The Heiress’s 2-Week Affair

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I knew it was something that started with the letter P,” she declared triumphantly.

  It took effort for the photographer to keep his true feelings from showing on his face. It took even more effort to keep from telling this two-bit slut what he thought of her and her whole degenerate family. But then, that would have been counterproductive to his plan. He hoped that by supplying her with the name he was going by these days, it would keep her from thinking too much. From remembering.

  But then, he comforted himself, her brain usually oscillated between being fried or being pickled. Neither state was conducive to remembering pertinent details, like the ones that would blow his cover.

  “Is the ring yours now?” someone else, obviously at least mildly familiar with the ring’s chain of ownership, called out to Candace.

  She didn’t bother trying to hide the condescending glance she sent toward the photographer. Her laughter echoed with victory.

  “It’s always been mine,” she announced.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Luke just within the entrance. Six foot two, lean and muscular, with dark hair she remembered running her fingers through, he looked incredible. A touch of nostalgia surfaced. He always did look good in a tux.

  Looked damn good out of one, too, she thought with a lascivious smile.

  “If you gentlemen’ll excuse me,” she murmured to the reporters. And then, because she hated the prospect of facing the night in an empty bed, she glanced back at the exotic reporter. It never hurt to have an ace in the hole. “Maybe we can get together later. I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been doing lately. For your tabloid,” she added with a wink as she patted his face, her ring sparkling and throwing off beams of light with every movement.

  “I’d like that,” he told her.

  She expected nothing less. “Yes, I’m sure you would. I’m staying at—”

  “I know where you’re staying,” Patrick Moore cut her short.

  She smiled, inclining her head. “Clever boy,” she murmured.

  With that, she sashayed off to the casino, every step a calculated movement guaranteed to make men’s mouths water.

  Once inside, Candace began to move just a tad faster. If she’d retained her present pace, the object of her pursuit, Luke Montgomery, would have put too much distance between them. She very much wanted to hook up with the gala host. Men of power were like an aphrodisiac for her, and Luke Montgomery, despite his humble beginnings, was now regarded as one of Vegas’s movers and shakers. Nothing she liked more than being on the winning team.

  She had, she liked to think, a lot to bring to the table.

  “Luke,” she called out to him. When he didn’t appear to hear her, Candace raised her voice, temporarily abandoning Marilyn Monroe’s sexy, throaty whisper for pragmatic reasons. There was still no response.

  The third time she called out his name, Luke stopped walking. He could feel his shoulders tensing. He’d heard her the first time and had hoped that she would just give up.

  He should have known better.

  Damn that shrew anyway. He wanted the focus of this gala to be on him, his newest casino and the charity he was sponsoring, in that order. Nowhere in that hierarchy did he want to include a vapid, superficial bleach-blonde.

  But if he didn’t acknowledge her, he knew she was going to cause a scene, and that was the last thing he wanted tonight.

  So Luke turned around, a perfunctory smile of civility on his lips worn for the benefit of anyone who might be passing by.

  “Hello, Candace,” he said as soon as he crossed back to her. Towering over the woman, he all but quietly growled, “I don’t seem to remember sending you an invitation.”

  A careless laugh met his statement. “I’m sure it was just an oversight.” Candace possessively threaded her arms through his. Being so close to Luke vividly reminded her of the last time they’d been together. Though she’d never said anything, she’d considered settling down with him. At least for a while. A lady-killer who lived up to his reputation, he was a magnificent lover who always left her wanting more.

  Because she sensed that this gala meant a lot to him, she tried to get on his good side by saying, “This certainly has the looks of being quite a successful event.”

  He certainly hoped so. Luke had undertaken hosting this event and pulling together all the beautiful people from the four corners of the world not just to benefit the charity he was sponsoring but also because hosting such an event, where all the rich and famous showed up in droves, would garner him an enormous amount of goodwill. Good publicity was crucial since he was on the verge of building yet another casino and hotel—this one on the exact spot where the tenement building he’d lived in as a child had stood.

  The Phoenix, as the new establishment would be called, was very near and dear to him, and he wanted nothing to hamper its success. Someone like Candace Rothchild and the kind of attention she attracted could do a lot of harm to all his good intentions.

  He wanted her out of here, and he had no time to be polite about it. Moving over to a more private corner of the casino, he asked in a controlled, low voice, “What is it you want, Candace?”

  Her eyes raked over his body, blatantly undressing him as she looked up into his eyes. “Why, darling, that should be very evident to someone as smart as you.” Tightening her hold on his arm, Candace raised her face up to his. Her mouth was barely inches away from his lips. “You.”

  Gone were the days when he would have been flattered. He knew her for what she was. A woman with no soul on her way out, living in a town that didn’t care. She was swiftly becoming a punch line to a good many insulting jokes.

  “Not now, Candace.”

  A pout appeared on her moist lips. “Then when?” she wanted to know.

  What had he ever seen in her? he couldn’t help wondering. Granted, there’d been a time when he would have gladly taken her up on her offer, but he’d been younger then and far more impressionable. He’d like to think he was too smart now to be tempted to lie down with a black widow.

