A Deceptive Attraction: The Wilsons, Book 3 (10 page)

“Violet, don’t go.” Leon caught her wrist in his hand. She tried to jerk it away, but he held on tightly.

“Let go of me,” Violet said coldly. “I know how to make a scene. You won’t like it.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Leon said. “The police would be called. Your family would not approve.”

Violet twisted her wrist out of his grasp and backed away from him. Her enormous blue eyes smoldered with anger. “What do you care about my family? If you had your way, you’d have us all sent to prison, our entire fortune scattered to the four winds, the laughingstock of the press. Don’t you try to pretend you give a crap about my family!”

Leon stood in the center of the room, breathing hard. He felt helpless. Of course she was right. He had done his job – reluctantly, but he had done it.

“All right,” he said wearily. “May I at least help you with your bags?”

“No
. I’ve already called for a bellhop.”

Leon’s mood sunk even further, if that were possible. Under normal circumstances, Violet’s manners were perfect, but just now she had simply told him no. Not “no thank you.” Just no.

“Won’t you need help when you get to your apartment?” he asked.

“I can handle things fine at my place. I have a doorman.”

There was a knock at the private entrance to Violet’s room. “Bellhop,” a voice said.

“Violet, I can’t understand why you won’t let me help you,” Leon pleaded.

“No way am I showing you where I live.” She shot him an icy look and opened the door for the bellman.

Then she was gone.

***

Violet stepped out of her cab and arranged for the doorman to have her two big suitcases brought up to her apartment. It was the second time this week that she had to lug those suitcases around after unpleasant conversations with men, and it was getting old.

Outside it was still the morning rush hour, but inside the building it was quiet. She let herself into her apartment and emptied out the suitcases on her bed.

Her heart was pounding as she hung up the black velvet dress. Hugh was definitely doing insider trading. The only question was whether Leon was in on it and had tried to involve her in the fraud.

The reception the night before had taken an unpleasant turn, but Violet forced herself to recall all of the details anyway. Hugh had doggedly tried to get rid of Leon before giving her the tip about selling Amixa stock before it crashed. Maybe Leon didn’t know what his partner was doing.

On the other hand, maybe it was a setup. Maybe Leon’s job had been to look clean and win her confidence so she would let her guard down. Then it was Hugh’s job to slink in and do the dirty work.

If that was the case, then they were both well suited for their roles, Violet thought. She spied the pot of Daphne eyeshadow still sitting on her vanity and almost burst into tears.

She needed to talk to someone. Amelia was out of the question. She was well known on Wall Street, and Zetta Holdings, the brokerage she had set up with Max, had earned top-ten
ratings and ruffled the feathers of its competitors. Violet would do nothing to jeopardize Amelia’s reputation. She didn’t want her sister to get anywhere near this.

In fact, the minute she told anyone with the slightest connection to the market, she herself would be an accomplice.

She had to call Max. He had kept the Zetta Corporation out of the stock market, instead keeping the family business’s investments in the private equities market, where the real money was. He was a silent partner in Zetta Holdings, letting Amelia manage the day to day operations of the brokerage.

Max would know what to do, and he knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Violet punched up her brother’s private cell phone number on her speed dial, smiling briefly. The Wilson siblings had played Batman when they were growing up. Max, who had always insisted on hogging the lead role for himself, called this cell line the Bat Phone. It was for family members only, and he would always answer it or return voice mails within five minutes, no matter where he was or whom he was with.

Max answered immediately.
“Vi, what’s up?”

“Somebody gave me an insider stock tip at a tech reception at the Edison last night and told me to tell the family,” she blurted out. “What should I do about it?”

Max immediately went into CEO mode. “You didn’t call Amelia, did you?” he asked sharply.

“Absolutely not. I know a couple of things about business
.”

“I know you do,” Max reassured her. “Just making sure. OK, slow down and tell me the story from the beginning. Do not under any circumstances tell me the name of the stock.”

Violet paused to gather her thoughts. So much had happened since the last time she had seen Max at their parents’ house upstate for brunch last Sunday.

“Well, I’ve been dating this French guy…” she started.

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Max said. “What about Tim?”

“Tim is history.” Violet decided not to explain. It wasn’t relevant.

“Hear, hear,” Max said caustically. He had never liked Tim, not one bit. “Never mind. Tell me more about monsieur.”

“Leon Girard. Handsome. Charming. The whole enchilada,” Violet said. “Told me he works in the finance industry but weaseled out of giving me more information.”

“Never a good sign,” Max said. “He must be very handsome and charming, then.”

“He is. His sister’s name is Colette. She has contacts on the Paris runways and offered to promote my work.”

“Oh, I see.”

Violet almost laughed out loud. Max was a bit shaky in the romance d
epartment, or had been until he’d gotten engaged to Amy, but because Colette had offered Violet a business advantage, he understood immediately.

“Leon introduced me to his supposed ‘business partner’ at the IPO reception last night. Nasty little American guy named Hugh Steffans who slithered up and whispered the tip in my ear while Leon was in the men’s room.”

“Obviously monsieur was the wing man,” Max remarked.

“That’s what I thought at first,” Violet said. “But he really didn’t want to leave me alone with the tipster.”

“That’s odd,” Max said. “Might have been a ruse. Do you think the sister is in on it?”

Violet felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t considered that. If Leon had told Colette to construct a bogus story about promoting her design work, then he was even more evil than she had first suspected. She had made the right decision to break up with him.

