Seductive Revenge

How the hell had this happened? Stupid. He knew how it had happened. What he didn’t know was why he hadn’t been told. Wes rubbed one hand along the back of his neck and didn’t even touch the tension building there. Still staring at the smiling girl on the screen, he felt the email batter away at his brain until he was forced to sit, open a new window and go to Twitter.

Somebody had hacked his account. His new handle was, as promised, Deadbeatdad. If he didn’t get this stopped fast, it would go viral and might start interfering with his business.

Instantly, Wes made some calls, reporting that his account had been hacked, then turned the mess over to his IT guys to figure out. He reported the hack and had the account shuttered, hoping to buy time. Meanwhile, he was too late to stop #Deadbeatdad from spreading. The Twitterverse was already moving on it. Now he had a child he had to find and a reputation he had to repair. Snatching up the phone, he stabbed the button for his assistant’s desk. “Robin,” he snapped. “Get Mike from PR back in here now.”

He didn’t even wait to hear her response, just slammed the phone down and went back to his computer. He brought up the image of the little girl—his daughter—again and stared at her. What was her name? Where did she live? Then thoughts of the woman who had to be the girl’s mother settled into his brain. Isabelle Gray. She’d disappeared from his life years ago—apparently with his child. Jaw tight, eyes narrowed, Wes promised himself he was going to get to the bottom of all of this and when he did…

* * *

For the next hour, everyone in PR and IT worked the situation. There was no stopping the flood of retweets, so Wes had Mike and his crew focused on finding a way to spin it. IT was tasked with tracking down this mysterious Maverick so that Wes could deal with him head-on.

Meanwhile, Wes had another problem to worry about. The merger with PlayCo, a major player in the toy industry, was something Wes had been carefully maneuvering his way toward for months. But the CEO there, Teddy Bradford, was a good old boy with rock-solid claims to family values. He’d been married to the same woman forever, had several kids and prided himself on being the flag bearer for the all-American, apple pie lifestyle.

This was going to throw a wrench of gigantic proportions into the mix. And so far, Teddy wasn’t taking any of Wes’s calls. Not a good sign.

“Uh, boss?”

“Yeah?” Wes spun around to look at one of the PR grunts. What the hell was her name? Stacy? Tracy? “What is it?”

“Teddy Bradford is holding a press conference. The news channel’s website is running it live.”

He stalked to her desk and only vaguely noticed that the others in the room had formed a half circle behind him. They were all watching as Bradford stepped up to a microphone and held his hands out in a settle-down gesture. As soon as he had quiet, he said, “After the disturbing revelations on social media this afternoon, I’m here to announce that I will be taking a step back to reevaluate my options before going through with the much anticipated merger.”

Wes ground his teeth together and fisted his hands at his sides. Teddy could play it any way he wanted to for the press, but it was easy to see the merger was, at the moment, dead. All around him, his employees took a collective breath that sounded like a gasp.

But Teddy wasn’t finished. The older man looked somber, sad, but Wes was pretty sure he caught a gleam of satisfaction in the other man’s eyes. Hell, he was probably enjoying this. Nothing the man liked better than sitting high on his righteous horse. Teddy hadn’t even bothered to take his call, preferring instead to call a damn press conference. Bastard.

“Here at PlayCo,” Teddy was saying, “we put a high priority on family values. In fact, you could say that’s the dominant trademark of my company and it always will be. A man’s family is all important—or should be. After this morning’s revelations, I have to say that clearly, Wes Jackson is not the man I’d believed him to be, and so I have some thinking to do in the next few days. As things stand now, it would take a miracle to persuade me to believe otherwise.” Questions were fired at him, cameras chattered as shutters clicked over and over again. But Teddy was done.

“That’s it. That’s all I’ve got to say.” He looked out over the crowd. “You have more questions, I suggest you throw them at Wes Jackson. Good day.” He left the podium in the midst of a media circus and Wes rubbed his eyes, trying to ease the headache crouched behind them.

Stacy/Tracy turned the sound off on the computer, and silence dropped over everyone in the room like a damn shroud. Inside Wes, irritation bubbled into anger and then morphed quickly into helpless rage. There was nowhere to turn it. Nowhere to focus it and get any kind of satisfaction.

