Caged

  mysterious in a light gray polo, charcoal-toned dress pants, and a black linen sport coat. He looked nothing like the other country-club clones.

  She saw a tiny sign that said LADIES’ POWDER ROOM—no gauche wording like bathroom at the Barclay Country Club. After she stepped inside, she stopped.

  Oh wow. This place was straight out of the 1980s, with a mauve and gray color scheme. A long countertop held an assortment of beauty items. A cushioned stool had been tucked under the counter—possibly for a powder-room attendant?

  She turned a corner and discovered a lounging area. With no mirrors or sinks, it seemed a waste of space. She lowered onto the chaise and almost bounced upright again. Talk about springy. She bounced a couple more times and grinned. This could be a fun place for a quickie. If she could ever find her wayward boyfriend.

  Closing her eyes, she pictured them sneaking in here—hot and wild for each other. They’d undress only enough to serve their need for instant connection and release.

  She’d push Deacon on his back on the chaise. The intensity in his eyes when she rode him always got to her. Would they be mouth-to-mouth, kissing frantically, swallowing each other’s groans? Would Deacon have his big hands around her hips, guiding her movements? Or would he twine her hair through his fingers, forcing her gaze to remain on his face as he manipulated her clit?

  Need surged through her. When she and Deacon were body to body, he made her feel beautiful, sexy, wanted, and loved. How she wished they could return to the hotel and shut out the world like they had this afternoon. Another curl of heat unfurled as she remembered Deacon’s near desperation to be inside her and how thoroughly he’d reminded them both of their intimate connection.

  The door swung open, and female voices sliced through her solitude.

  Molly stayed put. She was here first. Maybe they wouldn’t stick around long and she could go back to brooding in silence.

  “Love your shoes, Julianne,” a woman gushed.

  Great. Of all the people it could be, it had to be Deacon’s mother.

  “Thank you. Lola, my personal shopper at Neiman’s, is a godsend.”

  “So what were you saying before?”

  “Oh, just that I don’t understand why he brought her to this JFW dinner. It’s not like he’s paying any attention to her.”

  “I’ve seen Bing herding Deacon around,” the other woman said. “What’s he up to?”

  A faucet turned on and off.

  “Bing wants to introduce him to key employees to drive home the point that their jobs would be in jeopardy if JFW is sold.”

  “Smart. You’ve got to be happy that Deacon isn’t shirking his responsibilities for a change.”

  Shirking his responsibilities? The man trained like a fiend seven days a week. He defined disciplined.

  “He shouldn’t have any responsibilities in the first place. I don’t understand why his grandfather insisted Deacon have a seat on the board. He’s not exactly . . .”

  Not exactly what, Mama Westerman? Bright? Or easily manipulated?

  “Richard said Bing has offered Deacon his position at JFW if he verbally commits now to take over when he’s done fighting.”

  A shiver zipped down Molly’s spine. Deacon’s words to Maddox yesterday—fighting for a living ain’t my only option—seemed more ominous.

  “When being the operative word for him. Deacon. He won’t give up fighting. And then there’s . . . her.”

  Her has a name, bitch.

  “So it’s serious?”

  “Bing says so.” Julianne sniffed. “Everyone is acting like I’m supposed to be happy that he has a girlfriend after all these years.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Honestly, I thought part of the reason Deacon’s always been so closed off was because he was closeted.”

  A gasp sounded. “No.”

  “Yes. Wouldn’t you suspect that your son preferred men if he hadn’t brought a girl home in fifteen years?”

  “Julianne. You poor thing. Dealing with that worry in addition to everything else you’ve dealt with over the years.”

  Molly rolled her eyes. What a heaping load of crap.

  “Does it make me an awful person to say I’d rather he was gay than try to understand what he sees in that woman? Sweet lord.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Nobody. Beautiful women hang all over these fighters. They hang all over him. I’ve seen the pictures. So she wasn’t at all what I expected.”

  And once again, you’re a disappointment. You should be used to it by now.

  “Well,” the other woman said in a drawn-out drawl, “I hate to point out the obvious, but you know what she sees in him.”

  “Oh, I know, all right. Last night before dinner? Deacon couldn’t keep his hands off her. It was such a vulgar display. So I’m betting her appeal to him is her whorish behavior.” Julianne sighed. “Of course, she probably thinks that by being his whore, he’ll marry her. Then she can get her chubby hands on his money.”

