by Tara Leigh
MANHATTAN MOGUL
A New York City Romance
Tara Leigh
Contents
Manhattan Mogul
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
AUTHOR NOTE
BOOKS by Tara Leigh
About the Author
MANHATTAN MOGUL
A fake engagement. A sham of a wedding.
A lie dressed up in diamonds and lace . . .
Is still a lie.
NASH
In business, I’m ruthless.
The Black Knight of Wall Street.
And in the ring, I’m downright vicious.
I don’t rescue damsels in distress.
Nixie is on the run from her past.
She’s a distraction I don’t need, a complication I don’t want.
But when she needs a husband to claim her inheritance,
I’m only too willing to play the part.
NIXIE
Nash is my fiancé, but he isn’t mine.
Our vow to love, honor, and cherish each other,
till death do us part,
is a promise we have no intention of keeping.
Our union is a solution to my problems.
The ultimate marriage of convenience.
You are cordially invited to the biggest wedding Wall Street’s ever seen . . .
Chapter 1
Nash
It’s the girl that catches my eye first. A tiny bit of a thing, her baggy jeans drag along the pockmarked sidewalk, her arms clasped tightly across her chest. It’s dusk, that moody placeholder between afternoon and evening, the sun tiredly drooping toward the horizon, the moon just a crescent-shaped smudge in the sky. But even beneath the gritty streetlights of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the red hair piled on top of her head shines like a halo.
This is my old neighborhood, although you would never know it as I sit behind the tinted windows of my chauffeur-driven SUV. Most of my days are spent just two miles and a world away from here, plotting corporate takeovers on Wall Street.
Proof of my success is written in black and white, or maybe I should say green, at the bottom of my bank statement. For those who call me a coldhearted bastard, I’d say the Arctic is treating me pretty damn well.
But I still come back to the boxing gym where I first learned to fight. Crunching numbers gets tedious, and you can’t slaughter the competition if you don’t keep your killer instinct sharp.
Which is why I noticed the petite redhead in the first place. I couldn’t tell whether she was beautiful because I didn’t see her face. I didn’t know if she had a good body because her loose clothes disguised her figure. Face, tits, ass, legs—those are usually what draw my attention to the opposite sex, although not necessarily in that order. But this one . . . it’s her stance, hunched over. And her pace, too quick.
Like she’s running from something.
The girl doesn’t make a sound, yet everything about her screams prey.
And this is not the kind of neighborhood where vulnerability thrives. I should know.
Sure enough, two thugs are hot on her tail. Are they chasing her? Is that why she darts into the alley across the street like a scared rabbit?
“Home, boss?” My driver shifts into gear, about to pull away from the curb.
Muttering a curse beneath my breath, I toss my gym bag onto the opposite seat and launch myself out of the SUV. “Gimme a minute.”
I slam the door, trotting after them without waiting for a response, then slow my pace at the entrance of the walkway. Hugging the shadows and keeping my footsteps light, I avoid the beer bottles and soda cans littering the ground that would announce my presence like a fog horn.
The alley itself is dark, but there is enough light to see the three people less than thirty feet away.
Two men.
One woman.
The gap between them closing fast. Three paces. Two paces. One. And then it is gone.
A haunting wolf whistle splits the air. The woman’s head jerks up, her russet mane coming loose and spilling down her back. Too late, I see one of the men reach out and grab a chunk of it in his fist. Her high-pitched yelp echoes inside my eardrums as I sprint toward them.
I am just a few feet away when I grab for one of the bottles I avoided only seconds earlier and slam it against the brick wall, the sound of shattering glass an explosion in the narrow space.
The two thugs whip around, but they are from the neighborhood, too. Hood rats, they’re well-versed in protecting what is theirs, including the girl they’ve clearly claimed as their own.
“Get. The. Fuck. Off. Her.” Red hot rage courses through my veins, but my words come out slow. I’m no bleeding heart—some say I have no heart at all—but I do have a deep-rooted, bottomless disgust for those who pick on the defenseless, who turn unsuspecting individuals into victims.
The man holding the redhead speaks first, pulling her into his chest. I notice his ears, small and crinkled, set close to his head. Fighter’s ears. “What’s it to you?” Harsh consonants and clipped, rough-edged vowels. The voice could be my own, years ago. We come from the same gutter.
I don’t know her, don’t really want to know her, either—what kind of woman walks around these streets without even a shred of self-awareness? My only goal is to extricate her from the two pairs of hands she’d been too oblivious to avoid, and then I’ll be on my way.
“Yeah,” his friend echoes, wagging bushy eyebrows that overcompensate for a bald scalp. “Back off, slick.”
I have a passing urge to laugh. These fools have no idea who they’re dealing with. In sweats and two-thousand-dollar, special-order Dior Air Jordans, I look like just another rich prick slumming it downtown. Oh, I am rich. Rich beyond their wildest dreams. But my expertise on Wall Street is matched by an ability to break jerk-offs like these in two. “Not gonna happen. Let the girl go.”
