The Elliotts: Bedrooms Not Boardrooms!

TMI. Too much information. Aubrey’s description echoed in Liam’s head and his skin shrank three sizes. Don’t want to go there. His parents’ intimate life was none of his business and Liam liked it that way.

His father removed the landscape already hanging on the wall and replaced it with the morning glory.

“Perfect,” his mother announced.

His father hooked an arm around Liam’s shoulders and nodded toward the painting. “This was a great idea.”

Liam glanced at his mother. She studied the art with her hands clasped under her chin and a smile on her face. And then he turned back to his father. “So do you know what it means?”

His father shifted uncomfortably and lowered his arm. “Only because your mother fell in love with one of the paintings by this artist hanging in the hospital physical therapy room. I asked what was so great about a picture of a flower and Renee explained it to me.”

Renee was the social worker engaged to Tag, Liam’s younger brother. They’d met when Renee was assigned to keep Tag from terrorizing the hospital staff caring for their mother after her double mastectomy.

Liam shared a sympathetic look with his father and then confessed, “I had to have somebody explain it to me, too.”

His father crossed to the dresser and returned with a pair of gilt-edged tickets in his hand. “While I have you here I need a favor. There’s a charity thing this weekend. Your mother and I have decided to skip it, but we need an Elliott to make an appearance. Saturday night. Black tie. You’ll need a date. Can you swing it?”

Aubrey’s violet eyes flashed in Liam’s mind. No. Definitely not Aubrey. He’d come up with someone who had Saturday night free and a spare formal hanging in her closet. “Sure.”

“Good.”

“So, how about you put the champagne on ice and I dash down the street and pick up dinner at Mom’s favorite restaurant?” Liam suggested.

How in the hell he’d find a date on such short notice he didn’t know. He’d been out of the dating circuit since his grandfather’s announcement in January. But that wasn’t his father’s problem. If his parents wanted an Elliott at the gala, then Liam would be there, doing his duty the way he’d always done.

Aubrey looked at the man beside her and longed for a bed, a thick pillow, a silk-covered down comforter and solitude. Not sex. Which made her immediately think of Liam Elliott.

She huffed an exasperated breath and checked her diamond-faced watch. How long had she lasted this time? Less than an hour since she’d last vowed to never again think about Liam or their afternoon of amazing, curl-her-toes sex. God, she was weak. Blame it on exhaustion. She’d had precious little sleep during the past five nights, and when she had fallen into bed, Liam Elliott had joined her, invading her dreams and tangling her sheets.

Damn him.

As if thinking about Liam incarnated remnants of that afternoon, Aubrey spotted Trisha Evans across the ballroom. The gallery employee hadn’t known that Aubrey and Liam weren’t a couple, but that hadn’t stopped her from brazenly passing Liam her phone number along with a come-and-get-me smile and his receipt.

Witch.

The crowd shifted and Aubrey choked on her champagne when she recognized Trisha’s escort. Liam. Well, he hadn’t waited long to accept the brunette’s invitation. Emotion churned in Aubrey’s stomach. Anger? Jealousy? Whatever it was, it didn’t belong. How could she be angry or jealous? She and Liam weren’t—and never could be—a couple.

“Who’s the chick?”

“Pardon?” Aubrey turned to look at the hulking football player who’d escorted her to the arts fund-raiser this evening. One of her father’s magazines was doing a series of articles on Buck Parks and his recent retirement from the NFL. Her father had “suggested” Aubrey and Buck create a little buzz about the feature by appearing together at the gala.

“The brunette in the barely there red dress. You’re glaring at her like you want to mash her face into the turf.”

An apt description. “No one. She’s no one important.”

But at that moment Liam turned his head. His gaze lasered in on Aubrey from across the room and her breath jammed in her chest. He looked amazing in a tux. Suave. Sexy. GQ-gorgeous.

“Ah, now I get it.”

Aubrey blinked and broke the connection with Liam. Looking away wasn’t as easy as it should have been. She found sympathy in Buck’s eyes. “Get what?”

“It’s not her. It’s him.”

Was she completely transparent? “You’re mistaken. He’s the financial operating officer of Holt Enterprises’ chief competitor. I can’t be interested in him.”

Buck grinned and dipped his head. “Who’re you trying to fool, Aubrey?”