  He shook his arm free and then grasped hers. He began directing her toward the front entrance. “Some other time, Candace,” he said forcefully.

  Instantly, her face clouded over. “I don’t like being rejected, Luke. Your little party won’t go so well if I make a scene. That’s what they’ll remember, me,” she emphasized, “not you or this little jewelry store display of yours.”

  It was a threat with teeth, and they both knew it.

  He didn’t react well to threats. “I think you’ll be happier elsewhere, Candace,” Luke told her coldly. He snapped his fingers over her head at someone across the floor.

  She didn’t bother looking to see who Luke was summoning. She wasn’t interested.

  “And I think I’ll be happier here,” she insisted. Accustomed to getting her way, it infuriated her to be contradicted.

  The next moment, they were joined by a third party. Matt Schaffer, the head of security for Montgomery Enterprises, was at her elbow. But rather than look at her, his attention was completely focused on his employer. Matt waited silently for instructions.

  Candace always perked up when in the company of a good-looking man, and this time was no exception as recognition entered her eyes.

  “Why, hello handsome,” she purred.

  Candace had already had too much to drink, Matt realized. He could smell it on her. But he was careful not to allow his disdain to register on his face. Instead, he raised his eyes to Luke’s face.

  “Mr. Montgomery?”

  “Schaffer, please escort Ms. Rothchild out of the casino,” Luke requested, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “She was just leaving.”

  Candace became incensed. “No, I wasn’t,” she insisted heatedly. She gave every impression that she was about to dig in her heels, and if Matt intended to remove her, it was going to have to be by force.

  But rather than take hold of her arm and drag her from the premises, cursin
g and screaming, Matt leaned over and whispered into her ear. “There are a bunch of photographers outside asking about you,” he told the Rothchild heiress smoothly. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint your public, would you?”

  Her blue eyes flashed, reminding him of another pair of blue eyes. Matt banked down the memory and the feelings it threatened to usher in with it. He’d made his choice, and he had to live with it…had been living with it these last eight years.

  “I don’t want to be disappointed,” Candace told him haughtily.

  There was another, more logical approach to this. “You’ll save face if you make it look as if leaving is your idea. Ms. Rothchild,” Matt told her quietly. “But make no mistake, one way or another, you are leaving the casino.”

  Candace exhaled angrily, then, right before his eyes, she managed to get herself under control. There was a squadron of cameras waiting to capture her beautiful likeness, she thought, and she knew that when she frowned, she looked closer to her own age. Thirty was a horrible number.

  As she moved toward the door, Candace thought she could see that reporter—the sexy one—looking in her direction. Patrick Moore.

  Something told her that the evening was not going to be a total waste after all.

  She flashed a radiant smile. “I’ll have your head,” she promised Matt through lips that looked as if they were barely moving.

  They were almost at the entrance, but Matt knew better than to release her. If he did, she might just double back, and he needed her on the other side of the door.

  “From what I hear,” he told her conversationally, “that’s not the part that interests you when it comes to men.”

  They made brief eye contact. Just like that, her fury was gone. The smile on Candace’s lips was genuine. “I know you, but I can’t seem to remember your name.”

  He saw no point in refusing to answer. From what he knew, she and Natalie hadn’t spoken in a long, long time. She wouldn’t tell Natalie about this. “Matt Schaffer.”

  Candace nodded her head, as if absorbing the name. “Right. Of course you are.”

  Matt pushed the door open for her. He watched the woman saunter away and swiftly become engulfed by the crowd hanging around the casino entrance. She was in her element.

  As he walked back into the casino, Matt could only shake his head. The woman he’d just escorted out was light years away from Natalie. Hard to believe they were actually sisters, much less twins.

  The next moment, he forced himself to think of something else. Thinking about Natalie would do him no good. That part of his life was over.

  By choice.

  Chapter 2

  She had to be out of her mind, Anna Worth Rothchild thought.

  It was past eleven o’clock, and by all rights, she should have been in bed. The all-night parties that Vegas was so famous for no longer interested her. They never really had, but she’d pretended they did for his sake. Now, instead of curling up in her queen-sized bed, sleeping peacefully, here she was pulling up into her old driveway. Summoned by the distraught note in her ex-husband’s voice when he’d called her less than an hour ago.

  She was an idiot for doing this.

  What she should have said to him, Anna silently lectured herself as she got out of her ice-blue sports car, was “Tell it to your little bimbo, Rebecca Lynn. Whatever’s wrong in your life isn’t my problem anymore.”

  But that was just it—it was still her problem. Her problem because she chose it to be. And that, sadly, was because reasonable, independent woman that she was, she nevertheless still loved the man. Loved him despite the fact that he had, as the old jazz songs went, “done her wrong.”

  There was a term for women like her, Anna mused, and if she had half a brain, she’d turn around, get back into her car and drive back home. There was no reason for her to be here.

  Yes, between the two of them, they had four daughters in common. Anna’s natural child, Silver, was her ex-husband’s daughter whom Harold later adopted. Silver grew up in the vicinity of three stepsisters from Harold’s first marriage—twins Natalie and Candace and their younger sister Jenna. Raising these girls together would forever bind Anna and Harold to one another. But he had made it perfectly clear he wanted to spend the rest of his life with that gold-digging slut who was only four years older than his twin daughters. He deserved everything that happened to him for being such a fool. For throwing away their marriage after all the years she’d stood by his side, taking care of every detail, leaving him free to handle his businesses and his hotels.