As of now, the merger was in the toilet. And yeah, he was concentrating on the business aspect of this nightmare because he didn’t have enough information to concentrate on the personal. Furious, Wes watched his PR team scramble to somehow mitigate the growing disaster. His assistant was already fielding calls from the media and this story seemed to be growing by the minute. Nothing people liked better than a scandal, and whoever this Maverick was, they obviously knew it.

For the first time ever, Wes felt helpless, and he didn’t like it. Not only was his company taking a hit, but somewhere out there, he had a child he’d known nothing about. How the hell had this Maverick discovered the girl? Was Isabelle in on all of this? Or was someone close to her hoping for a giant payout along with payback? Whatever the reason, this attack was deliberate. Someone had arranged a deliberate assault on him and his company. That someone was out to ruin him, and his brain worked feverishly trying to figure out just who was behind it all.

Running a successful business meant that you would naturally make enemies. But until today he wouldn’t have thought that any of them would stoop to something like this. So he went deeper, beyond business and into the personal, looking for anyone who might have set him up for a fall like this. And only one name rose up in his mind. His ex-girlfriend, Cecelia Morgan.

She and Belle had been friendly for a while back in the day. Maybe Cecelia had known about the baby. Maybe she was the one who had started all this. Hell, she might even be Maverick herself. Cecelia hadn’t taken it well when he broke up with her, and God knew she had a vicious temper. But if she was behind it all, why? Her company, To the Moon, sold upscale merchandise for kids. They weren’t in direct competition, but she was as devoted to her business as Wes was to his, and maybe that was the main reason the two of them hadn’t worked out. Or, he told himself, maybe it was the mean streak he’d witnessed whenever Cecelia was with her two best friends, Simone Parker and Naomi Price. He knew for a fact that people in Royal called the three women the Mean Girls. They were rich, beautiful, entitled and sometimes not real careful about the things they said to and about people.

He didn’t know if she’d had anything to do with what was happening, but there was one sure way to find out. Leaving his employees scrambling, Wes drove home to Royal to confront his ex and, just maybe, get some answers. The drive did nothing to calm him down, since his brain kept focusing on the photo of that little girl. His daughter, for God’s sake.

He needed answers. The only one who could give them to him was Belle, so finding her was priority one. His IT staff was now focused on not only mitigating his business disaster, but also in finding Isabelle Gray. But until he did locate Belle, Wes told himself, at least he could do something. Knowing Cecelia could always be found at the Texas Cattleman’s Club for lunch, he headed there the moment he hit town.

Cecelia was in the middle of what looked like a lunch meeting with a few of her employees. And though breaking it up would only encourage gossip, Wes wasn’t interested in waiting for her to finish. The TCC was a legend in Royal, Texas. A members-only club, it had been around forever and only in the last several years had started accepting women as members—quite a few of the old guard still weren’t happy about it. The dining room was elegant, understated and quiet but for the hush of conversation and the subtle clink of silverware against china.

On the drive from Houston, Wes’s mind had raced with the implications of everything that had happened. A child he didn’t know about. A merger in the toilet. His reputation shattered. And at the bottom of it all, maybe a vengeful ex. By the time he stood outside that dining room, he was ready for a battle.

“Mr. Jackson.” The maître d’ stepped up. “May I show you to a table? Are you alone for lunch or expecting guests?”

“Neither, thanks,” Wes said, ignoring the man after a brief, polite nod. Wes speared Cecelia with a cold, hard gaze that caught her attention even from across the room. “I just need a word with Ms. Morgan.”

Once she met his cool stare, she frowned slightly, then excused herself from the table and walked toward him. She was a gorgeous woman, and in a purely male response, Wes had to admire her even as his anger bubbled and churned inside. Her long, wavy blond hair lay across her shoulders and her gray-green eyes fixed on him, curiosity shining there. She wasn’t very tall, but her generous figure and signature pout had brought more than one man in Texas to his knees.

She gave him a smile, then leaned in as if to kiss his cheek, but Wes pulled back out of reach. He caught the surprise and the insult in her eyes, but he only said, “We need to talk.”