Buck was tall and built, smart and funny. He smelled good and filled out his custom-tailored tux to perfection. Why couldn’t she get hot and bothered over him? But she didn’t. She experienced no blip of her pulse when he said her name, no sweaty palms when he looked at her, no burning twist of her stomach when he touched her. The feeling—or lack there-of—was mutual.

Mischief danced in his eyes. “Wanna give him something to think about? Because he’s on his way over here.”

Aubrey’s heart stopped and then slammed in a rapid jackhammer beat. “He is?”

“Yep. I can plant one on you. Long, slow, and I’ll make it look deep and hot. He’ll get the message.”

If she weren’t panicking, she’d appreciate the handsome ball player’s offer, but at the moment she was on the verge of hyperventilating. If he covered her mouth with his, she’d suffocate.

Buck’s big hand curled around her waist and he tugged her closer. “Last chance,” he whispered against her jaw.

“Aubrey.” Liam’s hard voice sent a flash-fire of heat over her skin.

Gulping, she took a second to gather her scattered nerves, pasted what she hoped passed as a disinterested smile on her face and turned. “Good evening, Liam. Trisha. Are you enjoying the ball?”

Aubrey avoided Liam by focusing on Trisha’s triumphant smirk. Buck’s hands tightened on Aubrey’s waist. She made a mental note to thank him later. He reached past her and offered his hand first to Trisha and then to Liam. “Buck Parks.”

Trisha, evidently not satisfied with one big fish on the hook, fluttered her mascara-laden lashes at Buck and gushed her name and something inane about football. Aubrey’s deafening pulse drowned most of it out.

“Liam Elliott.” Testosterone crackled in the air as the men shook hands and then Buck’s arm settled around her waist and hauled her close to his hard body. Her pulse didn’t even hiccup.

Aubrey risked looking at Liam again.

“Mom loved the painting,” was all he said. His unreadable expression gave nothing away.

“I thought she would.”

And then his lips twitched. “She had me hang it in her bedroom. I didn’t ask why. Don’t want to know.”

Aubrey’s lips curved upward. “No. I bet not.”

Then memories of Liam touching her, tasting her, filling her, wiped away her smile and set her legs to trembling. She had to get out of here or at least away from him. She couldn’t leave the gala until she’d done as her father requested. Dance, schmooze, get your picture taken by a few society reporters.

“Well, it was good seeing you both, but I promised Buck a dance. Bye.” And then she looked up at the former quarterback and silently pleaded for him to rescue her. Lucky for her, Buck was as quick with his thoughts as he was on his feet.

Getting the seats switched cost Liam fifty bucks. The fact that he’d paid money to torture himself with what he couldn’t have didn’t say much about his intelligence.

He deliberately stalled until after Aubrey and her date were seated at the big, round table with three other couples before leading Trisha to their seats in the banquet hall adjoining the ballroom. Aubrey glanced up as he pulled out his date’s chair. Her violet eyes widened and filled with horror and then the color and her polite smile slid from her face.

She jerked her gaze forward and sat stiffly erect. Liam settled beside her. Their shoulders brushed as he adjusted his chair, and her scent filled his lungs, bringing back a flood of incendiary memories. His thigh nudged hers beneath the crowded table and blood drained from his brain.

He recovered enough to introduce Trisha and himself to the other diners at the table and then turned to Aubrey and her date. The big lug with her had tried to crush Liam’s hand earlier. Too bad it hadn’t worked. Liam had done his own share of bone crushing during the exchange.

Aubrey cozying up to the quarterback is none of your business.

“You left something at my place,” he whispered to Aubrey.

Her cheeks turned scarlet, confirming she’d not only heard him, she knew exactly what she’d left behind, but she didn’t turn her head. In fact, she ignored him, which irritated the daylights out of him.

“Want it back?”

“No. Throw it out.” Her reply was barely audible over the hum of conversation in the large room.

He waited until after the salads had been served. “Can’t do that, sweetheart.”

She dropped her fork. Within seconds a server had replaced it with a clean one and stepped back to hover. One bad thing about five-thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners was that the wait staff never went far. They hovered behind you, watching every move. Not that he intended to touch Aubrey—no matter how much he wanted to.

Parks stretched his left arm across the back of Aubrey’s chair, clenching his fist and displaying his Super Bowl ring for Liam’s scrutiny. The gesture blatantly staked a claim, riling Liam. Hard eyes met Liam’s behind Aubrey’s back. Liam set his jaw.

