “Okay. Six o’clock. At the Waldorf.”

  If he could just see into her eyes, he might be able to figure out what she was hiding. What would he have to do to get her to take those glasses off?

  “I’ll see you there,” he promised.

  She left his office, but there was no mistaking the pretty aroma of trouble that lingered in her wake.

  At exactly five-forty, Jessie dialed Lainie Sinclair’s extension.

  “Is he gone yet?” she asked her roommate, who had a birds-eye view of the executive editor’s office from her cubicle.

  “He left a few minutes ago,” Lainie said softly. “Stopped in the men’s room first, came out with his tie straight, but no new hair gel or cologne.”

  “You’d make a great spy, Lainie.” Jessie laughed. But she knew Cade McMann wouldn’t gel up his burnished gold hair. He wore it tousled, and casual. Touchable. For the fortieth time since she’d left his office, her stomach flipped. “Wish me luck.”

  “What do you need luck for? Your boss’s boss has plucked you from intern obscurity for the coolest job in the company. I still don’t get why you’re turning it down.”

  The urge to confess all welled up in Jessie. Lainie had befriended her on the day of her internship interview, and then became her roommate and closest companion in New York City. If she were ever to confide in someone, Lainie was the one.

  But the time wasn’t right. Lainie was a doll, as trustworthy and true a girlfriend as there could ever be, but Jessie’s secret would be the most sizzling gossip to hit EPH since Patrick Elliott announced his year-long battle for the boardroom. Even Jessie’s new best friend might not be able to hold in the truth. Lainie had been bouncing off the walls for the past hour and all she knew was that Cade had offered Jessie a great assignment and was taking her for a drink to discuss it.

  If Lainie knew the truth…

  “I told you, Lainie. I don’t see shadowing Fin as a great plus for me. I’d have to give up the Spring Fling layout Scarlet offered me.”

  “Spring Fling Schmling. You’re nuts. Did you talk to Scarlet?”

  “She’s out at a photo shoot today,” Jessie said, peering at the empty cube where Charisma’s flamboyant assistant fashion editor worked in a sea of photos, clippings and fabric swatches. “Which I guess is why Cade delivered the news, since Scarlet is technically my boss.”

  “But it doesn’t explain why he wants to drag the meeting into a swanky hotel bar for further discussion.” Lainie paused, then added, “Think he got a room upstairs?”

  “Get real, Lain.” Not that the same thought hadn’t occurred to her. But, for once, fantasies of rolling around on high-end sheets with Cade McMann were not what caused the flipping in her stomach. “It’s just a drink.” An invitation to a drink, she had to admit, that was issued with a look that practically singed her down to her toes.

  But Lainie did know one of Jessie’s secrets: She nursed a crush on Cade McMann the size of her daddy’s south eighty acres in Colorado. And, to her credit, Lainie had kept that secret for months.

  “Just hear him out,” Lainie said. “You might be able to work it out so that you don’t lose the layout assignment and you get to do the shadowing.”

  There was no way Jessie was spending all that time with Finola Elliott. But there was also no way to explain that to Lainie. “We’ll see,” she said vaguely. “I better go.”

  “Should I wait up?” Lainie asked with a little tease in her voice.

  “I’ll be home by eight,” Jessie promised.

  “Tomorrow morning?” Lainie chuckled.

  “Very funny.”

  As Jessie pushed open the lobby door of EPH and stepped into the evening bustle of Park Avenue, an early September breeze danced over the tops of the trees that lined the gardenlike median strip. Momentarily taken with the possibility of inhaling clean air, Jessie sucked in a deep breath, only to taste the fumes from a cab that pulled out from the curb.

  Colorado seemed so far away. She paused to get her bearings, because even after almost six months in New York, Jessie had to glance at street signs and do a little grid math before she could figure out exactly where to go. Which was pretty sad for a girl who grew up knowing north from south strictly by the color of the sun streaks on the mountains.

  Stepping onto the sidewalk and dodging a man walking three dogs, Jessie gazed down the endless corridor created by the skyscrapers that lined Park Avenue. A different kind of valley from the acres of green and gold that surrounded the haven of Silver Moon Ranch. This one was made of steel and glass, and smelled of car exhaust and sausage vendors, and she couldn’t remember the last time she felt a mountain breeze in her hair.

  Well, she could. The day she left Colorado on this crazy, irresistible fact-finding mission.

  But the only facts she’d found—

  A man talking on a cell phone jostled her, and a woman carrying an armload of shopping bags excused herself as she hustled past Jessie.

  Sighing, she paused at the street corner. Some brave natives were crossing against the light. Someday she might have the nerve to do that. But for now she waited for the green Walk sign.

