The Tycoon's Secretive Temptress

by Elizabeth Lennox

Reid nodded and extended his hand. “I’ll make sure that he gets it.”

  The man gave the folder to Reid and quickly retreated. Selena peered around her husband’s arm curiously. “What’s that about?”

  He didn’t try to hide the report as he skimmed down the page. “It’s a list of the data that someone has downloaded over the past few weeks. But this doesn’t give me the information Brant wanted.”

  “What was he looking for? I’m sure Gianna could get it for him.”

  Reid sighed and turned, pulling her back into his arms. “Honey, the information is about Gianna. Brant thinks that she’s been spying on the company, stealing information.”

  Selena stared wide-eyed up at her husband for a long moment before bursting into laughter, shaking her head as she pulled away. “No,” she laughed. “Um…” lifting a finger, she gestured for him to wait. It took her a few more moments to get her amusement under control, but finally, she turned to look up at him. “Okay, so let me get this straight: Brant thinks Gianna is stealing company information?”

  “Right. Brant couldn’t figure out what Gianna was hiding. This report was supposed to give us a clue.”

  “And Gianna thinks that they’ve broken up?”

  Reid’s eyes were emotionless and Selena knew that meant he was conflicted. He wasn’t sure what to think.

  “I can’t confirm that. I haven’t spoken to her in the past few days.”

  Selena took her husband’s hand. “Come with me.” She led him down the hallway to Gianna’s office. The light was still on since Gianna hadn’t taken the time to turn it off in her rush to get out of the office. “This is what she was hiding,” Selena announced, gesturing to the trash can.

  Reid looked around, not sure what was wrong. He didn’t notice the magazines, trying to figure out what his wife was telling him. “Are you saying that Gianna used a different computer?”

  Selena blinked, not sure where he was going with that. “Another computer? You have excellent security, Reid.” She huffed slightly. “No, I’m not talking about what you and Brant think of her. I’m trying to show you what Gianna thought of her relationship with Brant.”

  Reid still looked confused.

  She laughed and lifted up on her toes, kissing him briefly before pulling away. “You’re handsome and brilliant in many ways. But in others, you’re clueless.” So instead of asking him to guess again, she pulled the bridal magazines out of the trash, handing them to him. “I suspect that this is what Gianna was trying to hide from Brant.” She leaned forward. “There is no corporate espionage. Just a woman in love with a man, Reid. And I have to tell you that Gianna has plans. Big plans. Plans that didn’t include staying here in Denver. So if she was thinking along these lines,” she said, once more pointing to the magazines, “then she’d fallen hard for Brant. Harder than even I knew.”

  Reid stared hard at the magazines covered in flowers and beautiful, happy brides. “This is what she kept shoving out of sight?” he muttered. He flipped through the magazines briefly, then looked at his wife, his expression changing from confused to amused. “Oh, he’s going to be kicking himself sideways when he finds out.”

  Selena shook her head and grabbed the magazines. “Oh no! You’re not telling him about these,” she said and dumped them back into the trash. “Come on, dear.”

  Reid frowned over his shoulder at the trashcan, thinking that he should tell Brant about them.

  “No!” Selena warned. “We’re going home. Besides, I tried to convince Gianna to show me how to make pasta, but she was too upset. So now, you’re going to cook me dinner.”

  Reid pressed the button for the elevator, smiling down at her but his expression was more wolfish than pleasant.

  “Ah, so dinner is my choice, right?”

  Instantly, Selena knew where his mind was going. And just as fast, her body responded to that idea liking it. A lot! But still, a woman had to play hard to get, even if it was with her husband, right? “No, you can’t have me for dinner!” Her rejection was tempered when she moved closer to Reid, stepping into his arms and smiling up at him.

  Chapter 13

  Brant watched with increasing dread as Reid’s Jeep pulled up next to his sedan. He’d been here for four days and knew that Mack was getting ready to toss him out.

