Instead of melting into me like I expect her to, she slaps both shoulders and pushes me away. She slips off the counter and yanks her skirt into place. “I should kill you. You cut off all contact and then you come here… and then we…” She snarls and turns away, but I catch her arm.
She asked me to fuck her, but I’ll never throw that in her face. I was the weak one. I should’ve sent Cannon. Or Kase. I had no idea she’d still want me so bad. “I thought it was for the best. It is for the best.”
“Why? Are you afraid our roles have reversed? That you’re in danger because of me.” She snorts and goes to a stand of paper towels and angrily rips a sheet off.
Will she wipe me off of her?
She stoops to mop at the yogurt splattered everywhere. Oh.
I get a few paper towels and wet them down.
“I can get it,” she snaps.
“London, I didn’t come here to upset you.”
“You didn’t have to come here to upset me. Not calling or returning my messages did that enough.”
Sitting back on my heels, I sweep my gaze over her. Her ass is nicely rounded in the skirt and she’s on her knees. Her heels stayed on while we fucked, and dammit if that doesn’t turn me on again.
“I’m sorry.” I mean it. I’m saying it for everything. I’m saying it for the future when she won’t want to hear my apology.
The mess is mostly cleaned. I stand and hold out a hand. She scowls at me but accepts the offer.
I don’t want to release her hand, but I do. “Did you hire a test of your security system?”
She screws her face up. “Building or IT?”
“Either.”
“No. Do I need to?”
“Someone’s been in your records. Especially when it comes to proprietary information.”
Her eyes go wide. “Why—How—Fuck.” She dumps the soiled paper towels into the garbage. With her back to me, she puts a hand on her hip, the other on the counter. “What now?”
She’s not panicking. Was there really a time I believed she wasn’t the best one to run Natural Glow? “I need inside all your records. And I need everything you have on your dad.”
She spins, her expression incredulous. “Do you think this goes back to Dad. Again? I haven’t been blackmailed again. I’m not remarried to anyone.”
I grind my teeth together but don’t say anything. It’s nothing less than I deserve.
“Sorry. That was bitchy. But Dad? Really?”
Delving into her dad’s past again seems shitty, but it’s prudent. “Do you think my parents are the only ones he stepped on in his career?”
She rubs her lower lip and kicks a hip against the counter. “Why now?” She nods, answering her own question. “Because he’s gone. It’s open season on me. Target the weak.”
“You’re not weak.”
“I can obviously be manipulated. Diana’s grieving. Just two dumb women running a multi-million-dollar-and-growing company.” She tips her head back. “I feel so stupid.”
I close the distance between us and cup her chin. “Not many other CEOs are going to experience what you have. Unless they’re engaged in shady activity and can otherwise expect these types of repercussions, they don’t live this kind of life.”
“And you do?”
“Not anymore. I swear to God, London, my business is completely legit and I will protect you and your company. And Diana.” I should suspect the stepmom, but my gut says she’s the real thing. Her main concern is London. “Give me access to everything and I will fortify it. No one will get in.”
Her smile’s wan. “You know, I considered Dixon Industries when looking into a new cybersecurity firm.” She sighs. “But there was nothing about you online and I didn’t want to do business with an enigma.”
“This enigma is at your service.”
* * *
London
I yawn and continue to pace. It’s two in the morning and Jacobi is bent over my computer at Natural Glow. The first couple of hours that he worked, I sifted through files, pulling everything Dad had his hands in. Which was nearly everything.
Contracts with factories. Deals with distribution services. Notes from meetings with financial planners and investors. Everything. He was the backbone of the operation before I took over.
Jacobi told me to concentrate on the older items. Back when Dad was cutthroat and apparently willing to screw anyone over.
I sink into an office chair and stare at the stack I piled. Dad adapted to tech as quickly as it came out, but he also liked his paper copies. Since I have no idea what’s possible with hacking and surveillance, I’m grateful for Dad’s diligence.
Jacobi scrubs his face and sits back. His shirt is only wrinkled where I grabbed him while I climaxed. He looks like he can do this for hours yet. He probably will. I’ve worked late before, but not after a full emotional day. I’m exhausted.
“I can finish at your place. I have all I need.” He lifts his chin toward my pile. “Does any of that go back to when he formed the company?”
“Yeah, right after Natural Glow came to fruition.”
His eyes narrow. “But not right before? Nothing about the planning stages and early consults?”
I shake my head. Natural Glow is my reality. It was already around. I didn’t even think about the planning stages, and since that’s where Jacobi’s family was screwed over, it makes sense that any other issues stem from there.
I dig out a pink Natural Glow tote and load the papers. “If there’s anything official, or even semi-official, I don’t have it at my place. Diana would have it. I can call her in the morning.”
We take the elevator to the underground parking lot in silence. I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m tired. I’m strung out. I’m glad he’s here, but upset at how he cut me off. But he’s back to help and find out who’s behind this.
