Kitabı oku: «Saving His Blackmailed Lover»

One

“You can do this, Cecelia.”

Cecelia Morgan attempted to encourage herself as she looked over her portfolio for the hundredth time. Tomorrow, she was presenting her design plans to the board of directors of the new Bellamy Hotel. This was a big step for her and her company, To the Moon. The company she started after college specialized in children’s furniture, bedding and toys. From the beginning she had targeted a high-end market, catering to wealthy parents who were looking for luxury products for their children.

The company had been a success from the very start. What had begun as a small online boutique had exploded into a series of stores across the United States after a celebrity posted on social media about how much they loved one of TTM’s nursery designs. Cecelia had been forced to open her own production facility and warehouse outside her hometown of Royal, Texas, to keep up with the demand.

The portfolio on the desk in front of her, however, could take To the Moon to the next level. Designing furniture, toys and accessories for pampered little ones had been her first love, but now Cecelia was ready for her business to mature along with her tastes. The Bellamy Hotel was her chance to make this a reality.

The Bellamy was a brand-new five-star resort opening right outside Royal. Owner Shane Delgado had contacted Cecelia about decorating and furnishing the hotel about a month ago, after a previous designer had been fired well into the process. This would be a big step for Cecelia. If she could secure the contract with The Bellamy, it would give her the footing she needed to branch out into the luxury adult furniture market.

As her daddy always said, if you’re not moving forward, you might as well be moving backward. She was successful, but that wasn’t enough for the Morgans. Her subsidiary of To the Moon—Luna Fine Furnishings—could change everything for her.

She was shocked that Shane had reached out to her, given he was pretty clear he’d dismissed her as part of the mean girls clique, along with her best friends Simone and Naomi. Admittedly, she wasn’t very nice to his girlfriend Brandee and recent gossip had been less than flattering about Cecelia and her friends. Some even suspected them of being behind the recent blackmailings. Shane was taking a huge leap of faith inviting her to submit her ideas for this incredible opportunity; she wasn’t about to screw this up.

Cecelia gathered up everything into her portfolio binder and slipped it into her leather briefcase. She’d probably gone over it a hundred times already. She needed to stop fiddling with it and just let it lie. It was perfect. Some of her best work yet. As usual, she was putting too much pressure on herself. Her parents certainly didn’t help matters. They always held Cecelia, their only child, to very high standards and never accepted anything less than perfection.

She supposed that was why she was so successful. Brent and Tilly Morgan were practically Texas royalty and had raised their daughter to follow in their footsteps. She went to the best private schools, rode horses and competed in dressage in high school, and went on to graduate summa cum laude with a business degree from a prestigious Ivy League university. Anything less for the younger Morgan would’ve been unacceptable.

While her parents had been supportive both emotionally and financially when it came to her company, Cecelia always worried that their support came at a price. If Luna Fine Furnishings wasn’t the success that she hoped for, she might never hear the end of it. The last thing she needed was for her father to pat her on the back and tell her that maybe she needed to just stick with the baby things. You know...woman stuff. Or worse yet, to hand the business over to someone else and focus on settling down with Chip Ashford to make actual babies instead of baby furniture.

She wasn’t opposed to settling down with Chip—he was her fiancé after all—but she certainly didn’t want to throw away everything that she’d worked for in the process. Chip was a Texas senator, and he had been very supportive of her business so far. But Cecelia got the feeling that once they got married, Chip might feel the same way as her parents did.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want kids. Cecelia wanted her own children more than anything. But she was confident that she could be both a mother and the CEO of her own company. She didn’t intend to set one ambition aside for the other.

A chime sounded on Cecelia’s phone. She reached for it and tapped the screen to open up the Snapchat notification she’d just received for a private message. It took her a moment to realize what she was actually looking at. The picture was of a document with small text, but the header at the top brought a sinking feeling to her stomach. It read “Certificate of Birth” with the seal of the state of Texas on the bottom corner. The message across the screen was far more worrisome.

Somebody has got a secret.

Cecelia looked once more at the photo before it disappeared. It was then that she realized that this wasn’t just any birth certificate, it was her original birth certificate. The one issued before she was adopted by the Morgans.

For a moment, Cecelia almost couldn’t breathe. Her adoption had always been kept a secret. Everyone, including members of her extended family, believed that Cecelia was Brent and Tilly’s biological daughter. Even Cecelia had believed it until her thirteenth birthday. That night, they’d told her that she was adopted but that they had kept it a secret for her own protection. The unfortunate truth was that her birth mother had been a junkie, and child services had taken Cecelia away from her when she was only a few weeks old. Her mother had overdosed not long after that, and she was put up for adoption. The Morgans thought that it was best if Cecelia’s birth mother and that dark past were kept secret.

