Читать книгу His Black Sheep Bride / The Billionaire Baby Bombshell: His Black Sheep Bride / The Billionaire Baby Bombshell - Anna DePalo - Страница 10

The bar of the Carlyle Hotel was as good a place as any for three notorious bachelors to lie low.

Or rather, two notorious bachelors and one notorious groom, Sawyer amended.

It was ironic for him to lie low, since he was the press. But these were his friends.

Like his two fellow aristocrats, he’d grown up here, there and everywhere. Still, despite their peripatetic existence, he and his bar companions had managed to become friends.

And now they had another thing in common. Ever since the wedding fiasco at St. Bart’s nearly two weeks ago, they were imbrued by the scandal of the moment.

The bar, with its dark woods and mellow lighting, was masculine and clubby and the perfect atmosphere to come together and commiserate.

It was also discreet without being sequestered. Because Sawyer would be damned if he was going to tuck in his tail and hide.

“Hell of way to crash a wedding, Easterbridge,” James Carsdale, Duke of Hawkshire, said, going straight to the heart of the matter.

“You could have given us some warning,” Sawyer added drily.

Sawyer had to admire Colin’s sangfroid. Of the three of them, the marquess was the most reserved and enigmatic. And now he’d just thrown not one, but two ancient British families into upheaval with his surprising news at the wedding—and his shock-maximizing method of delivery.

In response, Colin Granville, Marquess of Easterbridge, who’d been the last to arrive, took a swallow of his Scotch on the rocks.

They were sitting at one corner of the bar, away from the few other patrons. Since it was a hot and sunny day, and still a couple of hours from sunset, the dark bar was not even half-full.

“You’re the media, Melton, and you were a groomsman,” Colin finally pointed out lazily. “A double conflict of interest. You’ll understand why I didn’t take you into my confidence.”

Sawyer took issue. “You know I was picked as a groomsman because Dillingham and I are distantly related through our mothers. We’re not friendly in a true sense.”

“Yes,” Colin responded wryly, “but that fact, along with your role as one of the world’s most famous press barons, made you dynamite for the wedding party. The expectation of glowing press coverage was likely more than Dillingham could pass up. Not to mention cementing the extended family relationship.”

Sawyer shook his head. “As it turned out, the only dynamite at the wedding was you, and Dillingham got more media coverage than he bargained for.”

In response, Colin raised his glass in mock salute.

“If you couldn’t confide in Melton,” Hawk said, resting his elbow on the back of his chair so he could lean back in his position between his companions, “you could’ve at least told me.”

“Spoken like a true international man of mystery, Mr. Fielding,” Colin returned.

Sawyer smothered a laugh. He couldn’t picture their carefree, sandy-haired friend trying to pass himself off as a mere mister. Nor did he understand why Hawk would have wanted to.

“Right, and what’s going on there Hawk?” Sawyer asked. “The rumor mill, and pardon me for reading my own newspapers, has it that you were more than friendly with a certain lovely wedding planner—”

Hawk grimaced. “What’s going on is a private matter.”

“Precisely my point,” Colin said.

“A private matter, Your Grace?” Sawyer quizzed. “You mean between you and your alias, James Fielding?”

“Put a sock in it, Melton,” the duke growled.

“Yes, Melton,” Colin said, siding with Hawk, “unless you’d like us to quiz you on your pursuit of the fair Ms. Kincaid.”

It was Sawyer’s turn to grimace. His friends knew his acquisition of Kincaid News was tied up with Tamara’s hand in marriage. Fortunately, they didn’t know the particulars about his most recent interactions with Tamara. She’d gotten under his skin—so much so that he’d kissed her. And it had been some kiss—hot and wonderful enough to leave a man thirsting for more.

“I’ve seen Kincaid’s daughter with a date,” Hawk commented, arching a brow. “Always the same one.”

Sawyer shrugged. “She takes a date from time to time.”

“A date who’s not you,” Colin pointed out.

“Just an occasional date?” Hawk probed. “And you know this how?”

Sawyer gave a Cheshire-cat grin. “From the man himself, Mr. Tom Vance, lately of the rock band Zero Sum, and perhaps soon to be the recipient of some very good career news.”

Colin quirked an eyebrow, for once betraying a hint of surprise.

