Steal The CEO's Daughter - A Carny Bad Boy Romance

by Layla Valentine

“You heard the lady, bring us all the pickles you got!” I commanded.

  The flight attendant rolled her eyes, and Ella buried her face against my shoulder, laughing melodically. I brushed a hand through her hair, noticing that my girl seemed particularly radiant that afternoon. I attributed it to the excitement brewing in her gut. I mean, it wasn’t to say that Ella wasn’t always radiant, but she seemed to almost be glowing.

  I was drawn from my thoughts when the flight attendant brought a tray full of dill pickle spears. Ella was obviously delighted, grabbing the tray and pulling it into her lap. She balanced it there precariously, gobbling down the sour spears as quick as you please.

  If I’d expected her to eat like a little bird, I’d been dead wrong. She was eating like she hadn’t seen food in a good year or so. I smirked to myself, and though the way she was going at the goods was something short of ladylike, I certainly wasn’t about to point it out.

  We had the rest of our lives to be prim and proper, if we so chose. I sure wasn’t about to choose that lifestyle, and at this rate, it looked like my princess would feel the same. I made a mental note of just how much she seemed to like those damn pickles, wondering if they made all-you-can-eat pickle buffets. Sure, it wouldn’t be your typical wedding catering, but we were anything but your typical couple.

  As soon as she finished the last pickle, Ella burped loudly, patting herself on the stomach. In that moment, all I could think was just how much I loved that crazy woman. I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her, and I certainly couldn’t wait to see her surprised expression when I popped the question.

  This was gonna be the trip of a lifetime.

  ELLA

  I hoped I wasn’t being horribly obvious, but from the looks of things, Joey didn’t have a clue. I only hoped I could keep it that way until the end of the trip. Of course, he didn’t know the little things that my mom would have picked up on immediately. For example, how I hadn’t touched a pickle since third grade, or how under normal circumstances, I would be begging for a drink by now.

  I couldn’t help the subtle touches to my stomach, a sense of wonder washing over me every time I pressed my fingertips to the flat plane of my abdomen. It wouldn’t be flat much longer; that much was for sure.

  Before you come to any conclusions, no, I hadn’t been sleeping around with anyone besides the man at my side. I had no doubt that the life growing inside of me was his. While I knew it was soon, and I would have to tell him before long, I wanted to at least make the trip to London before I made my confession.

  We’d not been as careful as we should have been, and I’d forgotten to bring my birth control on the cruise. You couldn’t really blame me; I never would have expected to fall in love while on a company trip to Rio.

  I also never expected to get pregnant at such a young age, but…well, here we were.

  I knew if I told Joey now, he’d be waiting on me hand and food for the duration of the trip. He already did that well enough, but I didn’t want him to think I needed to be completely bedridden before we even got to Paris. After all, I wasn’t very far along.

  I was unsure if my mom would be thrilled or furious when she found out, or perhaps a mix of both. I planned to tell both her and Joey about the pregnancy once we had made it to London, if I hadn’t cracked and told Joey before then. I knew my mom would be upset that I’d kept it from her, but as it stood, I liked having this secret bit of knowledge, something that was truly mine, to share only when I was ready.

  The plane gave another little quake, and I felt a rush of queasiness wash over me. I bolted out of my seat, lunging past Joey and the other passengers to rush to the bathroom. Fortunately, there wasn’t a line, though I could have done without the smell inside the confined area. It only served to heighten my nausea until suddenly I was spilling my guts out. I heard a knock on the door and tried to quiet myself down.

  “Birdie, are you okay? Those pickles go down the wrong way? I can see how, the way you were scarfing them down,” Joey asked through the door.

  “Yeah, baby. I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute,” I called out, another wave of nausea washing over me.

  It seemed like an eternity before I escaped the hell that was the airplane bathroom, but Joey was waiting for me with a concerned expression as I emerged. There was something different about him, as of recently. He seemed more concerned than ever, protecting me even more than he had when we had first met on the cruise. If I had ever questioned his adoration for me, that sensation fell away with just how much he worried himself over me.

  “My sweet little birdie,” he murmured, drawing me into his arms and kissing me on the forehead.

  He guided me back to our seats, and I shifted back into my place beside the window. He watched me carefully, obvious concern in his gaze. It only further cemented my decision to wait to tell him the news; if he doted on me this much in normal circumstances, I knew he’d drive himself crazy if he knew that his future son or daughter was growing inside of me.

  It was nice to have the attention, but this trip wasn’t just about me. It was about our future together. I didn’t want to go from zero to fifty by telling him he’d knocked me up, though it seemed I would have little choice before long. I knew he would be thrilled, as family meant so much to him, and I was certain that we would be the best parents any baby could ask for. I’d be the kind of cool mom who let them invite their friends over on a school night, or paid their tuition to art school.

