“Name your price, Lauryn.”
“I don’t have a price. And I think I’d better go.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Don’t, Mr. Garrison. Don’t call. Not about…this.”
This wasn’t going well. “Besides the money, think of the advantages—”
“Of selling my body?”
“—of being my wife. Of being one of the Garrisons of Miami. Doors will open for you.”
She gurgled a disgusted sound. “I don’t care about getting into A-list nightclubs. I’m not even awake when they’re open.”
She tilted her head and appraised him through narrowed eyes. The angle revealed the pulse fluttering rapidly at the base of her slender neck. Her ivory skin looked smooth not sun-baked or covered with sprayed-on tan. Was she as pale all over?
“I suppose it’s because of your family’s wealth and power that you believe you can buy anyone or anything. Like a wife. Or the presidency of the business council.”
Damn. “Lauryn—”
She held up a hand. “You should stop now. Before this becomes harassment. Surely your attorney warned you about that?”
Oh yeah. Brandon had warned him in the same breath he’d insisted Lauryn was The One. That warning was the only reason Adam hadn’t planted a hot kiss on Lauryn’s lips to prove to her that he could please her in bed. But he would never convince her that the marriage could work when she was in this frame of mind. Time for a strategic withdrawal.
“Let me remind you of the confidentiality agreement you signed as part of your employment contract. Anything related to my business, and that includes my strategy to win the Business Council nomination, does not leave this room.”
“No one would believe me if I told them Adam Garrison tried to buy a wife. But don’t worry. I won’t blab unless you make that necessary.” She hustled out, closing the door behind her.
Adam shoved a hand through his hair, expelled a frustrated breath and dropped back into his desk chair. He was used to women chasing him—not running from him as if he’d suddenly announced he had the avian flu.
As one of the heirs to the Garrison hospitality and entertainment empire he was a great catch. All the society columns and his tax returns said so. Not only did his family have deep pockets, but Adam’s personal investments had exponentially increased his net worth. Add in his recently inherited fifteen percent of Garrison, Inc. and saying he was financially comfortable would be a gross understatement.
And he’d seen a mirror. He wasn’t ugly.
So why wasn’t Lauryn biting?
There must be something she wanted. Something he could use for leverage.
All he had to do was find it.
The man had to be crazy.
Lauryn placed her purse, car keys and glasses on the kitchen counter of her minuscule apartment and then headed for the bedroom, tugging the pins from her hair as she went.
A marriage of convenience.
What was this? A romance novel? She read them. But she didn’t live them.
Admittedly, she’d moved to Florida specifically to befriend Adam Garrison.
But she didn’t want to marry him.
He was a known womanizer who dangled a different celebrity or socialite from his arm almost every night. And with his longish inky dark hair, lady-slayer smile and devastating blue eyes, he invariably chose women equally as gorgeous as himself.
But good looks, she’d learned the hard way, were superficial and sometimes covered an ugly personality. They definitely attracted the wrong kinds of attention, which was why she’d quit flaunting her curves and started dressing to fade into the background.
She removed her suit, returned it to the hanger, toed off her pumps and placed them on the shoe rack.
“Huh. He says he likes his space, but I’ll bet he never goes to bed alone,” she muttered to herself as she pulled on a pair of faded sweats and an old T-shirt of her father’s. “He probably serves his women’s orgasms with a cab fare chaser.”
As an accountant she couldn’t help but consider all she could accomplish with a million dollars, starting with replenishing the bank account she’d depleted to move cross country and take a job with Adam’s club—a job she’d specifically targeted when her research revealed he was the new deed-holder to her family’s estate.
But marriage? No way. She’d had one disastrous marriage that began for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t an experience she ever intended repeating.
Not even as a business deal.
A very lucrative business deal.
Forget it.
She padded barefoot to the kitchen, withdrew last night’s Chinese takeout leftovers and popped them in the microwave. The scent of Hunan shrimp mingled with citrus in the air as she peeled an orange to go with her dinner.
If you lived with him you’d get to know him well.
Well enough to convince him let her pry up a few closet floorboards in the fifteen-million-dollar estate he’d bought eighteen months ago?
Why had he spent a fortune on a house if he wasn’t going to live there? She’d thought maybe he intended to remodel first, but a check at the courthouse revealed no building permits had been issued prior to her arrival, and as far as she could tell with her frequent drive-bys nothing beyond routine maintenance had been done to the house since her move to Florida.
A lawn-care company groomed the lush yard, and she’d seen a pool-service company’s van in the circular driveway. She thought she’d spotted tennis courts on the other side of the stone and wrought iron fence but the bougainvillea hedge was too thick to be certain, and the exclusive Sunset Island wasn’t exactly the kind of neighborhood where you could climb fences to peer over the top without getting arrested.
