Enticing Interlude (Tempest #2) (27 page)

The dress I’d bought for Bridget during our shopping spree, clung to her hourglass body in all the right places, and her legs looked a mile long in sexy high heeled black pumps.

She looked poised and confident in the tuxedo inspired piece, white at the bodice with tiny black crystal buttons from neck to hem. The dispassionate expression veiling her face made her seem like she belonged in this high toned modern office with its pristine white leather and glossy silver and glass. In fact, she looked like the heiress who I now knew she was.

The worry that had been niggling at the back of my mind since I found out pushed its way back to the front again. What place would I have in a life that suddenly included a fourteen story corporate office, a company jet, and thousands of employees across the globe? Before, I felt like we were two everyday ordinary people. Now…well, I had no experience in the world of the ultra-rich.

Carter knocked me out of my musings with an accidental elbow to my side. “Hey, Champ.” I scruffed his head and he squirmed beside me on the waiting room couch. “You ok?”

“Mommy’s scared,” he ventured, big blue eyes wide, solemn as his three piece black suit. I didn’t ask but assumed it was the one he’d worn to his grandmother’s funeral.

“Why do you think that?” I glanced over at her again. She was still huddled with her grandmother’s lawyer, Maurice Trigg, a tall black man with distinguished grey at his temples. His stern demeanor and the no nonsense way he carried himself projected an aura of authority. He didn’t seem like someone you wanted to tangle with. The way I figured it, with him on our side, the deck was definitely stacked in our favor. I had a strong feeling that the wicked witch was about to meet her match.

“She’s not talking,” Carter explained.

He was right. In fact, I’d been so caught up in all the drama that I hadn’t even noticed till Carter pointed it out. Bridget hadn’t said more than two words to me all morning. I wanted to kick myself. Instead I squeezed Carter’s shoulder. I stood and smoothed the crease from my black wool trousers. “Bridget,” I called. “Do you have a second?”

“Huh.” She blinked at me, her bottom lip between her teeth.

“We still have a few minutes before the meeting starts,” Maurice nodded in my direction. “Go ahead, but make it quick.”

I took her by the elbow to an alcove by a window overlooking a busy Orlando street.

“What?” she asked.

“Just this.” I drew her into my arms, ran my hands up her spine, and then into her hair, tilting her face back into a better position for me to touch my lips to hers. Firmly but gently I willed her to absorb all the love and confidence I had in her.

Bridget gave me a dreamy smile, a welcome replacement for the detached expression she’d worn all morning.

“Good morning,” I told her, as pleased as if my kiss had awakened her from some long enchanted slumber.

I grinned like an idiot at her.

“Well,” a nasally voice interrupted. “I see nothing’s changed. You’re still the same little slut.”

Bridget stiffened.

I turned my head and got my first glance at the piece of work that was Evelyn Dubois. She looked down her aquiline nose at her stepdaughter before shifting her gaze to me. Then her expression completely changed. Her brown eyes went all sultry and her heavily reddened lips curved. Some guys might think she ranked a MILF status. She did look good, if you were into the ‘I’m vain and I’ve got a shit ton of plastic surgery to prove it’ kind of reptile. Personally, I would have kept my distance, even in my most reckless days.

“Mrs. Dubois,” Trigg interjected. Her cold calculating eyes sliced to him. “Personal insults will not be tolerated. My client has agreed to this meeting only as a courtesy. I’m not sure why this all couldn’t have been handled by the attorneys without the drama. But since everyone is here,” he extended his arm toward the conference room, “why don’t we go ahead and begin.”

Evelyn spun on her four inch stiletto heels, her black hair as tightly confined in a chignon as her borderline anorexic body was in the red dress she wore. Two serious looking suits flanked her, following her through the door. Trigg motioned to Bridget. She started toward him, but I held onto her a moment longer. I wasn’t done yet. I tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. She was a breath of fresh air, a natural beauty that had drawn me in from the beginning, the complete opposite of her stepmother.

“Don’t let her get to you.” I kissed her cheek. “She’s jealous. That much is obvious. And she should be. You’re beautiful, Bridget. Outside and inside. Her beauty is shallow and superficial. And it’s already fading because of the rottenness in that dark soul of hers. You’ll only get more and more beautiful as time passes, like your Meemaw. She knows that. That’s
why
she’s jealous, and that’s why she wants so badly to try to destroy you.”

“It’s time,” Trigg told her. “Remember to stick to the plan. Evelyn’s got no leg to stand on.”

Bridget turned to look at me just before she crossed the threshold. “Take care of Carter.”

“Always.” I smiled reassuringly.

