Sex, Lies and the CEO

by Barbara Dunlop

  She jumped inside, peeled away from the curb and sped out onto the main road, quickly bringing up her speed.

  She’d been so certain Shane would accept the evidence. She’d thought he was on her side. She’d thought they had something special. She’d thought...

  The truth leapt into her brain.

  Her heart stuttered.

  She hastily wheeled into a street-side parking lot and braked under a maple tree.

  She dropped her head onto the steering wheel.

  She’d thought she loved him.

  She’d actually let herself believe the relationship was real. But Shane had a whole other agenda. Without absolute proof and a court of law, she was never going to win.

  Her cell phone rang. She let it go to voice mail, her hands tightening on the steering wheel until her knuckles went white.

  Long minutes later, she lifted her head, staring straight ahead at the riverbank in front of her.

  Was it time to give up? Did she pack up her broken heart and go home? There was no way she could face Shane again, no way he’d let her look any further.

  She opened her purse, extracting the letter from her father, unfolding it one more time. The words were so angry, so desperate. The hurt of the betrayal came through loud and clear in his writing.

  Then her gaze went to the picture of him in the D&I Holdings office. He’d looked happy back then, hopeful and full of life. She wished she’d known that side of him.

  “I tried,” she whispered, hoping he’d have understood.

  She stared at his face for a long time.

  Then something else came into focus. The desk behind him. In fact, there were two desks behind him, facing each other, like hers and Jennifer’s did. And they were identical.

  Darci’s heart began beating faster.

  They were also the same as the one in Dalton’s old bedroom. One of these desks was in Dalton’s bedroom.

  This had to be a clue. That was why the picture was with the letter. It showed the hiding place of the drawings.

  She’d already checked one desk. But what about the other? Where was the other desk?

  And then it hit her.

  The other desk would have gone to her father. And if his desk held the drawings, he’d have had them all along. He wouldn’t have needed anything from Dalton. He’d have simply presented the original drawings to a lawyer and won the case.

  Unless the desks had been switched.

  That was it. That had to be it. Her father had no way of getting into Dalton’s mansion. If the furniture had been accidentally switched, he wouldn’t have been able to retrieve the drawings.

  She glanced at the road leading from the mansion to the city. As soon as Shane cleared out, she’d try one more time. She had to search the desk again.

  * * *

  Shane stared at his father’s note, grappling between what was legal and what was moral.

  “Don’t go there,” Justin warned him, obviously guessing at his thoughts.

  “She’s not wrong,” said Shane.

  “You can’t trust her,” said Dixon.

  Shane looked up. “That’s the problem. I do trust her.”

  “She threatened to write a tell-all book,” said Justin, his voice rising.

  “She could be just like Bianca,” said Tuck.

  “She’s not like Bianca.”

  “She’s like Kassandra,” said Dixon.

  Everybody went quiet.

  “I trusted Kassandra,” said Dixon. “And I fought with my father over her. I fought just as hard then as you’re fighting now.”

  “It’s not the same,” said Shane.

  “It’s exactly the same. You think you can’t live without her, but one day, she’ll meet some slimy pharmaceutical executive, and a team of lawyers will try to take you for everything you’ve got.”

  “Divorce not going well?” Shane asked Dixon.

  “It’s going great. Because I was smart. Don’t you be an idiot.”

  “I’m not marrying her,” said Shane. Though, as the words came out, a vision of Darci in a long white dress came up in his mind. She looked really good.

  “She lied to you and spied on you,” said Justin. “And that’s just the stuff we know about.”

  “I’m not giving her up,” said Shane.

  “At least wait.”

  “If I wait, I lose her.”

  “This is an unacceptable risk,” said Justin, his posture rigid.

  “It’s mine to take.”

  “You take my advice on this. You take my advice on this, or I’ll walk.”

  Shane took in the conviction on his lawyer and best friend’s face. Justin was smart. He was brilliant. But he didn’t know Darci the way Shane did.

  “Then walk,” Shane said softly.

  Justin threw up his hands in disgust.

  “Wow,” Tuck whistled.

  “My father could easily have done it,” Shane said to all of them. “Legally provable or not, Dalton may have screwed Ian Rivers over and stolen his money. And none of this is Darci’s fault. She’s a fantastic person, and she’s just trying to make things right.”

  “Been there,” said Dixon. “Done that.”

  “Could anybody have stopped you?” Shane asked.

  Dixon didn’t answer.

  Justin groaned in obvious despair, bracing his hands on the tabletop.

  “Walk if you have to,” Shane said to him. “But I’m going after her.”

  “You are an idiot,” said Justin.

  “He’s in love,” said Dixon.

  Shane didn’t know about love. But he did know he wasn’t giving up on Darci. He knew where she lived now, and that was where he was going.

  He drove there as fast as he dared and parked in front of Darci’s building and took the elevator. There were only two suites on the top floor, and he easily located hers. He was surprised to find the door slightly ajar.

