Protected By The Enemy (Hacienda Heights Book 2) Page 5

  My mother was tucked into his side, her chair pressed so close to his that she might as well have crawled into his lap. As usual, she was waiting to be stroked and cosseted by the husband she was so slavishly devoted to.

  “Fuck.” Gideon echoed my sentiments in a low, fervent tone. “We should probably go. I didn’t know they were going to be here, I swear.” Gideon had let me in on the fact that he knew who I’d been in my other life, knew my family in passing, as well as Logan.

  Leaving would be smart. Logan would probably have deemed a tactical retreat necessary. But a few things kept me rooted to the spot, clinging to Gideon’s arm like a much needed anchor.

  My mother was mere yards away, wearing the polite but disinterested smile of a society wife. Just how many Xanax had she mixed into her morning green smoothie to achieve such Zen? Shy and nervous at heart, I knew that situations like this one scraped against my mother’s nerves like a cheese grater. I’d never understood what had compelled her to marry Senator Asshat and meld our family with his.

  Annette Blakely gripped her glass a little too hard, and the tremor in her hand would have escaped notice if I wasn’t looking for it.

  I wanted to snatch her from the Senator’s grasp, jam her under my arm, and carry her out of the building like I was a pro football player and she the ball. Failing that, I wanted to throw my arms around her and tell her I still loved her, and hear that I was still loved in return.

  But of course, that was impossible. Not only because of my disguise, but because of the pair who sat nearby. My half-brother, Keenan, stared moodily at his glass of brandy, circling the rim with a long, tapered finger. Piano-playing hands, Mom had called them.

  Just the sight of my stepbrother’s handsome profile highlighted beneath the ballroom lights made my blood pressure tick up a notch. The man beside him was familiar as well. Scott Flemming, another of Logan’s former roommates and army buddy.

  According to Logan, either one of them could have leaked my tape. Either one of them could have been responsible for ruining my life.

  “Down kitty,” Gideon said with a laugh, extracting my hand from his with a dramatic wince. To my intense vexation, I realized I’d dug my fingers into his palm hard enough to nearly draw blood, leaving little red crescents behind on his skin.

  “I’m so sorry,” I blurted in a rush, my fury over Keenan momentarily forgotten.

  “Don’t be. I’ve had worse.” He paused, his beguiling chocolate-brown eyes heating as he stared down at me. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and my stomach clenched, though from desire or worry, I wasn’t even sure. “If you’re going to use your nails, I’d rather you mark up my back.”

  Embarrassment flashed through me, drawing a flush into my cheeks. First the attempted kiss, now this. It appeared a naughty side lurked behind Gideon’s boyish charm and gentle exterior. Maybe there had been more to Logan’s animosity than simple caveman jealousy.

  Before I could formulate a response to his unexpected flirtation, Gideon posed the question. “Stay or go? It’s your call, but we can’t just stand in the doorway. We’re already attracting attention.”

  A glance at the interior of the room proved his point. Several pairs of eyes shifted back to their tablemates as I took in the room.

  “I don’t think you’re recognizable but…” He shrugged. “I won’t force the issue.”

  He was so different from Logan. Rarely when I was with my hunky ex did my input come into play. In matters of my safety, Logan would have informed me of what was best, and then stolen my breath with long, drugging kisses until I forgot my point.

  The reminder of just how delicious his lips could feel on my skin tipped the scales in favor of staying. I needed to track down the blackmailer before those lips became the marital asset of Phoebe Mason.

  Decision made, I marched into the room, dragging Gideon along like an attractive and flirty show pony.

  I reached the table first and pulled out one of the only available seats, inconveniently across the table from my stepbrother and Scott Flemming. When Keenan’s eyes measured me, doing the head-to-toe sweep that attractive and powerful men gave women before deciding to snatch them up, I nearly lost my lunch. It didn’t matter that we weren’t related—I’d known him since I was still using training wheels.