After the doors shut, we waited. I could feel the tension growing as the minutes trickled slowly by. Deciding we could both use a little distraction, I engaged Carter in a spirited discussion about superheroes. I’d just about convinced him that Superman could take any of the others when a tall blond man strode in, acting like he owned the place.

I felt Carter go rigid at my side.

“Renee,” he greeted the attractive brunette secretary.

She looked up from her monitor and came right to attention. “Good morning, Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Dubois said to send you right in as soon as you arrived.”

I put my hand on my little buddy’s back and sized up Carter’s biological father. His appearance at this juncture wearing an expensive grey mélange Burberry suit wasn’t a coincidence. The whole thing was obviously an ambush.

I squeezed Carter’s shoulder. “Stay right here, Champ.”

His eyes wide, Carter pressed his lips tight together and nodded once.

“Hey, Dick,” I called out as I moved to intercept him. “Hold up.”

He turned on his Salvatore Ferragamo loafers, his eyes narrowing on me before sliding over my shoulder. “Hello, Carter.” His chin dipped. “I see your mother finally took you to get a haircut. It’s about time.”

What a fuckstick,
I thought, pulse blaring in my ears. I was so primed to kick his ass, and had been since Bridget first told me about him that day in the Granville Marketplace. “Is that any way to treat your own son?”

Richard smirked. “What’s it to you, pretty boy?”

“The name’s Justin Jones.”

“And that should mean something to me why?” he asked snidely.

“No reason really, except that I made a promise to myself a while back, and now I intend to keep it.”

I heard the secretary gasp as I closed the gap between us. I shoved him back abruptly with both hands. He was bigger and bulkier than me, but I didn’t really care.
I was pissed.

“Whoa,” he said straightening his tie, his mouth forming a smug smile. It was easy to see he was the type who got off on confrontational shit like this. Anger and adrenaline flared behind his blue gaze. He took a step toward me, but held up when the conference room doors suddenly swung open.

“Richard.” Evelyn sounded exasperated as she looked us both over. She waved him inside. “Get in here. We’ve been waiting on you.”

Gilmore gave me a dismissive snort and followed orders. Apparently stepmom had him by the short hairs.

I was ready to pursue our little discussion inside the conference room. I might well have, too, but just then Carter grabbed my hand, and I remembered my promise to Bridget earlier. I knew that Carter needed me right now more than she did. Besides, Maurice Trigg was already moving to close the doors.

“Stand down,” he warned, shaking his head. “Don’t you think I expected something like this?”

The bitch returned to her seat at the head of the glossy dark conference table, her lapdog in tow. She smiled smugly at me through blood red lipstick. I wasn’t sure what other nasty surprises she had in store, but Richard’s presence here certainly wasn’t just for show.

Maurice patted my hand. He didn’t seem to be worried, but my stomach was churning. I did my best to ignore it, squaring my shoulders, and trying to maintain a look of indifference.

Richard laid his large hands on the surface of the mahogany table and stared at me from his vantage across it. It made me ill to think that I’d once let those hands roam all over my body. Tall, tanned, and muscular, he was as absurdly handsome as ever. But behind those looks was a heart as black as Evelyn’s. After all, those same strong hands that had once caressed me had shaken me hard enough to rattle my teeth the night before Carter and I had fled to Vancouver.

“Shall we begin, then?” The latches on Maurice’s briefcase clicked open and he withdrew a stack of documents. “Evelyn, I need you to sign a few papers. It’s really just a formality. The terms of the trust are quiet clear.”

“I won’t be signing anything.” Evelyn’s tone was icy, devoid of emotion, and full of authority. She accepted a stack of papers from one of her own attorneys and passed them along to Maurice.

He began to thumb through them, but she didn’t wait for him to respond.

“Bridget, you have a decision to make.” Her gaze bored into mine. “The company or your illegitimate spawn.”

I sucked in a breath. A wave of nausea washed over me at the thought of losing my precious son.

“You have to decide today. Right now. Because I promise you that if you fight me on this one, I’ll drag you both through the courts. When everyone finds out that you’re a slut and an addict, they’ll realize how unfit you are to be a mother, and Richard will easily win custody.” She rolled a pen across the table toward me, confident that I would cave in.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I would’ve done it. I would’ve picked up that pen, signed those papers, and then slunk out of there like some beaten dog.

But I wasn’t that lost, frightened little creature that she remembered. I’d changed. I’d learned that I could make it on my own, even I’d had to crawl forward on my knees most of the way. I’d kicked a drug habit, escaped from an abusive relationship, and gotten a GED, a college education, and a paying job. I was a survivor. I had some of my Meemaw’s fighting spirit flowing through me. All it took for me to realize that was finding someone who brought it to the surface with his faith and love.