Читать книгу The Garrisons: Parker, Brittany & Stephen: The CEO's Scandalous Affair - Sara Orwig - Страница 11

“You didn’t bring a picture?” Anna threw plenty of exasperation in her voice as she served a cup of coffee to the friend she hadn’t seen for far too long. “I don’t think I’ve seen a picture of your daughter since she was two.”

Megan Simmons tossed some wavy red curls over her shoulder and tucked her feet under herself as she got comfortable in Anna’s kitchen. “Well, Jade’s three and a half now and trust me, she’s gorgeous. She’ll be the first to tell you.”

Laughing, Anna bit back the next obvious question. Who does she look like? Megan had never revealed the father of her child and Anna respected that. Their friendship dated back to elementary school and one of the reasons it had lasted so long was that they knew when not to pass judgment on each other’s actions.

And they knew when to help each other. As Megan had four years ago, when she’d left her consulting job in Miami and returned to Indiana exactly at the time Anna had been up to her earlobes in false accusations. It was Megan’s connection with the director of human resources at Garrison, Inc. that had given Anna a much-needed escape, and because of Megan’s strong recommendation, she’d been able to get the job without the usual deep background check.

There were times when friends just didn’t ask, no matter how much they wanted to know. So, Anna brought the conversation back to the reason they had this unexpected Saturday morning to share some coffee and chat before Anna drove Megan to the airport. “So, how did the meeting go yesterday?”

Megan took a sip, her green eyes widening over the cup. “It was really an interview,” she said as she swallowed. “My former boss offered me a partnership in his design firm.”

“Wow, congratulations.” Anna lifted her coffee cup in a mock toast. “That’s wonderful, Megan.”

“Thanks. It sure is tempting.”

“I’d love it if you moved back here.”

Megan’s expression grew warm, but wary. “Yeah, it would be great to live near you again, but I don’t know.”

“You loved Miami when you lived here.”

“I know. But Jade has only ever known life in Indianapolis. And she’s starting preschool this fall.”

“The best time to move,” Anna said. “You can start her here. Garrison, Inc. donates to an excellent private preschool. I bet I could get Parker to pull some strings and get Jade in there.”

Megan pulled back, a little smile tugging at her lips. “Do you know that since I got here about twenty minutes ago, you’ve mentioned Parker Garrison about six times?”

Busted. “Have I? I hadn’t noticed.”

“I did,” Megan said drily. “So I guess you’re enjoying your promotion from the humble HR department to the lofty executive suites.”

“It’s different up there,” Anna admitted. “It’s more exciting. And I’m so busy. It’s my whole life.”

“It’s your job,” Megan corrected gently, using a voice she probably used on Jade when the child wanted soda instead of milk. “And I didn’t say you mentioned Garrison, Inc. I said you mentioned your boss.”

“I guess I have. But he’s…” How could she possibly explain what it was like to work for someone like Parker?

“He’s a Garrison,” Megan said, rolling the name on her tongue as if it tasted bad.

“Yes, he is,” Anna agreed. “And he’s also…” She willed herself not to turn all dreamy and stupid. “Very…”

“Arrogant.”

“Well, sometimes. But he’s…”

“Demanding.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “He likes things his own way, but he can be…”

“A snake.”

Her jaw dropped. “No. I don’t think he’s a snake, Megan. He’s confident and a leader, he’s smart and he’s—”

“Flat-out gorgeous. They all are.” Megan took a deep drink then thunked the cup back on the table. “Don’t get sucked into it, Anna.”

“Sucked into what?”

Megan leaned on the table. “I’ve done enough work for the Garrisons to know what they’re made of.”

“You consulted, Megan, as the interior designer when they refurbished the Garrison, Inc. offices. You don’t really know them. It’s not the same as being in their face day after day.”

“Oh, I was in their face plenty,” she volleyed back, more blood deepening the delicate dusting of freckles across her nose. “Don’t forget what happened to you, Anna. You are a living example of what can happen to a woman who is wooed by a man who isn’t above using her,” Megan said.