  Yeah, it was time to go back. No matter what she’d done, it was time to face the real world. But he’d come to one conclusion. He loved her. He didn’t care what Reid or the tech people found, he wasn’t letting her go to jail.

  Now, it was time to face his brother and find out what Reid had discovered.

  “You look like crap,” Reid announced cheerfully as he walked up the stairs to Mack’s cabin. “Lose your razor?”

  Brant reached up and smoothed the rough beard that he’d ignored for the past few days. “I think it suits me,” he replied.

  Reid shook his head. “Right. You keep on telling yourself that.” He sighed and handed Brant the papers. “Here’s what we found.”

  Brant stared at the file, not wanting to touch it. But Reid patiently waited until he accepted the folder. And still, he walked over to the porch chairs and slumped down into the closest one, not bothering to open the file.

  “What’s in it?” he asked, not wanting to hear, but knowing he needed to know in order to protect Gianna.

  “The tech guys are good. They were able to list all of the data she’d downloaded over the past few weeks, including the search history on her computer. Not hard to do, but still, they thought of everything.” He nodded towards the file. “Go ahead. Open it and take a look.”

  Brant stared at the seemingly innocuous folder for another long moment, then sighed and accepted that it was time. He’d avoided reality for long enough.

  He read through the first page, which was just a list of the Internet sites she’d visited over the past few weeks. At first, it was simple things, such as translation sites, American idiomatic phrases, different cultures in various parts of the country. Then there was a slew of football sites. Brant knew that the searches were from when she’d been trying to learn about American football and he chuckled at some of the site names.

  “She was bored, wasn’t she? I told you that she needed more work.” Reid grabbed Brant’s beer and took a long swallow.

  Brant nodded, agreeing with his brother. He even acknowledged that the work Gianna had done had always been exceptional. She was precise, careful, detail oriented, and figured out both the micro details and the big-picture issues.

  As he skimmed through more of the searches, he was startled to see the odd wedding dress search pop up. And then more bridal advice sites, wedding lists, timelines…

  “What the hell is all of this?” he demanded, furious that she would be thinking of weddings if…

  He looked up, staring at his brother. Reid only lifted his eyebrows, waiting for penny to drop. Mack stepped out, carrying three beers, which he handed around before sitting down to watch.

  “Is that the proof that Gianna hadn’t done anything wrong?”

  Brant didn’t look up as he turned the page, but he took a moment to say, “Shut up,” to his brother before focusing back on the lists. There were more wedding sites, but one of them included “How to Propose!” But the worst was the last few search requests. “How to get over a hard breakup” and “When your man betrays you.” There were more, each more painful to read than the last.

  He flipped through the search results and focused on the data downloads. Every single one he could match up to reports he’d asked her to build for him. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

  “This doesn’t show any of the stuff that she stole. Where’s the rest?”

  Reid lifted his hands in the air. “That’s it. That’s all they found.” He took a long sip of his beer. “Although, I was shown a bunch of bridal magazines that had been dumped into the trashcan. Any idea what that might be about?”

  Brant was confused. “B
ridal magazines? She was looking through bridal magazines?”

  Reid nodded. Mack smirked. “Told ya.”

  Brant was more than ready to slug his younger brother, but he was too focused on trying to figure out what he’d missed.

  “You were trying to figure out what she was hiding, idiot,” Reid filled in for Brant. “She didn’t want you to know that she was looking at bridal magazines.”

  Brant snapped the file folder closed, shaking his head. “But she was so secretive.”

  “Of course she was. Gianna probably thought you’d run to the hills if you found out that she was dreaming about marriage,” Mack told him. Reid chuckled and the brothers tapped their beer bottles together.

  “Good one, bro,” Reid said.

  Brant looked at both of them. “You’re both idiots.”

  Reid lifted his eyebrows. “We’re idiots?” He turned to Mack. “Am I the one moping on a mountain top because he’s in love with a woman he erroneously thinks is a criminal?”

  “I don’t believe that is you,” Mack said in a mocking tone, then both brothers turned to face Brant.

