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The Adair Affairs
Elizabeth was a person of interest all right. A person of interest to him.
Very much so, Whit thought ruefully as he got into the elevator and rode up beside the diminutive Officer Ruiz. Elizabeth was a person of interest to him despite the fact that he had broken his own rules and crossed the line with her, a line he had sworn to himself that he would never cross.
And he hadn’t.
Not until that night in Nevada when they had wound up stranded thanks to an untimely thunderstorm.
He’d been drawn to Elizabeth from the first moment he’d seen her that day she came to work for his father. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
But he more than anyone knew that business and pleasure had to be kept at arm’s length from one another. Otherwise, mixing the two together was just asking for trouble.
But none of that had been on his mind that night in Nevada. All he could think of was how very much he wanted her.
* * *
Be sure to check out the rest of the books in The Adair Affairs series—The Adair Affairs: The notorious and powerful political family is back with even more secrets.
Carrying His Secret
Marie Ferrarella
MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.
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With undying gratitude to everyone who ever read one of my books, then went back to read another—thank you. You made all this possible.
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With love to Patience Bloom for always being in my corner.
Contents
Cover
Introduction
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Extract
Copyright
Prologue
A woman’s piercing scream shattered the evening silence.
Filling up all the spaces within the very modern glass-enclosed executive office, the sound seemed to grow in volume rather than abate as seconds went by.
Cringing in response, Reginald Adair’s executive assistant, Elizabeth Shelton, didn’t immediately realize that the terrified scream had come from her. Shock, horror and disbelief had wrapped themselves so tightly around her consciousness that she wasn’t aware of anything except for the body lying in a pool of blood on the two-hundred-dollar-a-square-foot carpet.
Reginald Adair’s body.
Handsome, dynamic Reginald Adair, president of AdAir Corp, a huge cellular company that provided signal bars for close to two-thirds of the country thanks to its numerous satellites circling the earth, lay crumpled and unresponsive on the floor of his glass-and-chrome executive office.
This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
Pull yourself together, Lizzy. The man needs help, not drama, Elizabeth admonished herself. It didn’t matter that she felt like throwing up. This wasn’t about her. This was about saving Adair.
It felt as if every square inch of her five-foot-seven body was trembling as she knelt down beside the man. At sixty-two and an inch shy of being six feet tall, Adair had prided himself on keeping in excellent shape.
He might have been in excellent shape, but he was also heavy. Definitely not an easy man to move.
Bracing herself, through sheer determination, Elizabeth somehow managed to turn the man over onto his back.
His eyes were closed and there was blood flowing from a hole in his chest.
It took everything Elizabeth had for her not to back away. Another scream bubbled up in her throat. She pressed her lips together to keep it from emerging.
Taking a deep breath to brace herself, she searched for any sign of life. A panicky feeling was only inches away from erupting.
“Mr. Adair, can you hear me?”
For exactly sixty seconds, it felt as if every single thought had fled her head, leaving the entire area of her brain completely empty.
And then, because she’d been independent and on her own for most of her life, Elizabeth snapped out of the encroaching malaise.
Searching for his heartbeat, the only thing Elizabeth felt was her own as it went into overdrive, thundering madly against her rib cage.
“Think, damn it. Think!” Elizabeth frantically ordered out loud, desperate to keep it together. But what could she possibly do to save him?
Splaying her hand across her boss’s bloodied chest, she thought she detected just the faintest whisper of a heartbeat. At first she was afraid to push against it, afraid to make it beat any harder than it was because she was concerned that the pressure would make Adair lose more blood that much faster.
Tugging her cardigan off, she wadded up the sweater and then pressed it against the hole in Adair’s chest, frantically trying to stop the flow of blood.
Her own heart almost stopped when she saw his eyelids flutter.
“Oh, thank God. You are alive,” Elizabeth cried. “Stay with me, Mr. Adair, stay with me,” she begged.
She saw the light of recognition enter his vividly blue eyes. His lips began to move, but he made no audible sound.
Bending over him, Elizabeth brought her ear closer to Adair’s lips, trying to make out the words he was saying. He was so weak she could hardly feel his breath on her face as he attempted to tell her something.
Was it the name of his attacker? Had he seen who had done this to him?
Straining, Elizabeth still couldn’t make any of the words out.
“What? I’m sorry, sir, I can’t hear you,” Elizabeth told him.
He struggled again to say something, but still nothing came out.
She needed help.
Adrenaline racing through every fiber of her being, Elizabeth continued pressing on Adair’s wound with one hand as she searched for her cell phone in her purse with the other.
