No More Masquerade

by Angel Payne

  I planted my feet a little wider and folded my arms. “Yes, it was.”

  “Claire’s handiwork?” Her fishing expedition for information was charming but unsettling. Was she really worried more about her company’s place in the new lay of the land at SGC than the hundred painful questions flashing through her daughter’s eyes?

  “No,” I answered, adopting the cold tone I’d become famous for. “Father had it prewritten.”

  Only a spark of amusement crossed the woman’s lips, amply coated in whatever the hell color was trendy right now. “A fact that’s surprised no one, I’m sure.” She strolled slowly to the window, gazing out to the point where the mist swallowed the lake. “Joe Stone…in control to the end.”

  “The father I’ll never know.”

  Though every word of it was accusation, there wasn’t a drop of Margaux’s normal venom. There was only soft sadness, matched even deeper across her face. Thank fuck I turned to watch Andrea’s reaction, because I was just in time to watch a sole second of remorse flash across her features.

  “Margaux.” It was a strange combination of reprimand and entreaty. “You know that all I’ve ever wanted is to see you succeed and be happy. And you are both, am I right? Look at you, darling. Young, beautiful, at the very top of your game, held to nobody’s rules but your own,”—she swept a hand toward the expansive view beyond the windows—“the world literally at your feet.”

  I couldn’t help my derisive interjection to that. “Hmmm. The perfect glass tower.”

  Andrea’s perturbed glare was swift and silent. If I wasn’t the client throwing the biggest checks into Asher and Associates’ bank account, there’d likely have been some choice words along with it. She kept the comments in by flattening her lips to a terse line. “Margaux, your life has not lacked for anything. I have provided everything you could ever ask for—”

  “Except the truth.” Margaux approached Andrea with stiff steps and coiled hands. “The truth, Mother—you know, despite everything else, that little tie we’ve always shared?” A lightning flare from the skies illuminated the sharp green sheen in her eyes. “The dirty little secrets I’ve always kept for you? The things I’ve forgiven you for? The loyalty I’ve shown, thinking to myself that even if everybody else in the world deceived me, my mother never would. She’d always give me the truth, no matter how ugly or painful it was. She’d always care enough to be brutally honest with me. There’d never be any shocks or surprises or walls between us, and—”

  “Stop it.” Andrea’s comeback couldn’t have been more vicious had she spun on Margaux and physically slapped her. “You pitiful, ungrateful girl! You will stop—”

  She clutched into silence when I caught the hand she jabbed out, my palm smacking hard against her wrist. “No,” I growled. “You’ll stop. Now.”

  Andrea ripped her hand away. She glowered so hard at Margaux, I wondered if her nostrils would spew flames, too. “You want the truth, little girl? Fine, then here it is. Your real mother was a little whore who slept her way into Josiah Stone’s boardroom. I watched it happen because I was engaged to be married to his best friend and business partner.”

  I felt my eyes narrowing and my chest imploding. Somehow I bypassed the shock to stammer, “Harry Furwell?” To my knowledge, the man had been father’s closest friend until passing away last year. I remembered Father discussing the adventures of their early business deals, as well. “But Daisy was his wife. They had four children.”

  “Correct.” Andrea’s smile was all cruel lines and bitterness. “Daisy was the bitch who moved in after Harry broke our engagement. After I left college for him before I graduated, breaking the terms of my scholarship. After I planned our wedding to the last detail and was even sending invitations to the printer. And after he wanted to sample a little “cake” before the wedding then panicked like a child when the condom broke—forcing me to confess that he had nothing to worry about.”

  Margaux frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  But I did. “You’re infertile,” I ventured.

  “Barren,” she spat. “Yes. The cosmos correcting a blessing with a curse, I suppose. I mean, a woman with a one-sixty-one IQ can’t possibly expect to be blessed with a bountiful womb as well…right?” She gathered her hands together at her waist, the pose I liked calling Warped Mother Superior, while pacing across the suite as if it were a boardroom. “Regrettably, that logic wasn’t shared by the majority of Chicago’s social elite twenty-seven years ago. Daddy Furwell called me into his study to quietly inform me that I’d sign a nondisclosure agreement and accept their outrageous payoff for it, then get as far away from their son as I could get.”