But someone had found out.

Cecelia didn’t know how—she hadn’t even seen her original birth certificate before. A new one had been issued when her adoption was finalized, so someone had done some serious sleuthing to find it.

Another image popped up on her screen. This one was a message written in letters cut from magazines like some sort of ransom note. She supposed that in some way, it was a ransom note. It demanded that twenty-five thousand dollars be wired to an account within twenty-four hours or her secret would be exposed to the entire town. It was signed, Maverick.

Considering everything that had been happening in Royal, Texas, lately, she should’ve known she would be targeted eventually. Maverick had been wreaking havoc on the lives of Royal residents for the past few months. This anonymous blackmailer had been the talk of the town, and everyone at the Texas Cattleman’s Club had suspicions about who it could be. The most recent suspects had been Cecelia herself, along with Naomi and Simone.

Cecelia was a busy woman. She ran her own business, served as arm candy for her fiancé’s various political events, was busy keeping up appearances for her parents and for Chip... She hardly had time in her schedule to get a manicure, much less to research and dig up dirt on her fellow residents. Her busy schedule and high standards made her come off as a bit snobbish, and Cecelia supposed she was, but she was no blackmailer. Unfortunately, the only way to prove it was to let everyone know that she was Maverick’s latest victim.

That certainly wasn’t an option. She couldn’t have the whole town knowing that her entire life was a lie.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t just her secret. Her parents had built their lives around their perfect “biological” daughter. They’d lied to countless family members and friends to keep up the charade, but they’d only done it to protect her. Paying Maverick was probably the only way to shield Brent and Tilly from the fallout.

But hers wasn’t the only family she had to worry about. The Ashfords would have a fit. Chip came from a certain kind of family, and he believed that Cecelia was cut from the same cloth. Would Chip call off the engagement if he found out the truth? Their relationship was more about appearances and family alliances than love, but she hoped that Chip cared enough about her not to throw everything away if her secret got out. As far as she was concerned, she was a Morgan, through and through.

And as a Morgan, it was her responsibility to safeguard her and her family’s reputation, or tomorrow’s presentation would go down in flames. Her reputation where Shane was concerned was hanging on by a thread as it was. Surely, he wouldn’t want a scandal to interfere with his hotel’s grand opening.

But when did it stop? Would Maverick be content with the first payment, or would he drag this out until Cecelia was broke and her business was bankrupted?

Cecelia clutched her head in her hands and fought off a pending migraine. She’d suddenly found herself stuck between a rock and a hard place, and there was no easy way out of this. She either paid Maverick, or the truth of her adoption would be spread all over town. The clock was ticking.

She wasn’t sure what her path forward would be, but Cecelia knew what she was doing next. In her life whenever a crisis arose, Cecelia always called her daddy. This conversation, however, was one that needed to be had in person. She didn’t know how Maverick had found out about her adoption, but if her phone lines were tapped or her computer was being monitored, she couldn’t risk anything but face-to-face communication.

* * *

It took Cecelia over an hour for her to reach her parents’ mansion outside Houston. It was nearly ten o’clock by the time she arrived, but her parents would still be awake. As expected, she found her father sitting in his library. He was reading a book and smoking one of his favorite cigars.

Brent Morgan looked up in surprise when he noticed his daughter standing in the doorway of his library. “What are you doing here, sweetheart? Your mother didn’t tell me were stopping by tonight.”

Cecelia took a few steps into her father’s favorite room and took a seat in the leather chair across from him. “She doesn’t know I’m here. I’m in trouble, Daddy.”

Furrowing his brow, he set aside his book and stubbed out his cigar. “What is it? Are you and Chip having problems?”

“No, this isn’t about Chip.” With a sigh, Cecelia told her father about the message she had received. His expression had morphed from concerned, to angry, to anxious as she spoke. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to wire them twenty-five thousand dollars, or everyone is going to know the truth.”

“Our family can’t afford a scandal like this. And imagine the pain this would bring to the Ashfords. Surely this isn’t what you want. You’re just going to have to pay him,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Cecelia hated being put in a position where she had no options, and being under Maverick’s thumb was the last place she wanted to be. The only real way to combat blackmail was by exposing the truth before the attacker could. If they beat Maverick to the punch they could put their own spin on her adoption and why they’d lied about it.

“Are you sure, Daddy? I mean, I know you and Mother were trying to protect me, but I’m a grown woman now. I’d rather the story not get out. However, would it be the end of the world if people discovered I was adopted? Does it change anything, really?”