Her phone was in her shoulder bag. It had to be, Elizabeth thought as the phone continued to avoid her questing fingers.
Finally, in frustration, she took the strap in her teeth to facilitate keeping the purse open while she used her free hand to upend it.
Wallet, keys, her AdAir ID badge, along with her cell phone, came raining down beside her. Grabbing the phone, Elizabeth quickly dialed 9-1-1.
Within a couple of seconds, a cheerful, competent-sounding female voice declared, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
A torrent of rambling words threatened to pour out of her mouth all at once. Elizabeth struggled to sound coherent. “I need an ambulance. Now.”
“Are you hurt, ma’am?” the voice asked calmly.
“No, no, it’s not me. It’s for my boss. Someone shot my boss.”
The woman wouldn’t know who her boss was. Elizabeth knew she had to elaborate, but she had trouble finding the words and slowing her breath enough to speak.
She tried again. “Reginald Adair’s been shot. Executive suite, top floor of AdAir Corp.” She all but gasped out the words. “Please hurry!”
Elizabeth dragged in a ragged breath, doing her level best not to sound like someone having a meltdown. Breaking down now wouldn’t help save Mr. Adair.
“Do you know who shot him?” the woman on the other end asked.
The routine question, asked so calmly, filled Elizabeth with unreasonable anger.
“No, I don’t know who,” she snapped. “Don’t you think that would be the first thing I told you if I knew who did it?” Her hostile words echoed in her brain. Elizabeth forced herself to calm down. “He’s still breathing. Please. Send someone quickly.”
Everyone knew where the sleek six-story chrome-and-glass building was located, but she rattled off the address anyway.
“Please, I don’t know how much time he has left. There’s blood everywhere.” Elizabeth could almost swear she felt Adair slipping away from beneath her hand even as she spoke to the 9-1-1 operator. “You need to send an ambulance now.”
“They’re already on their way, ma’am,” the woman told her. “Stay on the line with me until they come,” she coaxed.
Elizabeth was about to tell the 9-1-1 operator that she’d stay on as long as she could when she saw Reginald’s eyes begin to glaze over.
No, no, no, no! Please don’t die, Elizabeth silently pleaded.
“His chest isn’t moving,” Elizabeth cried out loud, panic mounting in her voice again. “I can’t feel his chest moving. He’s not breathing!”
Dropping the phone, she began to do chest compressions using both hands. “Open your eyes again, Mr. Adair. Please! Open your eyes for me.”
But no matter how hard she pushed on his chest, she could barely detect that faint whisper of a heartbeat she’d initially felt.
Doubling up her fist, she began to pound on Adair’s bloodied chest, remembering something she’d once witnessed being done in a documentary.
The distant sound of a siren penetrated the wall of panic and heavy breathing, both coming from her.
“They’re coming, Mr. Adair. I can hear them. They’re coming. Just hang on a little longer and they’ll save you. Just a little longer, please,” she begged.
The man on the rug, his body partially outlined in a growing pool of his own blood, remained very, very still. There was no longer any indication that he was alive.
Refusing to accept that the man she had worked for so faithfully for the past five years was beyond hearing her, Elizabeth continued to pound on his chest.
She was still pounding when the paramedics arrived at his office.
“Come on, come on, you can do this. You can cheat death. You’re larger-than-life, Mr. Adair. Work with me here! Please!”
But a few seconds later there was no rhythm of any sort beating beneath her hands.
Chapter 1
An hour ago, Elizabeth Shelton had been driving out of AdAir Corp’s underground parking facility and on her way to her weekend.
It was eight o’clock on a Friday night and the rest of the employees who worked at AdAir Corp, one of the country’s leading cell phone providers, had already left for their weekends. Today the mass exodus had taken place at five o’clock, because that was when the building’s surveillance cameras had all been turned off. They’d had to leave, for safety reasons. A memo had gone out, and everyone knew that the existing system was being upgraded.
Elizabeth had stayed behind in order to catch up on some last-minute work. Work she needed to have prepared and at her fingertips for a meeting she was attending on Monday morning in her boss’s place. Reginald Adair was scheduled to be out of town on a business trip. He should have already left at six to catch his flight.
Preoccupied with something she had just learned earlier in the day—something that was going to completely upend her world once it became public knowledge...and it was going to become public knowledge, because that was the nature of the beast—Elizabeth had neglected to take several very important papers with her when she’d left the office. Without those papers her weekend would be completely unproductive despite the reams of papers she did have in her briefcase.