  Shuddering delicately as I sat, I examined Scott Flemming, who was as beefy as my brother or Logan, and scored extra intimidation points with the barely healed scar that pulled at his eye. Whatever had happened to him, it had blinded him in one eye. That one was milky and fixed, while the seeing eye was dark and trained on his phone, hidden partially beneath the table. When the waiter distracted him and he turned, it became apparent he was browsing through a webpage of escorts. Classy.

  “Ah, Gideon, you made it,” Owen Mason greeted genially.

  I shifted my glare from Keenan’s profile to get my first good look at Owen Mason. He seemed vaguely familiar to me for some reason, probably from one of my stepfather’s many parties. He wouldn’t have stood out, with a sea of other bigwigs just like him. His daughter had apparently inherited her curls, her soft, unassuming face, and upturned nose from her father. The few differences were his heavy jaw and close-cropped hair. His frame was slight, and even the squared shoulders of his designer suit couldn’t hide that he was a small man.

  It boggled the mind how this unassuming man held Logan’s company by the balls. In any other battlefield, he would have been crushed by Logan instantly. But this was business, and you didn’t have to be the biggest or the baddest to conquer.

  “It was a toss-up,” Gideon said, shaking the hand he was offered. “Hannah hasn’t been feeling well. I’m afraid we may have to leave early.”

  If we weren’t in the company of Gideon’s peers, I’d have given him a big smooch on the cheek. Gideon had offered me an out, something I desperately needed. The room was already stifling, and being trapped at the table with two of the men who’d potentially ruined my life was the textbook definition of a nightmare.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Owen said, patently false concern layering his tone.

  I avoided his probing gaze, irrationally fearful that he’d somehow recognize me. I kept my hands tucked neatly between my thighs and stared at my manicure with keen interest until I felt his gaze lift.

  Dinner was served after a half hour of idle chitchat. Ceviche and with a side of plain white rice was pushed in front of my nose. I picked at the dish, nerves robbing me of my appetite. It was a shame too, because this dish was one of my favorites.

  Gideon did a wonderful job of keeping most of the attention off of me. The wrongness of the situation grated on my nerves. I was usually the set piece, the conversation starter. Where had the charming and flashy woman I’d pretended to be gone?

  Maybe it was the presence of the Senator. Despite taking to me rather well after his marriage to my mother, I had always sensed his love was conditional. That I was little more than an asset, another extension of his person he could adulate in public but pick apart behind closed doors. The need to please had never quite left me, and the crushing weight of his antagonism had ground down my self-esteem over the years. It had taken his merciless ejection from my home and the severing of my trust for me to figure out how to grow up. I thought I’d finally stopped basing my opinion of myself on what he thought.

  Keenan’s foot kicked me beneath the table. At first I thought he was stretching, but after the fifth bruising impact with my shin, I knew better. After the meal, Gideon excused himself to talk business for a moment, and suddenly I was alone at the table with Keenan and Scott. The others had two by two left the table to dance to a live band that had set up in the corner. When I finally raised my eyes to openly glare at him, I found his familiar gaze trained on my face, a smirk dancing along the edges of his full mouth.

  “Wow, that’s quite a look. Are you alright there, Hannah?” he drawled mockingly.

  “I just have a headache,” I ground out, hoping against hope that I wasn�
�t busted. I clutched the cloth napkin tightly in one hand, my mind spinning entertaining scenarios in which I gagged him with it.

  “Maybe we should go out to the balcony,” Scott suggested, his gravelly voice low.

  “That sounds like a great idea.” I stood and pushed away from the table. “I’ll go out to the balcony.”

  Sometimes I wished life were like the movies. In the perfect spy girl movie, if the ledge outside Mason’s office window was thick enough, I could lower myself from the balcony, into the office. It was positioned just beneath the ballroom, a floor below.

  I sighed, weaving around the edge of a dozen swaying couples, in case the two men tailed me. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw that Keenan was not deterred. He was a big man, only slightly shorter than Logan, and muscled from all the strength training he did to keep up the facade of an action hero. Scott Flemming, who followed too, was the same size as Logan, and I wondered if he subsisted only on protein shakes and the souls of young children. Something about the scarred eye made me nervous, as it tracked me to the balcony.

