“Again.”
He frowned. “What?”
Her small hands cupped his face as she rose to her tiptoes, brushing her lips lightly against his. “Say it again.”
Understanding dawned. It was as close as she could get to him saying her name.
He smiled, knowing no other woman would ever hear the endearment from his mouth again.
“My sweetheart,” he said to her, pulling her closer. “My one and only.”
She shuddered in his arms before her lips met his.
This time there was no hesitation in her touch. Her hands slid over his chest as if she needed their nearness as much as he did.
“I love the way you make me feel,” she whispered in his ear.
His body stiffened. How he’d love to make her feel even better.
“Spend the night with me.”
She stared up at him with those big, glittering eyes. “I want to.”
Look how torn she is.
No one was this good an actress. Right?
She smoothed her hands over his shoulders before taking a deep breath.
“But I can’t. Not now.” Slowly those beautiful eyes lifted back to his. “Is this real?”
The words were so soft he almost missed them. But when they computed, they broke his heart,
She sounds so…lost.
And he hated it.
Cupping her face, he brushed his lips over hers in the gentlest of touches. “I’m real,” he murmured against her lips. “Are you?”
“What I feel is.”
Me too.
Her small hand snaked around the back of his neck, deepening the kiss in a way he had no objection to.
When she pulled back, she said words that froze him in place.
“There’s…something I need to tell you.” Confliction flew across her face. “But I can’t just…can we talk tomorrow? About everything?”
Lust banked at the uncertainty he read in her expression.
She’s ready to tell me the truth.
His heart swelled.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
She nodded once, decisively.
Her nervousness would have been adorable if he didn’t also fear what secrets she had to share.
One way or another, the truth will come out tomorrow.
And as much as she needed time to prepare, so did he.
Her hand rose to cup his jaw. “Kiss me,” she said, her voice soft. “Just one more time.”
As he took her in his arms, he hoped her words weren’t an unwitting promise.
Chapter Nineteen
“Tell me you have something,” Julian said.
He’d been avoiding Holly all day, using Lillian as a shield between them. The last thing he wanted was for her to reveal whatever the hell was going on before he had a game plan in place. He needed to figure it out for himself in order to trust that he was getting all the information. And he needed time to decide what those revelations would mean before he faced his lover.
Always stay one step ahead of the competition.
Not that Holly was a rival. But her family might be dangerous to him all the same.
Not to mention, it was getting damned hard to pretend he couldn’t tell the difference between the twins. Now that he knew what to look for, there was no mistaking them. At breakfast, Holly had turned red the second she’d seen him. It had taken all his willpower not to go over and give her a proper kiss good morning. He wanted to see if he could make that blush of hers even brighter.
Forcing himself to behave, he’d made bland, polite chitchat around the table as Holly watched her oatmeal. By his side, Lillian had sat quietly, no more excited about their supposed wedding than he was.
Whatever happened, he could only offer up a silent prayer of thanks he’d met Holly first. He and Lillian would have made each other miserable.
The only person in fine spirits was John, and that raised all sorts of red flags for him. Holly loathed her father. If John was thrilled and she was subdued, then he was on the exact wrong side of whatever was happening.
After breakfast, he’d excused himself to make some calls, well aware that Holly’s eyes had followed him out of the room as if she’d been unable to help herself.
He gritted his teeth, hating to leave her behind.
Slipping silently into John’s office, he’d pulled out his cell and called the one man he hoped had answers for him.
“Did you find anything?” he asked Jason.
There was a heartbeat of silence on the other end. “Maybe we should talk about this when you’re back. It’s not a conversation to have over the phone.”
“Just tell me. What the hell mess have I stumbled into?”
“A big one.”
“Jason.”
His friend sighed. “Ryan and I figured if we’re being railroaded with the company, maybe the answer was in John’s personal accounts. We did our best to follow the money.”
“And what did you find?”
Jason drew a deep breath. “That there is none.”
“What?” He couldn’t have heard that right.
“The Abbotts are skirting the edge of bankruptcy. If you married, you’d be legally bound to their debts. I’m betting they think you’d sooner bail them out than allow your merged companies to collapse together. Not to mention the scandal that would come from their destruction. You wouldn’t come out of it well if you let your wife and her family crumble without lifting a finger to help.”
The office swirled before his eyes. He fell into the leather chair behind the desk, unable to even comprehend what he was hearing.
“The due diligence about the merger…”
“John doctored the accounting. He gave us the numbers he wanted us to see, Julian. All of them.”
“But Lillian is an heiress.”
“She is. That’s likely why the family is pushing you together so hard. She’s the consolation prize. You’d merge with a penniless company, but you’d gain a wife with the right name and at least a few million in the bank. Her grandmother apparently never liked her daughter’s husband and locked her money up tight to protect her heir. Old school rules, though. It’s being held in trust till she marries.”
