Ruined (Ruined and Redeemed Duet Book 1)

by Marie Johnston

  Ruined

  Ruined and Redeemed Duet - Book 1

  Marie Johnston

  LE Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by Marie Johnston

  Editing by My Brother’s Editor

  Proofing by My Brother’s Editor and Rebecca Hodgkins and Angel Nyx

  Cover Design by Secret Identity Book Covers

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters, places, and events in this story are fictional. Any similarities to real people, places, or events are coincidental and unintentional.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

  Also by Marie Johnston

  Chapter 1

  London

  “So what you’re saying is, that if I don’t marry Jacobi Dixon, he’s going to reveal all of my stepmom’s secrets and ruin our company? Do I have the gist of it?” I glare at the prim lawyer across from me.

  He’s exactly who I expect a man like Jacobi Dixon to hire. Tailored seersucker suit a few shades darker than powder blue, totally on trend, and a receding hairline that argues that he’s not the thirty-something he dresses like. Dress for the role you want in life. I guess he left his sleazy middle-aged lawyer outfit at home.

  Next to me, Diana weeps. Through Mr. Turlowitz’s whole incredulous spiel outlining how Jacobi Dixon expected me to combine our names in wedded bliss to protect the reputation of my company, one thing stood out. Surprise that The Dick Dixon would think I was close enough to my stepmom to do something insane like marry a stranger to protect her reputation.

  He’s absolutely correct.

  “Yes, Miss Vanderbeek,” Mr. Turlowitz answers. He doesn’t appear to be taking any joy in delivering the news. What drives a guy like him to work for a man who thinks he can order a woman to marry him?

  Crossing my legs under the table, I rest an elbow on the top. I can’t talk without gesturing in all directions with my hands. “How in the world did he find out anyway?” Cutting my hand through the air, I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. He knows Diana’s past and is using it, poised like a wrecking ball over a neon sign that blinks with my company’s name, Natural Glow.

  Turning to the only mother I’ve ever known, I clasp her cold, clammy hand.

  “I’m so sorry, London,” she says between sniffles.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed about. You were an adult and it was your choice.” She’s never hidden her former career from me.

  Diana Vanderbeek’s pre-married life is no one’s business. Once known as Tempest Peaks, it’s been twenty-five years since she had sex on camera on some back lot in L.A. The story goes, I was a newborn, my dad was a harried single father, and Tempest Peaks was in town doing a signing. When she stopped at Target for a new razor—because I guess that was a critical item to forget to pack while on tour—she encountered Dad searching for baby wipes in the wrong aisle.

  By the end of that year, she retired Tempest Peaks and tried her hand at the suburban life. But once the company took off, that turned into a gated property and private drivers. None of the money changed how they raised me. She did my hair, painted my toenails, and was in the front row with Dad for every private school performance. When I lost my shit over a guy—which happened too often—she was the shoulder I sobbed on.

  Diana was open and honest with me about her past as an amateur porn star, including the money that rolled in with it. Neither she nor Dad acted like it was seedy or anything to be ashamed about. But the implication was there, don’t tell anyone or we will lose everything.

  Jacobi fucking Dixon.

  The guy needs better things to do than prey on my family’s legacy.

  Tears stream down Diana’s face, but her mascara is on point. Unyielding Mascara is a best-seller in the Natural Glow makeup line Dad formed when he expanded Natural Glow from natural body creams and lotions to high-quality, earth-friendly makeup. An empire that is now run by me. And Jacobi Dixon thinks he can take over? He thinks he has a right to my heritage?

  The old dispute referenced in the contract between my dad and his parents is just that: old. So old I don’t even know what the details are.

  How did The Dick Dixon find out about Diana’s past? She disassociated from the name as much as humanly possible. Her hair is no longer platinum blond, but golden brown, colored regularly to keep the gray at bay. The fake eyelashes are gone, along with the heavy liner and caked-on foundation. After she walked away from her life in front of the camera, she did a factory reset back to her natural glow.

  I snorted to myself at the play on words. Diana epitomized Natural Glow.

  The lawyer eyes me warily and Diana looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Surely I have, because I will do anything to protect the woman who stepped in to be my mother when my birth mother couldn’t be bothered, even marry a man I’ve never met but whom I despise.

  Spearing Mr. Turlowitz with my best boardroom stare, I say, “We tie the knot and he forgets Diana’s past?”

  “That is exactly what the terms are, boiled down to their basic nature.” He earns another inch of respect. He doesn’t shy away from the true nature of the situation.

  “How can I believe him?”

  “It’s all expressed in the contract. Mr. Dixon is a man of his word.”

  As if that means much to me when his word burns like poison.

  Can I marry a man I don’t know? More importantly, can I hand him the company that my dad built? Natural Glow is what it is today because Dad wanted me and Diana taken care of, like he knew he’d leave this earth well before his time. Now it’s my baby, and while Diana Vanderbeek is my stepmother, this company is just as much hers and just as important to her as it is to me.

