Society-Page Seduction

  * * *

  WINE COUNTRY COURIER

  Community Buzz

  The beeswax candles were lit, the quartet was playing, the peach and ivory roses were exquisite…and if beneath the veil the bride was not whom we expected, well, no one was going to question the groom, millionaire Simon Pearce!

  Despite the last-minute pinch-hitting, Mr. Pearce appeared unruffled and determined at his nuptials the other day. The bride, heiress Megan Ashton—the wedding coordinator—was resplendent in her silk white gown. The official word is that although it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to marry, the two had grown quite fond of each other over the past several weeks…as they planned Mr. Pearce’s wedding to another woman!

  Rest assured, dear readers, that whenever the Ashton name appears in print, a scandal is sure to follow. I can’t wait to see what they have in store for Courier readers next!

  * * *

  DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS

  SOCIETY-PAGE SEDUCTION

  Maureen Child

  Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Maureen Child for her contribution to the DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS series.

  To my mom, Sallye Carberry, for more reasons

  than I could possibly list here! I love you, Mom.

  Books by Maureen Child

  Silhouette Desire

  Have Bride, Need Groom #1059

  The Surprise Christmas Bride #1112

  Maternity Bride #1138

  * The Littlest Marine #1167

  * The Non-Commissioned Baby #1174

  * The Oldest Living Married Virgin #1180

  * Colonel Daddy #1211

  * Mom in Waiting #1234

  * Marine under the Mistletoe #1258

  * The Daddy Salute #1275

  * The Last Santini Virgin #1312

  * The Next Santini Bride #1317

  * Marooned with a Marine #1325

  * Prince Charming in Dress Blues #1366

  * His Baby! #1377

  * Last Virgin in California #1398

  Did You Say Twins?! #1408

  The SEAL’s Surrender #1431

  * The Marine & the Debutante #1443

  The Royal Treatment #1468

  Kiss Me, Cowboy! #1490

  Beauty & the Blue Angel #1514

  Sleeping with the Boss #1534

  Man Beneath the Uniform #1561

  Lost in Sensation #1611

  Society-Page Seduction #1639

  Harlequin Historicals

  Shotgun Grooms #575

  “Jackson’s Mail-Order Bride”

  Silhouette Books

  Love Is Murder

  “In Too Deep”

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Forever…Again #1604

  MAUREEN CHILD

  is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur.

  Visit her Web site at www.maureenchild.com.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Prologue

  1968

  S pencer Ashton leaned back in his dark brown leather desk chair and allowed himself a smile. He’d come a long way from Nebraska in a very short time.

  But not far enough.

  His smile faded even as he turned in the chair to stare out the window at the palm trees waving in the wind. Palm trees—a symbol of California and a reminder of just how different his life was now in comparison to his old world. He caught the glimmer of his reflection in the sparkling glass and studied it. He knew his own attributes as well as he knew his bank balance. Paid to be honest—at least with yourself.

  He was young, reasonably good-looking and ambitious. All traits that had served him well so far. Only three years with Lattimer Investment Banking and here he sat. In a corner office. He’d earned it. He’d toadied to John Lattimer, said all the right things, been all the right places and he’d learned. Learned enough to know that he’d never be satisfied working for someone else.

  He wanted it all.

  Wanted to put light-years between the man he was now and the man he’d been. If a brief flicker of guilt raced through his mind at the thought of the young wife and family he’d abandoned, he wiped it out fast. He hardly ever thought of Sally these days. Who had the time? He was a man on the fast track to success and wouldn’t waste his energies by looking back.

  Nodding slowly, thoughtfully, he decided then and there to never look back again. As of now, this moment, he had no past. He was starting over. A fresh slate. Nowhere to go but up.

  The Lattimer Investment Banking business was a good step, he told himself. “But one day, it’ll be Ashton Investments.”

  He could see it all so clearly. Himself, feared and admired by other lesser men. Employees jockeying for his good favor. Business rivals praying he wouldn’t pull the rug out from beneath them. He would have a house twice as big as Lattimer’s and he for damn sure wouldn’t keep an employee as ambitious as himself around.

  “Power,” he murmured, smiling again as a late afternoon breeze tossed the long, lacy fronds of the trees right outside his office. “It all comes down to power. And what a man’s willing to do to get it.”

  “Spencer?”

  He stood up instantly at the sound of his boss’s voice. Lattimer never knocked, damn it. Irritation scrambled through Spencer’s system, but he quashed it with ruthless determination. He couldn’t afford to piss off the old man. Not yet, anyway.

  “John,” Spencer said, smiling as though he wasn’t imagining Lattimer out on a street corner with a tin cup and a handful of pencils. “Good to see you.” Then he shifted his gaze to the young woman clinging to Lattimer’s right arm.

  Steering the petite blond woman farther into the office, John said, “I wanted you to meet Caroline, my daughter.” He winked down at her. “My only child and the apple of my eye.”