  Enough was enough.

  Molly walked around the corner, straight to the sink next to Deacon’s mother. She gave the woman credit; her expression didn’t change a whit when she realized Molly had overheard the entire conversation.

  Probably between the plastic surgery and the Botox, she can’t move her facial muscles much anyway.

  That thought brought on a smug smile. “I do feel the need to correct you, Julianne.” Molly washed her hands and reached for a fresh hand towel. “Whores get paid to fuck. Sluts do it because they like sex. I fall into the latter category rather than the former.” Then Molly sailed out of the bathroom with her head held high.

  Screw you, Julianne Westerman. You are a horrible person and an awful mother. Deacon already washed his hands of you, and now so do I.

  Molly nearly laughed out loud. She’d literally washed her hands in front of the woman.

  Deacon walked out of the private room just as she walked in.

  “Hey there.”

  “Hey.” He pulled her into an alcove in the hallway. “Where have you been?”

  “Needed a change of scenery. Why? Did you miss me?”

  “Yeah.” He kissed her. “You sure you’re all right?”

  No. I hate that your mother is a sorry excuse for a human being. “Just tired. Someone got me up early.” She forced a smile. “But I’ll swap sex for sleep any day.”

  “Me too.” Deacon kissed her with infinite sweetness and then nearly blistered her lips with his sudden burst of passion.

  Head spinning, she clung to him as he pressed her against the wall.

  “Seriously, Deacon. This is not an alley behind some low-rent nightclub. This is a country club. Stop embarrassing yourself by acting like a horny seventeen-year-old,” Julianne hissed behind them.

  He’d broken the kiss the instant she’d interrupted them. But he didn’t acknowledge his mother in any way. He kept those hypnotic blue eyes burning into Molly’s.

  Julianne harrumphed, and her footsteps faded into the distance.

  Before Molly said anything, her cell phone buzzed in her skirt pocket. She pulled it out and checked the caller ID. Hardwick Designs. “Hello?”

  “Molly. Thank the goddess I got you,” Presley said. “I know you’re with Deacon in Texas, and I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t an absolute emergency. But we’re in major crisis mode here.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Amery.”

  If Amery was at the office on a Friday night, something was majorly wrong. “What’s the crisis?” Presley started talking so fast Molly couldn’t understand a word. “Whoa. Slow down. Give me one second.” She gave Deacon an apologetic look. “Sorry. I have to take this.”

  “Sounds like it. Come find me when you’re done.”

  “Pres? Hang on until I get to a place I can talk.” She cut down the hallway. “Tell me the problem.”

  “Something is wrong with my hard drive. So no big deal, right? I figured I’d get the files off th
e cloud service and we’d look at them on Amery’s computer because I back up every night. But we can’t access anything on the cloud service.”

  Presley went into a detailed explanation of everything they’d done to try to access the files. When they’d called the help line, the person told them the account didn’t exist.

  “What project are you looking for files on?”

  “Okada. And it’s the new files that Maggie sent on Tuesday. I saved them to my hard drive and then uploaded them to the cloud.”

  “Amery doesn’t have a copy of them on her computer?”

  “No. She hasn’t seen the specs. Since Ronin had to go to San Francisco, she thought she’d work on them tonight. She called me in a panic when she couldn’t retrieve the files, and I came down to help.”

  That was weird. “Is there a chance your computer got a virus?”

  “There’s always a chance, but I run the antivirus programs for that every Friday afternoon.”

  “You did that today?”

  “Yes. And nothing popped.”

  “You didn’t do a hard backup copy on thumb drives or a file sharer for those files?”

  “No. Okada is strict about that.”

  Molly had been afraid something like this would happen. “Let’s start with your computer.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, Molly walked her through each step, backtracking, but nothing happened except additional frustration.

  If the heavy breathing on the phone was any indication, Presley had reached the freak-out zone. She said, “I hate this. Why can’t I figure this shit out?”

  “Because if you were a computer-tech expert, you’d be working for a company that troubleshoots technical problems.”

  “If we did our design work on a Mac, we wouldn’t have this problem,” Presley snapped.

  “Bullshit,” Amery said in the background.

  Molly held her breath, waiting for their ongoing argument to gain traction. When it didn’t, she said, “It’ll be fine. Just calm down.”

  Amery kept yakking at Presley while Molly was trying to tell her what to do next.