“He hasn’t used me,” she said, defensiveness making her voice tighten as she stood. “And I already gave him the ‘we can only be friends’ speech this past week at dinner and he’s been nothing but business since then.”

“It’s gone that far? You had to give him that speech?”

“Not that far,” Anna mused, turning off the oven and taking a minute to refresh their cups. “We’ve only kissed. In London. That’s all, I swear.”

Megan held her cup for a refill. “Why?”

“Why was that all or why did we kiss?”

“Oh, I know why you kissed,” Megan said wryly. “You kissed because you were in a ridiculously romantic place and wildly attracted to each other and he whispered in your ear and you melted.”

Anna laughed as she put the coffeepot back and sat. “Oh, you think you know everything.”

“Not everything. But I know enough.”

The need to share the truth was powerful and if anyone would understand, Megan would. “We kissed because he told me he suspects there’s a spy in the company and I planted one on him to drag him away from that dangerous train of thought.”

“A spy?” Megan’s eyes popped. “No wonder you’re freaked.”

“Can you imagine if he found out that I was stupid enough to let my boyfriend infiltrate my boss’s computer system and steal technology secrets at my last job? And then got blamed for it?”

“You’d be okay,” Megan said. “I mean, you’ve been at Garrison for four years or so.”

“But now there’s the Internet. How long would it take before someone searched my name and found articles in the local Indianapolis papers accusing an administrative assistant of being a corporate spy?”

“You were innocent, Anna. Michael Montgomery finally admitted he did it.”

“Yes, I know that and you know that, and even my former boss knows that because the confession happened in the privacy of a conference room in Indianapolis.”

“Barry Lynch dropped all charges.”

She nodded. “Yes, he did. The boss dropped the charges and the boyfriend fled town and no one bothered to call the papers and inform them except me, and the reporter wasn’t interested. Called it an ‘old story.’ But my name is still media mud.”

Megan sighed, obviously unable to deny that. “Barry Lynch is still running FiberTech outside of Indy. Why don’t you call him and ask him to vouch for you?”

“I don’t want to dredge up old history. He was embarrassed by the lax security in his company, anyway. That’s why he didn’t tell the newspapers the truth.” Anna closed her eyes. “I want it all behind me.”

“I know you do.” Megan reached across the table and put her hand on Anna’s. “And I want you to be careful with Parker Garrison.”

Parker again. “Do you even know him, Megan?”

“I met all the Garrisons when I did the consulting job. Cheating runs in their genes.”

“Cheating?” Then Anna recalled the latest Garrison scandal. “I guess you’re right.” She rose and donned an oven mitt to slide the pastry tray out, and as she did, told Megan the whole story of Cassie Sinclair and her unlikely role at Garrison, Inc.

Megan listened, rapt, then asked, “So this woman over in Nassau is John Garrison’s illegitimate daughter?”

“Looks that way. And now she owns twenty percent of Garrison, Inc.”

Megan’s eyebrow notched. “At least he took care of his child.”

At the catch in her friend’s voice, Anna turned from the oven, pastry tray extended, but Megan hid her expression behind the coffee cup.

“Would you like a cinnamon roll?” Anna asked.

Megan put her cup down with a little too much force. “But you see what I mean?” she asked, obviously not hearing Anna’s question. “See what they’re made of? Gorgeous, yes, every last one of them. But can they be trusted? And you, after all you’ve been through, you have to trust the man you love, Anna.”

The tray slipped in Anna’s mitted hand, but she caught it.

Love. Whoa.

“This isn’t love,” she managed to say. “This is a pathetic crush on my part and lust on his.”

Megan’s chair scraped the tile as she stood. “You think? How’s he treated you since you gave him the speech?”

“Well, he’s had a lot of closed-door meetings and placed most of his own calls, so I thought he was trying to avoid me. But…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to think of how to explain what had been happening for the past five days. “But when we’re together, well, to be honest, there’s been a lot of electricity in the air.”

“Oh, really?” Megan meandered over to the counter to help herself to a cinnamon roll. “Like lightning bolts that turn your lower half into liquid and your brain to mush?”

