Gilded Secrets Read online

  She found a tiny apartment in Queens. Rode the subway every day into Manhattan. She had felt like part of the bustling, exciting city and, looking back, she could see what easy prey she had been for the man who had romanced her.

  In a blink, she saw it all again. Felt the rush when she’d dropped her phone and a tall, handsome man had picked it up for her. She’d taken one look into those smiling brown eyes and had lost every ounce of common sense her grandmother had spent years instilling in her.

  “He hadn’t even had to work that hard,” she whispered, ashamed to admit even now how susceptible she had been to the flattery. To the attention.

  He had swept her off her feet, and in a few short weeks had her in his bed and convinced that it was true love. Charlie had had stars in her eyes, thinking that an important architect like Blaine Andersen wanted to be with no one but her. He’d told her that it was his great-grandfather who had designed the Waverly building. He’d been doting and kind—stopping by her office to bring her flowers and candy—helping her find her BlackBerry both times she had lost it. He was the fairy-tale prince and Charlie had believed in him.

  Until she’d told him she was pregnant and he’d disappeared. Until she’d tried to find him and discovered that there was no Blaine Andersen. That the Andersen who had long ago designed the Waverly building had never had children. That she had swallowed a tangle of lies in her pathetic need to be loved. Accepted.

  All those thoughts and more raced through her mind in seconds, leaving her shaken, but still furious. This had to be Blaine. He was the only one she’d told about her past. The only one she’d trusted with that information.

  “Well, he’s not going to make a fool of me twice,” Charlie muttered and set her fingers on the keyboard.

  Hitting Reply, she typed in, Who are you?

  The answer came in an instant. Doesn’t matter. I know you. And I will see you lose your baby.

  Fresh fear erupted. Just seeing those words on the screen twisted her heart and sent what felt like a lead ball dropping into the pit of her stomach. Whoever it was had included a link in the email. Dreading what she was going to find, she clicked on it.

  An old newspaper article flashed onto the screen. A story about her father and how he’d died. Quickly, she shut it all down, as if afraid that article might somehow etch itself onto her computer screen and remain there like a stain for anyone to read.

  Clenching her hands together, she squeezed until her knuckles went white. She didn’t know what to do. If she had to go to court and fight for her son, she would lose. She knew that. Charlie didn’t have the kind of money it would take to hire a shark of a lawyer. Besides, what could she say? She couldn’t even name Jake’s father. She had no idea what the guy’s real name was. And if the court looked into her past—where she was from, who her family was…

  “Oh, God.”

  “Problem?”

  She jumped and spun around. Vance Waverly was standing in the doorway. Did she look as guilty as she felt? Could he see the panic in her eyes? How long had he been there? What had he seen? What had he heard?

  He took a step into the room and he seemed to fill the space. The man was so tall, so broad-shouldered, and his eyes were sharp enough to see inside a woman’s soul. She hoped to heaven he wasn’t looking that deeply at the moment.

  “No,” she blurted out when she could find her voice again. “No problem.”

  The lie came easily, though it tasted bitter. She didn’t want to lie to him. She didn’t want to live a life where lying was necessary. But what choice did she have?

  “Good,” he said, still watching her. “Do you have the paperwork on the Ming vases ready?”

  “Yes, I’ll bring it right in.”

  “You’re sure everything is fine?” He was studying her and his brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  Get a grip, Charlie. She couldn’t let him know how shaken she was. Or that someone, somewhere, was trying to blackmail her. She couldn’t risk anyone finding out anything about her—at least, not until she’d found a way out of this mess. She’d think of something. All she needed was time. Just a little bit of time.

  Charlie took a short, sharp breath and nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll just get those papers for you.”

  When he walked into his office, her bravado dropped away. What was she going to do? If she sent the files to whoever was threatening her, she could lose her job. If she didn’t send them, she could lose her son. But if she sent the files and got caught, she’d go to jail and lose her son anyway.