  “All right, all right, all right! Just stop talking at once, both of you,” Presley pleaded.

  “Pres, since I’ll have you switch and try to access everything on my computer, I need to know that you’re thinking clearly. I don’t need you randomly clicking shit in a panic.”

  A puff of air exploded in the phone. “I am calm.”

  “Good. You’re at my computer now?”

  “Yeah. What’s your main password?” Presley asked.

  “OU812.”

  “Seriously? That is a killer password. And now you’ll have to change it. Sorry. Okay, I’m on. What next?”

  Molly walked her through three possible solutions and none worked. So she’d have to resort to telling them her secret. “Put me on speaker.”

  “Done.”

  “Hey, Mol. Sorry to pull you away,” Amery said.

  “No worries. This party sucks ass. Anyway, see the mirrored tile icon on the screen? Click on it. Same password.”

  “What is this?”

  “A backup program in case the cloud doesn’t work. Wednesday night before I left I backed up yours and Amery’s hard drives and everything on the cloud to a different cloud. So you should be able to access it.”

  The keyboard clicked. Then Presley said, “Motherfucking hell yeah. It’s all there. Every bit of it.”

  “Molly, you are a genius, and I have no idea what I would do without you,” Amery said. “Seriously. You cannot ever leave.”

  Molly laughed, but it felt damn good to be needed as an integral part of Hardwick Designs. “I’m not a genius; I’m just doing my job.” Which meant she never wanted to be accused of not doing her job, so in her paranoia, she had set up a third backup program—not that she’d admit that unless she absolutely had to.

  Amery declared, “I’m giving you a raise. We’ll talk as soon as you get back.”

  Holy crap. She hadn’t seen that one coming. “Okay.”

  “You saved our bacon by going whole hog with a secondary backup,” Presley said.

  Both Molly and Amery groaned at Presley’s pun.

  “How are things going with Deacon’s family?” Amery asked.

  “They’re a bunch of rich assholes, for the most part. We’re at a country club right now, and I want to stab myself in the eye with the tiny olive fork so I have an excuse to leave.”

  “Try to remember you’re in love with him, not his family.”

  “So noted, boss.”

  Guilt prodded her. If Amery had forgone a trip with Ronin to catch up on work, then Molly should be in Denver working alongside her, not stuck in Texas, where she seemed to be of little value to anyone.

  She needed to talk to Deacon right away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  THE morning had started out with a bang, but this night was fizzling.

  Immediately after they’d arrived, Deacon’s dad started dragging him off to meet people. When it seemed like he might be able to spend more than five minutes with Molly, some crisis had occurred at Hardwick Designs, so she’d disappeared with her cell phone to do her job and troubleshoot the problem.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Molly had left him waiting by the door, but he was bored out of his fucking mind. It led him to imagine how Molly must have felt, left to her own devices all day and most of tonight.

  He’d make it up to her.

  In trying to avoid the bar—too tempting to get liquored up—and steering clear of his dad’s intention to introduce him to everyone and their fucking dog, he meandered down the hallway.

  It’d been years since he’d stepped foot in the Barclay Country Club. Looked like the club still put up pictures of members and their accomplishments. Even club members’ grandchildren’s accomplishments were lauded.

  These people needed to get a damn life.

  But he couldn’t help smiling when he saw the newest photo on the wall. A picture of Warren after he’d won the annual junior division golf championship.

  Deacon meandered, recognizing few faces in the pictures. He stopped when he reached the last grouping of photos and saw a picture of his granddad at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The caption read:

  Jefferson Westerman, at the official opening of the new golf-cart cleaning facility, generously donated by his sons, Bing and Clark, of JFW Development, in his name.

  The picture was at least twenty years old. Strange to think his granddad had always looked that age to him.

  There was an even older picture next to it, with the entire Westerman family. No caption indicating the occasion. But Deacon had a vague memory of the official family photo. Mostly of Clive bawling like a baby so the photographer had to retake the picture a million times. In the photo, he and Dante sat side by side, dressed identically. Even studying the picture now, he didn’t know which one of the blond mop-headed twins was him.

  Next in line was a picture of Tag in a cap and gown. The caption listed him as class valedictorian. He snorted. Tag had always been an overachiever.

  Interesting there wasn’t a picture of Clive and his accomplishments. Oh right, because he was a fucking no-talent