  “Because I can’t just walk away from this,” came a man’s voice from inside the apartment.

  There was a muffled exclamation from a woman

  Shane broke into a run. He flung open the door to see a man’s broad back. He was bent over a woman, obviously kissing her. She was standing passive, her arms by her sides.

  Shane’s momentum took him across the room, and he grabbed the guy by the back of the collar.

  “Get your hands off her,” he bellowed, spinning the stranger around and slamming him into the wall.

  “Shane!”

  He drew back his fist.

  “Shane, don’t!”

  He suddenly realized it was Jennifer’s voice, not Darci’s.

  The haze cleared from his brain.

  Though the stranger was tall and obviously fit, the man simply held up his palms in surrender.

  Shane stepped back, his attention going to Jennifer. “I thought you were Darci.”

  “Darci’s at the mansion.” Jennifer looked dazed.

  “You okay?” Shane asked her, glancing at the stranger again.

  “I’m fine. This is Ashton Watson.”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “Ex.”

  Shane crossed his arms over his chest. “Does he need to leave?”

  “It looks like he does,” said Ashton, with a reproachful gaze at Jennifer, “unless there’s something more you want to say?”

  She stayed silent, her lips compressed.

  “I won’t be back,” said Ashton.

  He gave Shane a curt nod and left the apartment, the door clicking shut behind him.

  “I didn’t mean to barge in,” said Shane.

  “It didn’t change anything.” Jennifer’s voice shook ever so slightly. “What’s g
oing on? Where’s Darci?”

  “I’m looking for her.”

  “I thought she was at the mansion.”

  “She was. But she left.” He hesitated, but given what he’d just witnessed, he decided Jennifer was entitled to the truth. “We had a fight.”

  She waited.

  “Darci found something,” said Shane.

  “The drawings?”

  “A copy of the drawings. They weren’t signed. It wasn’t exactly proof.”

  “But she thought it was proof.”

  “She did,” Shane admitted. “And I didn’t back her.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “It won’t hold up in court. But it was enough for her. And, I guess that’s good enough for me, too.”

  Jennifer’s expression softened. “And you’re here to tell her that.”

  “I am.”

  “Shane, are you in love with her?”

  Shane knew he was. There was no other explanation.

  He pictured Darci in that long, white dress again. Then he pictured her with a baby in her arms, Gus and Boomer frolicking on the mansion lawn. He wanted her, now and forever. And he was going to find a way to make that happen.

  In fact, he had a way to make that happen.

  He came to his feet. “Wouldn’t that just solve everything?”

  “Wouldn’t what solve everything?”

  “I marry her, and she’ll instantly own half the company.”

  A grin stretched across Jennifer’s face. “No prenup?”

  The idea gained traction in his mind. “She could stop searching for the proof that probably doesn’t even—”

  It hit him then. Darci wasn’t the type to give up. She was clever, and she was determined. If she hadn’t come home, she was back at the mansion looking for the original drawings.

  He coughed out a laugh.

  “What?”

  “She’s back at the mansion right now. I’d bet money on it. She waited until I left, probably hiding in the shrubbery. And then she went back to search.”

  “So why are you smiling?”

  “Because she’s devious, and I love that about her. But I’m going to catch her red-handed, and I’m going to end this once and for all.”

  * * *

  Darci groaned as she muscled the walnut desk away from the wall in Dalton Colborn’s bedroom. She let her residual anger give her strength, and the heavy thing inched forward.

  The housekeeper, Estelle, hadn’t seemed at all surprised to see her return and had happily let her into the mansion. Darci hadn’t felt any remorse as she headed straight upstairs to the master bedroom. Shane could have her arrested, for all she cared.

  Maybe it would cause a scandal. Maybe there’d be reporters. Maybe she’d recant everything she said to Berkley Nash. Shane wasn’t upstanding and professional. He was a cad. Bianca might have been right, after all.

  Darci didn’t love Shane. She wouldn’t love Shane. She absolutely refused to love a man who would string her along like that.

  There. That fixed that.

  She’d checked each of the desk drawers, pulling them right out of the frame and turning them upside down to look at the bottoms. Then she’d crawled underneath the desk, checked every crack and crevice for secret compartments. So far, she’d found nothing. But she refused to say die.

  As she pushed on the desk, she couldn’t help taking in the mess she’d made of the room. Too bad. She’d take a jackhammer to the place if she thought it would help.

  Creating enough room to maneuver behind the desk, she felt for anything out of the ordinary. The top overhung the back, creating a sort of lip and she sat down, craning her neck to see what was underneath.

  Her last, faint hope was a secret compartment. She’d seen old furniture made that way. You pressed in just the right spot, and a panel opened up or a mini-drawer came free.

  There had to be something here.

  She could just barely make out a seam in the wood of one panel. She ran her fingers along it and came to a smooth indentation near the center. She pushed at the depression, and it wiggled. Squinting to see, she hooked her thumb in the groove and pulled forward. It gave, just a little, but it gave way.