  When her cell phone beeped out the chorus of “Rocky Mountain High,” she seized it like a starving woman who’d been handed a rare rib-eye.

  “Hi, Dad!” she fairly sang into the phone as she started across Park Avenue, still checking both ways; she didn’t trust those cabbies. “You’ll never guess where I am!”

  “Tell me, angel.” Travis Clayton’s booming baritone sounded as rich as if he were sitting across from her on the patio, gazing at the snow-tipped mountains that surrounded the Silver Moon Ranch.

  “Crossing Park Avenue.” Jessie let out a little laugh. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Be careful, honey,” Travis warned. “Those drivers are crazy in New York.”

  She accepted the long-distance parenting without even rolling her eyes, the bittersweet ache of homesickness too sharp to tease her father. “
How are you, Daddy? How’s Oscar?”

  “I had him out for a ride today,” he said. “I swear that gelding misses you.”

  Jessie closed her eyes for a moment and imagined climbing into a saddle with a single movement as natural to her as breathing. Another pang of homesickness threatened.

  “Of course he hasn’t forgiven you for that name.”

  Jessie just laughed. “Where are you, Daddy? Out on the porch?”

  “I am. I have to go back over to the barn in a bit, but I thought I’d catch you on your way home from work.”

  “I’m not going home,” she told him. “Get this. I’m about to walk into the Waldorf-Astoria. How does that sound?”

  “Like you’re a long way from Colorado, angel.” She could hear the wistfulness in his voice.

  Even though it had been three years since her mother died, maybe leaving Dad alone in Colorado hadn’t been the smartest thing Jessie’d ever done. It had certainly been the most impulsive. But she had to know.

  “What are you doing at this fancy hotel?”

  A valet opened the door to the Waldorf with one of those appreciative smiles that men in New York gave to pretty women, and Jessie beamed right back and thanked him.

  “I’m having a meeting with the executive editor of the magazine, if you can believe that.” In the softly lit lobby, a vast center table featured a bouquet of fiery and exotic autumn flowers exuding a luscious fragrance.

  “Oh? Think they’re finally going to start paying you?”

  She glanced around for the entrance to the Bull and Bear, and then spotted a silk-covered settee against one wall. She perched on the edge to finish her conversation. “The internship lasts a year and trust me, Dad, any of my classmates at the Art Institute would kill for this opportunity. Don’t worry, I’m watching every penny.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” His voice softened, and Jessie could imagine that his brilliant blue eyes did the same. “Your mother left you money to do anything you want. If living in New York City and working at a big magazine—for free—is making you happy, then it would have made her happy.”

  She closed her eyes and imagined her mother’s face for a moment. Her real mother. The one who raised her, the one who—

  Suddenly, the need to confide in her father squeezed her chest so hard, she thought her heart would pop right out.

  “So what’s this meeting all about, Jess? Do you have time to tell me?”

  She glanced at her watch. How long would it take to tell him the truth? More than the three minutes she had until six o’clock. But, oh, the need to share was sharp.

  “I’ve been offered an opportunity to shadow the editor-in-chief, Finola Elliott.” She deliberately waited a beat to see if he reacted to the name. “But I’m not sure I want to take it.”

  “Why the hell not?” His voice bellowed as though he were hollering to one of the Silver Moon hands. “That sounds like a fantastic break and you wouldn’t have been picked if they didn’t see your brains and talent.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m just not sure I want to spend that much time with Finola Elliott.”

  “Doesn’t spending time with the boss increase your profile…and the chance that they’ll hire you for a job that actually gets a paycheck?”

  Jessie had to smile. It was killing Dad that the internship was unpaid. “It might,” she agreed.

  “Then why wouldn’t you jump at the chance?”

  “I’m not sure I want to be under Fin’s close scrutiny.”

  “Why not?”

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and whispered the words that had been reverberating in her head for almost a year. She had to say them. She had to tell someone.

  “Because Finola Elliott is my birth mother.”

  Two

  Jessie was a full ten minutes late when she entered the darkened atmosphere of the Bull and Bear. Her head still rang with her father’s reaction and warnings, although the room hummed with soft chatter and conversation.

  Don’t expect some sort of hallelujah chorus when she finds out…She’s a city woman who probably wants no part of facing a past she gave up twenty-three years ago…If she wanted a reunion, honey, don’tchya think she’d have found you?

  Even the fact that Finola’s name was listed on an adoption finders Web site didn’t convince Daddy that Jessie’s birth mother may be conducting the same search with the same hope and trepidation that seized Jessie.