What if… what if this has nothing to do with him? I might never have met him and then I’d be coming to work tomorrow like normal while someone… did what? Dismantled the company right under me? Sold our trade secrets to our competitors? Stole my clients’ and employees’ information and destroyed our reputation?
What the hell is the point of all this? If it’s to rattle me, it worked.
I was protected while Dad was still alive, and now he’s gone and I have to depend on another man. And while Jacobi came to me, my pride and my feelings are still hurt over the way he cut off all contact. How easily he divorced me.
He takes a road that won’t get us to West Hollywood. “Take me back to my place, please.”
His jaw clenches with his hand on the wheel. “You can’t stay alone. If you’re going back to your place, then I’m staying there.”
I throw my hands up. “Why do you care? You cut me off for a month without batting an eye. You’re only back because you want to find out who’s after me—because they fucked with your company too.”
He screeches to a stop on the side of the road. Horns blare and cars weave around us.
“What are you doing?”
“The last month sucked, London. It was hell. I care about you, but…”
I wait, but he jerks his gaze to glare out the window. His hand is still gripping the wheel. All he has to do is stomp on the gas and we’ll be back on the road, this conversation forgotten.
He’s not finishing his statement and he’s not driving. I cave. “But what?”
He shifts his fathomless gaze toward me. Not even the streetlights can touch their depths. “There are things you still don’t know about me.”
“Then tell me.”
“Just know that it makes me a bad person and leave it at that.” He steps on the gas and merges into traffic.
I stare at him the whole way, trying to figure him out. The first I knew of him, he forced me to marry him. Then he took my company.
But I have my company and I fell for him and the sweet way he treated me. He’s treated me with more consideration than any of my exes. It’s th
e middle of the night and he’s hunting for a hacker who’s taken his focus off Jacobi and aimed it toward me.
The hacker isn’t the only one tracking me. Jacobi’s been spying on me.
My belly flutters. Holland’s words from high school float through my head. She learned a guy from the lacrosse team was following her on all her social media and showing up at the same restaurants she went to.
It’s not creepy if he’s hot.
Jacobi makes me feel safe, and he does it without chastising me to change myself in the first place. Unless it’s to become a better swimmer. I don’t know what’s tormenting him, but I know he’s good inside. And that I’ll go with him anywhere.
“I don’t have any clothes at your place,” I say.
“We’ll come back after we get some rest. You can sleep in the guest room.”
He expects me to keep my distance when we’re under the same roof and beds are involved? I don’t have superhuman willpower. If his secrets are bad enough that he thinks I’ll shun him, then he needs to tell me, or I won’t stay away from him.
But what he says next douses me with a bucket of ice water. “I have the name and address of your birth mom.”
Air whooshes out of my lungs. “Warn a girl when you come out with that.”
I think about his revelation as he pulls back into traffic. Do I want to see my mother? My mom? Neither term sounds right. Diana is my mom.
“What’s her name?”
“Cecelia.”
He says it so readily. It’s real. She’s out there.
“Where does she live?”
“Santa Monica.” His succinct answer surprises me.
“She lives close by?” I thought that the way Dad wronged her, she would’ve fled to Vancouver. Nantucket. Miami. Somewhere far away. But she’s not only in the state, she’s not many zip codes away.
Tears sting the back of my eyes. She hasn’t been far from me my entire life. Has she followed me from afar?
“You don’t know her story, London.”
“I know she had me and never spoke to me again.”
“People deal in different ways. Not always good ways. Whatever made her make the decisions she did, it doesn’t involve you. You’re a victim.”
A few minutes ago, he tried to convince me what a bad guy he is. But I’m about to lose it over my mother and he’s soothing my hurt feelings. He’s making me feel welcome where I’ve been abandoned.
I swipe a hot tear off my cheek. “You probably think it’s ridiculous. I’m crying over being left with a parent who sent me to private schools and gave me whatever I wanted then left me a company worth millions.”
His lips quirk as he maneuvers through his gate. “She didn’t leave you on a stranger’s doorstep, but don’t diminish what she did and how it affected you.”
“That’s the problem. It didn’t affect me. It didn’t affect me until I found out my dad was a different man than I thought he was, and Diana knew all along. It didn’t affect me when I thought my birth mom evaporated to somewhere across the world.”
“Didn’t it?” He pulls into the garage. The overhead light is bright enough to enhance his grim expression. “Your need to please others despite having your dad bulldoze a path through the world for you doesn’t have anything to do with a mom leaving you?”
I open my mouth. Shut it. His steady gaze is unnerving. I let out a nervous chuckle. “Take a few psych courses online?”
“No,” he says softly. “I just know you.”
More tears spill. What is he hiding from me? Because the Jacobi I know is pretty damn special. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
“Then you won’t.”
Chapter 18
Jacobi
It’s the next day, and London still hasn’t asked for Cecelia Wagner Vanderbeek Gomez’s information. She doesn’t even know her mother’s last name.
Now we’re pulling into Diana’s Beverly Hills home after being let through the gate. The place rivals mine, only much larger and loads more obnoxious. More formal and less beachy.
