A man like him wouldn’t be celibate for so long. Even with her name on his wrists, he’d probably slept with a dozen other women. It infuriated her, and suddenly she knew she wasn’t going to let him claim her so easily again.
She couldn’t be so easy, sell herself so cheaply to him. She’d dedicated herself to championing women, arranging for motivational talks that would encourage them to take control and say no to anyone who was being unjust and hurting them.
She’d been in therapy for three years, talking about her self-worth, her emotions, trying to stop feeling like a guilty party as well as a victim. But what kind of woman waited so long for a man, and then let him back in as if what he’d done hadn’t hurt without even demanding a decent explanation?
Not you, Whitney.
Hanging on to that thought, she entered the three-story building of Donahue’s, the biggest family-owned hardware business chain in the United States. And when she said family, it actually meant just her alone.
The specialized individuals currently in charge had been running Donahue’s for over a decade, since her parents died. But while Whitney preferred to dedicate her own time mostly to her charity work, she’d recently taken over a seat on the board and kept a small office on the third floor of the main store, where she could oversee the workings of the company from up close, and handle the planning of all the benefits she and Chloe frequently organized.
“Good morning, Felicia, how’s your mother doing?” she asked her personal assistant, who straightened from behind her desk and immediately followed her into her office.
“She’s out of the hospital today, thank God,” Felicia said, heading over the minibar to toil with the coffeemaker.
“Good. I’ve heard those nose jobs can be a bitch. And you might consider making that coffee extra strong today. I had that kind of night.”
“Bad, huh?” Fel asked as she pulled out a coffee cup and spoon.
Her cheeks felt aflame all of a sudden. “It was actually a good kind of bad. Just busy.” Andrew moving inside her, telling her, “Welcome me the fuck home . . .”
Shoving the disturbingly arousing memory aside, she slipped behind her desk and booted up her computer. She spotted a white envelope with her name on it lying across the keyboard.
She opened it without a second thought, and a picture of her uncle Harry dropped into her palm. He was much younger than she remembered him, but still, the sight of his odious face acted like a punch in the gut. She was about to tear it apart on impulse when the bold letters on the note caught her eye.
They read:
5 Million Cash
Midnight Sunday at Navy Pier
OR THE WORLD WILL KNOW
Her stomach disintegrated.
Fear, real, gut-churning fear, gripped all her organs into rocklike immobility.
“Who brought this?” When she finally managed to move, she lifted the empty envelope in the air to Felicia’s startled gaze. She was sure that the blood had drained from her face.
Felicia walked over with a steaming cup of coffee, alarmed. Of course she’d never seen Whitney like this. “I saw it there when I came in this morning, I don’t know who put it there. Are you all right, Whitney?”
“No, I’m not, Fel. Do you mean to tell me people can come into my office without anybody knowing about it?” When Felicia only spread her arms out helplessly, Whitney narrowed her eyes. “Bring me the head of security. Now.”
As Felicia scrambled to summon him, Whitney stared in disbelief at the note, and suddenly she was sixteen and helpless all over again.
The bile tasted thick and bitter in her throat as she slowly folded the note into her purse. She could not, for the life of her, allow her chief of security to see the blackmail note. She couldn’t allow anyone to see the blackmail note. But she sure as hell could demand to know who had entered her office without her permission.
Sunday at midnight . . .
She had three days to find out who set this envelope on her desk.
Three days to decide whether she would pay the ransom.
And most importantly, three days to decide whether or not she was going to tell Andrew.
The last suddenly seemed the worst option of all.
She loathed to have to admit to him that at this very moment, when she desperately wanted to show him how independent she’d become, that she still needed him.
*****
She had him all jacked up.
All. Jacked. Up.
Whitney was in every freaking corner of his head as he took charge of his office this morning, which didn’t help him wrap his brain around the fact that three years had flown by, and although his companies had kept going forward, he’d been stuck in the past. It had been supremely taxing, not to mention mentally exhausting, to check the status of eight multimillion-dollar corporations, and one huge billion-dollar oil and energy company.
Andrew had spent the entire morning checking the paperwork of only the first week after his departure, and it would take up to a year to fully catch up. But he also needed to make time to visit his father, so he left the AFM International headquarters at midafternoon with the aim of seeing his father, and then getting back home. Early. If possible. To her. His loins heated up at the thought of seeing her. He was going to take that sassy little redhead in his arms and make her realize that he was never, and never would be, an affair to her . . .
As he rode the private elevator up to his father’s penthouse, he could still see Whitney as she’d been this morning, all flashing eyes and defiance.
She made him about as hot as an exploding sun.
The entire day he’d felt wired like he had a dozen Red Bulls in his system and pure adrenaline rushing through his veins. The thoughts of her that flashed in abrupt spurts across his mind made him harder than granite. He’d never thought it possible that she could both enchant and defy him at the same time, but she did. Oh, she did. And now he simmered with the need to make her accept him once more.
Welcomed by the familiar smell of his father’s pipe and his old butler, Andrew greeted the butler and then found his father exactly where he’d suspected he would.
Seated at his usual burgundy wingback chair, with a leather tome on his lap and a half-drunk whiskey glass on the table beside him, was a seventy-eight-year-old embodiment of rectitude.
“Father,” Andrew said, from the door.
Andrew Fairchild, Sr., known to his friends as “Drew,” looked up slowly at the voice, and suddenly Andrew realized his father looked . . . old. Older. Aged.