Maureen Child - The Highest Bidder

Tears burned at the backs of her eyes, but she fought them back. She wouldn’t cry. She wasn’t the naive young thing she had been when Jake’s father had conned her. She was older. Wiser. She’d been burned and learned her lesson. And now she wasn’t just protecting herself. She was a mother. And no one was going to take her son from her.

No one.

For the next few days, Vance kept an eye on his new assistant. Granted, he didn’t know her well, but even he could see the change in her. She was jumpy. Nervous. She opened her email as if she were half expecting the computer to explode.

“Something’s going on with her,” he said.

“So,” Roark urged him, “find out what it is.”

“What a great idea. Wonder why I didn’t think of that?”

Oblivious to the sarcasm, Roark shrugged. He shifted his gaze to pedestrians rushing up and down Fifth Avenue. Summer was here and the sun was making sure everyone knew it. The sky was clear blue, the heat was blistering and the biggest sellers from the street cart vendors were icy bottles of water.

Under a wide umbrella, Vance still felt the heat. His suit coat was stifling, but he’d insisted on eating at the sidewalk café so he and his brother could talk without risk of being overheard. The cacophony of sound outside provided enough white noise that no one would be able to listen in on their conversation.

“Just yesterday, I walked into my office and Charlie was at my desk. When I came into the room, she was so startled she looked ready to faint.”

Roark grinned. “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. You can be a scary guy.”

Vance frowned. He wasn’t scary. Was he? Now that he thought about it, most people did tend to scuttle out of his way when he walked through a room. Was that it? Was Charlie just nervous being around him?

He shook his head. “No, that’s not it. She didn’t look scared. She looked guilty.”

Blowing out a breath, Roark turned to his brother, pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head and said, “If you really want to know what’s going on, romance it out of her.”

“What?”

“A little dinner. A little dancing. A little wine …” He shrugged again. “Fastest way to get to the bottom of it.”

“And unethical,” Vance retorted.

“So’s spying on your employer.”

Vance shook his head. “I can’t date my assistant.”

“No rules against it.”

“There are sexual harassment lawsuits.”

Roark laughed. “I didn’t say sleep with her.”

No, but that’s exactly where Vance’s mind had gone with absolutely no help. He’d been thinking about Charlie Potter for days and it wasn’t all about suspicion.

That hair of hers had become something of a fixation for him. He wanted to push his fingers through that long, thick mass of blond waves and feel the cool slide of it against his skin. And then there was the scent of her—something light and floral that seemed to cling to the air in the office even when she wasn’t in the room. The sound of her voice, the way her legs looked in those mile-high heels she wore … Yeah, she was on his mind way too much lately.

Shutting the mental door on those images, he said, “And if I find out she is guilty?”

“Then you fire her. Or,” Roark mused, “use her to give disinformation to Rothschild.”

“Use her and lose her—that’s what you’re saying?” Roark hadn’t even been raised as a Waverly and he had their sensibilities. Maybe it was in the blood. Hell, their own father—after recovering from the loss of his wife and daughter—had gone through women so quickly, there had practically been a revolving door on the Waverly house.

Vance had grown up in a love vacuum. His father had never again risked his heart and Vance had learned to do this same. Roark had been raised by a single mother, so maybe he hadn’t seen any evidence of love, either. Which just gave the brothers even more in common, Vance thought.

“Look,” Roark said, “if she’s guilty, you don’t owe her anything. If she’s innocent, you don’t have to do a damn thing. It’s a win-win.”

“I’ll think about it.” As if he’d been thinking about anything else lately anyway.

“Good. Let me know how it goes.” Roark put his sunglasses back on and dragged his brown leather jacket off the back of the seat. Pulling it on, he added, “I’m out of here in the morning. Got a flight to Dubai tonight and still have a few things to do before I go.”

“Dubai?” Vance smiled. His younger half brother was a master at turning up valuable items to sell at Waverly’s auctions. The downside? He was hardly ever in New York. He’d been around the globe so many times, he was on his third passport—he just kept filling them up with stamps.

“Yeah,” Roark said with a quick grin. “Got a lead on something amazing. I pull this off and Rothschild’s is out of luck. We’ll be so far on top, they’ll never be able to touch us.”

“What is it?” Intrigued, Vance looked at him and waited.

“A surprise,” Roark said. “It’ll be worth the wait. Trust me.”

He did. Funny, though they hadn’t grown up together, Vance felt closer to Roark than to anyone else he’d ever known. He looked at Roark and saw the family resemblance and wished to hell their father had told him about Roark years earlier. And wished Edward Waverly had sought out his second son himself before he’d died.

Roark was raised by a single mother who had refused to name his father. By the time Vance had found him and told him exactly who he was, Roark was his own man and unwilling to accept the truth as easily as Vance had. He wanted proof and who could blame him, really? But all Vance had was a note, written by their late father, and for Roark, that simply wasn’t enough.

Still, they were building a relationship and whether the younger man admitted it or not, they were family.

Vance threw down cash for the bill and walked out with his brother. Taxi horns blared, an ambulance wailed in the distance and the scent of cooking hot dogs drifted on a sullen breeze.

“Take care of yourself,” Vance said.

“Always do,” Roark assured him, then slapped Vance on the shoulder. “I’ll be back soon enough. And I’ve got the satellite phone on me all the time. If you need me, call.”

“Yeah. I will.” Vance watched Roark walk away until he was swallowed up by the crowds.

His brother, the rogue treasure hunter, was off on a quest. And Vance was about to start a quest of his own. Romancing the assistant . He frowned to himself as he joined a crowd of pedestrians to cross the street. He had a feeling that Roark’s job was going to be a hell of a lot less interesting than his own.

By that weekend, Charlie was at the end of her rope. She’d tied a knot and dug her fingernails in tight, but the rope was fraying and any second now she was going to—

“Lot 32,” the auctioneer called out.

She jumped, startled out of her thoughts. She’d had so much adrenaline shooting through her system this week she could probably fly to the moon and back on her own power.

Charlie took a breath, told herself to concentrate and carried a teak tray bearing a diamond-and-sapphire-studded tiara into the salesroom. Steering her thoughts away from the blackmailer now stalking her with daily, ever-more-threatening emails, she focused solely on the task at hand. She couldn’t afford to trip and fall and drop the tray, sending that tiara spiraling off to crash against a wall or something.

Oh, God. Just the thought of that made her stiffen up and slow her steps. The auctioneer turned to fix her with a glare as if to say, Get a move on, already .

She ignored him and stopped beside the podium, holding the tray at a slight angle that afforded the audience a nice view of the tiara.