  Daughter?

  Why hadn’t he known the old pirate had a kid?

  Spencer’s agile mind quickstepped. Pretty, in a nondescript, quiet way, Caroline Lattimer had green eyes, a nice figure and the polish and confidence of a woman raised with money. Obviously, her dear daddy doted on her, and Spencer, being a man who never failed to recognize opportunity when it stepped up and slugged him, gave her a slow smile.

  She ducked her head, then looked up at him with, he was pleased to see, interest.

  “Miss Lattimer,” he said, taking her hand in both of his and feeling a quick jolt of pleasure at her nervous, indrawn breath, “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “Daddy’s told me so much about you,” she said, her voice quiet, cultured.

  Shy, he thought and inwardly smiled. Though she was pretty enough and the daughter of a wealthy man, her own innate shyness had probably kept her from having too much experience with men.

  Which only worked to his advantage.

  Spencer kept her hand in his and stroked her skin with his thumb. And while she smiled up at him, he planned her seduction. His mind worked like a calculator as he figured out just how much time it would take to convince Lattimer’s only child to fall in love with him.

  Not long at all, if he played his cards right. And after that? Well, marryi
ng into the boss’s family was not exactly a bad idea.

  After all, there was more than one way to get power.

  And once he had it, he’d never let it go.

  One

  Present

  “W hat do you mean the bride’s missing?” Megan Ashton stifled the instinct to lunge for her sister Paige’s throat. No point in killing the messenger.

  “I mean we can’t find her,” Paige said in a whispered rush, her hazel eyes darting from side to side. “Anywhere.”

  “Perfect.” Megan plastered an unconcerned smile on her face and nodded absently at the handful of guests littering the small parlor. She couldn’t afford to look worried.

  Grabbing her sister’s elbow, she steered Paige across the room and out the right-side French doors leading to a wide stone veranda. When they were out of earshot, Megan reached up, took her headset off and clutched it in one tight fist. “Did you check the garden?”

  Paige inhaled sharply, then blew the air out in a rush. “Duh. We checked everywhere. I even poked into every bathroom on the ground floor. She’s nowhere, Megan. And I’m guessing she’s not coming back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Paige sighed. “She left her wedding gown in the bride’s room.”

  “Oh, God.” Megan felt the first swirls of panic and fought them off as she would any other would-be attacker. As the event planner at Ashton Estates and Winery, she’d never had an event fail—and this would not be the first. All she had to do was think. Okay, think fast.

  She glanced at her younger sister. Paige’s light-brown layered hair ruffled in the breeze and worry glittered in her eyes. The Ashton family “genius,” Paige had graduated college at nineteen, then she’d jumped right into business school at the University of Southern California, before leaving to come home and help out on the estate. Megan didn’t know what she’d do without her.

  Paige bit at her bottom lip and clenched her hands together at the waist of her simple black skirt. She shot an anxious glance toward the hall where wedding guests were still expecting the ceremony to take place in the next few minutes. “What’re we supposed to do now?”

  “What we don’t do, is panic.”

  “Right. How do we do that?”

  “Beats me,” Megan muttered and lifted one hand to smooth back an errant lock of blond hair that had escaped the tidy ponytail at the back of her neck. Voices murmured behind her and a squawk came from the headset she was still clutching.

  This was a nightmare.

  Well, a potential nightmare.

  Thoughts, ideas, plans raced through her mind, presented themselves and then were dismissed. None of them were good enough to pull this mess out of the fire. Blast it, what kind of woman ran away from her own wedding fifteen minutes before the ceremony?

  And what in heaven’s name was she supposed to tell the groom?

  As if reading her mind, Paige shook her head. “I’m so not going to be the one to tell that groom his bride vamoosed.”

  Megan winced.

  Simon Pearce, would-be groom and gazillionaire, was not going to take this news lightly. The man had arranged this wedding with all the care and diligence of an invasion. Having his plans quashed at the last minute was going to go over like a case of measles.

  Megan reached up and rubbed a spot between her eyes, but all she managed to do was massage a budding headache into a full-blown migraine.

  She’d been dealing with Simon Pearce for more than a month now. He was gorgeous, irritating and rude. He snapped off orders and expected people to jump. In fact, until this morning, Megan had never once seen the blushing bride. Pearce had taken care of everything. He’d made all of the decisions concerning the wedding that wasn’t going to be happening and right at the moment, Megan could almost understand why the bride scampered. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to telling Mr. I-Know-Everything-Don’t-Bother-Me-with-Details that he’d just been jilted.

  “Oh ye gods,” she murmured and lifted her face into the wind sweeping in from across the vineyard. The scent of the nearby ocean surrounded her and the chill of the March breeze cooled her heated cheeks. Unfortunately, it didn’t do a thing for the knot in her stomach.

