by Piper Knox
“Let’s not tell him.”
Ax looked surprised.
“It’s better if we set honey-pots.”
Caiden smiled. “I liked the sound of that. I’ll get on it.”
He stopped mid-stride when he saw me getting up and putting on my jacket, “Where are you going?” he said.
“Checking on a few things.”
“Checking on what?”
I turned off my laptop. “All the charities that we supposedly donate to. Sydney, the new Social Responsibility manager, helped cut off the obviously shady ones. I’ll be visiting the ones with the most donation money.” I had recently fired the previous Social Responsibility manager for stealing money and the guise of donating it to fake charities. It was just as well that my financial department had caught it in time before it blew into a scandal.
“I didn’t know you had taken it so seriously?”
“It was about time I started caring about who we were giving money to. Especially this brand new one. I hear they formed it to help get children stuck in child labor go back to school and sponsor their education.”
“Sounds like a good cause,” he said.
“If it’s a cause at all. Their books appear to be on the up and up, but guess who works there?”
Ax frowned, “who?”
“My wife’s very own maid-of-honor.”
He raised his eyebrows, “Oh.”
“I know right,” I made my way up to him, “I’ll be back before lunch.”
“Before you go, I wanted to ask, what did the crusty old man say?”
“About the deed? He’ll send it soon, is the general excuse, but it’s been one excuse after the other.”
Ax’s face turned red. He looked like he was about to blow a fuse. I get it. The deed was the real reason we even bought Celeste Jewels.
“But you did everything he said, down to marrying his spoiled daughter. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“We gotta do something about it. We can’t let him get away with it.”
“Don’t worry, I have something cooking.”
He raised an eyebrow.
I tapped his shoulder and strode past him. I will have to deal with the deed issue later. First, I had to get this visit out of the way. I hadn’t done all of them. I had left those to the auditors. This one had piqued my interest, plus it was close, they had New York offices.
When we got there, the head of the foundation, Rachel Baines, a petite woman full of spunk, was waiting in the lobby to welcome us. She seemed giddy to see us and I figured we were their biggest donor or she loved to treat all donors like kings.
She showed us the place. It was small and looked like she ran it on a tight budget. They had a big cubicle area and four other offices at each end and a conference room. Rachel was almost done when we knocked into someone who looked oddly familiar. It was Alicia, Hailey’s friend. She looked a little frazzled, edgy, and she hadn’t been like this when I first saw her, which only increased my suspicions. I took her as more of the calm and cool type when I had first gotten to know her.
“Alicia. We were in the middle of giving our benefactors a tour of the offices.”
Alicia greeted me and said, “My own’s over there. Nothing to see there. Same as all the other offices.” I frowned. She sounded like she was covering something.
“She’s a shy little one, but somehow she has the ability to woo people to our cause.”
“We must see where she does such splendid work.” If she was hiding something, then she was the person most likely to cause my company harm. Not that I could find anything by doing so, but her jitteriness was making me curious. I followed the two women.
“As I was saying,” Rachel said as she approached Alicia’s office. I didn’t hear the rest of her speech. I was intrigued by the office. Something was pulling me to it.
It was small and cramped like the other ones. This one was worse because it had two desks instead of one. There was a big pot plant in the corner taking much needed space.
There was a familiarity to it I couldn’t quite place and made no sense. Then I noticed the bag hanging on one of the chairs. It looked expensive. Something someone working in a place like this could not afford. But that wasn’t the only tell. It was very familiar. I had seen Hailey with one. Maybe it was Alicia’s?
“Whatever happened to Hailey?” Rachel asked. As she said so, a woman got up from under the desk and wouldn't you know it, it was my wife. What a ball of surprise she was. She was waving a pen in her hand.
“I was looking for this.”
“Hailey, you didn’t tell us your husband was going to come.”
I wasn’t listening to her. I was staring at the last person I expected to see there. The little liar. I thought back to when she had refused transport. Was it because she didn’t want me to know what she was about? Looking at her n with her now co-conspirators, I could tell there was more going on. She looked guilty.
I could feel my blood boiling. A million questions were going through my head. Were these offices their own, or was it all a lie? I was way too angry to even think straight, and I didn’t care how it looked; I marched toward her, grabbed her, and got her out of there. Looking around, I went to the first door I saw. It was the next office and no one was in it. I shut the door and locked it.
“What the fuck?” she said, twisting in my grasp. I let her go. She almost stumbled and I caught her in time. When she faced me, she looked like a tornado was brewing “How dare you embarrass me in front of my colleagues.”
