Harlequin Dare May 2021 Box Set

by Jackie Ashenden

  “Mom!” Fred sat up straight, glaring at his mother. “Why are you being so rude?”

  “Protecting my son from people more interested in his bank account than his personality isn’t rude, son.” Rosemary sniffed, pushing away the plate that held her portion of beef Wellington with a nose in the air. “It’s called being prudent.”

  “Tattoo artist. In our plaza.” Frederick Sr. scowled at her over the edge of his wineglass. “You’re that Marchande woman that the other tenants signed the petition against.”

  “What?” Rosemary looked between her sons and her husband, clearly eager for ammunition. Amy wasn’t overly insulted, because she understood now that this woman had been prejudiced against her since before she had even walked through the door. Rosemary wouldn’t have been polite to anyone she didn’t consider a suitable match for Fred—it was nothing against Amy personally. “I must say, I’m not surprised. The plaza was conceived to create a luxury shopping experience for the wealthy Bostonian, you see. It requires a certain...aesthetic.”

  “Mom.” Fred pulled his napkin from his lap and slapped it down on the table, right overtop of his beef Wellington. “That is enough.”

  “Your mother isn’t wrong.” Frederick Sr. nodded into his wine. “Who approved the lease for a tattoo shop in the first place? Might have a word with them. Unsavory elements can decrease sales over the entire plaza. And traffic. Not surprised they formed that petition.”

  Amy didn’t want to spend even one more moment around these people. These people, who couldn’t see past her choice of career, what she looked like, who her family was.

  Had she really expected anything different?

  She had not. In fact, she had come prepared. Following Fred’s example, she removed her napkin from her lap, placing it delicately over the congealing gravy of her entrée. Lifting her glass of what she was sure was hideously expensive wine, she lifted it to her lips and drank...and drank...and drank. Once it was empty, she handed it off to Fred, who took it with what she thought was a nod of appreciation. Then she stood, pushing her chair back so abruptly that it wobbled.

  “I might not have grown up in a rich area of the city. I might not have a big house, or a huge business, or ties to the Mayflower.” She pasted a fierce smile on her lips and looked at Frederick Sr., then at his wife. “But I have a hell of a lot more class.”

  “Class?” Rosemary made an unpleasant sound. “You run a tattoo parlor, dear. I’m surprised you know the word, and I don’t understand why you’re taking such offense at the truth.”

  Beside her, Fred slammed his palms on the table, starting to rise from his chair. He stopped when she shook her head.

  She didn’t need a knight in shining armor to come save her. She could do this all by herself.

  “I did not keep in contact with either of your sons in hopes that one day I’d marry one of them. In fact, I never thought I’d see Fred again until he came wandering into my shop this week, claiming he wanted a tattoo to hide the fact that he’d been ordered to deliver a warning letter he didn’t agree with. So really, you have yourself to thank that he got reacquainted with me.” She glared at Frederick Sr., then turned her attention to Rosemary. “By the way, your sons might be twins, but they are not interchangeable, at least not to me. It’s only ever been Fred I wanted. I’m not the least bit attracted to Frank. No offense.”

  She nodded across the table to Fred’s twin, who looked shocked and not a little delighted at the drama. As she looked, Frank shrugged, then wrapped an arm around Mark. “None taken. As you can see, it’s worked out all right for me.”

  “I never—” Rosemary started, but Amy wasn’t done.

  “As for who approved my lease, that would be you, Mr. Vaughan.” Reaching into one of the hidden pockets of her sleek dress, she removed a thumb drive and tossed it at him. It fell into his plate of beef Wellington. “Perhaps you allowed it because, in addition to offering works of art that use skin as a canvas, it is a gallery. Both of your sons have agreed that its aesthetics go above and beyond most tenants in the plaza.”

  Frederick Sr. blustered, but he actually stopped when Amy held up a hand to indicate she wasn’t done.

  “On that thumb drive, you’ll find a copy of the lease agreement, with your signature, in case you disbelieve your own role in events.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Fred rise to stand with her. “You’ll also find letters from every single tenant who signed that petition, recanting their signature.”

  “How did you manage that?” Across the table, Frank whistled. “Some of those tenants have iron rods up their bums.”

  “It wasn’t difficult.” Amy smirked at him, and he grinned back. Okay, he was growing on her. “I merely did some statistical work. I researched traffic into and out of the plaza on a random sampling of days. Conversion of that traffic to sales, and where they shopped. Compared the numbers to the likelihood that these shoppers had been drawn into the plaza due to any given piece of advertising, be it the plaza’s, another tenant’s or my own. And guess what? Since the day the plaza opened, Four Sisters Ink has been the reason that twenty-eight percent of shoppers have entered the plaza. And in case you’ve forgotten, there are two hundred and twelve storefronts, so let’s please dispense with the notion that I am an unsavory element scaring people off.”

  “Fascinating,” Frank muttered, drumming his fingers on the table. Beside Amy, Fred stood still. She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t bring herself to look. Was he proud of her? In disbelief? Angry?

  It didn’t matter. She’d wanted to impress his family, but at the end of the day, all she could be was herself.