  Okay, maybe I was projecting a bit. All the same, I knew the little life inside of me would be showered with love from all directions. While I knew my mother would be more difficult to win over, she was the last thing on my mind in that moment.

  All I knew was that Joey would be the best father a kid could ask for, and the best husband a woman could want, if he someday decided to pop the question. Until then, we had our whole lives ahead of us, as well as a new life to complete our family.

  This was going to be the trip of a lifetime.

  The End

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  Killer

  Layla Valentine

  And now, as promised, here is my previous book, Killer, in full.

  Enjoy!

  Copyright 2017 by Layla Valentine

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  This book was previously trial published under my other pen name, Evelyn Troy.

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  Prologue

  Looking around at the people crammed into the gallery, all waiting with bated breath for the jurors to file in, Cassandra guessed that at least half of them were journalists.

  She had had the feeling of swimming upstream ever since the defendant, Jack Hardy, had been arrested, and now at the conclusion of her assignment—the first big case she had followed in her career so far—Cassandra was torn between feeling excited that she would be the reporter covering the news for the paper, and feeling guilty her career had received a boost on the back of a woman being murdered.

  “What do you think the verdict will be?”

  Cassandra’s ears pricked up at the words of one of the other members of the gallery. She looked, to Cassandra’s eyes, to be a regular citizen—not a journalist, nor one of the family members or friends of the defendant or the victim.

  “Oh he’s guilty, for sure,” the woman’s friend responded with a shrug. “I mean, look at the evidence against the guy.”

  Cassandra made a mental note t
o ask a few of the non-press members of the gallery for their opinions—it would be a good addition to her article, which was due only a few hours after the verdict came out.

  “They’ve been holed up for so long though,” someone else observed, joining in the conversation. “Maybe they think the evidence isn’t that compelling.”

  “They just want to make sure they’re doing it right,” the second person, a man who Cassandra estimated to be in his thirties, said, brushing aside the concern. “It’s a murder trial; they don’t want to put someone away for life or potentially put him up for the death penalty if they’re not one hundred percent sure of their decision. I’d be more worried if they’d been in-and-out.”

  “What do you think? Is he guilty?”

  Cassandra noticed some of the other reporters listening into the hushed conversations; they were all interested in a bit of color for their coverage of the conclusion to the trial.

  “Oh, totally,” the man said, shaking his head as if to deny there could be any doubt. “You saw the evidence against him. Besides, given his past…”

  Before the conversation could get much further, the lawyers filed in, and the officers of the court took up their positions. Cassandra’s heart beat faster in her chest as she prepared herself for the moment she had been waiting months for: the verdict.

  Cassandra watched, on tenterhooks, as the lawyers took up their positions, and the judge entered the courtroom. She rose with everyone else at the command from the bailiff, and sat down when the judge did.

  She stole a glance at the defendant; Jack Hardy sat almost completely still at the table opposite the judge, his face perfectly expressionless as the formalities dragged on.

  He was dressed sharply, as he had been every day of the trial, in a slate gray suit that fit as though it had been made for him. Cassandra thought that his defense team had had their work cut out for them, trying to convince the jury that the man on trial was innocent. Even his stillness radiated a kind of unspoken threat, a calm before the storm that only the most overconfident or ignorant people would ignore. Hardy was built like an oak tree: broad, muscular shoulders, a lean body, perfectly straight when he stood, rippling with power. His light brown hair was combed back from his forehead, parted on the left with laser precision.

  Hardy looked brutal, and Cassandra reflected that in his usual line of work, as a professional bounty hunter, and even as a Navy SEAL that, it must definitely be an asset to him. In a murder trial, though, she thought his attorneys should have tried to get him to lose some muscle, to look a little flabby, a little scrawny. As it was, he looked as though he could kill with his bare hands and not break a sweat. Cassandra had glimpsed Hardy’s face up close more than once during the proceedings, and his bright blue eyes had looked out of his face without any trace of fear or remorse, like bottomless pools of deep, arctic ice.

  The jurors filed in, taking their seats quickly, and Cassandra’s heart started beating even faster. Contrary impulses danced in her brain: if Hardy beat the murder rap, the surprise verdict would sell so many papers that it wouldn’t matter what she wrote. If, on the other hand, he was found guilty, the paper would still sell, but Cassandra would have to work harder to set herself apart from the other journalists covering the story.

  “Madam Foreperson, have you reached a verdict?”

  Cassandra nodded along with the formalities, wishing that there was some way to get through them more quickly.

  “We have, Your Honor,” the tired-looking woman said.

  She passed the written verdict to the bailiff, who brought it to the judge. The court clerk rose.

  “In the charge of First Degree Murder, we, the jury, find the defendant, Jack Hardy, guilty.”

  Cassandra barely heard the rest of what was said; she already knew the most important part. As the clerk came to the end of the reading, the courtroom began to come to life, people murmuring to each other, a few people audibly crying, others letting out muted cheers and congratulations. Cassandra wasn’t entirely sure how she felt. She looked down at her hands, thinking about her involvement in the case.