Buddy, if she were yours, she wouldn’t have been in my bed.

Aubrey glanced at Liam and then swiftly turned to the man on her right. She said something, drawing Parks’s attention.

Liam faced forward. What in the hell are you doing, Elliott? Are you willing to fight for a woman you can’t have?

Belatedly he remembered his own date. Forgetting a woman who had groped his butt on the dance floor and whispered in explicit detail what she’d like to do to him later ought to be more difficult, but he’d done so easily. Trisha didn’t get to him the way Aubrey did, and he had no interest in accepting Trisha’s naughty invitation. On the other hand, he knew without a doubt that if Aubrey had made those suggestions—wise or not—they’d be halfway back to his apartment already.

Aubrey’s off-limits. Back off.

But knowing he should back off didn’t make him any less aware of the woman to his right for the remainder of the tasteless dinner and long-winded speeches. He couldn’t have her, but he ached for Aubrey Holt with each pulse of his blood and each lung-filling breath. Duty had never been so onerous and desire had never been more difficult to ignore.

Four

“Are you alone? Or is the thug with you?”

Aubrey’s heart stalled at the sound of the deep, slightly husky voice on the phone. “Liam.”

She scrambled upright in her bed, clutching the sheet to her chest and squeezing the phone so tightly her fingers hurt. And then she recalled his question. “That’s none of your business.”

“You are alone.”

“I didn’t say that.” She shoved the hair out of her eyes and squinted at her bedside clock. “It’s midnight. Why did you call?”

“To tell you that you looked beautiful tonight.”

Her lungs failed. The phone slipped in her grasp. She fumbled it back to her ear. “Thank you. So did Trisha.”

She cringed at the jealousy in her voice.

“Did she? I didn’t notice.” His distracted tone made her want to believe him, but the man had gone out with a woman who’d been ballsy enough to pass him her number with Aubrey standing two feet away.

“You shouldn’t have called, Liam.”

“You wanted me to tell you how beautiful you looked with your watchdog standing by ready to stamp my forehead with his Super Bowl ring?”

“Have you been drinking?” He sounded sober. Tired, but sober.

“Haven’t had a drop since that lousy wine at dinner. But I couldn’t get to sleep.”

She knew the feeling. “So you decided to call and wake me?”

“Did I?”

“Did you wake me?” She should lie and say, yes, she’d been sleeping dreamlessly. But she didn’t. “No.”

She scooted back under the covers and laid her head on her pillow. She shouldn’t ask, but her mouth didn’t listen to her mind. “Why can’t you sleep?”

The sound of a heavy breath and the rustle of sheets traveled through the phone line. Aubrey closed her eyes and a picture of Liam naked and kneeling above her on his king-size bed filled her head. She lifted her lids and turned on the lamp. Listening to Liam’s sandpaper voice in the darkness and remembering him naked wasn’t a good idea if she wanted to sleep any time in this century.

“I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about you. About Monday afternoon.”

Her heart would very likely sustain permanent damage from its frantic battering against her rib cage. Her fingers crushed the sheets. She bit her lip.

“It was good.”

“Good?” she choked out in disbelief.

His low chuckle made her shiver. “Better than good. Fabulous.”

She smiled. “That’s more like it.”

“Incredible. Stupendous. Phenomenal.” She could hear the laughter in his voice and then another rustling sound. “And it’s a crying shame that it can’t happen again.”

Her grin faded at the seriousness and accuracy of the last statement. “But it can’t.”

“I know. But I don’t have to like it.”

Neither did she. “No.”

The silence stretched for a dozen heartbeats. “Good night, Aubrey. Sweet dreams.”

“You, too, Liam. Sweet dreams.” She cradled the phone, turned off the light and then rolled on her side and tucked her hand beneath her cheek.

Odd phone call. So why was she smiling?

Seeing Liam again was out of the question. If she did, her father would expect her to weasel information out of Liam about EPH and she just couldn’t stomach the duplicitous role. Her father had been angry enough that she hadn’t brought him anything useful after her lunch with Liam. Oh, Matthew Holt hadn’t yelled. He never yelled. But he’d treated her to that same silent stare she’d come to know so well.

