by Lucy Smith
“See? These are the kinds of things I’m talking about. When instances like that happen, I need to know about it, Lauren. You need to let me know every time there’s something out of the ordinary.”
“You’re literally making no sense. Under that analysis, I’d be calling you every two minutes. It’s not a rarity for Pierce to be rude and short with me. That’s not exactly breaking news.” Unless we’re in the bedroom, then he takes his sweet time.
“Are you listening to anything I’m saying to you?” my father yelled. “I’m talking about the goddamn phone call, not his fucking office edict.”
I froze. Dad never raised his voice, or at least he hadn’t in years and years. What the hell was going on with him?
I watched my dad pinch the bridge of his nose like he was willing away a pounding migraine. “Let me try again,” he said. “Lauren, there’s a lot you don’t know. About me. About this company. And about the Mavericks.”
Obviously, since you never bother filling me in on anything. “Ever think of fixing that? I can’t exactly make information suddenly appear in my head, ya know.” I knew I sounded snarky, but I was sick of this guessing game.
He glared at me. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
I threw my hands in the air to prompt him to share whatever was lying so heavily on his chest. Bracing myself, I waited. There was no way he was going to tell me anything. He was all bark, no talk. No details. No information. Just the basics, the bare necessities of what I needed to know to get the job done. He had been that way since I was born, always keeping his family in the shadows of his business life. Even now, when I was one of his top employees, he still refused to treat me like anything but a little girl. I gave up trying to obtain information from him a long time ago, promising myself that I’d be different when I became Hart Corp’s new CEO.
“This isn’t really easy to talk about. I have not shared what I’m about to tell you with anyone before. So I hope when I tell you this, you’ll be understanding and . . . maybe a little compassionate with your old man.” He folded his large hands in his lap.
“You’re freaking me out now, Dad. What happened?”
“About a year ago, I slipped up.” His eyes wandered to the far wall, completely ignoring my intense gaze. “And I regret it, but it seems that it has been brought back to my attention. Someone doesn’t exactly want me to forget about my indiscretion . . .”
My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I don’t get it. What do you mean you ‘slipped up’?”
He held out his hand to stop me. “I cheated on your mother.”
“You what?”
“I’m not proud of it. Trust me, I’ve regretted it ever since. But I’m a man. I have basic human instincts. Your mother has been incredibly frail lately and I—”
I stood up from my chair. “You just thought it’d be okay to screw someone else?” I ran my hand frantically through my frizzy hair. “I can’t—I can’t believe this. I mean, I’ve always known you were a horrible father and spouse, but I’ve always thought it was because you were a workaholic. But this? I can’t even look at you right now.”
I stormed off to the kitchen. I didn’t know what I was looking for—a coffee, a shot of whiskey, a hammer? I wanted to cry. I wanted to puke. I couldn’t stand the sight of my sick, twisted father. I’d always suspected him of infidelity with his voluptuous secretaries and his late-night rendezvous across the globe. But I had never had definitive proof. How would I ever look my mother in the eyes again?
“I know you’re upset, and I’m really sorry about that,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you in all of this.”
“Me?” I asked, turning around to stare at him. He was now standing by the sofa. His hands were in his pockets, nonchalant as ever. “Who cares about me? What about Mom?”
“Well, hopefully, she’ll never have to find out.”
I folded my hands across my chest. “You seriously think you can just never tell her?”
“I hope not, my dear. I really hope not.” He hung his head as if in shame. I wasn’t buying it.
I pelted questions at him, one after the other. “Does someone else know about your affair? Who was it with? Does Toby know?”
He rubbed his bald head with his thick, sausage-like fingers. “Yes, unfortunately Peter Maverick found out about the affair.”
I wanted to collapse on the floor. Peter Maverick was a man as vindictive as my father was cold—he would surely destroy my dad with this information. “How did he get wind of this? Weren’t you careful?” My mind flashed to the video cameras in Pierce’s room and what they contained on their memory cards.
“Well, I thought so. Until I discovered that the girl I was seeing a few times a week was the daughter of one of the board members.”
My mouth fell open. “At Hart Corp?”
“I wish. Any of those old geezers could easily be bribed. The secret would go to the grave with me.”
“Surely you don’t mean . . .”
He shook his head slowly. “Maverick and Company,” he said slowly.
“But . . . but I don’t understand. Peter has sex with all kinds of women since his wife killed herself so long ago. Everybody in New York knows the notches on his bedpost have whittled the frame down to a complete nub,” I said, thinking out loud. “I mean, Pierce even told me that his dad used to hire women to dress in skimpy French maid outfits and pretend to clean around the house before he banged them.” I hoped Dad wouldn’t ask me why or when Pierce told me that. Now was not the time to confess my own sexual scandal.
“That’s true,” he said quietly, “but I believe all the women he’s slept with over the years have been of legal age.”
His words hung in the air like a toxin, making it impossible to breathe. My knees threatened to buckle. Reality was settling on my chest, and it was heavy. Incredibly heavy. I felt like I was suffocating and, at the same time, hyperventilating. My father, the child molester? It was way too early in the morning to process something this egregious.