“I don’t know. But why are these people bothering me?” she asked.

“You’re easier to get to than me or Amelia,” Max said. “I’m sorry, sis. It goes with the territory of being a Wilson.”

Violet nodded, not trusting her voice.

“OK, here’s the deal,” Max said. “You’re in the clear as long as you never breathe a word of this to anyone else again, ever. You don’t trade, so you’re not obligated to report this guy Hugh, or whatever his name is.”

“I won’t,” Violet said.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission would love to learn all about him, I’m sure,” Max continued. “But you’d have to answer questions, and it would surely get out in the papers. The public loves it when somebody sticks it to the wealthy. Zetta Holdings is squeaky clean and it’s in all of our best interests to keep it that way, if you get my drift.”

“Yes I do,” Violet replied. As much as she would have liked to see slimy little Hugh sent to federal prison, it wasn’t worth the risk to her family, whom she loved more than life.

Besides, Leon might also face charges in the European Union. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Part of her wanted to see him sent to a French prison for the rest of his life. Another part of her wanted the whole story to be a bad joke.

The memory of Leon’s expert hands caressing her flesh in bed last night flashed through her mind. So much was at stake.

“What should I do about Leon?” she asked Max. She already knew the answer.

Her brother’s voice softened. “Vi, I’ve made no secret of how I felt about Tim. I don’t care who left whom; I’m just glad he’s gone. If you like being single, we all support you in that. But if you want to be married, at least happily married, then you need to be picky. Very, very picky.”

Violet swallowed hard.

“One thing Dad always taught us was never trust a liar,” Max said. “I’d love to see you happy, Vi.”

“Thanks, Max,” Violet said, hoping her voice didn’t sound too choked up. “For everything.”

“No problem, sis,” Max said. “Take care.”

Violet ended the call.

Anger surged up in her. She couldn’t remember ever hating someone as much as she hated Leon Girard. He had seemed so sincere, such a gentleman, so protective and concerned about her comfort and safety. It had touched the vulnerable side of herself that she normally kept hidden behind her tough persona.

She had let down her guard because it felt so good after all those years of caution and avoiding risk. Her friends and family had encouraged her to loosen up and live a little. So she had.

It didn’t surprise her all that much that she had been used. She had known Leon less than a week, after all, and she had broken every rule in the book, not to mention her own internal rules, by sleeping with him so soon. Worse, she had given her heart away to him without asking a single thing in return. Sure, it hurt, but it had been her decision, and she was responsible for it. “If you play, be prepared to pay,” her father had always told her and her siblings as they were growing up.

Being used was bad enough, but Leon had gone one better and actually involved her in a criminal enterprise. Securities fraud was no joke. Only a decade ago, a famous, fabulously wealthy magazine publisher in New York City had been caught up in an insider trading scheme. She had served time in a federal prison for it, with every single detail of her trial and incarceration breathlessly reported by a hungry press anxious to embarrass her as much as possible.

How could Leon possibly try to do this to her and her family and still come across as the man he appeared to be?

Violet shuddered. He was worse than Tim. All Tim did was pretend to be sensitive while he was cheating on her. He never did anything to try to get her arrested.

Memories of her first night with Leon invaded her mind like thieves. She remembered the two of them locked together like lovers on the Staten Island Ferry with his jacket around her shoulders, filling her senses with his scent. Her body remembered the shock of his hard organ pressing against her belly for the first time when he held her, and the full feeling it gave her when she parted her thighs and took him inside her in his bed later that night.

Tossing away her lifelong distaste for drama, Violet threw herself face down on her bed and began to sob.

Chapter 14

After Violet left the suite with her bags, Leon called Air France and booked a ticket to Paris departing at one o’clock that afternoon. The IPO reception was his last job in the States in his current position. His work here was done.

His seat was the only first-class ticket left on that flight, and he had snapped it up. If he had stayed in New York one minute longer, he would either buy a pack of cigarettes or go out of his mind. Neither one was an acceptable alternative.

He settled back into his seat and sighed with relief as the plane backed away from the gate and taxied down the tarmac toward the runway.

The whole IPO project last night had been nothing but a wild goose chase. Hugh was an idiot, and his scheme to target the Wilsons had been idiotic even for Hugh. But the biggest idiot of the entire show had been Leon, for going along with it.

Ah well, Leon thought as the plane left the ground and the landing gear went up with its telltale clunk. He had been professional. He had done his job.

But he had lost Violet in the process. Not only that, but he had hurt her terribly. He had seen the anger in her eyes as she had packed her bags that morning. A woman like Violet didn’t show that kind of anger unless something was tearing her up inside.

And that something was him. She had told him so to his face.

Leon thought of his breakup with Adele and wondered if he needed to go back to his old routine as a player. The irony was thick. When he had kept things casual and left his heart out of it, everything was understood and nobody got hurt. As soon as his emotions got involved, he always ended up disappointing someone. The breakup with Violet this morning had cut his feelings to the bone.

Or was it really a breakup? They had only known each other less than a week.

And yet, Leon thought, he felt as if he had known Violet all his life. They responded to the world in the same way, with a sense of humor, and utterly without drama. Her manners were as perfect as any Frenchwoman’s. She had been tender and kind to him after he had the panic attack at the top of the Rockefeller Center. And she was so beautiful that she took his breath away.

Leon sat bolt upright in his seat as he realized what had just happened to him.

He had gone to America and fallen in love.