Buch lesen: «Falling For Her Fake Fiancé»

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Extract

Copyright

One

“Mis-ter Logan,” the old-fashioned intercom rasped on Ethan’s desk.

He scowled at the thing and at the way his current secretary insisted on hissing his name. “Yes, Delores?” He’d never been in an office that required an intercom. It felt as if he’d walked into the 1970s.

Of course, that was probably how old the intercom was. After all, Ethan was sitting in the headquarters of the Beaumont Brewery. This room—complete with hand-carved everything—probably hadn’t been redecorated since, well...

A very long time ago. The Beaumont Brewery was 160 years old, after all.

“Mis-ter Logan,” Delores rasped again, her dislike for him palatable. “We’re going to have to stop production on the Mountain Cold and Mountain Cold Light lines.”

“What? Why?” Logan demanded. The last thing he could afford was another shutdown.

Ethan had been running this company for almost three months now. His firm, Corporate Restructuring Services, had beat out some heavy hitters for the right to handle the reorganization of the Beaumont Brewery, and Ethan had to make this count. If he—and, by extension, CRS—could turn this aging, antique company into a modern-day business, their reputation in the business world would be cemented.

Ethan had expected some resistance. It was only natural. He’d restructured thirteen companies before taking the helm of Beaumont Brewery. Each company had emerged from the reorganization process leaner, meaner and more competitive in a global economy. Everyone won when that happened.

Yes, thirteen success stories.

Yet nothing had prepared him for the Beaumont Brewery.

“There’s a flu going around,” Delores said. “Sixty-five workers are home sick, the poor dears.”

A flu. Wasn’t that just a laugh and a half? Last week, it’d been a cold that had knocked out forty-seven employees. And the week before, after a mass food poisoning, fifty-four people hadn’t been able to make it in.

Ethan was no idiot. He’d cut the employees a little slack the first two times, trying to earn their trust. But now it was time to lay down the law.

“Fire every single person who called in sick today.”

There was a satisfying pause on the other end of the intercom, and, for a moment, Ethan felt a surge of victory.

The victorious surge was short-lived, however.

“Mis-ter Logan,” Delores began. “Regretfully, it seems that the HR personnel in charge of processing terminations are out sick today.”

“Of course they are,” he snapped. He fought the urge to throw the intercom across the room, but that was an impulsive, juvenile thing to do, and Ethan was not impulsive or juvenile. Not anymore.

So, as unsatisfying as it was, he merely shut off the intercom and glared at his office door.

He needed a better plan.

He always had a plan when he went into a business. His method was proven. He could turn a flailing business around in as little as six months.

But this? The Beaumont freaking Brewery?

That was the problem, he decided. Everyone—the press, the public, their customers and especially the employees—still thought of this as the Beaumont Brewery. Sure, the business had been under Beaumont management for a good century and a half. That was the reason AllBev, the conglomerate that had hired CRS to handle this reorganization, had chosen to keep the Beaumont name a part of the Brewery—the name-recognition value was through the roof.

But it wasn’t the Beaumont family’s brewery anymore. They had been forced out months ago. And the sooner the employees realized that, the better.

He looked around the office. It was beautiful, heavy with history and power.

He’d heard that the conference table had been custom-made. It was so big and heavy that it’d been built in the actual office—they might have to take a wall out to remove it. Tucked in the far corner by a large coffee table was a grouping of two leather club chairs and a matching leather love seat. The coffee table was supposedly made of one of the original wagon wheels that Phillipe Beaumont had used when he’d crossed the Great Plains with a team of Percheron draft horses back in the 1880s.

The only signs of the current decade were the flat-screen television that hung over the sitting area and the electronics on the desk, which had been made to match the conference table.

The entire room screamed Beaumont so loudly he was practically deafened by it.

He flipped on the hated intercom again. “Delores.”

“Yes, Mis—”

He cut her off before she could mangle his name again. “I want to redo the office. I want all this stuff gone. The curtains, the woodwork—and the conference table. All of it.” Some of these pieces—hand carved and well cared for, like the bar—would probably fetch a pretty penny. “Sell it off.”

There was another satisfying pause.

“Yes, sir.” For a moment, he thought she sounded subdued—cowed. As if she couldn’t believe he would really dismantle the heart of the Beaumont Brewery. But then she added, “I know just the appraiser to call,” in a tone that sounded...smug?

He ignored her and went back to his computer. Two lines shut down was not acceptable. If either line didn’t pull double shifts tomorrow, he wouldn’t wait for HR to terminate employees. He’d do it himself.