“It absolutely does!” her father said with his face flushing red, making his salt-and-pepper hair appear more starkly white against his skin. “We’ve lied to everyone we know for thirty years. This would ruin our reputation. And what would the Ashfords think? They wouldn’t understand. Neither would my customers or my friends. I could lose business. Hell, you could get thrown out of the Texas Cattleman’s Club. It’s social suicide, and your mother’s heart couldn’t take the scandal. No,” he insisted. “This stays a secret. Period. I will loan you the money if you need it to pay the blackmailer, but you will pay him.”

Cecelia noted the finality in her father’s tone. It had been the same when she was an unruly child, the same when she was a teenager testing her boundaries. She was an adult now, but Brent Morgan was still in charge. She didn’t have the nerve to go against him then, and she certainly didn’t have the nerve to do it now. She’d come here for his advice, and she’d be a fool not to take it.

“No, I have the money. I’ll make the transfer in the morning. I just hope it is enough to put an end to all of this.”

“It has to be,” her father said. “I refuse to have our family turned into laughingstocks.”

Cecelia sighed in resignation and got up from her seat. “I’ll take care of it, Daddy.”

* * *

Deacon Chase turned his restored 1965 Corvette Stingray down the main street of Royal, Texas. It’d been thirteen years since he’d looked at this town in his rearview mirror and swore he’d never set foot in this narrow-minded, Texas dust trap again. The whole flight over from France, he questioned why he was coming back. Yes, it was good business, and working with his old friend from high school, Shane Delgado, had always been a pleasant experience. But when Shane mentioned that he wanted to build a resort in their hometown of Royal, he should have passed.

Then again, when else would he get the chance to show the town and the people who rejected him that he was better than them? Sure, back then he’d just been a poor kid with few prospects. He was the son of a grocery store clerk and the local car mechanic. He’d gotten to go to private school with all the rich kids only because his parents had been adamant that Deacon make something of himself, and they’d put every dime they had toward his schooling. Even then he had worked in the cafeteria to bridge the gap in tuition. Nobody else had expected much out of him, and those were the people who even acknowledged he existed. As far as most the residents of Royal were concerned, Deacon had never fit in, never would fit in and needed to accept his station in life.

No one had expected him to take his hobby of restoring cars and parlay the skills and money into restoring houses. They certainly hadn’t expected him to take the profit from those houses and put it into renovating hotels. Now the kid who worked in the cafeteria was a billionaire and the owner of the most glamorous resort in Cannes, France, the Hotel de Rêve, among others.

The only person in Royal who had ever believed in him was Cecelia. Back in high school, she’d pushed him to be the best person he could be. Considering that she’d held herself to such high standards, he’d been flattered that she saw so much potential in him when most of the people in high school either ignored him or taunted him. Cecelia had said he was a diamond in the rough. Her diamond in the rough.

It’d certainly blown the minds of all the boys at school that Cecelia had chosen Deacon instead of one of them. What could he offer her after all? A free carton of milk with her lunch? It turned out that he’d had plenty to offer her. He could still remember how many hours they’d spent lying in the back of his pickup truck talking. Kissing. Dreaming aloud about their future together. Deacon and Cecelia had had big plans for their lives after graduation.

Step one had been to get the hell out of Royal, Texas. Step two had been to live happily-ever-after.

As Deacon came to a stop at the traffic light at the intersection of Main Street and First Avenue, he shook his head in disgust. He had been a fool to think any of that would ever happen. He might have fancy hotels and expensive suits, sports cars and a forty-foot yacht docked in the French Riviera, but Deacon knew, and everybody else knew, that Cecelia was too good for him.

It hadn’t taken long for Cecelia to figure that out, too.

The light turned green, and Deacon continued down the road to where his father’s old garage used to be. When he’d made his first million, Deacon had moved his parents out of Royal and into a nice subdivision in central Florida. There, they could enjoy their early retirement without the meddling of the snooty residents of Royal. His father had sold the shop, and now a new shopping center was sitting where it used to be. A lot had changed in the last thirteen years.

Deacon couldn’t help but wonder how much Cecelia had changed. He tried not to cyberstalk her, but from time to time he couldn’t help looking over the Houston society pages to see what she was up to. The grainy black-and-white pictures hardly did her beauty justice, he was certain. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been a young woman, barely eighteen. Even then, Deacon had been certain that she was the most beautiful woman he would ever see in person. He would bet that time had been kind to his Cecelia.

Not that it mattered. The most recent article he’d stumbled across in the paper had included the announcement of her engagement to Chip Ashford. He remembered Chip from high school. He was a rich, entitled, first-class douche bag. Deacon was fairly certain that that hadn’t changed, but if Cecelia was willing to marry him, she certainly wasn’t the girl that he remembered. Back then, she’d hardly given Chip the time of day.

