Their Colorado Conquest [Spirit, Colorado 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Zara Chase

  The thought of being such a pushover brought her to her senses. Whatever game he thought he was playing, whatever point he was trying to prove, he could do it without her participation. She snapped her mouth closed, almost biting his tongue off in the process, and pulled out of his arms.

  “That was stupid.”

  “I disagree,” he said, totally unperturbed by her abrupt change of mood. “I’ve wanted to do that since you walked through the door.”

  “Then you’re a pretty fast worker. I only got here a few hours ago.”

  “It only takes a few minutes for me to know what I want, and, just so you know, I always get it.” He paused, treating her to the full weight of a scorching gaze. “Eventually.”

  “Have you any idea how arrogant that sounded?”

  “Just telling it like it is,” he said, flashing a confident grin.

  “So you go after what you want and dump it when you get fed up,” she said caustically.

  His expression hardened, and the intimacy of the moment passed. She ought to be glad. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Instead, she felt oddly bereft and had to force herself not to hurtle right back into his arms. It had been pretty damned comfortable there, squished up against that broad chest of his.

  “I’ve already told you once. I did not ask Annabel to marry me and I only ditched her because I found her in bed with another man. I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s the truth.” He almost sneered at her. “Oh, and by the way, she hated Spirit and was adamantly opposed to my coming back.” He shook his head. “So much for being supportive.”

  “She’s never been here.”

  “That’s what she told you, is it?”

  “Look, let’s forget about the last five minutes and start again. We need to keep professional if this thing is to have any chance of working.”

  “And you need to trust me.”

  “I’ve known you for five minutes. I’ve known Annabel since my college days. She’s never lied to me.”

  “Is that right?” His eyes glistened like agate. “Ever met her mother?”

  “She doesn’t have a mother. Her parents died in an accident when she was in high school. That’s why she so enjoyed staying with my folks during the vacations.”

  “Your father being the newspaper magnate who gave her her first job?”

  “She got that job on merit!”

  Josh chuckled, but there was little mirth in the gesture. “I’m sure she did.”

  “What precisely are you implying? That she came on to my father?”

  He lifted his broad shoulders. “I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  “Which just goes to show how little you know her.”

  “Annabel’s father committed suicide when she was a teen.”

  Ellie gaped at him. “No, you’ve got that all wrong. Both parents were killed in a car accident.”

  “Nope. Her father made some bad investments, fell for a Ponzi scheme, and lost the lot. He couldn’t stand the shame and offed himself.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Ellie shook her head, trying to dispel both Josh’s words and a few odd remarks Annabel had made over the years that fitted with his scenario. “Why wouldn’t she have told me if it was true? We shared everything.”

  “Her mother was committed to a psychiatric unit for several years after that, and Annabel was on her own. It must have been tough for her, I’ll concede that much. Her mother recovered, but Annabel never wanted anything to do with her when she was released.” Josh sighed. “Okay, so her mother abandoned her when she was most needed, but that was hardly her fault.”

  “Annabel would never be so hard-hearted.”

  “Wouldn’t she?” Josh quirked a brow. “Everything has to be squeaky clean for Annabel. She’s ambitious and wouldn’t want even the suggestion of mental illness polluting her résumé.”

  Ellie fell back onto her stool. “Presumably you can prove all this?”

  His already dark expression became positively lethal. “Of course. Why would I expect you to take my word for it?”

  “You’re being unreasonable, asking me to question the word of a long-standing friend without something more concrete to base my suspicions on.”

  “She didn’t tell me about her parents, by the way. It was just that when I got to know her and she clung so doggedly, something about her behavior sent up warning flags, so I had her checked out. Everything was fine, unless I disagreed with her or she didn’t get her way.” Ellie’s head shot up. “Sound familiar, does it?” His voice softened. “I guess she used you in a similar manner to which she used me. You had something she wanted.”

  “And what was that?”