“Yeah.” Anna half laughed.

“And every time your hands casually brush when you exchange papers, you sort of shiver and get all tingly?”

“Precisely.”

Megan took a bite of gooey pastry, nodding like a knowledgeable expert as she chewed. “And,” she added when she swallowed, pointing the roll at Anna, “when he laughs at something you said, the whole room sort of spins and your heart gets all fluttery and your arms get numb from the need to touch him?”

“Every time.”

Megan slid her finger along the top of the cinnamon roll, covering it with icing. “You’re in love,” she pronounced.

“No, I’m not. I’m just in big, fat trouble.”

Megan sucked the icing off her finger with a noisy smack and a knowing grin. “Same thing.”

The last thing Parker wanted to do on Sunday was trudge up to Bal Harbor for the weekly Garrison dinner. Not that driving Collins Avenue with the top of his BMW M3 down and his floorboard-rumbling stereo at full blast was exactly trudging, but he still would rather have spent the evening working on the endless pile of paper that seemed to accumulate on his desk that week.

Because, God knows, he hadn’t gotten anything of consequence accomplished at work since Monday. Unless playing games with Anna Cross was “work.”

He’d planted three separate false trails regarding business development, and not one of them had resulted in sending the Jefferieses on a wild-goose chase.

He’d tried to draw Anna out from her cloak of professionalism, teasing her with the occasional joke and letting the inevitable contact blister into heat between them. But that hadn’t accomplished anything except more than a few restless nights for him and a bad case of unrequited… arousal.

And that, he thought, popping out the classic-rock CD he’d been playing and searching his collection for something that suited his mood, was the problem.

She was getting to him.

Maybe it was her resistance to his obvious interest. Maybe it was the fact that he suspected her of spying and couldn’t seem to catch her. Maybe it was the memory of those few kisses, that promise of so much more in London.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the all-too-familiar southbound rush of blood reminding him that whatever the hell it was about Anna Cross, it had an undeniable effect on him.

No matter which way he cut it, rationalized it or ignored it, he still wanted her. A lot.

His fingers grazed the CD cases restlessly, skipping each one. If not rock or jazz or a decent piano concerto, what did he want to hear?

Broadway tunes.

“Oh, man.” He tapped the steering wheel and yanked left into the stone gates of the Garrison estate. “That’s bad, Garrison. That’s rock-bottom bad.”

He whipped into an open space behind Adam’s smaller model BMW and checked his rearview, raking his hands through his wind-whipped hair in self-disgust. Since when did he have the slightest interest in Rodgers and Hammerstein?

Since that little vixen hummed show tunes while she was filing. Off-key, no less. But when she tapped her toes to some ditty that ran through her head and the tip of her tongue sneaked out between her sweet, soft lips, the next thing he knew he had a sudden need to—

“Don’t worry, you’re perfect.” Brooke leaned over the passenger door of the convertible and offered her brother a friendly grin. “Making all the girls wild, as usual.”

He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m afraid it’s the other way around lately.”

That earned him a surprised lift of her shapely eyebrow. “Don’t tell me someone’s finally gotten under big, bad Parker’s skin.”

“Not a chance,” he assured her, popping out of the car and coming around to give her a hug. “But who are you sneaking around with these days?”

All the color drained from Brooke’s usually rosy cheeks. “What?” She half laughed and accepted his hug. “You must have me mixed up with my far more social twin.”

He released the embrace, but held her shoulders tightly and searched her face, a pang of guilt twisting through him. He’d promised Stephen he’d call her this week and he hadn’t even remembered. He’d been so caught up in… Anna.

“Are you okay?” he asked, unwilling to let go of her shoulders. “Stephen told me you’ve been pretty miserable since the whole Cassie Sinclair thing came out.”

Her eyes filled, but she blinked back the tears. “I’m having a hard time, Parker,” she replied. “What Dad did was, well, unforgivable. And to let us know like that. During the reading of his will.” She inched out of his grip with a shudder of anger.

He slid his arm around her as they crossed the brick driveway and approached the massive glass-and-mahogany entrance to the Spanish-style villa.