Earlier, we’d slept until noon. When we woke, I tried to abstain. There was the time in her kitchen and then when we returned to my place, but waking up to a naked London in my bed isn’t going to strengthen my resolve to stay away. We had sex before we had lunch. While I prepared the food, she phoned Diana.
I have a feeling she won’t talk to Diana about Cecelia before she decides whether she wants to meet her or not.
Diana’s house is surrounded by two-and-a-half acres of plush grass. I can picture a young London racing across the yard, barefoot, her hair streaming behind her.
With a roof that peaks in several spots, the house doesn’t have wings as much as pods. Which pod was London’s? I’m sure she had her own master bedroom with a palatial bath and probably her own playroom.
Her father’s stuff could be stashed anywhere in this ten-thousand-square-foot monstrosity.
I’m supposed to believe that Diana is going to let me go through her late husband’s most incriminating belongings—if they still exist?
I loop around the circular drive and park right in front. No other cars are around.
“Does she have staff?” I know she does, but I want to know if they’re around.
“They come in the mornings. Diana doesn’t like people in the house when she gets home.”
“Roland?”
“She said they don’t have plans today.”
I make a note to look into Roland. He’s a fairly new development and I wasn’t interested in Diana’s dating life when I was researching London. But if he’s in London’s life, he means something.
So does his son.
The picture from her lunch out makes me seethe. Roland happened to invite the guy when Diana coincidentally did the same with London?
I’m not a believer.
London gets out of the car as soon as I stop. Diana rushes out of the house. She’s more casual than I’ve ever seen her, in loose white linen bottoms that stop below her knees, a billowy pink top, and strappy sandals. She and London are so very much alike, and the way she cares for her daughter means she won’t encourage this slide back into our old relationship.
Her gaze lands on me, darkens, then swings back to London. She holds her arms out and catches London in a short embrace. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“I’m fine,” London answers. “But someone’s tampering with the company. Or thinking about tampering.”
“Why do you need to look into your father’s belongings?”
The look London gives Diana is the same as mine. You’ve gotta be kidding me.
“Right. Sorry. Those days are so far behind me that I forget…” Dread crosses her face. “I forget that being in the past doesn’t stop it from haunting us.”
She shakes her head and grabs London’s hand, towing her inside. I follow, but I’m not forgotten. The tense set to their shoulders lets me know that no one’s forgotten why we’re here, or who’s sifting through their past.
Diana leads us through the house. London might know where she’s going, but I’m studying the layout, learning about the man who stole my future and the house he bought with it.
Couches that I doubt have seen an ass in years flank Aubusson rugs. The tile we’re walking across was probably imported and the tasteful, earth-toned artwork on the walls is interspersed with pictures that have pops of color and enough originality that I’m sure they were bought at a trendy LA art studio, probably from some up-and-comer. Because the Vanderbeeks are generous like that.
As if my bad vibes are tangible, London glances over her shoulder at me. I lift my gaze to hers and hide nothing.
No words are needed. This wasn’t how I grew up. But it could’ve been. I don’t care if Dennis Vanderbeek thought my dad would tank the company with his Cadillac-salesman personality, it would’ve worked. Anything would’ve been better than what I had.
Sympathy fills her gaze. She wants to apologize but doesn
’t want to draw attention to the dire circumstances of my childhood with Diana around.
I appreciate it. It’s bad enough London has to know.
The irony. A couple of months ago, I thought I wanted to rub her freckled nose in the cockroach-tracked carpet of my old house.
No more. I’ll do whatever I can to protect her from my past.
My conscience is begging to argue. Taking her in her kitchen and fucking her all night long is not keeping my distance. It’s not preventing her from developing feelings that I shouldn’t encourage.
Eventually, I’ll have to tell her and let nature take its course, no matter how much it hurts.
Diana bypasses bedrooms that do nothing but offer housekeepers steady work. She keeps walking until we reach the back of the house. When she opens the door, I’m disappointed to see that it’s an office.
Dennis Vanderbeek was too smart to hide incriminating documents somewhere so obvious.
After my gaze sweeps across a study that resembles the one in my house, I catch Diana’s eye.
“I know there’s probably nothing here, but I thought you could look while I dig boxes out of the spare bedrooms’ closets and bring them in here.” Her tone offers no warmth, but she’s as determined as me to keep London safe.
It’s the second time I feel a sense of kinship. The first time was when she warned me away. Only this time, she won’t chase me off. I’m better positioned to find out who’s doing this than anyone else.
Diana hesitates before she leaves the office. “We should be undisturbed. I told Roland that I was staying in with London all night. I didn’t, uh… I didn’t say that there’d be more than two of us.”
Would that make Roland more likely to leave us alone, or less?
“This’ll be, like, our headquarters.” London pushes her hair behind her ears. “Where should I start?”
She won’t stand back and let me take over, nor will she let me do this alone. I lift my chin toward the desk. “Look for hidden compartments, scraps of paper, anything. I’ll start on the filing cabinet.”
Redeemed: Ruined and Redeemed Duet - Book 2 Page 15