  “A father who could kick-start her career.” He headed for the door. “She’s lied to you all these years about her parents. Surely that makes you wonder if you got the complete story about our relationship or just the version she wanted you to hear.”

  Ellie was too stunned to defend Annabel or ask any more questions. With her mouth hanging unattractively open, she watched his retreating back—his retreating naked back—as he left the room.

  Chapter Five

  “What do you think, chérie?”

  Almost reverently, Ellie spooned bouillabaisse into her mouth, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the explosion of flavors on her tongue.

  “It’s a triumph, Marcel,” she assured the Lodge’s French chef.

  “Oui, naturally.”

  Ellie chuckled. “You obviously don’t do modesty.”

  “Modesty is for those with something to be modest about.” He frowned. “But the bouillabaisse, it lacks something, non?”

  “You worry too much.” Ellie took another spoonful of the delicious fish stew. “What did Josh and Rex say about it?”

  “They haven’t tried it yet.”

  The arrangement was that Ellie and the rest of the staff took their meals in the kitchen whenever they felt hungry. The food on offer was so delicious that Ellie found it hard to resist. If she carried on at this rate, she’d look like the back end of a car—no, bus. The same couldn’t be said for Josh and Rex, because she had yet to encounter them in the kitchen, or anywhere else, for that matter.

  “So you’re using me as a guinea pig again?” she said, feigning hurt.

  “Guinea pig? What’s this about guinea pigs?” Marcel threw his hands in the air. “I don’t put guinea pigs in my food.”

  Ellie smiled. Perhaps he enjoyed the screwed simile game, too. “Relax. It’s just an English expression. It means you’re experimenting on me.”

  “Ah, oui, that is so.”

  Appeased, Marcel went back to his pots and Ellie was left alone at the staff table to enjoy her meal. The chef was trying out various dishes for his restaurant menu and seemed to appreciate her opinion. Well, she was glad someone appreciated her round these parts since she’d barely seen Josh and Rex since her confrontation with the former two days earlier. True, they were continuing to help with the construction of the bar, as well as dealing with all their other stuff, but they never seemed to be in their shared office when she was there. Their workload was so hectic that she sometimes wondered if they ever slept.

  Ellie had been keeping her head down, too, sending out electronic invites to the media to have a look-see at the Lodge in another couple of days’ time. Her attachment featured a snow-covered image of the Lodge, with two of her favorite shots of Josh and Rex inset. The one of Josh in particular set her pulse racing whenever she looked at it. Bare-chested, his blond hair held back by a bandanna, she’d caught a look of deep concentration in his eyes as he lovingly sanded his piece of wood. Each time she looked at the shot she saw something different in it, but one thing never changed. His expression hinted at deep sexuality lying dormant beneath all those bulging muscles. Ellie doubted if there was a woman alive who wouldn’t take up the challenge to awaken it.

  She would have asked the guys’ permission to use their pictures, but since Josh in particular appeared to be taking pettin
ess to a new level by keeping firmly out of her way, she was damned if she’d bother.

  She tried not to think of his astonishing claims about Annabel’s parents. She had a horrible feeling he was speaking the truth, even before a file of papers appeared in her room, supporting his claims. She flicked through them, shaking her head repeatedly at the gruesome reading they made. Tears streamed down her face as she perused newspaper accounts of Annabel’s father’s selfish act and saw a grainy picture of a teenaged Annabel, looking grim yet dry-eyed at his graveside.

  “Why the hell didn’t she tell me?” Ellie said aloud. “She didn’t do anything to be ashamed of.”

  There was a copy of an investigator’s report, detailing the decline in Annabel’s mother’s health following her husband’s suicide. She was now living in a quiet suburb of Boston and had no contact with her daughter in spite of repeated attempts to get in touch with her.

  Ellie was consumed with the desire to apologize to Josh—except she had nothing to apologize for. Not really. She still wasn’t ready to absolve him from blame for breaking Annabel’s heart, much less admit he might have had good reason to do so.