She’d gotten halfway down the block, reviewing everything she needed to have taken with her, when she realized her mistake. The papers that were the key to the entire presentation were still sitting on her side desk, waiting to be packed up in her briefcase.
Muttering a few choice words under her breath about the state of her mind, Elizabeth had executed a narrow U-turn and driven straight back to the underground parking facility.
Habit had her easing her vehicle into her designated parking space—not that she needed to stick to protocol tonight. There were no other cars on her level—or on any other level, she strongly suspected—because everyone else had gone home, or at least away from here, three hours ago.
She had to get herself under control, Elizabeth had silently lectured as she walked across the parking structure to the private executive elevator that only let out on the sixth floor. Her situation was what it was, and she was not about to do anything drastic to change it. That just wasn’t her way.
In the meantime, she couldn’t allow her dilemma to upset her to the point that she wasn’t able to do her job.
God knew she was going to need the money in the coming months. And besides, work was all she really had. She couldn’t take a chance on losing her job.
She’d laughed at herself then, as she got on the private elevator. Months? Was she kidding herself? It was more like years. She was going to need money—extra money—for years to come. Eighteen at the very least.
Most likely longer than that.
Later. She’d think about it later, she’d told herself. For now she just needed to get those missing papers and go home.
One step at a time, Lizzy. One step at a time will get you there. Wherever there is.
The elevator had come to a stop, its stainless steel doors sliding apart soundlessly. Waiting for her to get off.
Stepping out, Elizabeth hurried toward her office, which was just beyond her boss’s.
The light coming from beneath Reginald Adair’s door registered in her peripheral vision and had caught her attention a beat after she passed it.
It made her stop in her tracks.
Reginald Adair was supposed to be on his way to the airport if not actually aboard the plane by now. Had he left without remembering to shut off the lights?
That wasn’t like him, she thought. The man was nothing if not extremely precise. He believed in leading by example and that meant following all the rules, no matter how small the rule might seem. That included powering down his computer and turning off the lights when he left the office for the night.
Approaching the closed office door, Elizabeth had knocked lightly at first. Receiving no response, she’d knocked a little louder, and this time she’d called out to him so he could hear her through the door.
“Mr. Adair, it’s Elizabeth. Do you need me to take care of anything for you before I leave the office for the weekend?”
She’d looked down at her watch. “Is everything okay? Your flight is leaving soon. Would you like me to call a cab for you?”
She’d leaned her ear against the door to see if she could hear anything and that was when she felt the door move slightly beneath her cheek.
The door had been left unlocked and open.
If he was there, why wasn’t he answering her? And if he wasn’t there, why had he left all the lights on as well as the door unlocked? Perhaps in his rush to get to the airport, he had forgotten? But the man had never been late for anything in the entire five years she had worked for him.
A wave of uneasiness slipped over her.
Something wasn’t making sense.
Bracing herself, Elizabeth had gingerly pushed opened the door with her fingertips. That it gave so easily should have warned her that something was drastically wrong.
But with her own personal dilemma fresh and foremost on her mind, she had completely missed that sign. That in turn had left her completely unprepared to find Reginald Adair sprawled out on the floor of his office the way that she had.
Elizabeth had been even less prepared to be catapulted from her role as the executive assistant to the president of AdAir Corp, to a person of interest in the very same corporate president’s lethal attack.
An aura of disbelief encircled her. It felt as if the whole world around her had transformed into a surreal setting that made absolutely no sense to her, no matter how hard she tried to put the puzzle pieces together.
The first detective on the scene, a fifteen-year veteran named Otis Kramer, lost no time in firing questions at her.
At first she’d just assumed that the questions were routine, but as they kept coming, Elizabeth began to change her mind.
Her uneasiness intensified.
When the detective, who was married to his job, continued interrogating her, Elizabeth couldn’t keep the nausea tamped down any longer.
“I need to use the ladies’ room,” she’d told the slope-shouldered man in the ill-fitting, off-the-rack charcoal-gray suit. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
There wasn’t an ounce of compassion in the man’s thin, nondescript face. “When we’re done,” he’d snapped back.
“Unless you’re okay with having your shoes ruined, now,” she’d countered.
She was certain that if she wasn’t allowed access to the bathroom immediately, she was going to throw up right there, at the crime scene. Thankfully, the man’s eyes widened and he nodded his head slightly. With that, Elizabeth quickly turned on her heel and rushed to Reginald Adair’s private bathroom. The disgruntled-looking detective was right behind her.
Entering the spacious restroom, she began to close the door behind her, only to have the detective put his hand in the way, effectively stopping the door from shutting him out.