After all, he was the boss here. What he said went.

And that included the furniture.

* * *

Frances Beaumont slammed her bedroom door behind her and flopped down on her bed. Another rejection—she couldn’t fall much lower.

She was tired of this. She’d been forced to move back into the Beaumont mansion after her last project had failed so spectacularly that she’d had to give up her luxury condo in downtown Denver. She’d even been forced to sell most of her designer wardrobe.

The idea—digital art ownership and crowdsourcing art patronage online by having buyers buy stock in digital art—had been fundamentally sound. Art might be timeless, but art production and collection had to evolve. She’d sunk a considerable portion of her fortune into Art Digitale, as well as every single penny she’d gotten from the sale of the Beaumont Brewery.

What an epic, crushing mistake. After months of delays and false starts—and huge bills—Art Digitale had been live for three weeks before the funds ran out. Not a single transaction had taken place on the website. In her gilded life, she’d never experienced such complete failure. How could she? She was a Beaumont.

Her business failure was bad enough. But worse? She couldn’t get a job. It was as if being a Beaumont suddenly counted for nothing. Her first employer, the owner of Galerie Solaria, hadn’t exactly jumped at the chance to have Frances come back, even though Frances knew how to flatter the wealthy, art-focused patrons and massage the delicate egos of artists. She knew how to sell art—didn’t that count for something?

Plus, she was a Beaumont. A few years ago, people would have jumped at the chance to be associated with one of the founding families of Denver. Frances had been an in-demand woman.

“Where did I go wrong?” she asked her ceiling.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t have an answer.

She’d just turned thirty. She was broke and had moved back in with her family—her brother Chadwick and his family, plus assorted Beaumonts from her father’s other marriages.

She shuddered in horror.

When the family still owned the Brewery, the Beaumont name had meant something. Frances had meant something. But ever since that part of her life had been sold, she’d been...adrift.

If only there was some way to go back, to put the Brewery under the family’s control again.

Yes, she thought bitterly, that was definitely an option. Her older brothers Chadwick and Matthew had walked away and started their own brewery, Percheron Drafts. Phillip, her favorite older brother, the one who had gotten her into parties and helped her build her reputation as the Cool Girl of Denver high society, had ensconced himself out on the Beaumont Farm and gotten sober. No more parties with him. And her twin brother, Byron, was starting a new restaurant.

Everyone else was moving forward, pairing off. And Frances was stuck back in her childhood room, alone.

Not that she believed a man would solve any of her problems. She’d grown up watching her father burn through marriage after unhappy marriage. No, she knew love didn’t exist. Or if it did, it wasn’t in the cards for her.

She was on her own here.

She opened up a message from her friend Becky and stared at the picture of a shuttered storefront. She and Becky had worked together at Galerie Solaria. Becky had no famous last name and no social connections, but she knew art and had a snarky sense of humor that cut through the bull. More to the point, Becky treated Frances like she was a real person, not just a special Beaumont snowflake. They had been friends ever since.

Becky had a proposition. She wanted to open a new gallery, one that would merge the new-media art forms with the standard classics that wealthy patrons preferred. It wasn’t as avant-garde as Frances’s digital art business had been, but it was a good bridge between the two worlds.

The only problem was Frances did not have the money to invest. She wished to God she did. She could co-own and comanage the gallery. It wouldn’t bring in big bucks, but it could get her out of the mansion. It could get her back to being a somebody. And not just any somebody. She could go back to being Frances Beaumont—popular, respected, envied.

She dropped her phone onto the bed in defeat. Right. Another fortune was just going to fall into her lap and she’d be in demand. Sure. And she would also sprout wings.

True despair was sinking in when her phone rang. She answered it without even looking at the screen. “Hello?” she said morosely.

“Frances? Frannie,” the woman said. “I know you may not remember me—I’m Delores Hahn. I used to work in accounting at—”

The name rang a bell, an older woman who wore her hair in a tight bun. “Oh! Delores! Yes, you were at the Brewery. How are you?”

The only people besides her siblings who called her Frannie were the longtime employees of the Beaumont Brewery. They were her second family—or at least, they had been.

“We’ve been better,” Delores said. “Listen, I have a proposal for you. I know you’ve got those fancy art degrees.”

In the safety of her room, Frances blushed. After today’s rejections, she didn’t feel particularly fancy. “What kind of proposal?” Maybe her luck was about to change. Maybe this proposal would come with a paycheck.

“Well,” Delores went on in a whisper, “the new CEO that AllBev brought in?”