  She gathered up her bag, ready to meet with a local television journalist whom she had in mind to shadow the guys. The woman was making quite a name for herself on the small screen as being hard-nosed but fair and had been enthusiastic about the scheme when they spoke on the phone. Ellie was keen to follow up before she had a chance to go cold on her. She would be here for the press conference and could check the place and the guys out for herself then. Ellie would make sure that they set some private time aside to meet with her. Even so, she was going into Vail now to sell it to her and keep her interest piqued. It was a lengthy drive and she needed to make an early start.

  Just before she left, she received an e-mail from her father in response to one she’d sent to him the night before. She hadn’t seen any point in beating about the bush and asked her father outright why he’d given Annabel her first break in his media empire. Her father made a point of never lying to his only child, but if there had been anything sexual between him and Annabel she’d hardly expected him to admit it. Annabel was very attractive, turning heads wherever she went. As well as being wealthy and powerful, her father was also a good-looking man. She didn’t want to believe that he or Annabel was capable of entering into a clandestine relationship—it was too tawdry for words.

  I don’t know why you’re asking me after all this time, but I guess the question was always going to come up sometime or other, she read. This isn’t something I want to discuss over cyberspace. Let’s meet up when I get back from Paris and we’ll have dinner.

  Love, Dad xx

  “Oh shit!”

  Ellie didn’t know what to make of her father’s cryptic response, but it didn’t auger well. If his relationship with Annabel was innocent, and if she’d landed such a plum job in his organization on merit, then he’d have come right out and said so. God forbid that Josh was right about her true modus operandi.

  Ellie frowned, unwilling to entertain the idea that had gradually taken root in her brain since Josh had suggested it and refused to budge. She was unswervingly loyal to Annabel, and to question her motives was something she found really hard to do. Besides, surely Ellie would have picked up the vibes if there’d been anything between Annabel and her father? Even the possibility of it made her feel physically ill. Her mother had still been alive at the time, the vibrant, driving force in their family. She’d always looked upon her parents as being dedicated to one another. Could she have been wrong about that as well?

  She took herself off to Vail, mulling the matter over during the drive. In spite of her preoccupation, she managed to paint a decent picture of the Lodge and its owners to Carla Baker, her selected journalist. The meeting ran on, and by the time she got back to Spirit, pleased with the way things had gone, darkness was falling.

  Reluctant to return to the Lodge and be ignored by the two men she couldn’t stop thinking about, Ellie gave in to the seductive lure of the Harmony Café, the smell of fresh bread wafting through the air making her empty stomach roil. She made a beeline for the welcoming eatery where locals seemed to make a habit of gathering.

  Except there weren’t any locals in that she recognized. Instead Annabel, looking stunning as always, sat in solitary splendor at a table with a clear view of the road. People cast her curious glances since she clearly didn’t belong in this setting, but no one approached her. When Annabel felt like being alone, she was versed in deterring people without uttering a single word.

  As soon as she saw Ellie, she jumped up from her seat and threw her arms round her. Ellie returned her hug, delighted to see her, all the doubts that had accumulated over the past couple of days instantly dissipating. This was the beautiful, talented, sassy Annabel who’d always had time for a lonely Brit trying to make her way through the confusing maze of the American college system. This was the Annabel who had no secrets from her.

  Except it seemed that she did.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” Ellie asked as soon as Annabel released her.

  “What’s to say I can’t come and see my best friend without an appointment?”

  Ellie smiled at the waitress who came to their table. She ordered a latte and a large pastry.

  “Nothing at all,” she said to Annabel when the waitress left them alone. “It’s just a surprise, is all. Did you ask for me at the Lodge?”

  “Yes, some snotty girl said you’d gone to Vail but were expected back tonight.”

  “You should have called and I would have made sure I was here.”

  “Oh, I was coming down anyway. The press conference,” she explained in response to Ellie’s blank look.