  At her office, late one night, she had received an anonymous phone call saying a murder had taken place in a house in a respectable suburban neighborhood. After calling 911 with the location, Cassandra had driven to the house, casing the scene, before the detectives arrived. Her bravery and tenacity in following the tip had impressed her boss, who then gave her a huge assignment covering the case. In the course of investigating the murder of Laura Granger, Cassandra uncovered facts about the NYPD officer and city’s sweetheart that had chilled her—and made it clear that the double life she was leading had made it almost a matter of when she would piss off the wrong person, not if.

  You’re here to work, Cassandra told herself firmly. Stop woolgathering. She looked up from her hands and scanned the room; the lawyers for the prosecution were congratulating themselves, patting each other on the back, talking to the family and friends of the victim. Happy and sad tears alike were on the loved ones’ faces. Cassandra turned her attention onto the jury and saw both relief and apprehension on the faces of the men and women. There were some, she could see, who didn’t exactly like the verdict they had collectively arrived at. There would be interviews later, and those members of the jury who had doubts—but not enough to count for reasonable doubt—were clearly dreading the grilling to come.

  A blur of movement in the corner of her eye caught Cassandra’s attention. She turned her gaze toward it, and saw that it was Jack Hardy, rising to his feet. He turned his head, his gaze moving over the gallery, and in an instant the deep-set blue eyes were on her. Cassandra glanced to either side of herself, trying to convince herself that Hardy was looking at someone else, but when she shifted slightly to the side, she saw his gaze shift with her.

  People started filtering out of the courtroom, and while Cassandra’s ears buzzed with the loud hum of conversations going on around her, she couldn’t make sense of anything around her. As Hardy stared at her, Cassandra felt as though she’d been plunged into a vat of ice water, but she couldn’t make herself look away.

  Hardy only broke his steady, uncompromising stare when two of the court officers grabbed him and turned him around, leading him towards the exit where he’d be taken to jail to await sentencing.

  As he walked away, Cassandra shook her head; she had never seen a look like the one in Hardy’s eyes as he stared up at her. She wasn’t sure whether what it had caused her to feel was a shiver or a tingle. It was like some base reaction to the undeniably attractive man in front of her, mixed with a wave of fear that he might launch himself at her and do to her what the jury had found him guilty of.

  “Cass!”

  Cassandra started at the sound of her name and looked around to see who had called out to her. She saw Max, her boss, approaching, walking against the tide of people who were heading out of the gallery, towards the exits.

  Show’s over, nothing to see here folks, move along, she thought idly, trying to push down the strange feelings that lingered in her mind and body at the strange look Hardy had given her.

  “You’re going to have that final draft on my desk by four, right?”

  “Yeah—yeah, Max, I’ve got it on lock,” Cassandra said, giving herself another shake.

  “You’ve done great work on this so far,” Max said, finally making it to her side. He patted her shoulder and there was something about his touch—about the contrast of Max’s cheeriness with Hardy’s ice-cold stare only moments before—that gave Cassandra a creepy-crawly feeling. “That in-depth on Laura Granger sold so well we had to do a second run, and now this front-page story will do the same.”

  Cassandra smiled, trying to push down her nerves so that they wouldn’t show on her face.

  “Thanks, boss,” she said. “I should probably get to work on it now, actually, if I’m going to make the six o’clock print run.”

  Max patted her shoulder again and Cassandra felt a twitch somewhere a
round her stomach. Normally her boss was all about business; even when she’d turned in the finished Granger article, he hadn’t seemed all that impressed at what she had managed to uncover.

  “You’re on the rise, Holloway,” Max said, giving her the warmest smile Cassandra had ever seen him give someone who wasn’t an advertiser. “As soon as today’s print run is over, come see me for your next assignment. I want to capitalize on your new-found fame and see if we can’t dig up some more readers while you’re still a household name.”

  He smiled again, before turning around to speak to someone else—an editor for one of the other city rags. Cassandra noticed that his wedding band was gone from its usual place on his finger. She shuddered, realizing the reason behind his sudden friendliness toward her.

  Think about your career, Cass. He’s right about that at least. Strike while the iron is hot, get this scoop on his desk and get the next assignment on the roll.

  Cassandra hurried out of the courtroom, trying to put the two odd interactions behind her as she headed to interview the people still milling around outside.

  Chapter One

  Cassandra

  Three months after the conclusion of the trial, Cassandra turned out of the parking garage at the office of The Daily Inquisitor, cautiously making her way up the street and away from the building in the eerie early morning quiet.

  Her eyes felt as if they’d been packed in sand; dry, scratchy, and bloodshot, and about thirty minutes away from being utterly useless. Just enough time to get home and get into bed, she thought, turning up the volume on the stereo.

  By three in the morning, most channels had switched over to a mostly talk-radio format.