  He lifted his hands in the air in defeat. “Fine!” He leaned back, taking a long swallow of his beer as he glared into the crackling fire pit. “So…”

  “She’s in love with you!” Reid announced loudly before Brant could come up with another theory. “She loves you and you’re in love with her. She wants to get married! That’s all she was hiding!”

  “Which is why you came up here to escape from your feelings,” Mack added. “But one thing I’ve known about my mountain. You can easily become lost in the woods, but you can’t really lose your feelings. They stick with you no matter how far you hike.”

  Reid looked at his baby brother. “That’s so profound of you,” he teased.

  “I’m a profound fellow,” he came right back. They laughed at their quip, then turned to look at Brant. “So any sage words of advice for our man over there?”

  Reid shook his head. “Shave, perhaps.”

  “Hell yeah! And do it before Gianna sees you,” Mack agreed.

  “Good point.”

  Mack nodded. “Good. Now that we’ve agreed on that, how do we get those love birds back together?”

  Brant didn’t argue with his assessment. “I need to go find Gianna.”

  “Not tonight, bro,” Mack announced. “There’s a snow storm coming our way. There’s no way you’ll make it down before it starts. And in your car, you’d slide into a tree and it would be ugly. So you’re here for another night.”

  “But…”

  “Come on,” Mack interrupted. “We can walk down to The Bull Frog. It will at least get you out of my house for a few hours. You can socialize or brood about your stupidity, whichever floats your boat. But you’re getting out of here so someone can tell you how ugly you look with that beard.”

  Brant rolled his eyes. “The weather forecast doesn’t have any snow coming.”

  All three brothers looked up into the sky where stars twinkled in the inky night sky.

  “Trust me. Snow is coming. Nothing huge, but enough to make the roads slick and dangerous. Especially in your pointless car.”

  “My car isn’t pointless,” Brant argued, but knew that his brother was a weird sort of human weather gauge. If he said that snow was on the way, it would be snowing very soon. So instead of getting into his car to head back to Denver, the three of them walked down the gravel road that led to the town of Minneville. “It drives great in the city.”

  “Pointless up here,” Mack asserted firmly. “Can’t go over gravel or rocks or…”

  “Hey, just because you have to drive over boulders to catch the bad guys or save the damsel in distress, that doesn’t mean that my car is pointless.”

  “Actually, it’s pretty rare that I have to save a damsel,” Mack told his brothers. “The ladies who come out to hike are more sensible than their male counterparts. They do their research and figure out a plan, check in with me or Ryan at the Ranger’s station and they’re smart about where they hike.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Mack shrugged. “I don’t know but I like it. I don’t worry about the ladies. It’s the men who I constantly worry about and it’s idiot men who go out hiking, thinking that they know what they’re doing, don’t check in with us, and just head out into the woods. So, finding them is always more difficult.”

  “Yes, but where would the world be without us men?”

  Mack grinned. “In a world of hurt,” he agreed.

  The walk to town was easy and The Bull Frog was a bar or pub, whatever one wanted to call it, with a quirky atmosphere that catered to both the locals and the tourists. During the summer months, the place was packed with hikers and people trying to fish in the cold waters that ran down the slopes of The Rocky Mountains to form rushing creeks and rivers as the streams merged. During the winter months, the skiers and snow lovers swarmed in. There were only a few months out of the year when things slowed down a bit and December was one of them. So when they stepped through the doors, the bar was crowded, but not as packed as it would be in a month or two. Finding a table near the back was relatively easy and, as they sat down, the owner, a beautiful, tall blond woman named Cynthia, walked over and smiled welcomingly at them. “Hey Mack! I haven’t seen you around in a few days. Where have you been?”

  “Trying to soothe my brother’s tortured soul,” he replied.

  “Doesn’t the mountain do that already?” she teased, as she set a pitcher of beer and three glasses down.

  “Apparently, his soul was more tortured than even the mountain could fix.”