  So why was she here? Why did she even care if Harold was distraught?

  Because she did, Anna thought with a sigh, wrapping her ermine stole tighter around her shoulders against the April evening chill. It was as simple as that. She just did.

  About to ring the doorbell, she was caught off guard when the door suddenly swung open and Clive, Harold’s butler for the past twenty-five years, firmly ushered out a tall, dark-haired man with an olive complexion. The well-built, exotic-looking man was far from happy to be leaving the premises. Although he was wearing formal attire, it appeared somewhat rumpled.

  The intruder nearly knocked her down as he was being hustled out of the mansion. The unexpected close contact allowed Anna to catch the faintest whiff of a sweet scent. It was vaguely familiar and nudged something distant in her consciousness, but she couldn’t place it.

  The next moment, the memory was gone. The thought that the scent was something a woman might wear whispered through her mind as she regained her balance. The latter was accomplished largely due to Clive’s swift action. Seeing her predicament, he quickly caught the former mistress of the mansion by the arm and kept her from falling.

  “Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to be forward,” he apologized, withdrawing his hands the moment she regained her footing.

  Anna smiled. After all these years with the family, Clive was still incredibly formal. She sincerely doubted that they made people, much less butlers, like him anymore.

  “Apology more than accepted, Clive. If you hadn’t caught me, that oaf would have mowed me down.” She glanced over her shoulder and saw the stranger was retreating through the gate. She decided the man had to belong to the car that was parked down the street. “What was that all about?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am. He’s one of those ruthless reporters, I believe.” Anna was certain that Clive knew far more than he was saying. Nothing happened in this house or to this family that the gray-haired man was not aware of. “So nice to see you again, ma’am,” he said warmly, deftly changing the topic. “Mr. Harold is expecting you. He’s in the den.”

  The butler dutifully escorted her to the room. Along the way she noted some changes. There were expensive, somewhat showy, paintings gracing the walls. Rebecca Lynn’s handiwork, no doubt, she mused. If there was a spare dime lying around, the woman would find something to spend it on.

  Opening the den’s double doors for her, Clive unobtrusively backed away and withdrew, moving as silently as a shadow.

  Harold, his back to her, was alone in the room. When he turned around, she was struck by how drawn he looked. His hand was wrapped tightly around a chunky scotch glass. The glass was almost empty.

  Her first thought was that something had happened with the eye candy he referred to as his third wife. Had she been a lesser woman, she might have secretly gloated at the thought. But Anna was made of better stuff than that, and she found her heart aching for him, aching despite the fact that he had been less than kind during the final days of their marriage.

  “All right, Harold, I’m here,” she declared, crossing to him. Removing her wrap, she carefully draped it over the back of the cream-colored leather sofa. “What’s the big emergency that couldn’t wait until morning?”

  On his best day, Harold Rothchild was never one of those men who exuded power. What power he had he inherited from a father who had been almighty, leaving no room for a son to emerge and become his own man, eve
n if he was handsome enough to turn a few heads. All his life, Harold had searched for a way to do that, to become his own man. Years after Joseph Rothchild’s death, Harold was still searching.

  Draining his glass, he placed it on the desk and cleared his throat before finally giving her an answer. He felt a tightness in his chest. “It’s gone.”

  He wasn’t making any sense, and there was panic evident in his blue eyes. Anna put her hand on her ex-husband’s, as if to silently reassure him that she was there for him. “What’s gone, Harold?”

  “The ring.” His voice seemed to crackle with the stress he was experiencing. “My father’s ring. The Tears of the Quetzal. Candace kept asking me questions about it. When she asked to see it, I said no. I thought she’d get angry, but she just said, ‘All right.’ After she left, I had this feeling that something was wrong,” he confessed, almost talking to himself. “So I went to the safe to look at it—and it was gone,” he wailed. “And now something bad is going to happen. I can feel it. Something awful.”

  Anna didn’t follow him, but then, Harold had always been secretive when it came to the ring and its origins. All she had ever gotten out of him was that, in the right hands, it brought true love to its owner within sixty seconds. In the wrong hands, dire things came to pass. Personally, she’d always thought it was all just empty talk, something to glorify the ring, nothing more. She’d only seen it once herself, and it was far too gaudy for her taste.

  “Worse than the ring disappearing?” she asked.

  Harold seemed to go pale right in front of her eyes. A line of sweat formed on his forehead. He sounded almost breathless when he said, “Much worse.”

  Natalie Rothchild felt sick to her stomach. It took all she had to keep the light breakfast down that she’d consumed this morning.

  After working her way up within the Las Vegas Police Department to the rank of detective in a relatively short amount of time, there weren’t many things that still got to her. She’d learned to harden herself, to separate herself from her work. She kept a firm, if imaginary, line drawn in the sand for herself. Her professional life was not allowed to cross over into her personal life—what little there was of it.