  “How did you get them all to back off from the petition, though?” Frank continued, speaking over the inarticulate sounds his parents were making.

  “I wrote out a case study about my own marketing methods, and the percentages by which each tactic had increased my business. I broke it down into ideas that other businesses in the plaza could apply to themselves.” She sucked in a breath. “They all backed down, and most apologized on the spot for judging me on the nature of my business. The petition you drafted the warning in response to is now null and void, I would think, so unless you have some other problem with my business being in the plaza, I think we’re done here.”

  “But...” Frederick Sr.’s face was scrunched so tightly that he resembled a bulldog. “How do I know your numbers are true? That you didn’t just make them up to get yourself out of trouble?”

  “I guess you don’t.” Amy pinched her lips together as she looked at Frederick Sr., then at Rosemary. “But before you continue with your judgment, I’ll tell you that I have a business degree. It’s from a community college rather than an Ivy League school, but let me assure you, I’m as savvy as I am artistic.”

  There—she’d had her say. She’d expected to feel relieved, triumphant, even. Instead, as she turned to Fred, still standing silent beside her, she only felt empty.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” The words were heavy on her lip. He’d risen to stand beside her, but she couldn’t quite read the expression on his face. He was silent, too, and she didn’t know if it was because he was proud of her for standing up for herself, or because he was loyal to his family and Vaughan Enterprises, to the end.

  She supposed it didn’t matter, really. No matter what she’d thought had sprouted between them, it would shrivel and die with the way his family felt about her. She looked up at him, into the eyes of the only man who had ever made her want more, and she took a single, painful step back. Something hot stung at the backs of her eyes.

  She would not cry in front of these people. Not ever. So she went with the only other option available to her in that moment—she decided to leave. Spinning on her heel, she crossed the dining room, her steps loud on the marble floor. Just before she passed through the archway that led back to the sitting room, she paused, looking back over her should
er.

  “By the way,” she started, catching Rosemary’s eye and winking, “I have a frequent shopper card at Discount Depot. I think I’m almost at a free bottle on my stamp card. When I drink it, I’ll make sure to think of you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FRED HEARD THE front door slam, and before he could even think about what he was going to do, he was halfway across the room, following her.

  “Frederick!” His father used a tone that Fred was well familiar with, conditioned to, and he turned around even though every cell in his body called out for him to follow Amy.

  “Explain yourselves.” Fred couldn’t remember ever being this angry. He looked into the faces of the people he’d thought he’d known so well, the people who had raised him, and wondered how he could have been so wrong.

  “I beg your pardon?” Placing his napkin very deliberately on the table, Frederick Sr. rose to a standing position. “Watch your tone, young man. When you are under this roof, you will show some respect.”

  “That’s the thing, though, Dad. You’ve always taught us that respect is earned, not automatically given.” Fred flexed his fingers, surprised to find that his hands were actually shaking with rage. “Why would I show you respect when you just treated the woman I love so horribly?”

  “Love?” Rosemary gasped, clutching her short pearl necklace to her throat. “Oh, surely not, Fred!”

  “Fred.” His father tried a placating tone now, one Fred had heard him use on investors when they became antsy. “Look. I must admit that your young woman has, ah, spirit. A certain resourcefulness and business acumen that I hadn’t expected someone like her to have.”

  “Someone like her. What does that mean, exactly?” Fred shifted his weight, itching to go after Amy but understanding that this conversation had to happen. “Are you referring to the fact that she’s a tattoo artist? To the way she looks? To the fact that you don’t know her family? Which is it, exactly? Please, enlighten me.”

  “That’s enough.” Frederick Sr. waved a hand in the air, gesturing for Fred to stop talking. “As I was saying. I suppose I can see the appeal as you sow your oats, or whatever this attraction is. But even if the Lawrences and the Lassiters have approved matches with girls in this family, you are a Vaughan. Blood is thicker than water, and this is not the girl for you.”

  Fred stared at his father for a long moment, silent. He’d convinced himself that introducing Amy to his parents would be fine, but now that the words had been spoken, he wondered if he hadn’t expected this the whole time. Expected it, and wanted it.

  Being with a woman who was so true to herself had made him understand things about himself that he’d never before been brave enough to acknowledge. And one of them, the biggest one, perhaps, was that while he would always love his family, and be grateful to them for the opportunities they’d provided, he was no longer interested in being associated with the way they handled business. The way they treated people, on the most basic level of human decency.

  He was done.

  He looked at his father, shook his head. Eyed his mother with disappointment. Caught his twin’s eye and gave a nod to indicate that they would speak later.

  Then he turned on his heel to follow the path Amy had taken out of the dining room and to the door.

  “Frederick!” His father’s voice thundered through the room, at a decibel that would have made Fred tremble in the past. Now he paused but didn’t deign to look back over his shoulder as he spoke.

  “Yes?”

  “If you walk out that door right now, you can consider your participation in Vaughan Enterprises over.” Did his father know how smug he sounded, how utterly certain that Fred would fall into line with what he’d demanded, simply because he wished it so?