  With Dad’s death from a heart attack last year, we’ve grown inseparable, which isn’t much different than before. Diana Vanderbeek is my best friend and my maternal support wrapped in one vegan-based package.

  Not for the first time I’m grateful Dad was able to look past the bleached hair and the plastic boobs and see what a treasure she is. Of course, the bleached hair and plastic boobs were what attracted him in the first place, but she could’ve been dressed in a burlap sack and still landed any handsome bachelor she wanted.

  I wasn’t even bitter she started dipping a toe in the dating pool. I saw how lonely she was after Dad died a year ago. Since I was unceremoniously dumped before Dad died, we’d been quite the pair of heartbroken power suit wearing women until she took an old friend up on his offer for dinner.

  Just like Dad would’ve done, I was taking care of her. “After I marry the douche, then what? I live in L.A. and he stays in his bat cave to harass another woman?”

  “Mr. Dixon lives in Malibu.”

  Of course he does. If our parents knew each other and I’m a born and raised California girl, then The Dick Dixon must be the same.

  Diana squeezes my hand, her delicately manicured nails digging into my palm. “You can’t possibly…”

  Yes, I can possibly. Despite the waterproof mascara and the sleek and glistening hair, shampooe
d and conditioned by our most popular and expensive line of hair products, Diana’s terror shines through. If our brand was sold in stores, then maybe I’d have a chance at saying no. But our line is direct sales. What some accused of being a pyramid scheme is really a way for women and a smattering of men to build their own business out of their homes, while still caring for their family and enjoying their children’s activities.

  Natural Glow gives them the freedom to live and look good while doing it.

  That’s one of our marketing slogans.

  Department stores might shrug it off as a minor controversy or pretend that they didn’t hear they stock products from a company run by a former porn star, but the hard-working moms might think differently and choose not to sell a product linked to the scandalous industry of pornography. More importantly, their clients might not want to purchase from said company. Who’s going to go to a near stranger’s house for a makeover by a line of makeup associated with the adult film industry?

  I can’t blame them for that thought process even if I don’t agree with it. With all the sex trafficking and schemes to lure children into the greedy hands of predators out there, I understand the need for diligence. If only future due diligence isn’t now ruining my life.

  Mr. Turlowitz clears his throat. “Mr. Dixon said you won’t need to concern yourself with the running of the company once you are married.”

  My jaw drops and not even our No. 5 foundation can hide the flash of anger creeping up my face. Jacobi Dixon can’t be much older than me and owns a cyber security company. “What does he know about makeup? He expects me to marry him to save my company and then not have a say in it at all?”

  The lawyer calmly replies, “He would argue that the company is originally his parents’ and that upon their death he would’ve been co-owner at the very least.”

  “Except my father did all the work and his parents, what? Heard him talking about it and thought it should be theirs? You can’t steal ideas.” I speak slowly like he will suddenly understand how ludicrous this is. But he’s a lawyer. His job is to make reason where there is none and make it fit his client.

  And The Dick Dixon would’ve hired a lawyer who’s savvy enough to make my family history sound sordid.

  “Mr. Dixon has grounds to argue that more than an idea was stolen. He would be happy to prove the matter in court, but he considers a union between the two families to be a sufficient resolution.”

  The Dick Dixon also considered that I would understand the implication. Go to court and he’ll air Diana’s videos. With his technical abilities, he can put her on every screen in America saying “Yes, harder, you big boy, harder.”

  “Did you know them, Diana? His parents?”

  She shakes her head and sniffles, but can’t look me in the eye. “I faintly recall the name, but Dennis must’ve known them before he met me.”

  I hate Jacobi Dixon for making her feel ashamed. If he can do something like this, what are his parents like?

  As if he read my mind, Mr. Turlowitz says, “Both Mr. and Mrs. Dixon have passed away.”

  That dampened only a tiny portion of my anger. Like me, The Dick has lost people close to him. Is that why he’s delusional?

  I know next to nothing about him. He’s an enigma. At one time, I looked into hiring his company to tighten up our cyber security. While The Dixon Corporation is highly recommended, there’s next to nothing about him online, not even a picture. Maybe that’s supposed to impress me as a future client, that nowadays he can control everything he wants to, but I work in a business that values relationships and nurtures them. I can’t do that with a screen.

  Major industries buy his security technology on the spot. But he’s a recluse. There are no pictures, no sightings, no one knows what he looks like. All I found online was speculation about his age, his looks, if he’s a real guy or a group functioning under one name, and rumors that he got his start as a hacker. I’m marrying a name laundered by gossip.

  The irony. I’ll learn more than I want to know about him. But I guess that’s the conclusion of it all. I’m marrying him.

  Even more irony. The girl that’s always dumped for being needy and practically co-dependent is the one being pursued. Jacobi Dixon is trying to tag me like an endangered lioness when my exes refused to come back to my penthouse and grab their box of personal belongings they’d left behind. They were afraid I’d cling to them and beg them back.