“I know how you feel,” Parker commiserated. “Mad and hurt and disillusioned. And, hell, we’re still in mourning.

I can’t believe I’m going to walk into this house and he isn’t going to be on the back veranda, drinking in the ocean view, ready to dissect every nuance of the past workweek and plan the attack for the next one.”

She raised her delicate jaw so the sunlight caught the dip of the Garrison cleft in her chin. “That’s your job now, Parker.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said, the weight of the “patriarch” role weighing heavy on his shoulders. “Those are big shoes to fill.”

“No problem,” she assured him with a gentle elbow to the ribs. “You’ve got big feet.”

Before they even reached the last of the wide stucco stairs that led to the entrance, the doors opened and Lisette Wilson, the real keeper of the Garrison house, appeared in her standard navy-and-white uniform, looking a bit older than her fifty-five years.

The loss of John Garrison had hit their longtime housekeeper hard, but Parker knew that something more than that was working on Lisette.

“Hello, Lisette,” he greeted her with a gentle hand to her shoulder, while she gave a nod to him and a peck on Brooke’s cheek. “How are you?” Parker asked.

She answered that with pursed lips feathered with a dozen tiny creases. “I’m fine, Mr. Parker, but I can’t say the same for your mother. The bottle has been open since eleven this morning.”

He felt his sister sink into him. “Oh,” Brooke said. “Thanks for the warning, Lisette.”

Behind the housekeeper, Adam strode into the oversize entryway, a frown on his angular face. “I’m leaving,” he said gruffly. “Sorry, but I’d rather be anywhere but here listening to her rant about Ava Sinclair.”

“Ava who?” Brooke asked. “Is that Cassie’s mother?”

“Yes,” Parker said. “Brandon Washington has been doing some digging. The woman, Dad’s, uh, friend, passed away about a month before he did.”

“And I’m supposed to feel bad about that?” Bonita ambled in and leaned shakily on a wide stone column that marked the entrance to a sprawling living room, a glass of something potent in her hand. She shook a strand of hair off her face, revealing some makeup streaked under her eyes. “Maybe your father died of a broken heart when his mistress croaked.”

Parker’s heart sank. Mother was loud, rough and blasted.

Lisette immediately stepped to her side. “Why don’t I take you upstairs to freshen up while the children gather, Mrs. Garrison,” she said, as gently as if she were talking to a petulant toddler. “Mr. Stephen should be here soon, and maybe Miss Brittany. I daresay we’ll have a full house tonight, and I made braised beef.”

“I don’t like braised beef,” his mother whined, but she allowed herself to be led up a winding staircase, mumbling under her breath as she clutched the wrought iron railing.

Adam blew out a disgusted breath and continued toward the front door. “I’m outta here.”

“Wait,” Brooke said, going after him. “Come on, Adam. We need to be a family.”

“You need to be a family,” he shot back. “I need to be somewhere else.” He opened the door to leave just as Stephen walked up the stairs. Wordlessly, Adam pushed past his brother with Brooke on his tail.

“Adam, please,” she called. “She’ll sober up.”

“Just enough to insult you, Brooke.”

“No, wait, Adam.”

Stephen stepped aside to let his siblings barrel by, a bemused smile aimed at Parker. “Another Sunday in paradise, I see.”

Parker shook his head. “For this, I gave up work.”

Stephen laughed lightly and gave his brother a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Spoken like a true Garrison, bro. But I bet the old man isn’t up in heaven saying, ‘I should have spent more days at the office.’ “

“What do you mean? You’re as much of a workaholic as I am,” Parker said as the two of them headed toward the back of the house, drawn by the scents of Lisette’s cooking and the possibility of a relaxing, private moment together.

Out of habit, they went straight through the bank of French doors to the veranda. A cool breeze blew the dozens of queen palms that lined the limestone patio, exotic scents of tropical flowers wafting from the planters that surrounded an Olympic-size pool that no one actually used.

Stephen ambled to the marble-topped wet bar and poured two fingers of Dad’s single malt into cut-crystal tumblers.