“How in the . . . how the hell did you let this happen?”
He turned on his heels and began to frantically pace the length of my living room. “I don’t know! I don’t know! She told me she was twenty-five, and she looked it. Maybe my judgment was clouded by my desire for her, but I would have never guessed she was barely seventeen. What seventeen-year-old has breasts like that? I met her at a bar for Christ’s sake!”
I met my father in the living room. His frenzied steps were driving me crazy. “Dad, chill. Sit down. Drink your coffee.”
“I’m too revved up for caffeine.”
I sank into my plush white loveseat. “Clearly.” I felt an intense headache coming on, and my bed was practically shouting my name. Fatigue from the night’s events threatened to overshadow the horrid news my father had just shared. “So what does this all mean, Dad? Sum it up for me.”
He sat at the edge of sofa and stared at the coffee table. “This seventeen-year-old girl has a father on the board of Peter Maverick’s company. I don’t know if he knows of his daughter’s extracurricular activities or not. But it’s apparent that Peter used her to get to me. She has pictures, texts, and e-mails to prove it all—our affair, I mean.”
“So Peter’s blackmailing you with that information.”
He nodded glumly. “He’s forcing Hart Corp to front this harebrained casino. I happen to know his company has been quietly suffering the last few years, mostly because of the competition we’ve been steadily giving them.” He sighed. “I believe it’s his intention to make this casino flop and ruin Hart Corp . . . and obviously, me.”
“I knew you had to be out of your mind to agree to do business with that sleazeball.”
“I had no choice. Don’t you see? He’s tied my hands with all the information. If my affair with a minor gets out, I’ll lose everything. It’d destroy my lifelong work. It would all be for nothing.”
“Not to mention you’d sure as hell go to jail,” I added.
“That too.”
I shifted on the sofa, bringing my knees to my chest. “Does Pierce know about his father’s schemes? Or is Peter acting like you always do, solo?”
“That’s what I wanted you to find out by watching him. I suspect he does know something. How else could Peter jeopardize the first project that his young son has ever really managed?”
I couldn’t believe that Pierce was willingly sabotaging this casino. He might hate my father and our family, but I happened to know he hated his own father even more. Would he really play along with his father’s games? I had a feeling Pierce wasn’t the kind of man who liked being a puppet, dancing and moving at the handler’s will. “So what do we do now? How am I supposed to go back to work tomorrow and act like nothing’s changed? I should just hand in my resignation right now. No one would bat an eyelash.”
“You could do that. But then you would have to explain to your mother why you suddenly quit. And she’d have to find out about all of this . . .”
I rolled my eyes. How dare he! “Really, Dad? I think we have enough blackmail on our hands without your pointless threats.” But admittedly, he did have a point. The only reason I wasn’t on a jet out of Vegas that very moment was the picture of devastation etched across my mother’s face when she discovered her husband’s scandal. My father had clearly made his bed, and he could lie in it for all I cared. But Mother? Her only crime was marrying a pig. I could just see her opening the morning paper to see Dad’s face and the haunting headline: “Billionaire bangs his way to bankruptcy and prison.” If there was any way of saving her from that pain, I would fight for it at all costs.
“We need to find something on the Mavericks, Lauren. We need to turn this thing around before Hart Corp completely capsizes and we’re all left drowning in the ocean.”
Lovely mental picture, I thought to myself. “I’ll see what I can do, Dad. I don’t think you should expect much. Pierce is a solid employee and smart as a whip. He’ll cover his tracks well, if he even has any to hide.” Was it wrong that in the wake of this crisis, all I could think about was next Sunday? That was the aspect of our arrangement I loved the most. We left work off the mattress and merely focused on the release—the pleasure from fully experiencing someone else’s body, the electricity of passion, and the fear of getting caught. I wasn’t sure if I could ever give that up and put the sexual animal that had roared to life back in her cage. Pierce’s sensuality and our Sunday arrangements had me captivated—hook, line, and sinker. As bad as it sounded, I almost didn’t care if he knew that his father was screwing over my father’s company.
My father reached into his tweed jacket and pulled out a thick, clunky cell phone. “If you find out anything, or if you need me for any reason at all, use this. It’s untraceable and safe.”
As though I had reminded him of something he had to do, he rose quickly from my sofa. “Be safe, Lauren. Don’t trust anyone, and always watch your back.”
~*~*~*~
It was still early, and I had nothing to do today. Originally I had wanted to conference call with my assistant, Monica, to get a summary of my projects, the ones my dad had forced me to stop. But they were the last thing I wanted to worry about now. Heading for the bedroom, I decided to sleep off the bizarre conversation I had just had with my father. Maybe my thoughts would make more sense when I got some sleep under my belt and could focus enough to formulate some kind of game plan.
A few hours later, I woke up to my cell phone buzzing. It was Pierce. He never called after we slept together, so I was confused about why he was suddenly acting more gentlemanly than he ever had after one of our one-night stands. I was afraid to answer, fearful I may give something away, so I let it go to voice mail.