  When I stepped through the balcony doors and out into the balmy evening air, I was accompanied by the unwanted pair. Though being alone with them made me nervous, it was better that we have this face-to-face here than in the midst of the guests. Perhaps this way, Mason wouldn’t be alerted of my duplicity.

  Keenan shoved a hand into his pocket and rummaged for a minute before pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a Zippo. He wordlessly offered the first to Flemming, who took it with a nod of thanks. Keenan selected his own and brought it to his lips, lighting it.

  He blew out a stream of smoke. “You want one, Mina? You look like you need it.”

  I jerked at the sound of my name, horror spilling into my stomach. How? How had he known it was me? Heather’s makeup had been flawless. My own mother hadn’t picked me out of the crowd, and if the Senator had noticed, I would definitely have been in for an earful.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said slowly, trying too late to disguise my voice. “I think you’ve had too much wine.”

  Keenan’s sardonic smile was undeterred by the cigarette he’d shoved into the corner of his mouth. “Cut the shit, Mina. I know it’s you.”

  I grappled with irritation for several seconds before finally blurting, “How the hell did you know it was me? This getup took hours to complete!”

  He chuckled and blew out another stream of smoke. “You’ve been glaring at me since you were still in Pull-Ups, kid. I’d know that judgmental scowl anywhere. What’s got your panties in such a twist?”

  Okay, I was now officially ready to throw him off the balcony. Not only had he been the one to release my sex tape, he was being condescending, like I was still the little sister who was weaker than him.

  “None of your damned business.”

  His cocky grin vanished and he scowled right back at me, eyes glittering dangerously in the low light. “Seriously though, it’s risky as hell turning up here. Do you want Dad to go postal?”

  “I wouldn’t have to skulk around if you hadn’t released my sex tape!” I hissed. “You ruined my life, Keenan. And now you have the gall to tell me where I can and can’t go?”

  His eyes turned flinty and he practically chewed the end of the cigarette. When he pulled it away and exhaled, he deliberately aimed for me. I coughed, batting the cloud away with a feeble swat.

  “Is that what you really think of me, sis? That’s nice. Real fucking nice. Glad to know where we stand.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t?”

  “Of course I didn’t,” he growled. “If I’d found that tape I’d have thrown it in the incinerator where it belonged. What the hell did I stand to gain by showing the world a tape of my baby sister? You really think I would have embarrassed Dad that way? You don’t know me at all, do you?”

  Doubt skimmed across the surface of my mind before it was completely subsumed by rage. Of course I didn’t know him. He’d been a teenager when I’d come to live in his house. He’d treated me as a nuisance, a kid always underfoot. He’d seemed just as good as an adult to me, better, since his room held bright posters and he constantly got in trouble for blaring inappropriate music.

  “You released it to knock me down a peg. I outperformed you in every arena. It had to suck when your stepsister gained more acclaim at twelve than you’d gotten your whole college career. You had to find a way to stop me so your star could rise, right?”

  Keenan flicked the finished cigarette to the balcony floor and ground it out beneath a heel, baring his teeth in a snarl. He advanced on me quickly and I took a step back, my back ramming into the marble bannister of the balcony.

  Keenan loomed over me, as large to me now as he had been when I was a little girl, hands gripping my shoulders like he might shake me. He pressed me backwards, the hard stone of the rail digging a furrow into my back. Cool air licked up my skirt, and I was very aware of the two-story drop to the ground below. Would I survive a fall from this height? Maybe, maybe not.

  For a frozen, paranoid second I was sure he was going to lift me off my feet and send me hurtling toward the ground. I wished Logan were here, his broad body blocking Keenan’s advance.

  I chided myself as soon as the thought crossed my mind. What was this, the 1950s? I didn’t need Logan Farraday to protect me from my douchebag stepbrother. Reaching for my clutch slowly, I got ready to seize the two-ounce can of mace I kept inside for emergencies.