The estate wasn’t within walking distance of the club like Adam’s condo, but even in heavy traffic and with all the South Beach road construction the commute would take less than twenty minutes.
While the food heated she set the table. Her mother—her heart hitched—her adoptive mother, she corrected, had always made a big production of setting the table. It was one of the many things she and Lauryn had done together. All that had changed eleven months ago when Lauryn’s father died and her “mother” had shared the letters.
Letters that had been locked in a safety-deposit box for decades.
Letters from her father’s former lover.
Letters that had upended Lauryn’s life and sent her on a three-thousand-mile quest to find the woman who’d loved her enough to have her but not enough to keep her.
Adrianna Laurence.
Her birthmother.
How could her father have lied? Lauryn asked herself for the billionth time. And how could her mother have let him?
The timer beeped. On autopilot Lauryn retrieved the carton, scraped the contents onto a plate and pulled a Diet Coke with lime from the fridge.
Hadn’t her father realized what a shock it would be for Lauryn to suddenly discover she wasn’t who she’d thought she was for the past twenty-six years?
Hadn’t he known finding out she was the by-product of her father’s affair with a Miami Beach socialite would make Lauryn doubt everything she’d once held as truth?
Why hadn’t he guessed that finding out he’d married his deceased buddy’s pregnant wife only to provide a mother for his infant daughter would make Lauryn question the very fabric of her parents’ marriage? Or that discovering the child growing in her “mother’s” rounded tummy in all those pictures wasn’t Lauryn at all, but a baby boy who had died before taking his first breath?
Why couldn’t her father have told her about her birthmother earlier? Before Adrianna had died. If he’d done so Lauryn would have had a chance to meet the woman who’d given her life and ask questions. She could have heard her mother’s voice, seen her face and learned about her parents’ relationship. What attracted them? What separated them? What had driven Adrianna to give her baby away and why had she died so young?
Even Lauryn’s name was part of the mystery. Laurence. Lauryn. According to Lauryn’s adoptive mother, Adrianna Laurence had insisted on the name. Was it because she wanted Lauryn to find her one day? Or because she couldn’t bear not being a part of her daughter’s life in some small way?
Lauryn might never discover the reason, but it wouldn’t be from lack of trying on her part.
If her father had told the truth then Lauryn wouldn’t be forced to use subterfuge to find her answers.
Answers that, according to the letters, might be found in a diary hidden in a secret compartment beneath the closet floorboards of the estate Adam Garrison now owned.
Were the diaries still there? Or had someone besides her mother known about them and removed them from their hiding place long ago? From Lauryn’s research she knew that her grandmother, the last surviving member of the Laurence clan, had died shortly before Adam bought the property.
Doors will open for you, Adam had said.
The only doors Lauryn wanted to open were the ones to that house. Her birthmother’s house. But she couldn’t just blurt out her odd request. If she did and Adam turned her down, then she’d have nowhere else to turn, and she’d never have her questions answered.
And so the deceit began. She’d moved from California to Florida planning to befriend her new boss and gain his trust. She’d believed that once she did that, once she’d proven she wasn’t some flake with outlandish ideas, he’d be more likely to grant her bizarre request to pry up a few floorboards.
Only it hadn’t worked out the way she’d hoped. She and Adam only saw each other in a business setting at biweekly meetings. There was nothing remotely personal in discussing the club’s bottom line and there were always other employees in the vicinity.
And now…
She stared at her steaming dinner with absolutely no appetite.
Now, Adam’s crazy plan and her refusal to participate in it had probably ruined any chance of friendship or trust ever developing. She’d be lucky if she escaped this situation with her job.
She’d have to find a way—short of marriage—to make amends or kiss her quest for answers goodbye.
Two
Getting out of the building for an hour on Friday appealed to Lauryn about as much as winning the lottery.
With the club operating from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., Adam didn’t usually make appearances in the Estate offices until late afternoon. While he slept, a hive of office staff, custodians and food and beverage restockers did their jobs to prepare for the night ahead. Nevertheless, Lauryn had jumped at every sound this morning and looked forward to taking the bus to her favorite Dolphin Mall deli and spending a relaxing hour not worrying about Adam Garrison’s bizarre proposition.
The clock ticked noon. Time to escape. Tension drained from her knotted shoulders. She pulled her purse from her desk and took her usual circuit through the club. With the lights turned low, the antebellum structure that had begun life as a French-owned casino looked as if it, too, were sleeping. Later this afternoon the building would awaken as the technicians tested every speaker and bulb and set up whatever stage requirements tonight’s entertainers demanded.