There were already enough people talking about his business today, so he took her forearm in a tight grip and led her away from the dining room to a quiet corner, hoping for at least a semblance of privacy. Cecelia pulled free as soon as he stopped and hissed, “What is going on with you?”

“You know damn well what,” he said in a gravelly whisper. “That email you sent.”

Those big, beautiful eyes clouded with confusion. “I have zero idea what you’re talking about.”

He studied her for a long minute, deciding whether she was lying or not. God knew he couldn’t be sure, but he was going with instinct here. She didn’t look satisfied with a mission accomplished. She looked irritated and baffled.

“Fine,” he said grimly and dug his cell phone out of a pocket. Pulling up his email, he handed the phone to her and waited while she read it.

“Maverick? Who the heck is Maverick?”

Her expression read confusion and a part of him eased back a little. But if she wasn’t Maverick, who was?

“Good question. I got an email this morning from a stranger. They sent me a picture of a daughter I never knew existed.” He opened the attachment and showed her the picture of the smiling little girl. That’s when he saw the flash of recognition in her eyes and he realized that Cecelia knew more than she was saying. Her face was too easy to read. His daughter’s existence hadn’t surprised her a bit.

“You knew about the girl.” It wasn’t a question. His chest felt tight.

Taking a deep breath, Cecelia blew out a breath and said, “I knew she was pregnant when she left. I didn’t know she’d had a girl.”

“She?”

Cecelia huffed out a breath. “Isabelle.”

He swayed in place. He’d known it. Seeing that necklace on a little girl with his eyes had been impossible to deny. Isabelle. The woman he’d been involved with for almost a year had been pregnant with his daughter and hadn’t bothered to tell him. More than that, though, was the fact that apparently Cecelia had known about his child, too, and kept the secret. Belle had left town. Cecelia had been right here in Royal. Seeing him all the damn time. And never once had she let on that he had a child out there. He couldn’t rage at Belle. Yet. So it was the woman in front of him who got the full blast of what he was feeling. Every time she’d seen him for the last five years, she’d lied to him by not saying anything. She’d known he was a father and never said a damn word. What the hell? And who was Maverick and how did he know?

“You knew and didn’t say anything?” His voice was low and tight.

She tossed a glance over her shoulder toward the table where she’d left her friends, then looked back at him. “No, I didn’t. What would have been the point?”

He glared at her. “The point? My kid would be the point. And the fact that I didn’t even know she existed.”

“Please, Wes. How many times have you said you don’t want kids or a family or anything remotely resembling commitment?”

“Not important.”

“Yeah, it is.” She was getting defensive—he heard it in her voice. “She was pretty sure you wouldn’t be happy about the baby and I agreed. I just told her what you’d said so many times—that you weren’t interested in families or forever.”

Having his own words thrown back at him stung, but worse was the fact that two women he’d been with had conspired to keep his child from him. No, he’d never planned on kids or a wife, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t want to know.

“Then what?” he asked, his voice sounding as if it was scraping along shattered glass. “You wait a few years, find this Maverick and tell him? Help him slam me across social media? For what? Payback?”

Her head snapped back and her eyes went even wider. “I would never do that to you, Wes,” she said, and damned if he didn’t almost believe her. “I wouldn’t hurt you like that.”

“Yeah?” he countered. “Your rep says otherwise.”

She flushed and took a deep breath. “Believe what you want, but it wasn’t me.”

“Fine. Then where is Isabelle?”

“I don’t know. She only said she was going home. A small town in Colorado. Swan…something. I forget. Honestly, we haven’t stayed in touch.” Tentatively, she reached out one hand and laid it on his forearm. “But I’ll help you look for her.”

“You helped enough five years ago,” Wes ground out, and saw her reaction to the harsh tone flash in her eyes.

Too bad. He didn’t have time to worry about insulting a woman who very well might be at the heart of this Maverick business. Sure, she claimed innocence, but he’d be a fool to take her word for it. When he rushed out, he barely noticed the waiter hovering nearby.