Frances scowled. “What about him? Failing miserably, I hope.”

“Sadly,” Delores said in a not-sad-at-all voice, “there’s been an epidemic of Brew Flu going around. We had to halt production on two lines today.”

Frances couldn’t hold back the laugh that burst forth from her. “Oh, that’s fabulous.”

“It was,” Delores agreed. “But it made Logan—that’s the new CEO—so mad that he decided to rip out your father’s office.”

Frances would have laughed again, except for one little detail. “He’s going to destroy Daddy’s office? He wouldn’t dare!”

“He told me to sell it off. All of it—the table, the bar, everything. I think he’d even perform an exorcism, if he thought it’d help,” she added.

Her father’s office. Technically, it had most recently been Chadwick’s office. But Frances had never stopped thinking of her father and that office together. “So what’s your proposal?”

“Well,” Delores said, her voice dropping past whisper and straight into conspirator. “I thought you could come do the appraisals. Who knows—you might be able to line up buyers for some of it.”

“And...” Frances swallowed. The following was a crass question, but desperate times and all that. “And would this Logan fellow pay for the appraisal? If I sold the furniture myself—” say, to a certain sentimental older brother who’d been the CEO for almost ten years “—would I get a commission?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Frances tried to see the downside of this situation, but nothing popped up. Delores was right—if anyone had the connections to sell off her family’s furniture, it’d be Frances.

Plus, if she could get a foothold back in the Brewery, she might be able to help all those poor, flu-stricken workers. She wasn’t so naive to think that she could get a conglomerate like AllBev to sell the company back to the family, but...

She might be able to make this Logan’s life a little more difficult. She might be able to exact a little revenge. After all—the sale of the Brewery had been when her luck had turned sour. And if she could get paid to do all of that?

“Let’s say Friday, shall we?” That was only two days away, but that would give her plenty of time to plan and execute her trap. “I’ll bring the donuts.”

Delores actually giggled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Oh, yes. This was going to be great.

* * *

“Mis-ter Logan, the appraiser is here.”

Ethan set down the head count rolls he’d been studying. Next week, he was reducing the workforce by 15 percent. People with one or more “illness absences” were going to be the first to find themselves out on the sidewalk with nothing more than a box of their possessions.

“Good. Send him in.”

But no nerdy-looking art geek walked into the office. Ethan waited and then switched the intercom back on. Before he could ask Delores the question, though, he heard a lot of people talking—and laughing?

It sounded as though someone was having a party in the reception area.

What the hell?

He strode across the room and threw open his office door. There was, point of fact, a party going on outside. Workers he’d only caught glimpses of before were all crowded around Delores’s desk, donuts in their hands and sappy smiles on their faces.

“What’s going on out here?” he thundered. “This is a business, people, not a—”

Then the crowd parted, and he saw her.

God, how had he missed her? A woman with a stunning mane of flame-red hair sat on the edge of Delores’s desk. Her body was covered by an emerald-green gown that clung to every curve like a lover’s hands. His fingers itched to trace the line of her bare shoulders.

She was not an employee. That much was clear.

She was, however, holding a box of donuts.

The good-natured hum he’d heard on the intercom died away. The smiles disappeared, and people edged away from him.

“What is this?” he demanded. The color drained out of several employees’ faces, but his tone didn’t appear to have the slightest impact on the woman in the green gown.

His eyes were drawn to her back, to the way her ass looked sitting on the edge of the desk. Slowly—so slowly it almost hurt him—she turned and looked at him over her shoulder.

He might have intimidated the workers. He clearly had not intimidated her.

She batted her eyelashes as a cryptic smile danced across her deep red lips. “Why, it’s Donut Friday.”

Ethan glared at her. “What?”

She pivoted, bringing more of her profile into view. Dear God, that dress—that body. The strapless dress came to a deep V over her chest, doing everything in its power to highlight the pale, creamy skin of her décolletage.

He shouldn’t stare. He wasn’t staring. Really.

Her posture shifted. It was like watching a dancer arrange herself before launching into a series of gravity-defying pirouettes. “You must be new here,” the woman said in a pitying tone. “It’s Friday. That’s the day I bring donuts.”

Individually, he understood each word and every implication of her tone and movement. But together? “Donut Friday?” He’d been here for months, and this was the first time he’d heard anything about donuts.

“Yes,” she said. She held out the box. “I bring everyone a donut. Would you like the last one? I’m afraid all I have left is a plain.”

“And who are you, if I may ask?”