“What are you doing here.?”
“I work here. What’s your problem?”
“And didn’t think to tell me this?”
She crossed her arms, “You never cared.”
“I’m your husband. I think I deserve to know what my wife does for a living, unless you have a reason for not telling me,” I moved closer until we were eye to eye, “like running a scam.”
“Are you high? That’s what you are, right?”
I made another step, and she stepped back and bumped into the desk behind her. “I don’t know and I think a lying socialite who comes from an embezzling family with money problems, running a charity scam, is a logical conclusion. Tell me,” we were so close our breaths mingled, “are these offices even real?”
“Yes. You’re high. That’s the only explanation.”
“Why did you lie to me then, if it’s not a scam?”
She cooled down a little, “I was going to tell you, eventually.”
“I’m not convinced.”
Her shoulders slumped, “It’s not a fake charity. You can audit us. Hell, I didn’t even know KMVH was one of our donors. That was all Alicia’s doing.”
I stared into her eyes. She seemed to be telling the truth. “Do you have any idea why I’m here?” I said.
She blinked.
“I’ve recently fired the person responsible for our fund for siphoning money through bogus charities. Then I find out that one of the biggest donations that was recently approved was given to a charity that a person from a fraudulent family works for. How am I supposed to take that?”
Her face changed, and a worried expression quickly took over. “What does that mean? What are you going to do?”
Seeing her so afraid made me want to taunt her. “I don’t know,” I said looking around, “maybe stop the fund because this whole place could be a scam. It looks scammy.”
She grabbed my arm. Her big beautiful eyes were full of worry. “Please don’t do that. I’ll do whatever you want.” I had never seen her this desperate. It made me simmer down and gave me an idea.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were working here.”
“Because I was afraid that you’d sabotage it. Like you’re doing right now.” I couldn’t argue with that. Especially if it was real and not fake. But the idea of her working here made little sense. She was the type of person who shopped during the day and partied all night. Not some saint.
“We do good work her
e,” she said, “Well at least they do and I didn’t want anything happening to it. I know how it is with you and my family. Please don’t take away your donation.”
“Not if it’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie.” Her mouth turned into a sexy pout that was so tempting. I could feel my groin tighten at the swell of my erection. I looked down at the swell of her breasts beneath her blouse. Our little tryst in France came to mind, not that it had left. Hell, ever since then, Hailey had gained a starring role in my dreams. Seeing her like this made me want to lay her on that desk behind her and fuck her until she was screaming my name. The cool office turned hot. I shook the thought out of my head. My incessant need to kiss her every time shouldn’t distract me.
I wanted to believe her. And honestly, if it weren’t that I had seen her here, I wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with this place. Their books were in order. I turned away from her kissable lips and looked around. “Is this where you were going to work every day?”
She nodded.
“Why here?”
“I enjoy it.”
“The truth.”
She took a deep breath as she clearly assessed her options. Was she weighing between the truth and lies? “I took the job because they were helping the people who were affected by the sweatshop that closed when Lyndell’s relationship with it was unearthed. They mostly help the children with schooling and some of the adults with getting comfortable and consistent work.”
Of course. Even though this had been the last response I had expected, it made sense. What was shocking was that the party socialite was actually here, doing the grunt work and not doing glamourous fund-raising. I asked her that.
“I’m horrible at it,” she responded. She was underestimating herself and skills and thought about telling her, but I let it go. This new Hailey was different and going against a lot of what I knew about her. But I shouldn’t be quick to give her the Nobel Peace prize. After all, she was still a Lyndell.
“I won’t withdraw the funding or shut down your charity.”
She gave me the biggest, brightest smile. It was as if I had saved her from some great tragedy.
“But that’s not all. You lied to me.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Repay me.”
“Whatever you want.”
I stepped closer to her until she was mere inches away from me. “Are you sure about that?”
Her tone was breathless, “I’ll do anything.” I could feel her chest rising against mine. A little closer and I would have her lips on mine and kissing her senseless. Is she as affected as I am? Or did she know what she was doing to me and did it deliberately? I pushed down the thought, even when it was getting harder.
“I want you to betray your family.”
16
I tried not to give away any emotion. He was so close to me. I could smell the sandalwood cologne he loved so much that it had become a part of him. My chest was brushing against his suit. He was staring down at me with piercing eyes that were making it difficult to concentrate. “What do you mean betray?”