“Or what?”
A harsh snicker rumbles from my chest. “You think I’m handing out fucking options? Let her go and you just might walk out of here with your kneecaps intact.”
Eyebrows looks from me to Cauliflower Ears who makes the mistake of shaking his head, a stubbornly defiant expression on his face. His thoughts are unspoken but obvious. There’s two of us and one of him, and the girl is too good of a prize to give up. We can take him.
“Don’t think so,” Eyebrows says, answering for them both. There is a pinging noise, and a flash of steel catches my eye. His arm lifts, a knife aimed my way.
I react instantaneously, instinctively. The bottle flies from my right hand straight toward his bald skull, opening up a jagged gash in the shiny skin. I keep moving, closing the distance between us and jabbing an elbow into his ribs, the curved bones splintering on impact. He tries a defensive jab but I anticipate the movement and dodge, catching his wrist and twisting it hard.
He howls in pain, his knife hitting the ground a second after I break his radius in half.
The urge to destroy him is almost irresistible. What punishment should I mete out next? I could crush his nose with a spinning backhand to the face. Collapse his windpi
pe with a vicious throat punch. Or maybe I should pick up his own knife and–
I stop myself, reluctantly falling back on the principles of restraint and discipline that are at the core of every true fighter. There is no honor in going for the jugular when a kick to the solar plexus will do.
This guy, however, deserves everything I have to give and more.
But . . . there is the girl to consider. I step away and jerk my chin toward the far end of the alley. “Go.”
Eyebrows doesn’t hesitate. Holding his broken arm tightly to his side, blood dripping down his neck, he takes off, his frantic footsteps echoing off the brick walls.
Cauliflower Ears, having witnessed what I’ve done to his friend, shoves his hostage at me and sprints in the same direction. I catch her by her narrow shoulders, stifling the urge to chase after him and deliver an equally memorable lesson. “You okay?”
She tilts her head back to meet my gaze. And it’s as if I’m staring into twin flames. I’ve never seen a pair of eyes burn so brightly, absolutely searing in their intensity. Like they’re fed by a fire burning deep within her soul.
And for a moment, a sliver of a second, I feel something I can’t quite describe. The loosing of a lock. The falling of a weight. The exhale of a breath. Just . . .
Something.
But whatever it is, whatever it was, is snuffed out when the owner of those eyes rears back and slaps at my wrists. “Get your hands off me!”
I release her immediately. What the fuck?
“Gladly.” I’ve known plenty of crazy females in my life, but this one takes the cake. A naive porcelain doll who has no idea how close she came to being irrevocably shattered. I back away, but not quickly enough to miss her frown when she slides a palm down her side, her earlier anger turning to confusion when her fingers come away streaked with blood. Her blood.
Fuck. Cauliflower Ears must have had a knife, too.
I catch her just before she hits the ground.
Jay’s face is impassive as I come out of the alley, holding an unconscious woman in my arms. He opens the back door and I slip inside, cushioning her head against my shoulder. Hair the color of a freshly minted penny spills down my arm, pooling in my lap.
Jay jumps back into the driver’s seat, twisting around to look at me. “I’ve seen ladies fall all over you, but this one might be taking it a little too far.”
I grimace at his attempt at humor. “Can I get more light back here?”
He pushes a button, illuminating the interior of the Navigator, and takes a flashlight from the glove compartment. I raise her shirt high enough to assess the deep gauge carved into her waist. It begins just above the waistband of her jeans and ends just below her ribcage, though it doesn’t appear to be life-threatening. I take a clean towel from my bag and press it against her side, hoping to staunch the flow of blood.
Jay lets out a low whistle. “That’s gonna hurt when she wakes up.”
Stealing a glance at her face, an unfamiliar pang of sympathy twists in my gut. I barely looked at her while I was dealing with Eyebrows and Cauliflower Ears. And afterward, her unusual eyes had garnered most of my attention. Those eyes are shuttered now, giving me the opportunity to look my fill.
And what a view it is.
The plane of her forehead is smooth and relaxed, no trace of the earlier frown tugging at her brows. Gold eyelashes fan out against high cheekbones dusted with tiny freckles. Her nose is a narrow ski jump that juts above a mouth as plump and juicy as a fresh strawberry.
She really is a porcelain doll.
“Should I make tracks for the hospital?”
I shake my head. In any Emergency Room in the city, she wouldn’t be seen for hours.
“No. Get Doc on the line and take us home,” I say, keeping pressure on her wound, the towel slowly becoming red. This girl isn’t about to become a beautiful corpse on my watch.
“Sure thing, Boss.” Jay turns back in his seat and puts the car into gear, switching off the interior lights. It doesn’t matter, though. The image of her heart-shaped face is seared into my corneas.