“Oh, you may.” She lowered her chin and looked up at him through her lashes. She was simply the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, which was more than enough to turn his head. But the fact that she was playing him for the fool—and they both knew it?

There were snickers from the far-too-large audience as she held out her hand for him—not to shake, no. She held it out as though she expected him to kiss it, as if she were the queen or something.

“I’m Frances Beaumont. I’m here to appraise the antiques.”

Two

Oh, this was fun.

“Donut?” she asked again, holding out the box. She kept as much innocence as she could physically manage on her face.

“You’re the appraiser?”

She let the donut box hang in the space between them a few more moments before she slowly lowered the box back to her lap.

She’d been bringing donuts in on Fridays since—well, since as long as she could remember. It’d been her favorite part of the week, mostly because it was the only time she ever got to be with her father, just the two of them. For a few glorious hours every Friday morning, she was Daddy’s Little Girl. No older brothers taking up all his time. No new wives or babies demanding his attention. Just Hardwick Beaumont and his little girl, Frannie.

And what was more, she got to visit all the grown-ups—including many of the same employees who were watching this exchange between her and Logan with rapt fascination—and hear how nice she was, how pretty she looked in that dress, what a sweetheart she was. The people who’d been working for the Brewery for the past thirty years had made her feel special and loved. They’d been her second family. Even after Hardwick had died and regular Donut Fridays had faded away, she’d still taken the time to stop in at least once a month. Donuts—hand-delivered with a smile and a compliment—made the world a better place.

If she could repay her family’s loyal employees by humiliating a tyrant of an outsider, then that was the very least she could do.

Logan’s mouth opened and closed before he ordered, “Get back to work.”

No one moved.

She turned back to the crowd to hide her victorious smile. They weren’t listening to him. They were waiting on her.

“Well,” she said graciously, unable to keep the wicked glint out of her eye. Just so long as Logan didn’t see it. “It has been simply wonderful to see everyone again. I know I’ve missed you—we all have in the Beaumont family. I do hope that I can come back for another Donut Friday again soon?”

Behind her, Logan made a choking noise.

But in front of her, the employees nodded and grinned. A few of them winked in silent support.

“Have a wonderful day, everyone,” she cooed as she waved.

The crowd began to break up. A few people dared to brave what was no doubt Logan’s murderous glare to come close enough to murmur their thanks or ask that she pass along their greetings to Chadwick or Matthew. She smiled and beamed and patted shoulders and promised that she’d tell her brothers exactly what everyone had said, word for word.

The whole time she felt Logan’s rage rolling off him in waves, buffeting against her back. He was no doubt trying to kill her with looks alone. It wouldn’t work. She had the upper hand here, and they both knew it.

Finally, there was only one employee left. “Delores,” Frances said in her nicest voice, “if Mr. Logan doesn’t want his donut—” She pivoted and held the box out to him again.

Oh, yes—she had the advantage here. He could go right on trying to glare her to death, but it wouldn’t change the fact that the entire administrative staff of the Brewery had ignored his direct order and listened to hers. That feeling of power—of importance—coursed through her body. God, it felt good.

“I do not,” he snarled.

“Would you be a dear and take care of this for me?” Frances finished, handing the box to Delores.

“Of course, Ms. Frances.” Delores gave Frances a look that was at least as good as—if not better than—an actual hug, then shuffled off in the direction of the break room, leaving Frances alone with one deeply pissed-off CEO. She crossed her legs at the ankle and leaned toward him, but she didn’t say anything else. The ball was firmly in his court now. The only question was did he know how to play the game?

The moment stretched. Frances took advantage of the silence to appraise her prey. This Logan fellow was quite an attractive specimen. He was maybe only a few inches taller than Frances, but he had the kind of rock-solid build that suggested he’d once been a defensive linebacker—and an effective one at that. His suit—a very good suit, with conservative lines—had been tailored to accommodate his wide shoulders. Given the girth of his neck, she’d put money on his shirts being made-to-order. Bespoke shirts and suits were not cheap.

He had a square jaw—all the squarer right now, given how he was grinding his teeth—and light brown hair that was close cut. He was probably incredibly good-looking when he wasn’t scowling.

He was attempting to regain his composure, she realized. Couldn’t have that.

Back when she’d been a little girl, she’d sat on this very desk, kicking her little legs as she held the donut box for everyone. Back then, it’d been cute to hop down off the desk when all the donuts were gone and twirl in her pretty dress.

But what was cute at five didn’t cut it at thirty. No hopping. Still, she had to get off this desk.