Mr. and Mrs. Morgan must be so proud of her now. She’d finally made a respectable choice in a man.

Turning off the main drag, Deacon headed down the narrow country road out of Royal that led to his latest real estate acquisition. The rustic yet luxurious lodge that was to serve as his home base in the area stood on three acres of wooded land several miles outside town. He’d bought the property sight unseen when he decided to take on The Bellamy project with Shane. He couldn’t be happier with the place. It was very much his style, although it was a far cry from the elegant European architecture and design that he’d become accustomed to.

He hadn’t really needed to buy the home. Deacon had no real intention of staying in Royal any longer than he had to. But the businessman in him had a hard time passing up a good deal, and it seemed a shame to throw money away on renting a place while they built the hotel. He had no regrets. It was his happy retreat, away from the society jungles of Royal.

When he pulled up in front of the lodge, he was surprised to find Shane Delgado’s truck parked out front. Deacon parked the Corvette in his garage, then stepped out front to meet his friend and business partner.

Deacon hadn’t had many friends back in school. Basically none. But his side business of buying and restoring cars had drawn Shane’s attention. Shane had actually bought Deacon’s very first restoration, a 1975 cherry-red Ford pickup truck with white leather seats. Deacon had been damn proud of that truck, especially when Shane had handed over the cash for it without questioning his asking price. They’d bonded then over a mutual love of cars and had continued to keep in touch over the years. When they both ended up in the real estate development business, it was natural for them to consider working together on a few projects.

“What’s wrong now?” Deacon asked as he joined Shane at the bottom of his front steps.

While the construction of The Bellamy had gone relatively smoothly, Deacon was the silent partner. Shane bothered him with details only when something had gone awry. He joked with Shane once that he was getting to the point that he dreaded the sight of his friend’s face.

“For once,” Shane said with a smile, “I’m just here to hang out and have a drink with my friend. Everything at the hotel is going splendidly. Tomorrow, Cecelia Morgan will be presenting her designs to the board, based on your recommendation. Assuming we like what Cecelia did, and I hope I’m not going too far out on a limb here, we’ll be moving forward and getting that much closer to opening the hotel.”

Deacon slapped his friend on the back of the shoulder. “I wouldn’t have brought her on board if I didn’t think she was the best designer for the job. Come on in,” he said as they started up the massive stone stairs to the front door. “Have you eaten?” he asked as they made their way into his office for a drink.

Shane nodded. “I have. Brandee is constantly feeding me. By the end of the year, I’m going to weigh three hundred pounds.”

“You’re a lucky man,” Deacon said as he poured them both a couple of fingers of whiskey over ice. Shane had recently gotten involved with Brandee Lawless, the owner of the nearby Hope Springs Ranch. She was a tiny blonde spitfire, and one hell of a cook. “I’d be happy to have Brandee feeding me every night.”

“I bet you would,” Shane said. “But you need to just stick with your cultured European women.”

Deacon chuckled at his friend’s remark. He had certainly taken advantage of the local delicacies while he was in Europe. Even though it’d been years since he and Cecelia had broken up, it had soothed his injured pride to have a line of beautiful and exotic women waiting for their chance to be with him. He would never admit to anyone, especially Shane, that not a one of them held a candle to Cecelia in his mind.

Deacon and Shane sat there together, sipping their drinks and enjoying each other’s company. They didn’t get a lot of opportunities to just hang out anymore. Deacon’s office, however, just begged for gentlemen to spend time in comfortable chairs and shoot the shit. The walls were lined with shelves containing leather-bound books that, frankly, came with the house and Deacon would never read. They did create a nice atmosphere, though, along with the oil paintings of landscapes and cattle that hung there. It was all very masculine Texas style.

“Can I ask you something?” Shane asked.

“Sure. What?”

“You do know that Cecelia’s business specializes in children’s furniture, right?”

Deacon tensed in his chair. Perhaps his office made Shane too comfortable, since he felt like prying into Deacon’s motivations for wanting Cecelia for the job. “Yeah, I know. I also know that she’s managed to turn her small company into a furniture and accessories juggernaut since she started it. She’s always had a good eye for design.”

“She does, I won’t argue that. But hiring her to decorate The Bellamy is a huge risk. She and Brandee aren’t exactly fans of each other. And what if she and her friends are actually behind the cyberattacks? That’s not the kind of publicity we’d want for our hotel. I don’t have to remind you how much we stand to lose if our gamble doesn’t pay off.”