  “That about covers it,” Paige said and leaned back against the gray stone balustrade. Crossing her arms over her chest, she tipped her head to one side and asked, “So. What do you want me to do, boss?”

  Megan nearly laughed. Boss indeed. Nobody told Paige what to do. Of course, that was probably an Ashton family trait, since Megan didn’t take orders any better than her sister did.

  And at that thought, memories of a conversation she’d had with her father just two nights ago filled her mind briefly before she shut them off. Another man used to giving orders and expecting them to be obeyed. But, she didn’t have time right now to worry about what Spencer Ashton was going to say when she refused to go along with his latest plan.

  At the moment, she had her own predicament to pull out of the fire.

  “This cannot be happening,” she muttered and started pacing, the sound of her heels clicking furiously against the polished river stones. “The food’s hot, the cake is gorgeous, the musicians have been tuning up for a half hour.” She threw her hands wide, then let them slap down against her thighs. “There are reporters, for heaven’s sake, stationed right outside the hall. The minister’s inside tapping his foot and the groom is probably chewing on rocks. Why would the stupid bride do this to me?”

  “Um,” Paige pointed out, “my guess is she wasn’t thinking about you.”

  “Right.” Megan inhaled slowly and exhaled the same way. She tried a quick chant, but didn’t have the patience for that, so she jumped right back at her problem. “Okay, fine. We just have to do the best we can.”

  “And that is…?”

  Megan pulled in another deep breath and held it for a moment or two, just to steady herself. “You go into the hall and mingle. Chat up the guests and keep smiling, for pity’s sake.”

  “Uh-huh,” Paige said, pushing away from the stone railing. “Then what?”

  “Then,” Megan said, settling her phone’s headset back into place, “wait. I’ll talk to the groom, tell him what’s going on and let him decide how he wants to handle it.”

  “Better you than me,” Paige said.

  Megan snorted. “Yeah. This must be why I make the big bucks, huh?”

  Simon Pearce checked his gold wristwatch for the dozenth time in the last ten minutes. According to schedule, he should have entered the hall five minutes ago and even now be just about hitting the I do phase of the ceremony.

  He tapped one finger against the glass face of the watch and tried to quell the licks of anger lapping at his insides. This delay would only foster more delays in the remainder of the day’s schedule—and that was unacceptable.

  “Want me to find out what’s going on?”

  Simon shook his head at his friend and assistant, Dave Healy. “No. Give it one more minute, then I’ll ask some questions.”

  Dave shrugged and leaned one shoulder against the far wall. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Wedding, you mean?”

  Dave smiled. “All in the way you look at it.”

  “Right.” Simon paced the confines of the small antechamber off the main hall. Dave had never been in favor of Simon marrying Stephanie. Since Dave himself was happily married to his college sweetheart, he was under the impression that love should have something to do with a wedding. Well, Simon knew differently. Love only got in the way. Muddied the waters. Better to deal with a marriage as you would with any business merger.

  He stalked to the wide bank of leaded windows overlooking the pool and gardens, and stared blankly out at the early spring day. Most of the trees were still bare-limbed and the rosebushes were just beginning to pop with buds. But there were a few splashes of deep rose and burnt orange from an assortment of fall and winter flowers lining the walkway leading to the pool house. He concentrated on those as his brain worke
d.

  He thought of Stephanie Moreland, the woman he should have been marrying at that moment. They’d known each other for several months and when Simon had proposed only six weeks ago, she’d accepted with calm dignity. Exactly as he would have expected her to react.

  She was just what he was looking for in a wife. Elegant, intelligent and wealthy enough in her own right that he needn’t be worried she was after him for his money. Though there were no starry bursts of excitement when they were together, Simon was content enough. He needed a wife—specifically to help him in business. There were quite a few firms out there who were old-fashioned enough to think that an unmarried man was too unsettled to be trusted.

  With Stephanie by his side, he could continue to grow Pearce Industries as planned.

  “Which is why,” he muttered, checking his watch yet again, “we need to get this wedding completed.”

  When the wide oak double doors behind him opened, Simon turned. The wedding planner stepped into the room, and his gaze pinned her in place.

  Megan was a tall blond with cool green eyes and a limited store of patience. On more than one occasion over the last month or so of dealing with her, he’d seen her bite her lip to keep from arguing with one of his decisions. She seemed to be efficient, though, which was no doubt why the Ashtons kept her employed at their estate.

  At the moment, however, she looked as though she’d prefer being anywhere but where she was.

  One of his strengths in the world of business was reading the opposition’s expressions. One look at the woman’s troubled eyes and pinched mouth told him that he wasn’t going to like whatever she had to say.

  “Mr. Pearce.”

  He spoke up instantly and went right to the heart of the matter. “What seems to be the problem?”

  She stepped into the room, closed the doors behind her and shot his assistant a quick look.