Dangerous Proposition (2 page)

When she had taken a job—her very first job—at the Westwood Inn that summer, her only priority had been raising enough money to buy a car. But when she caught a glimpse of the owner’s exceedingly handsome son, everything had changed.

For nearly three months, Julia had worked like a banshee every day, trying to clean her assigned rooms as fast as she could manage, making sure always to be done before three, when she knew Colin would be coming by to collect the daily earnings.

Spotting him in his typical place beside the front desk one afternoon, she’d stopped for her usual secret viewing. Dressed in a sharp black suit, he’d somehow looked more devastating than ever.

As was typically the routine, she had expected Colin would sign for his father’s money and be on his merry way. But instead of leaving, he’d turned and set his incredible blue eyes on
her
. And then he’d done something she never saw coming.

He’d smiled at her.

It had been the most incredible moment of Julia’s young life. At least, it had started out that way. Eyes locked with Colin’s baby blues, her body was shaking so hard that she was hardly aware of her own movements. She supposed that was why she hadn’t known her pant leg was caught beneath the wheel of the supply cart.

As she stepped forward, the cart jolted, tearing the left leg of her khakis. She’d tried to stop it, but the enormous thing was too heavy. It had rolled down the staircase, sending two hundred or so sample-sized soaps and shampoos scattering across the carpet. By the time she’d reached the first floor, her prince was nowhere to be found.

“I have no problem whatsoever confronting Colin Westwood,” Julia said, speeding out of the empty parking lot. “I’d just prefer not to do it on an empty stomach.”

“Well, that’s certainly a relief,” Abigail said. “I’m glad to know you’re not planning on abandoning your inner bounty hunter when you need her the most. The Westwoods are having a party tonight. I think it’s the perfect opportunity to ambush your suspect.”

Julia slammed hard on the break, catching sight of an unexpected squirrel scampering across the pavement. “How do you know about that?”

“The entire town of North Conway knows about it,” Abigail said. “Besides, Colin Westwood is a friend of Ryan’s. Colin does usually invite him to these things, not that Ryan has much interest in talking shop with a bunch of medical tycoons.”

It was hard to believe Abigail’s down-to-earth husband was friends with Colin Westwood. Someone whose parents had worked two jobs just to pay the bills hardly seemed like a match for a man whose father owned half the town.

Julia wasn’t exactly a history buff, but she knew a few things about the residents of North Conway, particularly those like the Westwoods, who were talked about the most. Leighton Westwood was a wealthy Irishman who’d married an even wealthier Englishwoman named Elizabeth, after coming to the United States. Most said the man was a corporate genius, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Leighton Westwood owned more businesses than most entrepreneurs on Wall Street.

Colin was Leighton’s firstborn son. And though Colin had shocked the entire town by becoming a doctor instead of joining the family business, Julia found it hard to believe that the man hadn’t been influenced by his luxurious surroundings.

Maybe Colin had taken to pulling in extra cash by working for the same underhanded cause as her dad. And when things hadn’t gone his way, he’d decided to eliminate the competition.

The idea left her horror-stricken.

As if she’d read her mind, Abigail took the phone they’d discovered and pressed a few buttons. Julia could practically hear her friend’s mouth falling open from where she was sitting.

She veered to the side of the road. “What’s wrong? Did you find something?”

With widened eyes, Abigail held up the cell phone. “The last call made to this phone isn’t the only one Colin Westwood is responsible for.”

“There are more?”

“Try all of them.”

Julia swallowed, fighting with every fiber of her being to ignore the dread that was gnawing at her gut. All consideration that Colin might be her father’s doctor was completely gone.

She took the phone from Abigail’s hand. Facing the road ahead, she slipped it into her pocket. “Mind if I drop you off at your place? There’s a man I need to see about an abduction.”

Hundreds of young men and women were scattered across the pavilion. The majority of them were heavily intoxicated. Their conversation created a hum that could undoubtedly be heard all over North Conway.