  She forgot about Shane’s treachery and everything else as she came up on her knees, digging her fingernails into the crack. She pulled hard, and a sheet of wood slid out about an inch. Her heart rate doubled, her pulse pounding in her veins. She took hold of the thin panel with both hands and drew it forward.

  The narrow compartment was filled with dust, but buried in the dust was a flat plastic bag. She pulled it out, sneezing from the cloud of particles that billowed into the air. She was sweating, and she pushed back her damp hair.

  She went to where the light was better, finding a taped flap on the opaque plastic bag. She held her breath and peeled it open.

  She slid out the papers, unfolded them, and there it was, the original set of schematic drawings. Her entire body sagged in relief.

  Her heart pounding with excitement, she smoothed them out on the carpeted floor. They were nothing but shapes and lines and numbers, making no sense to her. But in a bottom corner, there was a date, along with her father’s signature.

  “Darci?” Shane’s voice boomed in the doorway.

  She popped her head up from behind the desk, excited to share the find with him, then remembering at the last second that he was a jerk, and she was furious.

  He gaped at the awkward position of the desk, the scattered dust and the drawers strewn around the room. His shocked expression was almost comical. She tried to stay furious. She tried not to love him. But all she wanted to do was rush into his arms.

  “Have you lost your mind?” he demanded.

  She came to her feet. “You left me no choice.”

  “You dismantled my father’s desk?”

  “I had to.”

  “No.” He gave his head a rapid shake. “You didn’t have to.”

  The rhythm of their debate was familiar to her, in a good way. “I had to prove my point.”

  “You’re trying to justify a crime spree?”

  “It wasn’t exactly a spree.”

  “I should have you arrested.”

  He was angry. He was bullheaded. And he was annoying. But it didn’t seem to dampen her feelings for him, and she couldn’t wait to tell him what she’d found.

  “Shane, it’s here—”

  “But I won’t have you arrested.”

  “Shane, it’s—”

  “I have a proposition for you instead. Well, more of a—”

  “Stop talking, I—”

  “No, you stop talking,” he insisted.

  “It’s really important,” said Darci.

  “So is what I have to say.”

  “But—”

  “Okay, now I’m thinking maybe I’ll press the alarm button and have you arrested, after all.”

  Darci clamped her lips together.

  “Good.”

  For some reason, he smiled at her. She opened her mouth to step into the silence, but he put an index finger across her lips.

  He stepped in closer, his touch still light on her mouth. “I have an idea.”

  She lifted her brow.

  “It’s outside the box. But everything about our relationship has been outside the box.”

  She pursed her lips in frustration. What she had to tell him would have taken only a fraction of the time.

  “You think you deserve half of Colborn.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted. “I—”

  “One more word, and I kiss you.”

  “I never once—”

  He kissed her. Before she could make another sound, his lips were
on hers, tasting sweet, familiar and, oh, so wonderful.

  She couldn’t hold out against him, and soon they were pressed tightly together. His arms wrapped around her, and the kiss went deeper and deeper.

  After long, disorienting, satisfying minutes, he drew back. He framed her face with his hands, looking into her eyes.

  “I love you, Darci. I’m in love with you, and I want you in my life forever.”

  The fight in her evaporated. “Huh?”

  “The solution is so simple.”

  “Wait a minute. What?”

  “You marry me.”

  Her brain scrambled to keep up with his words.

  “You marry me, Darci, and half of Colborn is yours. It doesn’t matter who invented what. It doesn’t matter if we never prove anything. Though, I have to say, I’m definitely seeing your side of it right now.”

  “What?” she repeated.

  “I’m seeing it your way.”

  “Not that.”

  “Oh, I’m asking you to marry me.”

  Not that, either. He loved her? He believed her?

  She didn’t know where to go first.

  “I... You...” She gestured in the direction of the desk. “I found it, Shane.”

  He paused. “You found what?”

  “The drawings. I found the original drawings.”

  “They exist?”

  “There were two desks. They were identical. And there was a secret compartment. At the back of this one. I’m assuming they got mixed up somehow.”

  “Darci, I don’t follow...”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “Come and look.”

  He followed her. She lifted the drawings, placing them on the desktop so they could both see.

  He gazed at the documents.

  “So, that’s it then?” he asked.

  Her chest tightened with a deep sense of satisfaction. “Mystery solved.”

  Her father’s good name as an engineer was exonerated. He would take his rightful place in the history of the turbine engine. She might even be able to correct the patent.

  “I guess you won’t have to marry me.” There was disappointment in Shane’s tone.

  “I won’t have to marry you,” she agreed. “But I do want to marry you.”

  “Say that again.”

  She rubbed her hand along his steel-hard biceps, loving the feel of him. “Not to get my hands on Colborn Aerospace. Not to clear my father’s name. But because I love you, too.”