She couldn’t continue letting her father down. She’d worked her fanny off to be the kind of employee and daughter of whom he could be proud and she’d failed. She owed him for taking her in when he hadn’t wanted her. He hadn’t wanted custody during the divorce from her mother, and he hadn’t wanted custody after Aubrey’s jerk of a stepfather had crawled into her bed and offered to keep her from getting lonely while her mother was out of town.

Aubrey had heard her father arguing with Jane after she’d revealed that dreadful secret. His bellow had carried through his closed office door. “What in the hell am I going to do with a teenage girl?”

Aubrey hadn’t heard Jane’s reply. In fact, Aubrey hadn’t heard anything from either of her parents until hours later when her mother had stormed into Matthew Holt’s office with Aubrey’s belongings and dumped them on the floor. She’d glared at Aubrey and said, “Look what you’ve done with your lies,” and then left.

Pamela Holt Curtis hadn’t asked for Aubrey’s side of the story. She’d chosen to believe her young husband’s version. He’d claimed Aubrey had invited him into her room and that she’d been flirting with him for weeks.

Aubrey had been left with a mother who no longer wanted her around and a father who had never wanted her in the first place.

“Liam.”

Liam blinked his unfocused eyes and looked up from the papers on his desk to the man rapping on his office door. Cade McCann, the executive editor of Charisma, EPH’s high-fashion magazine, also happened to be Liam’s good friend, probably his best friend.

“Got a minute?”

“Sure, Cade. Come in.” Considering Liam’s mind had been elsewhere since this morning’s monthly meeting with the editors in chief of the different magazines, Cade wasn’t interrupting anything. Liam hated the tension invading the formally congenial meetings.

This week he’d been distracted by thoughts of Aubrey and he’d barely managed to relate the pertinent facts and figures. For a split second Liam considered asking Cade how to wipe a woman from his brain, but nixed the thought. His friend hadn’t been too successful on that score, a fact proven by his recent engagement.

“What brings the rooster out of the henhouse?” The question was a running joke between them. Cade was a rare male on Charisma’s predominantly female staff. A lesser man would have been henpecked into submission, but not Cade.

“Are you having woman troubles?” Cade asked as he settled in the chair in front of Liam’s desk.

Alarm straightened Liam’s spine. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I called you three times before you answered.”

Liam silently swore. His mind had been on Saturday night and the phone call he shouldn’t have made. Pretty damned stupid of him to throw fuel on a fire he was trying to put out. “What’s up, McCann? Spit it out.”

Cade’s direct gray gaze said he wasn’t fooled by Liam’s evasion. “Okay, if you want to play it that way. You’ll have to lay your cards on the table eventually.”

“Cade—”

“I want you to be my best man when I marry Jessie next month.”

Jessie Clayton was the Charisma intern who just happened to have stunned them all with the revelation that she was Aunt Fin’s daughter—a daughter Fin had been forced to give up for adoption twenty-three years ago. Until Jessie had revealed that shocking secret, Cade had questioned her loyalties and suspected her of being a plant from another magazine.

No doubt about where Aubrey Holt’s loyalties lay. Liam rolled his shoulders, but the knot at the base of his neck didn’t ease. “I’d be honored to stand up with you, Cade. Being your best man means I get to give you one hell of a bachelor party.”

“I’m all for that. Jessie might not be. But no naked women. I have the only one I’m interested in looking at.”

“What about the rest of us?”

Cade leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. “Want to talk about her?”

Her. Cade didn’t mean Jessie. “You’re offering to give me dating advice? Last month you were asking for it.”

Cade snorted. “And some good you were.”

“Hey, I told you to go for it.”

“Well, I’m telling you the same thing. Last month I was battling the current and trying not to get sucked into the love whirlpool. Looks like you might be in the water this month. Don’t fight it, man. Let it pull you under. You’ll be glad you did.”

Love? Hell no. He’d only spent a few hours with the woman. But lust? Oh, yeah. He had a bad rash of that and it itched 24/7. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“She’s—” Damn. He hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Because the only problems I’m having are EPH problems. She’s been a bitch of a mistress since January, compliments of Patrick and his damned competition.”

Cade shook his head. “You’re lying through your pearly whites, pal. When you want to talk, let me know. In the meantime, see if you can clear your calendar for the weekend after this one. Jessie’s father’s throwing us an engagement party in Colorado next Saturday. I’d like you to be there. I don’t want to be the only city slicker on the ranch.”