Colin Westwood stood on the grass behind his mansion, watching from several feet away as his foolhardy younger brother gave that wife of his a kiss that initiated more than a few whispers. Turning at an angle, he rolled his eyes. For the third consecutive Saturday night in a row, his brother and sister-in-law’s decision to throw a party had just put a hell of a damper on his plans.

It wasn’t as if he had somewhere more important to be. But standing in the middle of a crowd of drunken gold diggers didn’t exactly give him a lot of privacy.

His mood lifted temporarily as two pretty young women, whose names he couldn’t seem to remember, shot him a couple of flirtatious waves. The women were curvaceous and thin, though not as tall as he preferred. The one to his right had a killer set of legs, and the blonde could melt the arctic with her smile. Turning toward them, Colin offered a slow, suggestive grin. The irritating sound of a grunt nipped his perfect plan in the bud.

Anxious to be through with the inevitable, he turned to the man standing beside him. Desmond McGrath, one of his trusted employees, was a young man of keen intellect and absolutely no common sense.

“Whatever this is about, it can wait until tomorrow,” Colin whispered sharply. He turned from the crowd, indicating with a swift gesture of his hand that Desmond should follow suit. “In case you weren’t aware, Mr. and Mrs. Love-Struck are entertaining half the state of New Hampshire in my backyard tonight.”

Contrasting drastically from his typical groomed stance, Colin’s square-chinned, small-framed assistant looked up at him. An exceptional amount of fear quaked in his gray eyes. “Tucker’s gone,” he said in a whisper.

Colin shifted his arm, wondering whether he’d been leaning up against the side of the house for too long, or whether he felt a heart attack coming on.

Tucker was his second in command. Hell, the man probably had more confidential information floating around in his head than
he
did. Either Desmond’s poor sense of humor had finally taken a terminal dip, or else the world was about to collapse beneath both of them.

Snatching his counterpart by the shoulder, Colin strode in the direction of the patio door. Certain they were out of earshot, he loosened his grip. “What do you mean,
gone
?”

“I mean, one minute the guy was checking in with me, and the next he stopped returning my calls. I’ve been trying to track him down for two days. No one on the inside knows where he is. At least, no one claims to know.”

A sickening feeling of anxiety, something Colin had not experienced in a good long time, swept through him. His operation consisted of a group of highly intelligent men, the lot of whom had been ostracized nobodies when they’d started out. All had been trained to exercise the utmost discretion. In spite of all of his careful plotting and precaution, someone had just declared war on him.

Tucker was significantly older than most of the men in Colin’s employ. No doubt, the responsible party had taken him without much of a struggle. More than likely, the abductor was trying to get to Colin himself. Namely, he was looking for a payoff.

With a look on his face that was unsettling to say the least, Desmond took a step in his direction. His brows furrowed the way Alec’s often did when he was about to drop a bombshell. “There’s more.”

“More? Well by all means, Desmond, the floor is yours.”

“Before he disappeared, I overheard Tucker talking.” His gaze shifted to the massive crowd of partygoers. “I think the guy has a family. More specifically, I think he has a twenty-six-year-old daughter.”

“A daughter?” Colin laughed. He’d known Tucker for years and had been to his home on countless occasions. Not once had he seen or heard of this alleged daughter that Desmond was so bent out of shape about. He knew well what Tucker had been making when he first began working for him, and it was barely enough to afford a condominium, let alone feeding another mouth.

Of course, if this alleged daughter did exist, she might have been living with her mother, or with a relative or friend. But the fact would have presented itself upon conducting Tucker’s initial background check. Wouldn’t it have?

A daughter
.
Good one, Desmond
. He shook his head. “It’s impossible.”

“Is it?” The younger man’s smile felt like nails against Colin’s backside. “You’ve kept more than your share of secrets over the years. Maybe Dyson picked up a trick from the master.”

Be that as it was, keeping secrets was an art which needed to be practiced for some time before one could do it with ease. Colin knew this better than most. Nearly all of his adult life he had been hiding things from the people around him.