  She laughed, her long, blond hair shimmering in the overhead lights. “I didn’t think that was possible,” she replied, then turned to wink at Brant before walking away.

  “She’s nice,” Reid observed as he poured beer. “And fast. I like a woman who brings me beer.”

  Mack punched Reid’s arm. “Don’t be a sexist ass.”

  Reid laughed. “Yeah, don’t tell Selena I said that. She’d take me down in a heartbeat.”

  “We’ll hold it over your head for when we need to blackmail you.”

  “Fair enough,” Reid agreed.

  Mack and Reid leaned back in their chairs, watching the crowd, grunting at the soccer game playing on one of the televisions that were set up in a corner. The sound was turned off so that the music of the bar could be heard, but the guys didn’t need to hear the announcers to know what was happening on the field.

  Reid and Brant drank most of the beer, which was a local craft brew and tasted a hell of a lot better than what was generally served in small towns. But Mack barely sipped his beer. Reid and Brant knew that their youngest brother rarely drank, especially when he was in town. He might be officially off duty, but as sheriff of a small town, he was never really off-duty. He had deputies, but Mack was always vigilant. And too often, the tourists on vacation drank too much and caused problems.

  Sure enough, the brothers watched as a group of men, obviously hikers from their boots and attire, stepped through the doors.

  Not by word or sound did Mack indicate that he was expecting trouble. But Brant and Reid knew that he was watching the four men.

  They took a table over by the window, laughing loudly about their day, bragging about one thing or another while putting the other guys down. Typical male bonding.

  Immediately, Cynthia stepped up to their table and smiled. “What can I get you boys?” she asked, being her usual friendly self.

  One of them ordered two pitchers of beer and Cynthia left to fill the order.

  “She seems nice,” Brant commented of the tall, leggy blond. “Why couldn’t I have fallen for someone less complicated?”

  Mack chuckled. “Buddy, if you think that Cynthia is uncomplicated, you’re nuts.”

  “She’s a mess?”

  “Nah. She’s great. Cynthia is kind and easy-going, loves the mou
ntains as much as anyone else and is friendly. But she has her demons, just like the rest of us.”

  “You dated her?” Reid asked.

  “Never. We’re just good friends.” Mack looked over at the woman in question, long, blond hair cascading over her shoulder and a ready smile for everyone. She wore an old tee-shirt that had been washed so many times, it was soft and faded. Her jeans were the same, faithfully cupping her pert butt and long legs. Cynthia was the kind of woman that one might find on the beaches of California. Tall and slender, curvy in all the right places and silky blond hair paired with an easy, relaxed smile.

  Until….

  Cynthia delivered the pitchers of beers to the guys, but one of them smirked up at her with a dangerous look in his eyes.

  Brant watched, tensing as he waited. He had no intention of allowing anyone to be fondled by a drunken bastard.

  Sure enough, the stupid ass reached around, pretending to put his arm around Cynthia’s waist. Brant was about to stand up and slam the guy against the wall for daring to touch the woman who was just trying to serve them, when the man’s fingers were captured and viciously twisted by Cynthia. With a slow, incredibly sexy smile, Cynthia bent down low so she could whisper in the offender’s ear.

  Whatever she said caused the man in question to nod quickly as he sank lower in his seat. His face was a painful shade of red. Slowly, she released the man’s fingers and stepped away. “If any of you need anything else, just let me know!” Cynthia smiled, winked cheekily at the man across the table whose mouth was hanging open, then walked away with her chin held high.

  “Damn, that was impressive!” Brant whispered.

  Reid whistled, nodding in agreement. A split second later, the bar erupted in applause and Cynthia spun around, glaring at the others who were making such a big deal out of the interaction. “Yeah yeah! Get it over with!” she announced.

  The bar patrons laughed and the applause actually increased. The only one not applauding was the guy who was shaking his fingers, trying to get circulation back to them.

  Cynthia blushed, but took it all with good humor, even bowing to everyone before turning back to head into the kitchen.