Hawk started to shake his head. “Don’t go there …”

Since he already had, Sawyer gave both of them a bland look. “Know of any good West Coast record producers?”

She was sunk.

Or more accurately, practically destitute.

Tamara stared at the letter in her hand. Her bid for investors had fallen flat. Financing was tight these days, and people apparently weren’t lining up to give money to a lone jewelry designer with a big idea and not much else to her name.

She’d maxed out her credit cards and had already gobbled up her allotment of small business loans.

She looked around her loft from her seat at a workbench cluttered with pliers, clasps and assorted gemstones. Her business had a name, Pink Teddy Designs, and not much else these days. Yesterday, she’d received notice her rent would be increasing, so soon even the four walls around her would cease to exist—as far as she and her business went, anyway.

She’d have to find another place to live and work. There was no way she could afford a ten percent rent increase—not with things the way they were.

She’d never have admitted this to Sawyer when she’d encountered him last week at the fashion party in TriBeCa, but these days she was hanging by a thread—one that was becoming very frayed very fast, ever since she’d left her salaried position two years ago at a top jewelry design firm to strike out on her own.

Rats.

She was desperate—and Sawyer’s words reverberated through her mind. I’m in a position to help you move your jewelry business to the next level.

No, she wouldn’t let herself go there.

And with any luck, Sawyer didn’t have a clue as to just how dire her current financial situation was. He hadn’t seemed as if he did. In fact, his words to her that night indicated he thought she was looking to expand her business, not merely survive.

She hoped her appearance had also served to throw him off the scent. She’d dressed to project an image of success. She’d worn expensive earrings of her own design to the fashion party—as much for advertising as for anything else, though the earrings were worth much more than the typical Pink Teddy piece of semiprecious jewelry.

Yes, she dreamed of expanding her business and having her name added to the roster of top celebrity jewelry designers. But she’d also had to start small, given her financing, or rather lack thereof. And now she was nearly broke.

People assumed she had money—or at least connections—as the daughter of a millionaire Scottish viscount. In fact, she was entitled to be addressed as the Honourable Tamara Kincaid and not much else. After her parents’ divorce when she was seven, she’d gone to reside in the United States with her mother, who had been able to maintain a respectable, but not settled, lifestyle. Instead, thanks to child-support payments, Tamara had been entrusted to the care of a series of babysitters, schools and summer camps while her peripatetic mother had continued to travel and move them within the United States.

Her mother resided in Houston now with husband number three, the owner of a trio of car dealerships, having finally achieved a measure of stability.

Tamara sighed. Partly because of the physical distance, she and her mother weren’t very close, but a fringe benefit was that her mother didn’t interfere much in her life.

Of course, she could hardly claim the same benefit with respect to her father, who owned an apartment in New York City.

But unlike her mother, she’d thumbed her nose at her father’s money. Because the strings attached had been more than she’d been able to accept. As she’d grown older, her father had made his opinions known, and her artsy tendencies, her penchant for the bohemian and her taste for the unconventional had not gone over well.

Her father’s attempts to meddle had, of course, reached their zenith in his crazy plan to marry her off to Sawyer.

Really, that scheme was beyond ridiculous.

Sure, her parents’ marriage had been an ill-advised union between an American and a British aristocrat—a still-naive girl from Houston on the one hand, and the young and ambitious heir to a viscountcy on the other. But her starry-eyed mother, who’d imagined herself in love, had been thrilled by the prospect of residing in a British manor house.

In contrast, Tamara prided herself on being a worldly-wise New Yorker. And much as she hated to admit it, she had her father’s skeptical nature. She’d inherited her mother’s coloring and features, but that’s where similarities ended.

She liked her life just fine. She was bohemian with an edge.

A marriage between her and Sawyer Langsford was laughable. They barely spoke the same language, though she had been known to read his paper, The New York Intelligencer, and occasionally watch the Mercury News channel.

To Sawyer’s credit, Tamara acknowledged, his media outlets didn’t stoop to petty sensationalism. And she had to admit he’d built an international media empire from the two British radio stations and the regional newspaper he’d inherited from his father. At thirty-eight, he’d stuffed a lifetime’s worth of career accomplishments into a mere fifteen years or so.