  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 ski
n. 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.

  Items too big or too fragile to be carried into the auction were displayed on a sixty-inch flat screen behind the auctioneer. But it was more traditional to carry lots like the tiara into the auction room so everyone could see the items up close.

  Of course, the bidders had already had a chance to study the sale items. There had been a reception before the auction where the über-rich and celebrities could sip champagne and decide what they wanted to buy.

  But as Charlie stood in front of the audience now, dressed in her tidy black suit, she felt everyone stir as if leaning in toward her for a better look at the tiara. And who could blame them? Under the lights, every single diamond sparkled like an individual star. The sapphires were so dark they looked almost black until the light hit them just right and they revealed a hue of blue so rich and deep it was like looking into the heart of the ocean.

  Any other day, Charlie would be loving this. She would smile at the crowd as she walked down the center aisle so that people could take a closer look. She would move smoothly, slowly, proud to be a part of the Waverly’s tradition.

  Today it was all she could do to remain upright.

  She should have called in sick and skipped today’s auction. But she needed the extra money the overtime would bring her. And, more than that, she didn’t want her world disrupted. Didn’t want to be afraid, so she was pretending she wasn’t. Didn’t want to lose what she’d begun to build here, so she clung to that frayed and tired rope with everything she had.

  “We’ll start the bidding at $35,000… .”

  The auctioneer went into his patter and Charlie zoned out again. She kept one corner of her mind on the task at hand, of course, walking to the front of the room once again and turning, holding the tray so that the lights caught the gems in just the right way.

  But the other part of her mind was racing. Desperate to find a solution to her problem. Every day, she opened her email with fear and trepidation. And every day, her blackmailer was a little more curt. A little more dangerous. She hadn’t written back to him since that first day, hoping that he would think that she wasn’t getting his emails.

  But even as she hoped and wished for it, she knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  Whoever was emailing her wanted information and wasn’t going to go away until he or she got it. Which left Charlie exactly where?

  Jail or out of a job? Losing her son?

  Her heartbeat skittered in her chest and she felt a little faint. So she swallowed hard, locked her knees and held on. The bids came fast and furious. Red paddles lifted and lowered. Nods of the head. A wave of a hand. A cough. A phone ringing as anonymous bi
dders made their play for the stunning tiara. There was excitement, magic all around her, and Charlie didn’t feel any of it. Finally, beside her, the slam of the gavel made her jump.

  “Sold for $75,000.”

  That was Charlie’s signal to return the tiara to the holding room where its new owner would pick it up after the sale.

  Justin took the tiara from her as soon as she returned. “Thanks, sweetie. You’ve got time to sit down or something. I’ll need you again to take in lots 41 and 46.”

  She forced a smile. “I’ll be here.”

  “Hey.” Justin frowned at her. “You okay?”

  God, was she that easy to read? How could she ever be a spy and sneak something out from under Vance Waverly’s nose if Justin—a man who barely looked up from the treasures he was in charge of—noticed right away that she wasn’t herself?

  “I’m fine. Just a little hungry, I guess. Haven’t really eaten in a while. Didn’t have breakfast.”

  “Well, go get something, honey.” He gave her an absentminded pat on the arm. “We’ve got snacks set up for everyone in the break room.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  But Justin had already moved on. “Sam, put red velvet under the onyx rings. If you use black, who’s gonna see them?”

  While the rest of the auction team bustled around in an organized manner, Charlie slipped off for some quiet. Some time to herself so she could think.

  Trouble was, she’d been “thinking” for days about this problem and didn’t have a solution. Couldn’t figure out how to handle it. Didn’t know who to talk to about it, because no one here knew who she had been before coming to Manhattan. And that was how she wanted it to stay.

  Charlie dropped into a chair beside the table loaded with sandwiches, cookies and cupcakes and idly picked up a snickerdoodle. She broke a corner of the cinnamon cookie off, popped it into her mouth and chewed—even though it tasted like sawdust.