Staring at my laptop screen, at the papers spread all over the desk in my sitting room, a measure of relief washed over me.
There was nothing here.
For the past two weeks, in my spare time, I’d been researching Caine Carraway. I’d also used savings I couldn’t afford to use on a private investigator. I had him following Dick everywhere in the hopes that he’d find something I could use to blackmail my boss out of blackmailing me. It made me sick to my stomach to even contemplate blackmailing someone but that’s how desperate Dick made me feel.
Since that moment in his office, I’d been walking around with a constant knot in my stomach.
I pulled at my ponytail in frustration but not at the fact that I’d found nothing on Carraway. That was the best news I had so far.
The woman Dick had slept with, Imelda Worthington, was refusing to take my calls. She’d hung up on me on our first call, and now she was screening me. I’d left a number of messages but so far, nothing.
As for Carraway’s history at Wharton, from what I’d discerned, he’d worked his way through business school as a waiter at a fancy restaurant on Society Hill. How he got the money to make his first investments seemed clear to me.
I pulled out a photograph of Henry Lexington from my research.
Henry was the son of Randall Lexington, the CEO of Randall Lexington, a domestic and offshore bank; he worked for his father, who happened to be Carraway’s business partner. Henry was where Carraway got his money to invest, I was sure of it, because Henry and Caine were good friends and roommates at Wharton. As far as I could tell, they were still close.
I stared at their photos. God, the two of them were annoyingly good-looking. Where Caine was tall, darkly handsome, and brooding, Henry was tall with light brown hair, had a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes, and overall polished, movie-star good looks. According to the society pages, he was a perpetual flirt, never seen with the same woman twice, and he was the ultimate catch. He and Caine were Boston’s most eligible bachelors.
But they came from entirely different backgrounds.
Whereas Henry had all the luxury and opportunities in the world, Carraway had not.
He grew up in South Boston, son of a construction worker and a shop girl. His mother’s body was found in a hotel room when he was a boy—a drug overdose. Three months later his dad walked into their cop neighbor’s home, took the cop’s gun, and blew his own brains out.
Carraway was put into the system.
A tragic early life.
It only made his successes more impressive.
I hated Dick. I hated that he would want to hurt someone who had strived so hard to put his past behind him.
There was no other scandal immediately to report. Carraway didn’t seem to have a lot of connections in his life. If anyone knew anything remotely private about him, it would be Lexington. My eyes flicked back to the photo of the handsome blueblood. It was from yesterday’s newspaper: a photograph of him at Richard and Cerise Anderson’s anniversary ball at their home in Weston. On his arm was a very attractive, tall, enviously slender brunette. She was named as Alexa Hall, Carraway’s PA. Henry had taken Carraway’s PA to the ball?
Wait.
Hall?
Something about her name bothered me and I fumbled to find the file I had on Carraway’s staff. As Carraway’s PA, Alexa would surely know more about him than most but I’d eliminated her as a possibility because she had only recently started working for Carraway.
But her name…
I pulled out her official employee file at Carraway Holdings. The file was confidential but my friend Joe had a friend who worked at Carraway Holdings and owed him a big favor. Joe and I met at college, we fell in love in a nonsexual way because he was attracted to men, and I rarely asked him for a favor so he cashed in this one for me. His friend got into the personnel files and made a copy for me. It had to be some big favor he owed Joe to risk his job like that, but Joe wouldn’t tell me what. Joe was a whiz with a computer, though, so I hope it wasn’t anything more illegal than copying some personnel files.
That’s how I ended up with Alexa’s file. And I knew why her name was bothering me.
Her file said Alexa Holland, not Hall.
Holland?
As in Holland Diamonds?
The Hollands were one of the oldest, bluest-blooded families in Boston.
Why would a Holland be working for Caine Carraway as his PA? And why would they lie about her name at the ball?
I Googled Edward Holland, the current patriarch of their mini empire.
There was no mention of a granddaughter called Alexa.
However, the story that caught my attention was his son’s. Alistair Holland. Disinherited twenty years ago, Alistair Holland divorced his wife Patricia Estelle Holland, leaving behind her and their son, Matthew.
But where did he go?
I drew up his picture and then folded Henry out of the photo of him and Alexa and put Alexa next to Alistair. “Hmm.” There was something in the chin and shape of their eyes… but not enough to say they were related.
Flipping back to Alexa’s file, I looked up her date and place of birth and called Joe to ask him for another favor. Ten minutes later, he called me back with results.