At twenty-eight, she was a decade behind Sawyer in experience and worlds away in outlook. Yes, she wanted her design business to float instead of sinking into the great abyss, and yes, she dreamed of becoming successful. But she didn’t aspire to the same lofty heights of empire building that her father and Sawyer did.

She’d effectively been abandoned twice by her father—once, in a transatlantic divorce, and then again by Viscount Kincaid’s devotion to his media company. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—risk acquiring a husband who was from the same mold.

It would be beyond foolhardy, notwithstanding the kiss the other night.

Still, the kiss had repeatedly sneaked into her thoughts over the past few days. Sawyer had made her toes curl. And embarrassingly, she’d clearly responded to him.

But she knew why Sawyer had kissed her. He’d been trying to convince her to agree to a marriage of convenience.

If Sawyer thought she was a pushover for his seduction techniques, however, he had another thing coming. So she’d had a brief and primitive response to his air of raw power and sexuality. She was still well past the age of gullibility—of being swayed by a momentary attraction into a relationship with someone who was so very wrong for her.

In contrast, she and Tom were alike. They enjoyed prowling SoHo at night, appreciated the city, and were both artistic. They were friends, first and foremost.

They weren’t two people from very different backgrounds united by lust. In other words, to her relief, they were definitely not her parents.

As if on cue, her cell phone rang, and it was Tom.

“You’ll never guess what’s fallen in my lap,” Tom said.

“Okay, I give up. What?” she replied.

“I’m flying out to L.A. to meet with a big music producer. He heard one of our demos and is interested in signing the band.”

“Tom, that’s wonderful!” Tamara exclaimed. “I didn’t even know you were in touch with a producer out in L.A.”

Tom laughed. “I wasn’t. The guy got his hands on the demo from a friend of a friend.”

“See, networking works.”

Tom gave an exaggerated sigh. “Here’s the thing, babe. I’ll be gone. Physically, existentially and in every other way.”

She picked up on his meaning.

“What?” she said with mock offense. “You’ll no longer be available to be my standby date?”

It was easy for her to adopt a lighthearted tone, she realized. Tom had never been more than a casual, occasional date for her—a reliable escort when she had to attend one social function or another. He was nothing more, despite their Tom- and-Tam epithet, and that was the reason she could be happy for him without rancor.

“Afraid not,” Tom responded now. “Will you ever forgive me?”

“If I don’t, you could always write a song about it,” she teased.

Tom laughed. “You’re a pal, Tam.”

Tom’s words summed up their relationship, Tamara acknowledged. It had always been easy and casual. Such a contrast, she thought darkly, from her fraught interactions with—

No, she wouldn’t go there.

“It was a lucky break running into your friend the Earl of Melton.”

Tamara started guiltily. “He’s not my friend.”

“Well, friend or acquaintance—”

“And what do you mean it was a lucky break?” she asked, even as she was touched by a feeling of foreboding.

“Well, this music producer has a friend who socializes with the earl. Seems the earl had heard my music—”

She’d just bet Sawyer was a fan of Zero Sum.

“—and had talked it up to a friend of his, who passed along the recommendation to his music industry connection.”

Tamara felt a wave of heat wash up her face. He didn’t … He wouldn’t …

And yet, it was all too convenient.

When she found Sawyer, she was going to let him have it, and then some.

For Tom’s sake, however, she forced herself to sound cheerful. There was no reason to rain on Tom’s parade by imparting her suspicions about how his lucky break was more than mere luck.

Besides, from Tom’s perspective, it didn’t matter how his intro to a top music producer had come about. The bottom line was that he was getting his chance to hit it big.

“I owe this all to you, Tam,” Tom said gratefully. “I don’t need to tell you how tough things have been in the music industry lately, so getting someone to take a chance on Zero Sum is a big deal.”

If only Tom knew exactly what he owed to her, Tamara thought.

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” Tamara said. “Blow them away.”

“Thanks, babe. You’re the best.”

When she ended her call with Tom, she set down the phone and stared at it unseeingly, her brows knitting as she contemplated Sawyer’s skullduggery.

She’d barely begun to get herself worked up over Sawyer’s fiendishness, however, when the intercom sounded.

After she pressed the intercom button by the front door, she jumped as she heard Sawyer’s voice.

She took a deep breath. Apparently her confrontation with Sawyer would occur sooner than she’d expected.

“Come on up,” she said with a semblance of serenity, and buzzed him in.