  Ellie inwardly groaned. She absolutely didn’t want Annabel or Josh feeling uncomfortable. “You’re assigned to that?”

  Annabel nodded. “It’s my beat.”

  “True.” Ellie had sent an invite to her paper but had assumed that Annabel would excuse herself. “Won’t you find it embarrassing?”

  The animation left her eyes. “I’m a professional.”

  “I know you are.” Ellie covered Annabel’s hand with one of her own. “But I don’t want to see you get hurt again. You’ve only just gotten over Josh.”

  “Who?”

  Ellie dutifully laughed. “The press conference isn’t for two days. Why are you here now?”

  “I thought I’d snoop about a bit. Get some background work covered.”

  “I can’t give you access to the Lodge ahead of the others, if that’s what you were hoping.” Ellie compressed her lips, determined not to let Annabel talk her round as she so easily could if she put her mind to it. “Sorry.”

  “Heavens, no. I can find out a lot more by straying from your carefully laid-out plans for the press.”

  Ellie smiled, wondering why her friend’s determination to snoop bothered her so much. More to the point, why was Annabel putting so much groundwork into what had to be a very small story for such a big paper as her father’s?

  “You ought to be aware that I’m getting a TV crew to follow Josh and Rex for the next couple of weeks or so, right up until the opening. Reality TV at its finest.”

  Annabel quirked a brow. “You have been persuasive, haven’t you? Shame you didn’t ask me.”

  “It needs to be visual,” Ellie said, thoughts of the TV producer Annabel was supposed to have seduced flooding her mind.

  “Yes, well, that will be me before too long.”

  “You’ve got another television opportunity?” Ellie smiled at her friend. “I’m so pleased for you.”

  “It might come to nothing.” She said no more about it and changed the subject.

  “How’s Josh?”

  Was it Ellie’s imagination, or did Annabel seem a little too eager to know? “Working his fingers to the bone,” she said. “He’s doing half the donkey work himself.”

  “Typical.” Annabel curled her upper lip. “He do
esn’t need to do that. There are plenty of decent workers available for hire.”

  “Perhaps he enjoys creating nice things?”

  “We can’t always do what we enjoy most. It projects the wrong image, and image is everything if you want to get on in life.” Ellie thought of her own image at that moment and grimaced. She was having a bad hair day, especially when compared to Annabel’s immaculate grooming, but then she’d long since given up aspiring to Annabel’s exacting standards. “He’s a leader, not a worker. I told him this was a bad idea.”

  “It’s something he needs to do. Besides, he’s got a lot invested in it. Perhaps he wants to save costs.”

  “He’s gotten to you already, hasn’t he?”

  Annabel spoke accusingly, her entire demeanor changing in a heartbeat from amiable to downright hostile, just like it always did when she was upset or didn’t get her way. Why hadn’t Ellie taken exception to that aspect of her character before now? Probably because she’d fallen into the habit of appeasing her when she got moody, she thought. She wasn’t the only one who reacted to her that way, either. Could it be that Annabel surrounded herself with sycophants?

  Of course not! Her father had been the same, and he didn’t have a sycophantic bone in his body. If Annabel fell into a funk when she came to stay during vacation time, her dad went out of his way to entertain her. Thoughts of her father’s enigmatic e-mail consumed her, and it was a moment before she realized Annabel was staring at her, waiting for an answer to her question.

  “No, he hasn’t gotten to me,” she said quietly, wondering why she didn’t mention that kiss. She told Annabel everything as a rule, but there was no point in upsetting her by mentioning that the ex she hadn’t gotten over yet had made a pass at her. If that’s what it had been. “In fact, I barely see him.”

  “Barely is a good way to describe it,” Annabel said stiffly, stirring her coffee so savagely that it slopped over the rim of her mug. She didn’t appear to notice. “Taking pictures of Josh half-naked is a bit tacky, isn’t it?”

  Ellie grinned. “That’s what he said, but I talked him into it.”