“Found her birth certificate. Her father isn’t named on it. But her mother is Julie Brown.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
“I thought you didn’t need anything else from me,” he teased.
“I owe you another beer.”
“Nah, this is fun playing detective. Arthur and I are considering doing a PI bit.”
I snorted. Arthur was Joe’s husband, and they liked to play out a different sex scenario every week. “Have fun with that.”
“I’m thinking I’ll be the PI and he’ll be on the—”
“For future reference, I never need to know the details.”
He laughed and hung up.
And I immediately searched for Julie and Alexa.
A few pages into the search, I found an article from eleven years ago, from a high school in Chester, Connecticut, a town about an hour from my own hometown of Beacon Falls.
Alexa and Julie had raised money together as part of a mother-daughter entrepreneurial challenge. All the money went to charity. They were photographed together at the high school and it was clear that Alexa looked more like her mother.
But that wasn’t what made my heart rate speed up.
It was the profile of a man who appeared to be walking out of the shot.
I looked at Alistair Holland and then back to the newspaper article.
It was the same guy. Alistair.
Alistair Holland was Alexa’s father.
He had to be.
But why didn’t anyone know this?
Why was Alexa unacknowledged?
I turned my attention back to the mystery of Alexa Holland and started weeding through the stories of Alistair’s disinheritance. At first I couldn’t find anything about Julie or the reason why he’d been disinherited. The society pages speculated but no one really knew anything real. However, as the minutes gave way to hours and my eyes blurred, something pushed at the edges of my brain.
A date.
No.
I rifled through my folders and found the one I was looking for.
The articles on Caine’s tragic childhood.
“The dates,” I whispered to myself.
No. That was mere speculation too… I had no evidence.
But everything somehow connected.
No. I shook my head. Surely someone else would have put this together if it did.
But then no one else knew about Alexa. About Julie.
My eyes flicked to the date on the short article in the newspaper about Caine’s father’s suicide. And then I looked at the old society pages announcing Alistair’s disinheritance. They were only weeks apart.
All the information started whirling around in my head. Caine’s mother worked in an upmarket shop in Beacon Hill. From the one photo I’d found of her, she was extremely beautiful. A beautiful shop girl in Beacon Hill would have tempted Alistair Holland, a known philanderer. Did they have an affair? From the stuff I had on Alistair, I knew he’d run into trouble in his youth with drink and drugs. Was there a connection to him and Caine’s mother’s death? Is that why Edward Holland disinherited him and he ran off to Connecticut to be with Julie Brown and his illegitimate daughter?
So why would Caine hire the daughter of the man who could’ve been involved in his mother’s death?
“Your imagination is getting the better of you.” I sank back in my seat, thinking perhaps I should have been a fiction writer instead of a meteorologist.
But the idea that there was something in the story made me antsy.
And I didn’t want to stop until I’d proved or disproved my theory.
“Why?” I huffed to myself.
It wasn’t like I had any intention of actually taking this story to Dick.
No… but if there were truth in it, I could take it to Caine and tell him what Dick was up to. Seeing how easy it was for a nonresearcher to put the pieces together might light a fire in Caine to put a stop to Dick digging into his history. And consequently, hopefully, put a stop to Dick messing with me.
I stared at the photos of Alexa and Caine. Their mystery was intriguing but more than that, it could save my job.
My eyes flicked from Alexa to Henry Lexington. I’d bet everything I owned that handsome blueblood knew the truth.
I’d also bet everything I owned that he’d never tell.
His hand rested proprietarily on Alexa’s slender hip. She looked like a lot of the women he dated, if not more striking than most. I wasn’t exactly his type but it was possible, if I could find a way to meet him, the known womanizer might be swayed by my feminine wiles.
Or not, the insecure voice in my head said.
There had to be a way to find out the truth without turning to Lexington.
There just had to be.
* * *
Joe was a better researcher than I was and he’d managed to find me Caine Carraway’s childhood apartment. My thinking was that perhaps someone who lived in the building at the time might still live there and be able to give me some answers.
It was a Saturday and I should’ve been spending the little free time I had relaxing or sleeping, but I had to follow up on my theory.
Dick had asked me into his office the day before, and it had lit a fire under my ass.
“Anything?” he asked as I’d closed the door behind me.
“Not a thing,” I lied.
To my revulsion, he invaded my personal space, placing his hands at either side of my head on the door as he leaned in. “I don’t have to remind you what’s on the line, do I?”
I’d wanted to lift my knee and slam it into his crotch but, as usual, I was wearing a tight pencil skirt, which restricted that kind of movement.