A moment later, Doc’s voice comes through the car’s speakers. Doc is Dr. Carmichael, a concierge physician I pay a small fortune to have at my beck and call. When you work and play at my level, convenience is easily bought with the swipe of a credit card. An Amex Black Card, that is. “Nash, how can I help you?”
“Meet me at my place. Now.”
My apartment consists of the entire top floor of the highest, most expensive skyscraper in Battery Park City. On one side I look out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, on the other is the Freedom Tower. As far as I’m concerned, Central Park and the stuffy uptown crowd packed into the buildings at its perimeter can go to the pigeons. Judging from the amount of bird droppings covering the sidewalks, maybe it already has.
I carry the girl into my bedroom and place her gently on my duvet. I take off her sneakers, threadbare red Converses that have seen better days, while Jay brings me a fresh towel.
A few minutes later, Dr. Carmichael rushes through the door. “Taking in strays, I see,” he comments, dropping his black bag on the floor and reaching inside for a stethoscope.
“Very funny. She was on the wrong end of a knife fight.” I gesture at her shirt, the lower half almost entirely stained a deep reddish-brown, and he lifts it to expose the skin beneath, his lips pursing at her wound. I add, “She didn’t faint when she was cut. It wasn’t until later, when she saw the blood on her hand.”
Doc nods but his attention is on her, not me. Tearing my own eyes away, I leave him with his new patient and walk out of the room, shaking off my body’s strange, visceral reaction to the unconscious girl splayed across my mattress.
More than just curiosity. Protectiveness.
But more than that, too. Attraction. Intrigue, even.
I want her to wake up, I realize. I want to feel her eyes on me again, explore the amber blaze I’d been so taken aback by earlier. Discover if the rest of her burns as brightly.
With a start, I pull myself together. I’m curious about a lot of things. How grandfather clocks work, for example. The laws of physics. Cryptography.
Protectiveness is a given. I will not stand by when women or children are in danger.
And I’m attracted to beautiful women. Who isn’t?
But they don’t intrigue me, no matter how beautiful they are.
Once I wash her blood off my hands, I pour a double shot of whiskey into a crystal old fashioned glass and head for my office. Six televisions hang on one wall, each set to a different news network, their sound muted. I scan them quickly, but the biggest news of the day is the remembrance ceremony commemorating the anniversary of 9/11.
I don’t need to remember.
I’ve never forgotten.
I lost two brothers that day. My older brother at the hands of insane zealots who believed weaponizing 747s entitled them to eternity in paradise and seventy-two virgins.
And my baby brother more than a decade later when he ran into a burning building and never came out. To Wyatt, there were no greater heroes than the firefighters who went into the Towers, risking their lives to save Scott and so many others like him.
But Scott couldn’t be saved. And Wyatt . . . he died a hero and left behind a family.
The echos of the past are quieted by three short raps of Doc’s knuckles on my open office door. I look up. “How is she?”
“Fine, now. She woke up as I was examining her wound, and I gave her a mild sedative and a local anesthetic before I stitched her up. But I erred on the cautious side and expect she’ll wake up in a few hours. I left enough painkillers to get her through the next couple of days, along with anti-bacterial meds, on the nightstand. And her dirty clothes are in the bathroom sink.”
I nod, exhaling a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Thanks, Doc. Appreciate it.”
“Anytime.” He starts to walk out and then turns back. “I’d like to return tomorrow mornin
g. Check on her again.”
Tomorrow morning?
No woman has ever spent the night in my apartment.
Because I don’t bring women back to my apartment. Ever. I keep a suite at a nearby hotel for that.
It’s not that I hire escorts and want someplace anonymous for our trysts, although I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about it. How easy it would be to pick up the phone, place my order, and have a girl delivered to me within the hour. Ready and willing to please.
Most of the women I meet are ready and willing to please, too, but getting them to leave adds a layer of awkwardness I prefer to do without. I slip away while they’re still sleeping and room service knows to send up an elegant breakfast by eight. A handwritten note that reads Good morning, beautiful seems to lessen the sting of my disappearing act.
I roll suddenly tense shoulders, tossing back the remains of my glass in one swallow. “Good. Do that.” First time for everything.
Nixie
Jerking awake, I suck in an agonized breath, drawing it through my teeth as I feel for the brand that has obviously been seared into my right side. The pain is biting and sharp, like the sting of a thousand wasps, and so shocking my mind temporarily goes blank with it, leaving no memory to grab hold of for an explanation.
My touch is at once urgent and tentative, feeling for ruined, raw flesh. But all I find is a neatly-taped gauze bandage.
A tide of memory rushes in, depositing bits of the past along the barren shore of my mind. The skirmish in the alley. Two men with stained teeth, shifty eyes, and foul breath. And one man who charged in and turned what I’m certain would have been a basic mugging into a terrifying knife fight. There wasn’t much in my wallet but I’d have gladly handed it over to walk away uninjured.