  Margaux’s lips trembled. “And you accepted it? Just like that?”

  “Of course I didn’t.” The woman rocked back on one heel. “And I paid handsomely for that stupidity, as well. Within a week, the gossip mill circulated about Harry’s supreme dissatisfaction with my ‘cake,’ and how he was having severe second thoughts about our compatibility.” She sniffed. “The bastard was desperate. He’d waited too long to get married and get started on his heirs. Joe and Willa already had the three of you and Harry was feeling the pressure from his parents. Marrying me would’ve meant waiting for years for a proper adoption, if that would even fly as an acceptable alternative.”

  I parked my ass on the couch’s arm before supplying, “So the Furwells played dirty.”

  I almost knew the answer already. I’d liked Harry Furwell but the man possessed a ten-mile-long devious streak. Andrea confirmed it by elaborating, “Within a few days, the men scoffed at me. The women simply didn’t pay attention anymore. Half my bridesmaids backed out of the wedding via email. And when I went back to Furwell to finally accept the payoff, the amount on the check was cut in half.”

  I nodded in a moment of sympathy. Growing up at Keystone Manor had given me special “insight” into the cruelties of the social elite gossip machine. It was Smaug the Dragon in high form, fire and death to anyone who dared piss it off enough. “So how did my father’s indiscretion play into all this?”

  The only thing missing from Andrea’s cat-in-the-cream look was a smug lick of her lips. “Obviously, you boys don’t linger in the country club bathroom like we girls do. I’d just stopped in to clean out my locker and was primping a bit in the salon, when little Violet came running in and donated the contents of her tum-tum to the porcelain goddess. When she broke open every tear duct in her head right after, sobbing Josiah’s name between the blubbering, it was simple to string together all the pearls of their interesting little secret.”

  “And you saw a way to help them out—for a price,” I filled in. “Making back the money the Furwells welched on, and gaining a ‘special’ weapon to hold over Josiah, as an emergency backup.”

  I longed to retract the words as soon as they spilled out. The corporate strategist in me had simply taken over to arrive at the conclusion. I didn’t think about the look Margaux would flash at me, her breath catching as if I’d hurled a dagger at Andrea and really missed the target—or the way Andrea would react, either. The victorious smirk on her face turned my gut to lead.

  “Yes, well…” she crooned, “Nothing like a few million dollars and a gorgeous new baby girl to turn your ex-fiancé a little apoplectic. Seeing me in full mother mode made the man harder for me than a Jolly Rancher. And believe me, he was just as delicious—down to the last drop I sucked out of him, the night before his oh-so-proper nuptials to Bunny Harper.”

  Damn.

  So this was what it felt like to stand beside a nuclear core that had melted down. The disbelief and inability to accept what had just happened, followed by sickness that wouldn’t stop. I traded enough of a look with Sorrelle to know he felt exactly the same way. And Margaux? To be honest, I wasn’t sure if her silence impressed me or alarmed me.

  Studying her profile, now dipped toward the floor, didn’t clarify anything. Her face, lined in sorrow, tore at my heart. All the woman’s effort
s to objectify herself suddenly made sense. She’d been seen as nothing more from the day she was born. But the knowledge of it and the words, spoken aloud, confirming it?

  Yeah. Nuclear reactor core breach. Big time.

  “Andrea.” Margaux’s lips barely moved with the syllables. “I’d like you to leave now.”

  For the first time since I’d known her, Andrea Asher’s face flushed deep red. “Margaux. Darling. Come now. You know that I didn’t—”

  “Let me re-phrase.” Margaux snapped her head up. Her shoulders ratcheted back. “Get. The. Hell. Out.”

  Sorrelle had already crossed to the door and flung it open. He grimaced at Andrea like she was a used makeup wipe as she strode past him. As soon as she was clear of the portal, he let the door click shut while smoothing both his brows and muttering something about how the room needed a thorough karmic cleansing. After bustling back to the desk, he produced some incense cones and instantly lit them up in a ceremony that sounded like a Latin-Klingon fusion.