So she extended her left leg—which conveniently was the side where one of the few designer dresses she’d hung on to was slit up to her thigh—and slowly shifted her weight onto it.

Logan’s gaze cut to her bare leg as the fabric fell away.

She leaned forward as she brought her other foot down. The slit in the dress closed back over her leg, but Logan’s eyes went right where she expected them to—her generous cleavage.

In no great hurry, she stood, her shoulders back and her chin up. “Shall we?” she asked in a regal tone. “My cloak,” she added, motioning with her chin toward where she’d removed the matching cape that went with this dress.

Without waiting for an answer from him, she strode into his office as if she owned it. Which she once had, sort of.

The room looked exactly as she remembered it. Frances sighed in relief—it was all still here. She used to color on the wagon wheel table while she waited for the rest of the workers to get in so she could hand out the donuts. She’d played dolls on the big conference table. And her father’s desk...

The only time her daddy hugged her was in this room. Hardwick Beaumont had not been a hard-driven, ruthless executive in those small moments with her. He’d told her things he’d never told anyone else, like how his father, Frances’s grandfather John, had let Hardwick pick out the color of the drapes and the rug. How John had let Hardwick try a new beer fresh off the line, and then made him tell the older man why it was good and what the brewers should do better.

“This office,” her daddy used to say, “made me who I am.” And then he’d give her a brief, rare hug and say, “And it’ll make you who you are, too, my girl.”

Ridiculous how the thought of a simple hug from her father could make her all misty-eyed.

She couldn’t bear the thought of all this history—all her memories—being sold off to the highest bidder. Even if that would result in a tidy commission for her.

If she couldn’t stop the sale, the best she could do was convince Chadwick to buy as much of his old office as possible. Her brother had fought to keep this company in the family. He’d understand that some things just couldn’t be sold away.

But that wasn’t plan A.

She tucked her tenderness away. In matters such as this one, tenderness was a liability, and God knew she couldn’t afford any more of those.

So she stopped in the middle of the office and waited for Logan to catch up. She did not fold herself gracefully into one of the guest chairs in front of the desk, nor did she arrange herself seductively on the available love seat. She didn’t even think of sprawling herself out on the conference table.

She stood in the middle of the room as though she was ruler of all she saw. And no one—not even a temporary CEO built like a linebacker—could convince her otherwise.

She was surprised when he did not slam the door shut. Instead, she heard the gentle whisper of it clicking closed. Head up, shoulders back, she reminded herself as she stood, waiting for him to make the next move. She would show him no mercy. She expected nothing but the same returned in kind.

She saw him move toward the conference table, where he draped her cape over the nearest chair. She felt his eyes on her. No doubt he was admiring her body even as he debated wringing her neck.

Men were so easy to confuse.

He was the kind of man, she decided, who would need to reassert his control over the situation. Now that the audience had dispersed, he would feel it a moral imperative to put her back in her place.

She could not let him get comfortable. It was just that simple.

Ah, she’d guessed right. He made a wide circle around her, not bothering to hide how he was checking out her best dress as he headed for the desk. Frances held her pose until he was almost seated. Then she reached into her small handbag—emerald-green silk, made to match the dress, of course—and pulled out a small mirror and lipstick. Ignoring Logan entirely, she fixed her lips, making sure to exaggerate her pouts.

Was she hearing things or had a nearly imperceptible groan come from the area behind the desk?

This was almost too easy, really.

She put the lipstick and mirror away and pulled out her phone. Logan opened his mouth to say something, but she interrupted him by taking a picture of the desk. And of him.

He snapped his mouth shut. “Frances Beaumont, huh?”

“The one and only,” she purred, taking a close-up of the carved details on the corner of the desk. And if she had to bend over to do so—well, she couldn’t help it if this dress was exceptionally low-cut.

“I suppose,” Logan said in a strangled-sounding voice, “that there’s no such thing as a coincidence?”

“I certainly don’t believe in them.” She shifted her angle and took another shot. “Do you?”

“Not anymore.” Instead of sounding flummoxed or even angry, she detected a hint of humor in his voice. “I suppose you know your way around, then?”

“I do,” she cheerfully agreed. Then she paused, as if she’d just remembered that she’d forgotten her manners. “I’m so sorry—I don’t believe I caught your name?”

My, that was a look. But if he thought he could intimidate her, he had no idea who he was dealing with. “My apologies.” He stood and held out his hand. “I’m Ethan Logan. I’m the CEO of the Beaumont Brewery.”