Roaring filled his ears. Everything he’d worked for. Everything this marriage was supposed to bring him. All of it disintegrated before his eyes. The power of the Abbotts was a sham. The woman he wanted would bring him nothing to further his business goals. Worse, his new in-laws only viewed him as a walking bank.
If they’d just been screwing with him, he might have been able to forgive it. But their companies were in the middle of a merger. John had gone after the only thing Julian truly cared about, and that was a mistake. No matter what happened, he’d never let his company flounder. Too many employees depended on him to make the right choices as their CEO.
“Julian, are you there?”
“Why did they switch?” he asked, his voice dark.
“I’m not sure. Near as I can tell, Lillian disappeared for a while. I guess John didn’t want you wiggling off the hook while they looked for her.”
“She ran.”
Because she never wanted to marry me. Neither twin did.
He remembered how uncertain Holly had been on their first dates. The way she’d looked like she wanted to escape even as she talked about the future.
She’d been buying time. Distracting me until her family could trap me the way they needed.
Rage bubbled within him.
“I guess they didn’t bank on you noticing the difference between the women.”
“And once I married Lillian, John would milk my bank accounts. He’d hold my company hostage and take whatever he wanted because we’d be family and I’d have a legal responsibility.”
“Yes.”
Had Holly known?
Bile rose in his throat. Of course she had. She’d led him like a lamb to slaughter, and he’d been so wrapped up in her he’d never notice
d.
Betrayal sliced into him like a physical blade. How could he have been so stupid? With Holly in his arms the night before, he’d actually believed this could be the rest of his life. But nothing this family said was trustworthy. For all he knew, everything he and Holly had said to each other, done to each other, had been one long list of calculated actions. Hell, maybe she was her father’s creature, after all.
She was going to tell you something today.
Too little, too late.
“Don’t act rashly,” his friend cautioned. “I followed the accounting, but those facts don’t take the human element into account. You don’t know what Holly was really thinking.”
“She was thinking I was the cash cow her desperate family needed. I was her ticket to a nice, comfortable life if only one of them could get me down the aisle.”
Memories of his past rose to the forefront of his mind. All the people who had used him for what they wanted and thrown him away when they were done.
He’d wised up. Hardened his heart. Ignored the vague need for more in his relationships. At least, he had until Holly barged into his carefully laid plans.
And despite it all, once again he found himself in the same situation. He’d made the mistake of caring for someone who only wanted his bank account. Holly had been the most unexpected thing in his life. His reward for decades of being alone. Yet even she wasn’t real.
The only thing the Abbotts can do is lie.
Even while smiling up at him with trusting eyes that had completely sucked him in.
No more.
He was done. Done being their puppet. Done being swayed by a pretty face. Done pretending men like him got a chance at happiness.
If the twins thought he lacked power just because he’d clawed his way up from nothing when they’d been born with everything, then they had another thing coming.
“Jason, I need to go.”
“Think this through,” his friend said quickly. “Give yourself some time. You’ve never spoken about any woman the way you do about Holly. You could ruin everything.”
“Oh, I fully intend to,” he replied without hesitation. He disconnected the call before Jason could protest.
Ice settled over his emotions as he pushed to his feet.
The Abbotts had miscalculated. He was not their savior.
But he damn well might be their destruction.
…
“I’m going to tell him the truth.”
Lillian looked at her with wide eyes. “You can’t.”
Holly paced the length of the library. “I have to.” She took a depth breath and revealed the one secret she’d never spoken aloud. “I love him, Lil.”
The words earned a cynical snort from her sister, a far cry from the support she’d been expecting. “What does love matter?”
That drew her up short. She glanced back at her twin. “You’re not usually so pessimistic.”
“I had a crash course on love. We’ve spent too many years thinking we could escape our destiny as Abbotts. It’s time to wake up to the real world. If the employees are our top priority, then I need to marry a man I don’t even know, and you need to give up on happily ever after.”
Holly shrank back, stung. It wasn’t like Lillian to be so brutal.
“You don’t understand. Julian and I…I think it’s real. And if it is, I want a lifetime with him.”
He sister rose to her feet, folding her arms across her chest. “It’s real when he thinks you’re an heiress and our company is a catch. The second he knows who you are, he’ll turn on you.”
She frowned. “What happened to you when you were away?”
Lillian’s lips twisted into a bitter line. “I learned the truth about the men who run corporations. It all comes down to the bottom line. Love isn’t worth as much as cash.”
“You’re wrong.”
Lillian sighed, the fire going out of her. “I’m not. I really hope you don’t learn the same lesson as I did, but if you go down this road, I’m afraid that’s exactly what will happen.”
Memories of the beach filled her mind. The way he looked at her. Spoke to her. Touched her. It couldn’t be just a show for his future bride. He had to mean it.
Didn’t he?
Doubts niggled at her, and she pushed them aside.
I believe in him.
It was that simple. This would be a lot to forgive. She knew that. But eventually, he would. He had to.