  My cheeks burn. Those days are over. An unexpected—and probably the solitary—benefit of this arrangement.

  “When are the happy nuptials supposed to take place?” I infuse as much sarcasm into my tone as possible.

  “Two weeks from today.” Mr. Turlowitz pushes a piece of paper and a pen across the table, and rifles through his pile for another sheet of paper. “You’ll also need to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

  “Doesn’t that say a lot? He doesn’t want me to talk about how he forced me into marrying him. Yet, he’s acting like my family are the criminals.”

  “Sign the papers, please, Miss Vanderbeek.”

  Doesn’t find that so funny, does he?

  Diana rests her shaking hand on my wrist as it’s poised over the papers. I’m using Mr. Turlowitz’s pen. It’s still warm from where he clutched it in his dry, cracked palm. Natural Glow has a lotion for that.

  “I don’t want you to do this.” Her voice trembles. “I just can’t… I promised your father…”

  A wicked plan forms in my mind. Nothing in the contract says that The Dick expects me to fulfill all the expected roles of a wife, but I have time to temper his expectations. “It’ll be okay. I have two weeks to sow my wild oats and maybe pick up a nasty STD to pass on to him, and then once I say ‘I do’ I’ll figure the rest out. We’re not done yet.”

  A watery smile plays across her lips, but concern weighs heavy in her eyes. She always comments on my fight and says she wishes she had as much spark as I do. I think she’s ashamed of her past, and she thinks I would never do something like that. But she’s wrong. I would go shoot fifty porn videos now only to piss The Dick Dixon off. Alas, I would tank the company and isn’t that what we’re trying to prevent?

  I scribble my signature over each of the two documents and shove the papers back at Mr. Turlowitz so hard they scatter around him and flutter to the floor. Diana and I stand at the same time. Great minds think alike.

  “Tell that dick not to contact me until our wedding day.” I spin on my Louboutins and march out with Diana hot on my red-soled heels.

  Jacobi

  The clock ticks in my large home office. The two wall-mounted monitors above me are silenced. The screens on my desk are stuck on reams of data. Another minute passes. How long is this meeting going to take? Will London Vanderbeek simper and cry? Will her stepmother be willing to ruin her reputation and that of the company’s to save a pampered London from some unknown monster—me?

  My entire life has built up to this point. I was raised on the legendary stories of the betrayal of Dennis and Diana Vanderbeek. My parents’ hard work, the way they were swindled, and how it led Mom toward gobbling down a full bottle of pain pills and chasing it with half a bottle of wine.

  The rest of the red wine stained the plush white carpet when I found Mom’s cold dead body.

  I shake my head and scrub my hands over my face, but it’s futile. Nothing can wipe away an image no sixteen-year-old boy should experience.

  I watch my phone, waiting for Mr. Turlowitz to call. He was instructed to do so as soon as he crawled his bony ass into the private car, and according to the app I installed for the car, he got in a minute ago.

  Another minute ticks by. Unacceptable.

  I scratch the growth along my chin. It’s nearing beard stage. More than stubble, but not enough to condition, I’ll cut off my left nut before I use any of Natural Glow’s beard moisturizer.

  My hair’s shaggy, too. I should get a cut, but I hate going out in public, which is only necessary to get lai
d. As much as my life revolves around technology, I can’t fuck a computer. Technically, I have a friend who invests in sex robots, so…

  I won’t. There’s an app for everything, including anonymous sex. Anonymous for them. By the time I met the one using profile ID JinnieD3 at the corner bar, I knew her bank account balance, her GPA in school, and whether she’d ever been dosed with penicillin due to a lack of protection with previous partners.

  If the quick hookups think to contact me again, my information is erased before my pants are zipped. By the time I get back home to my beachside estate in Malibu, I’m nothing more than a ghost who gave them an orgasm or two. Sometimes three if I’m bored.

  I protect my assets and my reputation by allowing nothing to get out about me. Because of the money from my first business venture, I’ve been able to fortify myself well. Before that, I learned to physically fend off the bookies who thought I should carry on the payment program Mom had left behind.

  I’m just having a friend over, honey.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. All those friends.

  No one steps foot in my sand without a full background check. No one comes here other than my chef, the housekeepers, and my groundskeeper. I bought this beachside property for the solace.

  My computer room is my office, my home, and my panic room. But I can conduct my business throughout the entire house. It’s wired so I can take conference calls on the treadmill in my home gym or order groceries as six showerheads beat down on me.

  Clicking through my computer, I keep tapping buttons as pictures fly by. London Vanderbeek. In every picture she has a smile on her face. No matter how long I stare at her photos, I can’t figure out why she doesn’t seem to wear an ounce of the makeup that her family destroyed mine over. Her clear complexion should thank my mother and the concoctions that Dennis Vanderbeek stole.