Wes’s entire IT department was working on this problem, but he should be researching himself. His own tech skills were more than decent. He could have found Isabelle years ago, if he’d been looking. Yeah, he’d have to sift through a lot of information on the web, but he’d find her.

And when he did, heaven better help her, because hell would be dropping onto her doorstep.

* * *

Isabelle Graystone sat at the kitchen table working with a pad and pen while her daughter enjoyed her post-preschool snack.

“Mommy,” Caroline said, her fingers dancing as she spoke, “can I have more cookies?”

Isabelle looked at the tiny love of her life and smiled. At four years old, Caroline was beautiful, bright, curious and quite the con artist when it came to getting more cookies. That sly smile and shy glance did it every time.

Isabelle’s hands moved in sign language as she said, “Two more and that’s it.”

Caroline grinned and helped herself. Her heels tapped against the rungs of the kitchen chair as she cupped both hands around her glass of milk to take a sip.

Watching her, Isabelle smiled thoughtfully. It wasn’t easy for a child to be different, but Caroline had such a strong personality that wearing hearing aids didn’t bother her in the least. And learning to sign had opened up her conversational skills. Progressive hearing loss would march on, though, Isabelle knew, and one day her daughter would be completely deaf.

So Isabelle was determined to do everything she could to make her little girl’s life as normal as possible. Which might also include a cochlear implant at some point. She wasn’t there yet, but she was considering all of her options. There was simply nothing she wouldn’t do for Caroline.

“After lunch,” Isabelle said, “I have to go into town. See some people about the fund-raiser party I’m planning. Do you want to come with me, or stay here with Edna?”

Chewing enthusiastically, Caroline didn’t speak, just used sign language to say, “I’ll come with you. Can we have ice cream, too?”

Laughing, Isabelle shook her head. “Where are you putting all of this food?”

A shrug and a grin were her only answers. Then the doorbell rang and Isabelle said, “Someone’s at the door. You finish your cookies.”

She walked through the house, hearing the soft click of her own heels against the polished wood floors. There were landscapes hanging on the walls, and watery winter sunlight filtering through the skylight positioned over the hallway. It was an elegant but homey place, in spite of its size. The restored Victorian stood on three acres outside the small town of Swan Hollow, Colorado.

Isabelle had been born and raised there, and when she’d found herself alone and pregnant, she’d come running back to the place that held her heart. She hadn’t regretted it, either. It was good to be in a familiar place, nice knowing that her daughter would have the same memories of growing up in the forest that she did, and then there was the added plus of having her three older brothers nearby. Chance, Eli and Tyler were terrific uncles to Caroline and always there for Isabelle when she needed them—and sometimes when she didn’t. The three of them were still as protective as they’d been when she was just a girl—and though it could get annoying on occasion, she was grateful for them, too.

Shaking her long, blond hair back from her face, she opened the door with a welcoming smile on her face—only to have it freeze up and die. A ball of ice dropped into the pit of her stomach even as her heartbeat jumped into overdrive.

Wes Jackson. The one man she’d never thought to see again. The one man she still dreamed of almost every night. The one man she could never forget.

“Hello, Belle,” he said, his eyes as cold and distant as the moon. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Two

Isabelle felt her heart lurch to a stop then kick to life again in a hard thump. Invite him in? What she wanted to do was step back inside, slam the door and lock it. Too bad she couldn’t seem to move. She did manage to choke out a single word. “Wes?”

“So you do remember me. Good to know.” He moved in closer and Isabelle instinctively took a step back, pulling the half-open door closer, like a shield.

Panic nibbled at her, and Isabelle knew that in a couple more seconds it would start taking huge, gobbling bites. As unexpected as it was to find Wes Jackson standing on her front porch, there was a part of her that wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him. Somehow, she’d half expected that one day, her past would catch up to her.

It had been five long years since she’d seen him, yet looking at him now, it could have been yesterday. Even in this situation, with his eyes flashing fury, she felt that bone-deep stir of something hot and needy and oh, so tempting. What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she learned her lesson?