“Hey there. I hope you got some rest after last night’s adventure. Good call on the cameras, by the way. I think you’ll be pleased when I get this video all edited. We look especially hot on film. I wanted to tell you that you’ll need club clothes for our next Sunday. See you tomorrow.”
I set the phone back on the nightstand. I hadn’t been to a club for anything other than scouting our potential competition here in Vegas, except for our visit to the mermaid attraction, and I knew nothing in my closet would fit that type of scene. I grabbed my cell; I needed to go shopping and would probably need my driver.
“Yes, ma’am, I will be there soon to pick you up,” he said.
Four hours later, I found a suitable dress. It was a black, thigh-high, form-fitting dress with a draping neckline and open shoulder sleeves. The back of the dress was very revealing and gathered by a diamond-encrusted clasp, showing off most of my back. It was exactly what I wanted. With this, I purchased silver peep-toe pumps and a black onyx and diamond bangle bracelet. I was all ready for Sunday; I just had to wait for it to come, and in the meantime, figure out if Pierce was trying to destroy my father.
Chapter Fourteen
My brother called me on Wednesday to let me know that the model was done, but that he wouldn’t be able to make it out until Saturday night. His wife, Margret, had their second child and he wanted to spend a few days with her. I understood where he was coming from, but that didn’t help my nerves about Sunday. I wouldn’t have been able to tell him not to come, and I also wouldn’t have been able to force him to leave Las Vegas with a good conscience.
The original plan meant he’d be gone by Sunday. Now, all that had changed. He’d be here Sunday night. I knew he would want to have dinner and talk about the new baby and different things going on in our lives. Aware that I didn’t have much of a social life, I knew he’d be suspicious of any “plans” I might have on the calendar. If I told him I just wanted to be home, he’d invite himself over to watch a movie. If I told him I was hanging out with friends that night, he wouldn’t believe me. I needed to figure something out if I wanted another sexual fantasy.
~*~*~*~
“He can come with us,” Pierce said when I told him Toby’s plans.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’d really rather not have him there for various reasons.”
He held up his hands. “My plan is to distract him with something or someone else, and we can sneak off. We’ll be back before he notices anything is different.”
“How do I explain to him that I’m willingly hanging out with you? He’ll hardly buy it, especially after how charming you were last time.”
“Tell him we are scouting the club because it’s one of the hottest in Las Vegas.”
“Fine, but if he figures out what’s going on, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s fair enough, I suppose.”
“What’s fair?” April asked as she entered the conference room. She had a cardboard carrier with three grandé-sized cups in her hands.
“That we all get a raise for dealing with this tiresome project,” I said.
“Well, I brought us coffee, if that helps. Caffeine makes everything better, right?” She passed us each a warm cup.
“You’re wise beyond your years, April,” Pierce said before taking a sip. “Lucas should be by later. He’s going to start bringing in lunches up here for the three of us.”
A tingle of delight warmed my heart at his words. I wasn’t sure why, but something about Pierce’s personal chef was incredibly attractive. I wouldn’t mind seeing his handsome face a little more.
Shaking Lucas from my mind, I asked April, “Did you finish the expenditure report I sent you?” Coffee runs were nice, sure, but I needed this assistant to actually assist, for once.
Her face fell. “No, sorry. Not yet. I’ll get to work on it straightaway.”
“Make sure you send those to me first,” Pierce piped up. “I want to go over the finalized version before we talk to the investors about our new budget plan.”
My ears suddenly perked up. “Wait, what? New budget plan? Did I miss your memo or something?”
“No, it’s something I decided last week. Fantasy needs a bigger budget if w
e’re going to make her as grand as we want. We need to pitch to more investors.” He took another sip of coffee. “I’m going to see how much more Maverick and Company can lend, and you need to talk to your dad.”
Little did he know, I was completely sick of talking to my dad—a thought I had never had before during my twenty-seven years with an absentee father.
~*~*~*~
Saturday came faster than I expected. Between doing my own work and doubling back over Pierce’s to be sure nothing suspicious stood out, I had been exceptionally busy. I was nervous about seeing Toby, even though Pierce assured me it would all play out fine. I wished I had his confidence.
I picked my brother up in the evening. He had the air of a proud father about him, showing me picture after picture of his new baby girl, Arianna.
“She’s beautiful, Toby! Who knew you could make such beautiful kids?”
He laughed. “I know, right? It’s all Margret though.”
“How is she doing anyway? Recovering okay?”
“She’s all right. She’s a little pissed that I’m here actually. But ya know, the bills aren’t going to pay themselves.”
I nodded. “Might be a nice break for you. I’m sure a newborn is a real delight to live with around three a.m.”
“You have no idea.”
We ended up having dinner at the restaurant inside his hotel. My fettuccini alfredo was divine, and the cabernet was exquisite, but our conversation waned. Toby seemed distracted, but I chalked it up to fatigue from taking care of a newborn and the flight out to Las Vegas. I was glad for this because I didn’t really have anything to say. Desperately, I wanted to tell him about Dad’s scandal and Maverick’s blackmail. If I couldn’t confide in Toby about it, who could I confide in? But something deep within me told me to hold back. I didn’t want to involve him more than was absolutely necessary. He clearly had enough on his plate.