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But Teddy wasn’t finished. The older man looked somber, sad, but Wes was pretty sure he caught a gleam of satisfaction in the other man’s eyes. Hell, he was probably enjoying this. Nothing the man liked better than sitting high on his righteous horse. Teddy hadn’t even bothered to take his call, preferring instead to call a damn press conference. Bastard.
“Here at PlayCo,” Teddy was saying, “we put a high priority on family values. In fact, you could say that’s the dominant trademark of my company and it always will be. A man’s family is all important—or should be. After this morning’s revelations, I have to say that clearly, Wes Jackson is not the man I’d believed him to be, and so I have some thinking to do in the next few days. As things stand now, it would take a miracle to persuade me to believe otherwise.” Questions were fired at him, cameras chattered as shutters clicked over and over again. But Teddy was done.
“That’s it. That’s all I’ve got to say.” He looked out over the crowd. “You have more questions, I suggest you throw them at Wes Jackson. Good day.” He left the podium in the midst of a media circus and Wes rubbed his eyes, trying to ease the headache crouched behind them.
Stacy/Tracy turned the sound off on the computer, and silence dropped over everyone in the room like
a damn shroud. Inside Wes, irritation bubbled into anger and then morphed quickly into helpless rage. There was nowhere to turn it. Nowhere to focus it and get any kind of satisfaction.
As of now, the merger was in the toilet. And yeah, he was concentrating on the business aspect of this nightmare because he didn’t have enough information to concentrate on the personal. Furious, Wes watched his PR team scramble to somehow mitigate the growing disaster. His assistant was already fielding calls from the media and this story seemed to be growing by the minute. Nothing people liked better than a scandal, and whoever this Maverick was, they obviously knew it.
For the first time ever, Wes felt helpless, and he didn’t like it. Not only was his company taking a hit, but somewhere out there, he had a child he’d known nothing about. How the hell had this Maverick discovered the girl? Was Isabelle in on all of this? Or was someone close to her hoping for a giant payout along with payback? Whatever the reason, this attack was deliberate. Someone had arranged a deliberate assault on him and his company. That someone was out to ruin him, and his brain worked feverishly trying to figure out just who was behind it all.
Running a successful business meant that you would naturally make enemies. But until today he wouldn’t have thought that any of them would stoop to something like this. So he went deeper, beyond business and into the personal, looking for anyone who might have set him up for a fall like this. And only one name rose up in his mind. His ex-girlfriend, Cecelia Morgan.
She and Belle had been friendly for a while back in the day. Maybe Cecelia had known about the baby. Maybe she was the one who had started all this. Hell, she might even be Maverick herself. Cecelia hadn’t taken it well when he broke up with her, and God knew she had a vicious temper. But if she was behind it all, why? Her company, To the Moon, sold upscale merchandise for kids. They weren’t in direct competition, but she was as devoted to her business as Wes was to his, and maybe that was the main reason the two of them hadn’t worked out. Or, he told himself, maybe it was the mean streak he’d witnessed whenever Cecelia was with her two best friends, Simone Parker and Naomi Price. He knew for a fact that people in Royal called the three women the Mean Girls. They were rich, beautiful, entitled and sometimes not real careful about the things they said to and about people.
He didn’t know if she’d had anything to do with what was happening, but there was one sure way to find out. Leaving his employees scrambling, Wes drove home to Royal to confront his ex and, just maybe, get some answers. The drive did nothing to calm him down, since his brain kept focusing on the photo of that little girl. His daughter, for God’s sake.
He needed answers. The only one who could give them to him was Belle, so finding her was priority one. His IT staff was now focused on not only mitigating his business disaster, but also in finding Isabelle Gray. But until he did locate Belle, Wes told himself, at least he could do something. Knowing Cecelia could always be found at the Texas Cattleman’s Club for lunch, he headed there the moment he hit town.
Cecelia was in the middle of what looked like a lunch meeting with a few of her employees. And though breaking it up would only encourage gossip, Wes wasn’t interested in waiting for her to finish. The TCC was a legend in Royal, Texas. A members-only club, it had been around forever and only in the last several years had started accepting women as members—quite a few of the old guard still weren’t happy about it. The dining room was elegant, understated and quiet but for the hush of conversation and the subtle clink of silverware against china.
On the drive from Houston, Wes’s mind had raced with the implications of everything that had happened. A child he didn’t know about. A merger in the toilet. His reputation shattered. And at the bottom of it all, maybe a vengeful ex. By the time he stood outside that dining room, he was ready for a battle.
“Mr. Jackson.” The maître d’ stepped up. “May I show you to a table? Are you alone for lunch or expecting guests?”
“Neither, thanks,” Wes said, ignoring the man after a brief, polite nod. Wes speared Cecelia with a cold, hard gaze that caught her attention even from across the room. “I just need a word with Ms. Morgan.”
Once she met his cool stare, she frowned slightly, then excused herself from the table and walked toward him. She was a gorgeous woman, and in a purely male response, Wes had to admire her even as his anger bubbled and churned inside. Her long, wavy blond hair lay across her shoulders and her gray-green eyes fixed on him, curiosity shining there. She wasn’t very tall, but her generous figure and signature pout had brought more than one man in Texas to his knees.
She gave him a smile, then leaned in as if to kiss his cheek, but Wes pulled back out of reach. He caught the surprise and the insult in her eyes, but he only said, “We need to talk.”
There were already enough people talking about his business today, so he took her forearm in a tight grip and led her away from the dining room to a quiet corner, hoping for at least a semblance of privacy. Cecelia pulled free as soon as he stopped and hissed, “What is going on with you?”
“You know damn well what,” he said in a gravelly whisper. “That email you sent.”
Those big, beautiful eyes clouded with confusion. “I have zero idea what you’re talking about.”
He studied her for a long minute, deciding whether she was lying or not. God knew he couldn’t be sure, but he was going with instinct here. She didn’t look satisfied with a mission accomplished. She looked irritated and baffled.
“Fine,” he said grimly and dug his cell phone out of a pocket. Pulling up his email, he handed the phone to her and waited while she read it.
“Maverick? Who the heck is Maverick?”
Her expression read confusion and a part of him eased back a little. But if she wasn’t Maverick, who was?
“Good question. I got an email this morning from a stranger. They sent me a picture of a daughter I never knew existed.” He opened the attachment and showed her the picture of the smiling little girl. That’s when he saw the flash of recognition in her eyes and he realized that Cecelia knew more than she was saying. Her face was too easy to read. His daughter’s existence hadn’t surprised her a bit.
“You knew about the girl.” It wasn’t a question. His chest felt tight.
Taking a deep breath, Cecelia blew out a breath and said, “I knew she was pregnant when she left. I didn’t know she’d had a girl.”
“She?”
Cecelia huffed out a breath. “Isabelle.”
He swayed in place. He’d known it. Seeing that necklace on a little girl with his eyes had been impossible to deny. Isabelle. The woman he’d been involved with for almost a year had been pregnant with his daughter and hadn’t bothered to tell him. More than that, though, was the fact that apparently Cecelia had known about his child, too, and kept the secret. Belle had left town. Cecelia had been right here in Royal. Seeing him all the damn time. And never once had she let on that he had a child out there. He couldn’t rage at Belle. Yet. So it was the woman in front of him who got the full blast of what he was feeling. Every time she’d seen him for the last five years, she’d lied to him by not saying anything. She’d known he was a father and never said a damn word. What the hell? And who was Maverick and how did he know?