He stepped back. His absence felt like falling into a crater. He strode over to the desk, picked up a pen and began twirling it on the tops of his fingers, “I want you to steal something from me from your father.”
“What?” I was silently praying that it would be something innocuous and easy. It didn’t escape me that the men in my life were both trying to use me to steal things from each other.
“The deed to a mine.”
He spoke so casually one would think he was asking for candy. I shook my head, “A mine? How am I supposed to find something like that? Where am I supposed to find it? Isn’t that stealing?”
He closed the space between us. “It’s stealing what was originally stolen. The deed is a property of Celeste. It didn’t come with the company when I bought it back. I need it. Technically, it’s mine, anyway.”
“Bought back?”
He cocked his head and smiled, “You didn’t know about this, didn’t you?”
I shook my head.
“Your daddy, back when he forced Shep to sell Celeste to him, he also bought a mine attached to it. The deeds were part of the agreement back then as they were the last time I bought it. That mine was why I bought it actually, but when asked to produce the deed, your father has been cagey.”
All this, was because of some old people drama? I knew the vendetta between KMVH and Lyndell went back decades, but why was Caiden involved? He wasn’t related to Shepard in any way. “Why do you care?” I asked.
“First off, it’s wrong and your father is practically engaging in slave labor on that Island. Secondly, Shep was my mentor. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
“Is that why you married me? To steal a deed.”
“Your father forced my hand. Besides, there are tons of benefits to keeping your enemy close.”
“Such as?”
“You’ll soon find out.”
The puzzle was piecing itself. No wonder dad had driven a hard bargain. He knew how much Caiden wanted Celeste and he knew the family name was in the mud. What better way to rescue the name, if only temporary, than to have your daughter marry into one on its way to the top.
I gazed up to him, “I don’t think I’m the person for you. Where would I begin to look for something like that?”
“His safe, for starters. The deed itself is easy to find. It’s an old deed, it probably looks old-timey and is yellow. Can’t be hard to miss.”
“Why not go to the island and tell them you own the damn mine.”
“I’ve tried that and it’s difficult. We could win the case in the courts, but it would be too long and too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Are you going to get me the deed or not?”
My pulse sped up at the prospect of the theft. If my father caught me in the act, I could only guess what he would do with me. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“It’s that or I’m pulling my funding.”
I glared at him as he kept playing with the pen. It was so infuriating I wanted to slap it away midair. Stealing from dad is not what bothered me. It was tradition after all. My family’s wealth was tainted from the start and father was proud of it. He liked to tell the story about how he had swindled the mine from Shepard and enjoyed watching him seethe for years. He had enjoyed knowing that he had died without the mine. Rumor had it, after he died, Shepard left everything to Caiden and that clearly included the grudge.
What bothered me was going there unannounced. It would raise alarm considering I rarely paid him a visit.
“I would need a reason to be there.”
“You don’t have to. They are throwing a surprise sixty-fifth birthday party for your father tomorrow and we’re both invited.”
◆◆◆
“I don’t know about this,” I said to Caiden in the car on our way to Dad’s place.
“You’ll be fine.”
I doubted it. What if they caught me? What if the deed isn’t even there? He wouldn’t trust me to tell the truth. He would probably think I was lying. My stomach got more unsettled and as we got closer to the house, I felt nauseated. He took my hand and squeezed it. I was surprised by the gesture and glanced at him. Then I remembered we were around people and it was time to put his mask on. I closed my arm and got out of the car, following Caiden into the house. They had decorated the place with a celebratory theme, that was both modern and chic. I could only guess that Bryce’s party planning girlfriend was the one responsible. The two were the first to greet us.
“Sorry we’re late for the surprise,” I said to Bryce. I wasn’t. We had deliberately arrived late.
“The place looks lovely,” I said to her after exchanging hugs.
“Not as lovely as you,” she said to me, pointing at my dress. It was one of my many purchases during my spendthrift days. It was a timeless golden gown that was backless and dippe
d low in the front. I knew it looked good. Even Caiden, who’s usually frozen and unresponsive in whatever I did, had done a double take when I had strode out of my room.
We entered the drawing room where the party was. Caiden’s arm never left my back the entire time we strolled around. Now and then it would dip a little lower and cause all sorts of havoc inside me. It did not help my already hyper nerves.
“You’re a bit possessive today,” I said to him after a few of my father’s colleagues left us. We had greeted them, and one had been a little too reluctant to let go of my hand. Caiden immediately took my hand into his as soon as the man had let go.