When Alec had finally stumbled onto the truth, that Colin was actually spending his time between shifts at Memorial Hospital importing stolen gems into the country, Colin had almost been relieved, knowing that there was one less person from whom he needed to keep his secret.

He drummed his fingers against his shirtsleeve. “What you’re suggesting is ridiculous. The girl would have been only fifteen years old when Tucker came into my employ.”

“So she was in high school, watching television and hanging out with her friends. Tucker could have told his daughter he was traveling for business, easily justifying the frequent disappearances.”

Colin paced the stone pavilion, considering the fact that Desmond had just made an excellent point. There was a lot he knew about Tucker Dyson, but there had to be just as much he didn’t know. He hadn’t dug especially far into the man’s roots, at least not so far that Tucker couldn’t have buried a secret or two along the way.

He sucked in a breath of mountain air. If there was any truth to what Desmond was saying, he needed to deal with the matter promptly. Tucker’s disappearance wasn’t something he could let hang for long. Not if he valued his life.

Narrowing his gaze, he said, “I don’t suppose this mysterious young woman has a name?”

“My guy didn’t know it. He only knew her age because the girl graduated college the same year as him, and they both had jobs at the Westwood Inn.”

Colin clenched a fist. Assuming Desmond had been given accurate information, Dyson’s daughter had once worked at one of his father’s hotels. The thought of this duplicity taking place under his nose made him livid. Maybe the girl knew the truth about her father’s profession, and had for some time.

“Excellent job, as always.” Wondering just how long it was that Desmond had been holding this information back, Colin released a sigh. “I want this situation taken care of by any means necessary. Do you understand me?”

“You’re the boss,” Desmond said.

“I’m not waiting around for the enemy to make a move. You’re going to find Tucker. Tonight.”

“Tonight?” Desmond swallowed visibly. “What about the girl?”

“Don’t worry about her,” Colin said, imagining it shouldn’t be especially difficult to handle this mystery woman Desmond was referring to. It was one of the more interesting assignments he’d been handed this week, for certain.

With a smile, he said, “I plan on taking care of Dyson’s daughter personally.”

Julia made a K-turn for the fourth time, finally spotting an empty space between two parked cars. As she hit the gas, she glanced at the clock on her dashboard, noting it had been almost an hour since she’d split off from Abigail. With a fresh cup of coffee in her system, she was back in the game. She veered toward the parking space and pulled in, leaving the vehicle behind her in the dust.

Smiling to herself, she straightened out the wheels of her car. She looked around, noting that clusters of twenty- and thirtysomethings were walking along the street. They were dolled up in dresses, tuxes, and way too much makeup. All were making their way toward the massive stone palace at the top of the hill—the Westwood mansion.

Julia glanced at her attire in the rearview mirror. Noting how casual she appeared in her tank top and jeans, she sighed. “Good one, Julia. Way to be inconspicuous.”

She finger-combed her wavy hair as best she could then stepped out of her car. God, she felt like a dandelion in the middle of a rose garden. She was the only woman in pants, and quite possibly the only one wearing clothing that covered skin past her navel. She followed the winding path that led to the gate.

Much to her relief, there was no guard positioned at the opening between the black metal posts. Feeling lucky, she made her way toward the enormous white building behind them. It was decked with long columns, and it stood at the top of a wide set of stairs. As she brushed past them, she couldn’t help noticing the large potted plants that framed the porch. There were over a dozen miniature bushes trimmed to perfection. Ceramic statues centered a gigantic water fountain.

Imagining the inside of the house was probably just as ostentatious, Julia made her way toward the source of the blasting music—the backyard. As she stepped around the corner, a massive swimming pool came into her view. Several people appeared to be swimming in it. Additionally, a few hundred stood around drinking and laughing.

The location of the Westwood’s extravagant home was common knowledge in North Conway. But in all the years she’d lived there, Julia had never once made a point of driving up to Cathedral Ledge for a look. Standing beside it, she was almost sorry she hadn’t. The property was incredible, and it buzzed with as much nightlife as a Las Vegas casino.