  Jessie loved that dream, loved imagining a moment when Fin Elliott would look at her and throw her arms open to exclaim “My baby!”

  But Daddy might be right. After observing Fin for five months, Jessie had seen absolutely nothing that would indicate the thirty-eight-year-old workaholic would be interested in finding, and knowing, and loving, a child she’d given up for adoption when she was only fifteen years old.

  Revealing the truth could be a huge error in judgment, one of those prayers that are best left unanswered.

  The sight of a golden-haired god at a corner table brought Jessie back to the moment. From the day she’d walked into Cade McMann’s office for an interview five months ago, Jessie had felt a tickle of…desire. At first it was just his looks—six perfect feet of solid muscle, dark blond hair that in the summer he’d let grow over his collar, and those see-right-through-you smoke-gray eyes. And it didn’t take long for Jessie to get past the great looks and realize that Cade also had a leader’s sense of order and a survivor’s sense of humor.

  From the sidelines, she’d watched a man who thought through every decision he made, who considered all the angles and rarely, if ever, made a mistake.

  So why, then, would he ask an intern out for drinks?

  And why was he standing there now, looking at her like a man who wanted something? What could he want?

  His handsome face broke into a slow smile, and her heart skittered around for a second. She wasn’t sure what he wanted, but she sure wished it was her.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said as he pulled out a chair for her.

  “Don’t tell me. Scarlet called from the photo shoot with twenty things for you to do before you could leave.”

  She put her purse on the floor next to her and touched the frame of her glasses to make sure they completely covered her green eyes. Even in the dim light of the bar, he might recognize the similarity in shape and color to the woman he worked for.

  “Actually, I was on the phone with my father and didn’t have the heart to hang up on him.”

  He raised his eyebrows in interest. “He’s in Colorado, right?”

  Did he remember that from her interview? Or had he been checking on her background? “Yep. We have a cattle ranch not far from Colorado Springs.”

  He signaled for a waiter, who took their orders for drinks. Jessie planned to slowly sip a chardonnay; the last thing she needed was to lose control. Anyway, just being this close and personal with a man she’d been admiring—okay, lusting after—for five months was about all the intoxication she needed.

  After they ordered, Cade slipped off his suit jacket and tossed it casually over the back of a chair. Jessie congratulated herself on keeping her gaze from meandering over the solid muscles that strained the crisp white linen of his custom-tailored shirt.

  “So how exactly did a girl raised on a ranch in Colorado land in the jungles of New York City?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and absently running a hand over his jaw. By the end of every day, he had just enough stubble to make her want to rub it.

  “I mentioned this in my interview,” she reminded him gently. “I graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. But all my minor classes were in fashion. Where else would I go but New York?”

  “To combine your love of art and fashion?” he prompted.

  “I’ve been reading Charisma since I was fourteen,” she admitted. “I’ve always loved the magazine and always loved fashion.” But the day she found out that her birth mother was the editor-i
n-chief was the day her world changed forever.

  “So this is your dream job,” he said.

  “You could say that.”

  “Except for the pay.” He winked and it sent a little quiver through her body.

  The waiter brought her wine and a beer for Cade.

  She gave a nod to his Coors. “The Colorado girl in me says thanks for that.”

  He smiled and tilted his head toward the bar. “Mostly martini drinkers in here.”

  “It is more old-world than new-age.” She adjusted the napkin under her wineglass. “Why did you pick this place?”

  “I knew there wouldn’t be any EPH people here.” He poured the beer into a glass, then looked up at her, his gray gaze direct and meaningful. “The other magazines have spies everywhere, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said, lifting her glass. “But I hope Charisma wins.” She forced herself to add, “For Finola’s sake.”

  He tapped her glass with his. “We plan on winning,” he said, his voice rich with confidence.

  As she sipped, he asked, “Did you interview at the other magazines before you came to Charisma? Snap has a great internship program and Pulse is one of the most respected newsmagazines in the business.”

  “I didn’t even consider the other magazines,” she said, eliciting a flash of surprise on his face. “While the celebrities covered in Snap are appealing and I’m impressed with what Michael Elliott’s done with Pulse, my heart has always been in fashion.”

  A statement that was the absolute, honest truth. And when she discovered that her birth mother was the editor-in-chief of her very favorite magazine, Jessie had been in an emotional upheaval that even two-hour-long rides on Oscar hadn’t calmed.

  “The week after I graduated,” she continued, “I came to New York and Charisma is the very first place I interviewed.”

  “How did your parents feel about you going so far away?”

  She touched her glasses. They’d become her favorite crutch ever since she saw Lainie wearing a pair, and Jessie discovered she could disguise her eye color and look somewhat hip at the same time.