Instead I seethed. “You might want to take a step back.”
He leaned in further until his breath whispered across my lips. His cologne was spicy, cloying, and might as well have been a pillow over my face for how suffocated it made me feel. “You might want to put a little more effort into this story, Nadia. One call to the right reporter and your career goes up in flames.”
“Imelda Worthington won’t take my calls.”
“That’s it?” he sneered. “That’s all you’ve done?” His eyes washed over my face and then dropped to my chest. “So you really are just a piece of ass, huh.”
One day I was going to snap. I could feel it. He was going to reduce me to physical violence. I hated him. “No, I’ve been looking. But if there’s a story, Carraway has buried it deep. Which wouldn’t surprise me considering who he is. He has money and resources we don’t have. Plus, I have to be careful so I don’t alert him that I’m looking into him.”
Dick sighed. “Try Imelda again.” He dropped one hand to my shoulder and ran it slowly down my arm, deliberately brushing the side of my breast with his fingers. “You have a week.”
I shrugged his hand off and fumbled for the door handle. Yanking the door open with all my strength forced him to stumble back and I shot out of his office.
Not wanting to see anyone, I’d locked myself in the ladies’ restroom and fought a battle with tears. There was no way in hell I’d let him get away with making me cry. I thought of his touch and the way it made my skin crawl, like a thousand tiny spiders had followed in the wake of his hand on my body.
This was the point I needed to tell the powers that be what he was doing.
Touching me was crossing the line.
But anger had started to course through me from the moment he’d put his hands on me, an anger so hot its flames burned all those creepy little spiders to ash.
No, he wouldn’t get away with this, but I wasn’t going to take it to the executives and eventually lose my job. I was going to prove my Caine and Alexa theory and use Caine as a weapon to destroy my lecherous, asshole boss.
So it was taking me down a dark path, making me like him in a way, yet right then, staring into the mirror at that angry, vulnerable woman, I didn’t care.
All I cared about was showing Dick that I had power and he couldn’t take it from me.
No one could.
Shaking off the memory of yesterday, I grabbed my purse and opened the door to my apartment with every intention of jumping in a cab to the address Joe had given me.
However, a man blocked my way.
He stood in my doorway, his fist raised as if to knock.
Shocked, I stared up at his familiar face.
Why the hell was Henry Lexington standing in my doorway?
His vibrant blue eyes met mine and for a moment, neither of us said a word. Silence stretched thinly between us, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
Lexington quite abruptly broke the silence. “Miss Ray?”
“Yes, what—”
“We need to talk.” He pushed past me and walked into my apartment without an invitation.
For a moment, I stood there with my mouth open, asking myself if that had just happened. Were people really that rude?
I stared after him, watching him disappear out of my hall and into my sitting room.
All my papers on Carraway were in there!
“Hey!” I called, shutting the door and hurrying after him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Lexington stood in the middle of my small sitting room, his back, thankfully, to my desk. His expression was sullen, cool, and calculating. This was not the charming, hedonistic millionaire I’d read about. “I could ask you the same thing, Miss Ray.”
“Excuse me?” Cold sweat prickled under my arms. Did he know? How did he know? If he didn’t know, why the hell else would he be here? Why was he here and not Carraway?
I waited anxiously for Lexington to stop boring through my face with his hard eyes. “I assume you know who I am.”
“You’re Henry Lexington.”
“And you, Miss Ray,” he turned and strode over to my desk, fingering my papers, “are going to let a certain story die.”
My belly flipped unpleasantly.
Goddammit. “What?” I said.
Lexington raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Imelda Worthington.”
Fuck.
“That blank expression isn’t fooling anyone, Miss Ray. I know she said a few unfortunate things to Richard Peters, your boss, and I know you’ve been calling her ever since.”
Despite my guilt, despite knowing I was in the wrong here, this privileged asshole had burst into my apartment to intimidate me. Like hell! “You do, do you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Imelda informed me of what’s been going on and asked me to kindly give you a message.” He prowled toward me and I suddenly felt real fear. I didn’t know this man and he was here to shut me up. How far would he go? I steeled myself, not wanting him to see my fear. If my expression gave me away, however, I didn’t know; all I did know was that Henry Lexington stopped a good foot from me. It still wasn’t enough. He stood at over six feet, his broad shoulders fitted into a perfectly tailored three-piece suit. He had big, masculine hands, one hidden in his pocket, the other resting on his flat stomach over a suit button. Henry Lexington had a swimmer’s build—sleek but powerful—and I could only guess at the strength beneath his suit. I struggled not to feel overwhelmed by his large, magnetic presence, as much as I struggled not to feel fear.