“I already promised him the truth today.”
“Dammit, Holly. What are we supposed to do?” Lillian pushed to her feet in agitation. “Why is it us stuck in Father’s mess?”
“Maybe we both need to hop on a train to anywhere else,” she joked.
But her sister’s expression was anything but humorous. “Maybe,” she agreed.
Holly blinked.
What happened in San Francisco?
Obviously, things hadn’t gone the way any of them had hoped.
Going to her sister, she gripped her hands. “Trust me,” she said. “I’m sure about this.”
“Don’t tell him the truth. Please.”
Her throat tightened. “I can’t lie to him anymore. I want to marry this man, sis. For that to happen, he needs to know my real name.”
A sad smile crossed Lillian’s lips. “All he’ll do is curse it.”
I hope she’s wrong.
Because the truth was, she didn’t know what Julian would do. While she wanted to believe he cared for her as much as she did for him, she had no proof to back up the belief. Nothing beyond the way her heart raced when he entered a room.
“I have to go,” she said gently.
Lillian closed her eyes. “And what do we do when he storms out of this house refusing to marry either one of us? How do we help the employees then?”
“We find a way. The right way. One that doesn’t destroy lives.”
“We’re out of options. Do you really think I would have come back to marry this man if I could have seen any other way out?”
“This won’t end badly. Believe me.”
Her sister dropped her hands and stepped back. “If only I could.” She looked away. “I’ll tell the housekeeper to pack up his belongings and leave the suitcase in the front hall. Just in case.”
“You don’t need—”
“Just wait.”
She shook her head, knowing she’d never be able to convince Lillian that Julian wasn’t the big bad wolf. Crossing the room, she left the library before her sister could chip away more of her confidence.
This is the right thing to do. I owe him the truth.
Even if it cost her everything else.
She wandered into the living room as she looked for him. Pausing, she checked her reflection in the mirror above the mantel. She looked different now. Not the same copy of her sister she’d pretended to be. But not the invisible shadow she’d once been, either.
Touching a loose curl, she smiled at her reflection. Is this what happiness did? She looked more alive than she had in years. Ready to go out and take the world by storm.
Not happiness. That’s too weak a word.
Love was the only force strong enough to transform a person this way.
Just thinking the word had her heart racing. A cautious smile she couldn’t help curved her lips. If today was a day of truths, she couldn’t hide from that fact anymore.
He’s the future I want.
And the time had finally come to fight for him.
Drawing in a deep breath, she lifted her chin. No matter what happened, she wasn’t going to cower the way she once might have. She might not be Lillian, but she also wasn’t the mouse Julian had first met for brunch, either.
Maybe this is who I was always meant to be.
Quiet, but not weak. Not anymore.
Go find him.
She wanted to share her revelations with the man who had helped her achieve them.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Julian entered the room behind her,
his face hard in the reflection.
She spun with a welcoming smile. “Hi,” she said.
His icy gaze raked her from head to toe before he uttered two words that froze her in place.
“Hello, Holly.”
Chapter Twenty
It took her brain a second to catch up to what her body already knew.
Holly.
He’d called her by name. By her real name. Even though she was dressed as Lillian.
“What did you say?”
There was no kindness in his expression as he prowled deeper into the room. Nothing that reminded her of the lover she’d left on the beach the night before.
“Would you prefer I kept calling you Lillian the way I have for the past few days?”
The air was sucked from her lungs. “You knew?”
He can tell us apart?
The disdain on his face stung her. “I can recognize my own lover. Or did you think just because I was stupid enough to fall for your other lies, I’d be too dumb to realize who’s body I’d tasted every inch of?”
She shook her head, taking a step back. “What are you talking about?”
He advanced on her, that same chill filling his eyes.
“I’m talking about this little game we’ve been playing.”
“I don’t—”
He slashed a hand through the air, silencing her protest. “Don’t. You said that today you’d tell the truth. How about you keep a promise for once?”
She took a careful step away from the mantel even as his eyes tracked her. “Julian, tell me what’s happened.”
A tight smile tipped his lips. “What’s happened is I’ve figured out this charade of yours. I wonder what the business community of New York will think when I tell them the vaunted Abbotts are about to go bankrupt?”
Her breath left her in a rush. She cast out a hand to the wall to steady herself. This was worse than she’d ever imagined. He wasn’t supposed to figure everything out on his own. She was supposed to tell him herself to prove that he could trust her.
Now he looked at her like an enemy, and why the hell not? From his perspective, she’d done nothing but trick him. Even if she hadn’t known everything at stake, she was part of his nightmare.
“I can explain. Lillian disappeared and then—”
“Oh, I’m sure you can,” he said, sounding more like a stranger than ever before. “But I have nothing to say to a con woman. You’ve played your part well; I’ll give you that.”
Betraying the Billionaire (Abbott Sisters) Page 16