  There was so much privilege in that. As a wealthy white man from a prominent family, Fred knew that he possessed much privilege as well, but he’d just discovered a huge difference between himself and his father.

  Frederick Sr. was content to let his privilege continue to serve him. Demanded that it did, even.

  Fred, though? Maybe he’d felt that way, too, once upon a time. But being with Amy, with a woman who followed her own passions, had shown him that he’d rather use his position to make some kind of a difference.

  He understood exactly what he was doing by walking away, but he did it anyway. Where was he going?

  He needed to go find Amy.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “HOW DID YOU get in here?”

  Paintbrush in the air, Amy stilled, just for a moment, before continuing on. On the sawhorse beside her was an artist’s palette that she’d brought up from her shop, fully loaded with pools of oil paint. Alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow, Prussian blue and zinc white.

  Dabbing the tip of her brush—a dagger, this one was called—into the crimson, she swept it across her canvas, leaving a deliberate streak behind. Her canvas in this case was the plain white wall of the single empty retail space in the plaza. Well, formerly white—it now featured the outline of a giant orange rose, the beginning of a mural she’d sketched out to work through her anger.

  “It wasn’t hard.” She shrugged as she examined her palette, still facing away from Fred. She wasn’t surprised that he’d found her, and in fact, she’d wanted to be found. “I know security is up to each tenant, but all you had protecting this empty space was a door with a thumb lock. I was prepared to try to pick it with a hairpin, but it opened with one hard twist.”

  One hard twist that had broken it, but that was neither here nor there. She expected him to sigh heavily, to remind her that if she wanted to stay here, she needed to back down. That she should go apologize to his parents, grovel on her knees for not being who they wanted her to be.

  “All they had protecting this place,” he corrected, as she geared herself up to argue with him.

  “I’m not going to...” Her voice trailed off as she processed what he’d said. Turning slowly on bare feet, she found him standing a few feet behind her, hip propped up on the dusty sawhorse she was using as a table. He was watching her calmly, hungrily, and unless she was very much mistaken, he wasn’t in the mood to argue with her. “What did you say?”

  “I think you heard me.” A sexy grin curved his lips, and Amy felt something tighten in her chest, a fist clutching her heart. “It seems that I’m no longer part of Vaughan Enterprises. Which I suppose means that we’re both trespassing, but I think Phyllis will give us a pass if she happens by.”

  Amy was pretty sure that security guard Phyllis read Harlequin romance novels on her phone when things were quiet, so she was pretty sure that Fred was right. With no possibility of interruption, though, it meant that there was no more wasting time—it was time to have the hard conversation.

  She ran a dry tongue over cracked lips, then tried to swallow. She opened her mouth to speak, but Fred beat her to it.

  “I’m sorry I insisted on dinner with my family. I should have known better.”

  “How could you have known?” Setting down her paintbrush, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Have you brought home other tattoo artists that you met in Amsterdam that your parents hated?”

  “No.” The corner of his mouth quirked up with amusement. “I met the best of the lot right out the gate. Didn’t need to go looking anymore.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t say things like that.” Her voice was faint. She cleared her throat, tried to speak more firmly. “It will only make things harder.”

  “What things, exactly?” He moved in closer, and she could feel the heat emanating from his skin. She wanted to touch.

  “You know.” She swallowed again, wishing desperately for a glass of ice water. Warm water. Anything to wet her throat with. “Things between...us.”

  “Amy.” Reaching out with one hand, he cupped her cheek. She couldn’t help herself; she pressed into the warmth of his touch.


  “You didn’t follow me.” Her breath hitched; her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “When I left. You stayed. That says something.”

  “I stayed because I had some things to say.” He dipped his head, brushed his lips over her forehead. “Things that have been fermenting for years. Things that could no longer wait to be said.”

  “I think my feelings about your family are pretty obvious at this point.” Restless, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “But...well, they’re still your family. I’m not sorry for what I said to them. They were awful. But I... I don’t... I mean. I understand that you’re trapped in between a rock and a hard place.”

  “I see things differently now that I’m with you.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, absentmindedly. “And you know what? I’m not trapped at all.”

  “What...what are you saying?” Her pulse stuttered.

  “I’m saying that...if you hadn’t come back into my life, I might have been content enough to stay on with the family business. To float along, meeting the status quo and living a shell of a life.” He sucked in a deep breath. “But you showed me that it’s okay to want something different. To be who you really are. To love who you love.”

  “What did you say?” Her knees trembled. She looked up at him with wide eyes, her heart on her sleeve. “Don’t say it unless you mean it.”

  “Amy.” Curling his free arm around her waist, Fred pulled her in closer to him. Her breath was unsteady as she looked up into his eyes. “I love you. I love everything about you. Don’t you know that by now?”

  She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, let the anxiety wash away. She’d known this somehow, on some level, but even knowing that, she hadn’t been certain that love would be enough for him to defy his family.

  Was he defying his family? Squeezing one eye open, she looked up at him with suspicion.

  “How does this work with your job? Your...legacy?” She gestured wide with her arms, indicating the empty space. “I don’t think your dad is going to be pleased for you to keep seeing me.”