  “Keenan,” Scott said in a warning tone, speaking up for the first time since they’d stepped out onto the balcony.

  Scott’s voice seemed to reach Keenan, because he took a step back from me, a sneer fixed on his face.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t be turning into a pancake.

  “I didn’t release that tape. I have no clue who did. I do know one thing, though. You never deserved all that attention. You’re a middling actress at best, your impressions are a joke, and you didn’t even fucking fool me in disguise. You have about ten minutes to get lost before I pull Mom and Dad aside and let them know what you really do for a living.”

  Ice slipped into my stomach at the prospect, freezing me where I stood. I hadn’t ever gathered the courage to tell my mother what I’d built. During our brief communications in the early years of my exile, I’d sent her postcards from New York, claiming to have made a killing as a realtor there. The webpage Tuck had built for me was stellar, and if my mother had known any different, she’d never said.

  Again, the desire to bolt inside and grab my mother was strong. I needed to get her out of this nest of vipers before it ended up killing us both.

  My mind spun, trying to find a solution that didn’t involve running with my tail tucked between my legs. Maybe, if I pretended to need the restroom, I could double back around and force the door of the office.

  Nodding sharply, I hiked my bag farther up my shoulder and stalked past Kennan.

  “Scott, see that she makes it to the front door safely,” he added in a slightly softer tone.

  Scott acknowledged the request with a grunt and trailed after me into the main hall. Yes, I was definitely regretting my restraint on the balcony. I ought to have slapped Keenan. He was ruining everything as usual.

  I found Gideon conversing with Isadora Anwick alongside the dance floor. Tucking myself into his side, I murmured, “Gideon, darling, I don’t feel well. Maybe we should go.”

  Gideon gave Isadora a brief hug and a warm smile. “That’s my cue, Dora. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, bright and early, right?”

  Isadora’s smile was beatific. “Of course. Tomorrow.”

  Scott Flemming followed us down the hall and stairs. I had a feeling that he’d follow me into the ladies’ room if I tried to pull off my last-minute plan. So, with nothing else to do, I raised a mental white flag of surrender and allowed Gideon to lead me out the front doors with grace.

  The evening air did nothing to soothe the anger that scalded
my insides. I didn’t relax my rigid posture until Gideon left me by my car. When I finally slid into the seat of my Lexus, I sagged bonelessly over the steering wheel, angry tears stinging my eyes. I’d accomplished exactly nothing besides alerting my brother that I was on to him.

  Fan-fucking-tastic.

  Chapter Eight

  Logan

  Ice clinked against the side of my glass as I set it down on the bar. I dearly wanted a scotch, but the soda water would have to do for now. I’d have to meet Mina if things panned out this evening, and I wasn’t calling a damn Uber because I’d gotten plastered on one of the most important nights of my life.

  The little dive bar was situated right in the middle of the Heights, putting me in a prime location to reach Mina, whenever she finished with her little incursion. A blonde down the bar gave me an appraising glance, licking the olive from her martini suggestively.

  Agitation crawled beneath my skin, and the twitching, pulsating need to do something was impossible to ignore.

  Mina was out with Harvey, again. And no matter how necessary this mission was to the success of our venture, it still vexed me. His hands were on her, his eyes peeling the layers of clothing off her body until he could picture just what it would be like to lick every bare inch of my Mina.

  I shoved the glass aside with a growl of frustration, shoving a hand into my jacket to retrieve my phone. I’d been grappling with the decision to call all night. But like many other times before we’d reconnected, once I had the phone in hand, I couldn’t go through with it. A million vivid scenarios spun themselves out in my mind, each one more terrible than the last. If I called and she was in a precarious position, I could jeopardize the operation that Mina had worked hard to orchestrate. If I called during dinner and Owen Mason saw my name on the caller ID, he’d find a way to discreetly toss Mina out. I had to stay inactive for the time being, even though it killed a part of me to do it.