Liam looked at the stacks of files and reports on his desk. With his workload, dropping everything and flying to Colorado sounded insane, but it might be worth it if putting some mileage between him and a certain female could get her out of his head. “I’ll be there.”

“I’m heading for the cafeteria. Coming?”

“No, I have an errand to take care of.” A fool’s errand.

Aubrey stood in front of her father’s desk, feigning calm she didn’t feel. Why had he requested this late afternoon meeting?

He kept her waiting while he scanned the blueline in front of him. Checking the magazine proof was the production manager’s job, but her father tended to spend a lot of time looking over everyone’s shoulders—especially hers. He second-guessed each decision she made, which made the rest of the staff do the same. He claimed he hadn’t gotten to the top by letting others do all the dirty work, and delegating wasn’t something he enjoyed.

Finally, she asked, “You called?”

He put the blueline aside, revealing the folded newspaper beneath it. Aubrey’s tension eased. She suspected he’d seen the photo in the society section. He should be pleased. She and Buck Parks had done exactly as he’d requested and garnered a little free publicity from not only the newspapers but a few celebrity magazines as well.

But that wasn’t an approving smile on her father’s face.

“You sat beside Liam Elliott at the dinner. What did you learn?”

She concealed a wince. Yes, Liam’s face was easily recognizable in the picture. She’d hoped her father wouldn’t notice. “Um, nothing. Buck was my date. I talked to him, not to Liam Elliott.”

In fact, she’d done her best to ignore Liam throughout the mediocre meal and the soporific speeches afterward. Her best hadn’t been good enough. She’d been hyperaware of each shift of his body. And any change in the ventilation of the stuffy banquet hall had wafted his cologne in her direction. As if that weren’t bad enough, his phone call Saturday night had only worsened her preoccupation. Warmth swept through her at the memory. She bit her lip and vowed once again to quit thinking about him.

Very slowly her father lowered the paper. “You missed your chance at lunch. You could have redeemed yourself at the gala. How many times do I have to tell you? Never let an opportunity to find out what the competition is doing slip by.”

A heavy blanket of failure settled over Aubrey’s shoulders. “Yes, sir, I understand. But Liam Elliott is tight-lipped about EPH. You couldn’t pry him open with an oyster knife. I can’t—”

“There is no such thing as can’t, Aubrey. Something is going on at EPH. Patrick Elliott runs a first-class armada.”

He extracted a page of handwritten notes from one of the neat piles on his desk. “Patrick’s son Michael has been out of the office more than he’s been in while his wife has undergone chemotherapy. Michael’s oldest son is running Pulse. Patrick’s second son, Daniel, has stepped down as editor-in-chief of Snap magazine in favor of his youngest son. Patrick’s daughter, Finola, suddenly has had a secret offspring emerge from the woodwork, and Elliott’s granddaughter—one of the twins—has taken off with a rock star and left her ex-fiancé engaged to her sister.”

He lowered the paper and focused hard eyes on Aubrey. “That’s only the news my clipping service has found in the papers. For this many ships to be adrift in Elliott’s port there must be a storm stirring the water. I want to know what kind of storm and when it’s expected to make landfall. Find out.”

Flabbergasted, Aubrey gaped at him. “I’m the VP of single copy sales not an investigative reporter.”

“I’ve given you a direct order, Aubrey. You know Liam Elliott. Use him as your inside contact.”

Use him. “I—I don’t think I can help you.”

“I didn’t ask you to think. Do it,” he commanded in an end-of-discussion tone.

My family’s in enough turmoil without throwing an affair with the enemy’s daughter into the pot. Liam’s comment echoed in Aubrey’s head. Her father’s obvious disappointment in her tempted her to throw out this tidbit to prove that she wasn’t a complete failure, but she was no Mata Hari who slept with men and then shared their secrets.

“I’ll see what I can find out.” But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—go back to the source. Advertising sales directors maintained high-level contacts within advertising agencies. She’d speak to Holt Enterprises’ sales directors and get them to pump the clients they shared with EPH. If there was anything amiss at EPH, maybe some of the advertisers had noticed. And then she’d collate that info and report back to her father. That way she wouldn’t be sharing anything Liam had told her in confidence.