“In honor of the old man,” he said, giving one glass to Parker and holding the other in a mock toast.

“We’re as bad as mom,” Parker said drily.

“Nah. This is my first and it’s five o’clock.”

Parker acknowledged that with a nod. “Yeah, yeah.” But he barely sipped the hot, amber liquid, clunking the glass down on the bar. “It’s been a helluva week.”

Stephen pulled out a leather bar stool and settled next to his brother. “Tell me about it. The bastards are up to no good again.”

“Jefferies? What happened?”

“Remember that photo spread in Luxury Traveler I negotiated for the hotel?” Stephen said. “Fourteen pages of priceless coverage in one of the top travel magazines in the world?

I worked with the editorial director, schmoozed him, wined him, dined him, let him stay in the penthouse with a young woman who was definitely not his wife. Remember?”

“Of course,” Parker said. “That editorial coverage will be equivalent to a hundred thousand worth of ad dollars for the Grand.”

Stephen snorted. “Not anymore. He’s changed his mind and is waiting for Hotel Victoria to open. He’s using that as the background for the photo shoot and story about the latest hip and hot hotels in South Beach.”

“What?” Parker slammed his hand on the counter. “How did the Jefferieses swing that? No one even knew that story was in the works.”

No one, he thought as the whiskey turned bitter in his mouth, but the woman who sat outside his office. Maybe some others, but he distinctly remembered Anna knew about the deal because the editorial director of Luxury Travel had called him on more than one occasion.

“I’m royally ticked,” Stephen said. “But since it’s not paid advertising, my hands are tied. He said it was strictly an ‘editorial’ decision.”

Parker swore softly.

“We got a hole in the dam,” Stephen said. “And we can’t ignore it any longer.”

Parker took a deep drink of the scotch. “I think I know who it is.”

“You do? Who?”

He hesitated, but only for a moment. This was Stephen, and they had no secrets. “Anna.”

“Anna Cross? Your secretary?” Stephen stabbed his fingers through his hair in disbelief. “Is that why you’re dating her?”

“It didn’t start out that way, but then she said and did a few things that made me suspicious. Anyway, I’m not dating her. She wants to keep it all business.”

“Sure, so she doesn’t get fired and can keep her hands in your files.” Stephen sounded disgusted. “What are you doing about it?”

“I’ve tried a misinformation campaign, but that isn’t working. They didn’t bite on anything this week.”

“Then you’ll have to use a James Bond technique,” Stephen said, a half smile threatening. “Screw the truth out of her.”

A tremor of heat warred with distaste. Not screwing, not with Anna.

“She’s keeping me at arm’s length,” Parker said.

Stephen looked unconvinced. “Come on, ace. You can do this. You’re a master.”

“I really like her.” The admission sounded a little lame, but felt amazingly good. He did like her. Wasn’t that at the bottom of all his angst? It certainly explained the sudden desire to listen to the overture from Camelot.

“She’s using you.”

Was that even possible? She was so guileless. “I don’t know that for a fact.”

“Then find out.” Stephen stood to make his point. “Forget misinformation or seduction. Set her up and catch her in the act. Then you can fire her and we can stop this infernal leaking of proprietary information.”

Parker lifted his glass and swirled the remaining whiskey. “Seems kind of underhanded, don’t you think?”

“And spying on us and feeding information to Jordan and Emilio Jefferies is aboveboard?” Stephen tapped him on his shoulder. “What do you think your father would do?”

John Garrison would have set her up and taken her down in a heartbeat. Business before personal feelings. Business before anything.

“Hey, if she’s innocent,” Stephen added, “then you find that out, too. Then you can seduce her for real.”

“Seduce whom?” Brittany strolled onto the veranda and sidled up to her two brothers. “Who’s your next victim?”

“No one,” Parker said dismissively.

His brother was right; they had to know the truth. The thing was, if he was wrong, and Anna realized he suspected her, he’d never have a chance with her. Ever.

But if he was right, then he’d be doing the very thing the patriarch of the family should be doing: protecting the Garrison brand.

When it came down to that, he really had no choice.