Her patience just about worn down to a nub, Elizabeth glared at the rumpled older man. “In case you failed to notice, we are on the sixth floor. I’m not about to crawl out the window.”
He glared back at her for another moment or two, then reluctantly released the door.
Just in time as far as Elizabeth was concerned. Rushing over to the toilet, she sank down on her knees in front of the bowl.
The contents of her stomach from the past few hours made a reappearance in recycled form.
After everything she could have possibly eaten spilled out—and then some—Elizabeth pulled herself up to her feet again. Standing before the marble sink, she gave herself a minute to recover, then turned on the faucet and threw cold water on her face. The face looking back at her in the mirror was almost a ghastly shade of white.
White sheets were darker than she currently was.
Get it together, Lizzy, she told her reflection. You look too guilty. That detective will be all over you like a starving dog on a bone.
Elizabeth gave herself a couple of extra minutes to pull herself together before she opened the door. Kramer was standing right in front of it. She barely avoided walking right into him.
Determined to look as if she was in control, Elizabeth told the detective, “I’m sorry about that. I can answer the rest of your questions now.”
Kramer was obviously annoyed that she had managed to put him off, no matter what the reason. He looked far from friendly.
The next minute, he was gesturing at her to stand over to the side as the gurney carrying Reginald Adair moved past them. Instead of paramedics, the gurney was accompanied by two men from the coroner’s office.
Her heart felt like lead in her chest.
Adair hadn’t made it, Elizabeth realized, startled. Somehow, maybe because the man always seemed larger-than-life to her, she’d expected him to recover no matter what the wound.
Tears sprang to her eyes, threatening to fall. She did what she could to hold them back. Tears weren’t going to help the man now.
Nothing was.
Flat brown eyes took inventory of her, moving from top to bottom. “There’s a lot of blood on you,” the detective finally commented.
Completely oblivious to her appearance, Elizabeth looked down at herself for the first time since she’d found Adair on the floor.
The entire bottom portion of her skirt, as well as large sections of her blouse, was stained with blood. Reginald Adair’s blood.
The realization—not to mention the sight of that blood—brought a chill racing up and down her spine.
“I guess it got all over me when I was trying to revive him,” she told the detective numbly.
“You tried to revive him,” the detective echoed. “Even though he was dead?”
The latter part of the question was all but fired at her. The detective continued staring at her, his eyes nearly boring small holes into her.
“He wasn’t dead at the time,” Elizabeth snapped irritably. Too much had happened in too short of a time frame. She wasn’t up to coping with a rude police detective who seemed to have made up his mind that she was guilty of murdering her boss and had condemned her right from the start. “I detected a faint heartbeat and tried to get his heart to beat harder, stronger.” She blew out a breath as she wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly cold, wishing there was someone else in the room, someone familiar she could turn to for moral support as she suffered through this entire ordeal, even just for a moment or two. “I didn’t succeed,” she ended quietly.
Kramer snorted and looked at her pointedly. “Now there’s an understatement.” The comment was accompanied by a dry, humorless laugh. “What were you doing in the building in the first place?” he wanted to know. “I couldn’t help but notice that the entire building was empty except for you two.”
“Mr. Adair gave the order for everyone to leave by five,” she told him. Maybe this would go faster if she just answered him in simple sentences, she thought, desperate to have this over with. She had calls to make, people to notify of this terrible tragedy.
“Convenient.” Kramer continued to stare at her intently, waiting for her to break or say something out of turn.
“Not really.” She knew her tone sounded defensive, but there was something about the detective that just brought out the worst in her. “Mr. Adair was having the security system overhauled and updated.”
The detective’s face was expressionless. “How many people knew about that?”
Wasn’t he listening? “Everyone,” she answered, trying not to allow her exasperation to poke through. “That’s why they all left at five.”
“Not all.” Kramer looked at her pointedly. “You stayed.”
“I had something to finish. It took longer than I thought,” Elizabeth told him, leaving out the part explaining why it took longer: because she was so preoccupied with this new situation she unwillingly found herself in. “When I finished, I left the building,” she informed him coolly, then added, “It was around eight o’clock.”
“You left,” he echoed. “And yet, you’re here. Why is that?” Kramer asked, keeping his voice deceptively light, almost friendly sounding.
Elizabeth didn’t know if the detective was mocking her or trying to trip her up into making some kind of a confession. In either case, she trod very carefully, knowing that any misstep would have the man pouncing on her with who knew what sort of accusations—not the least of which would be naming her to be Reginald Adair’s killer.