Isabelle had loved working for Texas Toys. They were open to new ideas and Wes had been the kind of boss everyone should have. He encouraged his employees to try new and different things and rewarded hard work. He was always hands-on when it came to introducing fresh products to his established line. So he and Isabelle had worked closely together as she came up with new toys, new designs. When she’d given in to temptation, surrendered to the heat simmering between them, Isabelle had known that it wouldn’t end well. Boss/employee flings were practically a cliché after all. But the more time she spent with him, the more she’d felt for him until she’d made the mistake of falling in love with him.

That’s when everything had ended. When he’d told her that he wasn’t interested in more than an affair. He’d broken her heart, and when she left Texas, she’d vowed to never go back.

It seemed though, she hadn’t had to. Texas had come to her.

“We have to talk.” His voice was clipped, cold.

“No, we really don’t.” Isabelle wasn’t going to give an inch. She wasn’t even sure why he was here, and if he didn’t know the whole truth, she wasn’t going to give him any information. The only important thing was getting rid of him before he could see Caroline.

“That’s not gonna fly,” he said and moved in, putting both hands on her shoulders to ease her back and out of the way.

The move caught her so off guard, Isabelle didn’t even try to hold her ground. He was already walking into the house before she could stop him. And even as she opened her mouth to protest, his arm brushed against her breast and she shivered. It wasn’t fear stirring inside her, not even panic. It was desire.

The same flush of need had happened to her years ago whenever Wes was near. Almost from the first minute she’d met him, that jolt of something more had erupted between them. She’d never felt anything like it before Wes—or since. Of course, since she came back home to Swan Hollow, she hadn’t exactly been drowning in men.

After Wes, she’d made the decision to step back from relationships entirely. Instead, she had focused on building a new life for her and her daughter. And especially during the last year or so, that focus had shut out everything else. Isabelle had her brothers, her daughter, and she didn’t need anything else. Least of all the man who’d stolen her heart only to crush it underfoot.

With those thoughts racing through her mind, she closed the door and turned to face her past.

“I think I deserve an explanation,” he said tightly.

“You deserve?” she repeated, in little more than a hiss. She shot a quick look down the hall toward the kitchen where Caroline was. “Really? That’s what you want to lead with?”

“You should have told me about our daughter.”

Shock slapped at her. But at the same time, a tiny voice in the back of Isabelle’s mind whispered, Of course he knows. Why else would he be here? But how had he found out?

One dark eyebrow lifted. “Surprised? Yeah, I can see that. Since you’ve spent five years hiding the truth from me.”

Hard to argue with that, since he was absolutely right. But on the other hand… “Wes—”

He held up one hand and she instantly fell into silence even though she was infuriated at herself for reacting as he expected her to.

“Spare me your excuses. There is no excuse for this. Damn it, Isabelle, I had a right to know.”

Okay, that was enough to jolt her out of whatever fugue state he’d thrown her into. Keeping her voice low, she argued, “A right? I should have told you about my daughter when you made it perfectly clear you had no interest in being a father?”

Wanting to get him out of the hall where Caroline might see him, she walked past him into the living room. It was washed with pale sunlight, even on this gloomy winter day. The walls were a pale green and dotted with paintings of forests and sunsets and oceans. There were books lining the waist-high bookcases that ran the perimeter of the room and several comfortable oversize chairs and couches.

Oak tables were scattered throughout and a blue marble-tiled hearth was filled with a simmering fire. This room—heck, this house—was her haven. She’d made a home here for her and Caroline. It was warm and cozy in spite of its enormous size, and she loved everything about it. So why was it, she wondered, that with Wes Jackson standing in the cavernous room, she suddenly felt claustrophobic?

He came up right behind her and she felt as if she couldn’t draw a breath. She wanted him out. Now. Before Caroline could come in and start asking questions Isabelle didn’t want to answer. She whipped around to face him, to finish this, to allow him to satisfy whatever egotistical motive had brought him here so he could leave.

His aqua eyes were still so deep. So mesmerizing. Even with banked anger glittering there, she felt drawn to him. And that was just…sad. His collar-length blond hair was ruffled, as if he’d been impatiently driving his fingers through it. His jaw was set and his mouth a firm, grim line. This was the face he regularly showed the world. The cool, hard businessman with an extremely low threshold for lies.