“You’ll leave her alone,” he demanded.
Guessing there was no point in being coy considering he’d seen my desk, I asked, “Why are you here instead of Carraway?”
Lexington flashed me a wolfish grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Because I’m the nice one. Caine scares Imelda. He scares most people. Not you, though.” He took another step toward me, seeming to be cataloguing every little nuance of my face. “And if you’re not careful, that lack of fear could ruin you, Miss Ray.”
If I’d been smarter, I would’ve told Lexington everything there and then. But his threats cut open the wounds Dick had caused. That others had caused. How I was sick of men trying to bully me. “I don’t care how Carraway made his money in his youth, and anyway, there is no evidence to prove he did what Imelda told Dick he did.”
It was a slight movement, so miniscule most wouldn’t have noticed, but Lexington’s shoulders lowered ever so, just enough to tell me he was relieved. Which meant there was probably truth in what Imelda had said.
Interesting.
“But that’s not the story I found.”
Lexington’s jaw clenched and he cocked his head to the side. There was something about being the sole focus of this man that made me nervous and insecure. I put it down to the fact that I was alone with him in my apartment and he’d politely threatened me.
“I’ve seen you in the morning doing the weather reports.” He dropped his gaze for the first time, deliberately raking it over my body, before moving back up to my face. “You’re hard to miss.”
I kept my expression carefully blank, not liking his derisive tone. Not at all.
“How then,” he took a step toward me, “does a weather girl end up chasing tabloid gossip?”
But he didn’t give me a chance to explain, or to tell him what I’d already planned to tell Carraway. “Tabloid journalists are bottom feeders. Lowly scum on the evolutionary chain.” His upper lip curled in distaste and I hated that it was directed at me. Defiance shuddered through me but I held it together. Who was he to judge me? He’d had money and power his whole life. He didn’t know what it was like to be made to feel like a victim.
I flinched, goddamn him.
And he saw it. His brows drew together as he studied me and his tone softened ever so slightly. “Caine doesn’t know you’re digging, and he doesn’t need to know. Stop.”
He seemed to take my non-answer as agreement because he walked past me to leave.
What was I doing?
Just because this man was an asshole didn’t mean Carraway wasn’t still the answer to my problem with Dick.
I hurried after Lexington, and as he opened my door, I called out, “The story is about his mother’s death and whether the Hollands are connected to it. Alistair Holland. Was he there when she died and did someone cover it up? Is Carraway’s PA Alexa related to the Hollands? And if so, why is she working for him?”
Henry whipped around and barreled me back into the wall before I could even blink, anger emanating from every part of his body as he trapped me. Infuriating heat and expensive cologne engulfed my senses. “How much do you want?” he seethed.
Shock and fear quickly turned to disgust and disappointment.
How stupid was I to think this guy could help me?
How stupid was I to think any man could help me?
I was right before.
I needed to fix this myself. Like always.
“You people think you can do whatever the hell you like, don’t you,” I said, my voice hollow in my ears, “Throw money at the problem and it’ll go away.”
“Don’t pretend like I’m the bad guy here, Miss Ray. I’m not the cruel woman playing journalist, plucking guesses out of rubble and trying to put them together like a puzzle to wound strangers who don’t deserve the consequences of your poisoned pen.”
I wasn’t trying to do that, you arrogant bastard!
I gave him a hard, mocking smile. “How poetic of you, Mr. Lexington.”
“Don’t think seduction will work here,” he bit out, staring at my mouth, surprising me because seduction was the last thing on my mind. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m not swayed by every pretty face I see.” He pushed off the wall and stepped back. “You will bury this story or I will bury your career.”
Hurt kept me pinned to the wall. “And here I was led to believe you were the most charming man in Boston.”
“Oh, I am. But some people aren’t worth the energy.”
And on that last well-placed parting shot, he marched out of my home, slamming the door behind him.
Feeling exhausted, I hurried to lock my door. Slumping against it, tears of anger pricked my eyes.
I hated Dick.
And I hated Lexington.
To spite him, I should give Dick the story. Clearly from Lexington’s reaction there was truth in it.
But I wasn’t a spiteful person and it wasn’t Carraway’s fault that his friend was a dipshit. And it certainly wasn’t Alexa Holland’s fault.
I’d still find a way to bury it, and not because Lexington had bullied me, but because it was the right thing to do.