  Margaux hadn’t moved.

  I carefully approached. “Hey. You okay?”

  She didn’t say anything. I tugged at her shoulder, wondering if I’d shatter her with the move. But maybe a good shatter was exactly what she needed.

  Feeling her head slam into my chest was one of the best and worst feelings I’d ever experienced. As her tears spilled out and blended with the rain on my shirt, the storm obliged the moment by breaking into a torrent outside the window. I cradled her head against me, eschewing the normal platitudes in favor of what Margaux needed the most—an anchor in her tempest.

  Fuck. I knew that feeling well.

  “Killian?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When does this get easier? When does everything go back to normal?”

  I pulled in a long breath and pierced my gaze into the fathomless gray chaos, seeming to take over the world around us. “I wish I knew, Miss Mary Stone. I wish I knew.”

  Chapter Nine

  Claire

  I stretched and rolled over in Killian’s mammoth bed. Regardless of how far I reached in any direction though, I came up empty. The sheets on his side were undisturbed and cool…but I didn’t let that stop me from running my arms across them in need of feeling him near.

  The past week came thundering back like a stampede of stallions. Ban, Josiah. Dad, Father. Margaux.

  My god. Margaux.

  Sister.

  Not just my stepsister. Killian’s real sister. No; that wasn’t right, either. Trey and Lance’s real sister. Because Killian had separate blood in his veins. Hell, maybe Lance was half something else, too. Sure would explain why he and Kil hadn’t grown up into half-lunatic asses.

  No matter what, it was all a mess. In every tangled, fucked-up sense of the word.

  My head started pounding again. Same rhythm, different day—for the seventh day in a row. It had been a nonstop week, working with everyone on the team including Andrea and Margaux, who were definitely on an as-necessary basis for their communications. Despite that new jolt of weird to the team, we’d coordinated a memorial service for Josiah that likely made some people in Chicago wonder if his canonization was next.

  Two hundred people attended. Nobody wept except Willa.

  My second project was accompanying Killian to Ban’s service. With Willa’s blessing, we buried his ashes in a small clearing in Keystone’s forest, one of his favorite places on the estate.

  Fifty people attended. Everyone wept except Killian.

  At three the next morning I’d found him in the office at the condo, staring out at the rain…his face more wet and streaked than the window.

  Project number three was the source of all the headaches. A press conference in the lobby of Stone Global’s headquarters, scheduled for this afternoon right before the evening news cycle went hot, had to flow without a hitch. It was the first public announcement from the Stones since the fire, and would set the tone so Killian could guide the company forward with the same support always thrown behind Josiah’s name.

  With a normal client our team would have urged waiting at least a week longer for this kind of event, but the stock market had already reacted to the drama surrounding the fire, as well as the rumors abounding about Josiah’s less-than-peaceful passing. SGC’s stock values had taken a fearful drop. As soon as that happened, Killian ordered the press conference bumped forward. It was never far from his mind that the SGC name was responsible for employees making their mortgage payments, buying their groceries, and putting braces on their kids’ teeth. If that meant he had to shove aside his grief and, in his own words, “Put on the lampshade and dance on the table” for investors, then he would.

  Though none of the market’s behavior seemed odd to Kil, I’d been floored by confusion. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that he’d already logged years in his “father’s” seat, having stepped to the company’s helm when Josiah was ill, Trey was drunk, and Lance was six states away. The detractors apparently had memories of fleas, leading back to the importance of today’s event. Kil’s most important opportunity to silence the doubters lay in sixty simple minutes this afternoon.

  I needed to take something for the headache. Regrettably, that meant moving—the first time I had since collapsing to the mattress last night. After quickly snatching my hoodie off the chaise at the end of the bed, I dashed across the room and hustled some socks out of Kil’s drawer. While his bare floors were gorgeous, even with radiant heat built below them, his California girl roomie was constantly cold in here.

  Get your ass in gear, San Diego. The blood circulation will help.

  I let a smile tilt my lips. In my head, the decree was issued in Killian’s beautiful baritone. I wondered where he was as I trudged to the kitchen for coffee and ibuprofen. He’d been full of restlessness since we’d gotten back, a few clicks higher than his usual on-the-go speed. In light of the enormous impact of today, I hadn’t blamed him for it last night. I’d wanted to stay up with him but sheer exhaustion finally took its toll and I passed out.

  I expected to find him sacked on a couch in the office or living room but a look through both didn’t turn him up. I felt a frown replacing my smirk as I started the coffee brewing then grabbed my phone. It was still ungodly early but if he’d gone to the office, he would’ve messaged me.

  That was when I saw his note on the counter. I ran a finger over his elegant handwriting.

  Went to clear my head with a run. Be back soon.

  Love you, Fairy Queen.

  —K

  I took my coffee and phone and headed back toward the bedroom. As I crossed the living room, thunder boomed overhead. Thick clouds billowed over the lake. The rain pelted harder at the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “A run? Seriously?” Irritation underlined my mumble, brought on by a wave of concern. Why the hell was he exposing himself to a tempest worthy of the Wicked Witch and all her cousins—today of all days? On the other hand, how had anything about the last week made any sense? If the man needed to get lost in a storm to “get clear,” who was I to stop him?

  I decided to be grateful he hadn’t asked me to join him. To celebrate that fact, it was time for a nice, scalding shower. The bathroom steamed up while I grabbed my robe from the closet to lounge in afterward.

  I sighed in bliss while stepping under the spray, allowing my limbs to go limp while the hot water cleaned off some of the difficult memories from the last seven days. None of it had been easy but Killian and I had hung on to each other through it all, despite running in our “operations” mode for much too long now. My discomfort with that was hard to define. We weren’t as broken as we’d been in Europe. We just weren’t connected again, either. The rigors of life had drained us both…and I was badly in need of a recharge, Mr. Stone style.

  While towel-drying my hair at the vanity, the condo’s alarm system chirped. Two seconds later, the front door whumped shut. I smiled. Carl Lewis had returned from his session. Deciding to let him find me inste
ad of crowding him the moment he walked in, I sat on the bed to start combing through my hair. It was getting long and thick and difficult lately. When I got back to San Diego, a trip to the salon would be on the priority list.

  I felt his presence before turning to behold him in the doorway. He’d shucked his running shoes but that barely mattered. The rest of him, from the ink-black waves on his head to the socks that squished when he stepped, was soaked straight through. And was sexy as hell.

  “Hey,” he greeted. “Here you are.”

  I didn’t fight my appreciative smile. Or the warmth in my wide eyes, undoubtedly telling him how utterly hot he was in his chilled clothes. Tiny drops ran down his angled cheeks then dripped from his chin to his chest. His windbreaker clung to the ridges of his pecs, biceps and abs like an obscene second layer of skin.

  “Yep. Here I am.” Now getting very hot and bothered, thank you, Mr. Stone.

  “Miss Montgomery?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “You’re staring.” The bastard had the nerve to laugh a little.

  “And you’re…wet.”

  “It’s raining outside.”

  All that was missing was the “duh.” It raised his fuck-me-please factor by about a gazillion. The man’s sideways smirk told me he grew more aware of that by the second, too. Had he turned up the thermostat on his way in, too?

  “So where’d you run? Though I guess a trip to the corner would’ve also turned you into a walking sponge, too. Good thing I didn’t cancel the stylist for you this afternoon.” I’d gone for conversational but it all came out like an accusation, the last effect I intended. Fortunately, the heat we’d just exchanged still lingered in his gaze. If he’d noticed, he didn’t say.

  “Had to muck the stalls,” he said softly.

  I gave an understanding nod. Though he played water polo now, he’d grown up on the real horses-and-divots version, meaning the equestrian terms came out as metaphors for the state of his gray matter. That didn’t explain the strange quirk to his lips after that. “And I also…”