DeadlySuspicious.epub

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Scarlet Harlot Publishing
™

Erotic Romance

Copyright © 2013 by Amarinda Jones

Editor: Vivian Vincent

First E-book Publication: April 2013

Cover design by Amarinda Jones

All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Amarinda Jones
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

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www.amarindajones.com

Deadly Suspicious

The Outcasts Series

©Amarinda Jones

“I agree. Women must be jailed for abortion.” Sirius Tate’s voice was strong and full of determination. The dark gray suited men of the Jacobson Committee nodded and murmured their approval. “Women cannot dictate to men whether they will or won’t have a child, nor can they abort a fetus because it doesn’t suit them to have a baby. A man has rights.”

“Well said.”

“That must be put into the ruling draft.”

“Agreed. For a woman to have a baby is as important as it is for her to marry.”

They all nodded. “That
is
a woman’s job after all.”

Sirius looked around the boardroom table at the bland faces. They all appeared identical to him.

Pale, thin lipped and with a fanatical gleam in their eyes. That they disliked women was a given.

That’s what made them good, servile lackeys of the Committee. Knowing he was one of them sometimes surprised him. He only disliked one woman. Intensely. She was the reason behind the amendment to the draft he’d proposed. “No woman should ever take away a man’s right to his child.”

The Jacobson Committee, which had its origins in Australia, but soon became a global entity, was in the middle of drafting a law designed to change the world. They had started off as a small group of men who expounded their theories on old fashioned values and a woman’s place being in the home. To get their message out to the masses, they schmoozed with pop stars and politicians and lobbied anyone in power to listen to them. Rock concerts, film productions, sporting events and men’s health programs were funded to win the hearts and minds of the people. The best looking members of the Committee spoke to women’s homemaker groups, making the women feel special, letting them know the homemaker projects they were doing were important to the happiness of the family home. They wined and dined female politicians, having sex with them when necessary, adoring them and making them feel what it was like to be looked after by a man and why it was a feeling every woman should have instead of worrying about things that were a man’s job. They were smooth, charming and influential. One of their biggest coups was to pay the big breasted, no brained Miller sisters, Milly, Molly, Mandy and their mother Mattie, to influence women to be like them and follow not only their diets, fashion lines and hair styles but also their beliefs that anything the Jacobson Committee wanted was good.

What the committee wanted was so alien to the world, it took the pop stars, divas and the politicians who could be bought off with sex, drugs and fame, to promote it. The war on women started because the vain and the vacuous had the following of the uneducated, the needy and the gullible. When pronouncements like ‘
all women past the age of twenty-one must be married to a
male or in a monogamous, sexual relationship with
another female constituting a partnership that
has been sanctioned by the Jacobson Committee’
were made, Milly Miller and her sisters jumped on the bandwagon with their vacuous thoughts on what else was a woman for but to be adored by a man and ‘think of the power, ladies, in having a man who adores only you.’

Senator Jane Roenfeld was completely on board with the committee’s beliefs that all women must have at least one child unless they could prove they were medically unfit to conceive. She was quoted as saying, “It seems reasonable to me and not too much to ask.” But then her campaign for re-election was being topped up by the shadowy committee and she would say whatever they wanted. “If a woman is found to be pregnant and single and refusing to marry?” the senator preached on the campaign trail. “Well that’s unfair of her to make a man suffer. Exposing her to jail time and having the child taken from her is reasonable also. Why penalize the man?” Women’s groups were outraged. The committee slammed them down by having superstar, sex symbol Jed Jedson, whose drug habit they were funding, announce that he only found ‘married women sexy.’

Those women hungry for a man and romance fell on board with this idea. When he told the adoring masses that the women’s groups who opposed the benefits of the new plan were militant, khaki wearing, lesbian throwbacks from the 1970s, many agreed with him.

The war against women was fought and won using celebrities to woo adoring fans into believing the committee only wanted the best for women. What woman wouldn’t want romance, love, kids, and a stable home with a loving husband?

* * * * *

He was still angry. Very, very angry. It was a cancer that had begun to eat away at him three months ago when Penny, his lover of the time, announced she had aborted their child ‘because I’m not in the right place in my life to have a baby.’ Sirius had been horrified. He didn’t have a clue she was pregnant and that she had so coldly announced it was done and a baby didn’t suit her? It had made him want to throttle her. The fact she hadn’t considered his rights as a father, nor had she even considered he needed to be brought into the discussion, made him mad. Real mad. So mad that he joined the then new men’s group, the Jacobson Committee, to try and change the laws about abortion and the rights of fathers. What the other men’s personal agendas were didn’t concern him.

He knew what he was fighting for.

However, once a part of the Committee, they urged Sirius on to feel anger towards all women.

The Committee wanted that to happen. Angry men were strong men and useful to their cause.

Added to that, at thirty-five, Sirius Tate was a poster boy for their cause. He was handsome, commanding, dark haired, tall and well-built. They recognized he had an authority that made other men listen and women want to do whatever he told them. The Committee needed men like Tate. He became a rising star and even the founder of the Jacobson Committee, who few had seen and many speculated on, was impressed with Tate.

“
Keep him angry.”

“
That won’t be hard, we know which buttons to push.”

“
Good. That’s why I pay you.”

“
Sir, I hear your daughter is in town.”

“
You hear correct.”

“
Can we do anything to assist?”

“
Keep an eye on her. Denby had this foolish notion she wants to change the world by militant
over reaction.”

“
Hasn’t she learned the world has changed?”

“
Her mother was a bitch. She had strange ideas too. Australian women are like that. Too
independent for their own good.”

“
Those females are going to be the hardest to crush.”

“
Yes, but we will. Watch Denby. I don’t want her getting any more crazy ideas about equality and
the rights of women.”

“
Of course, sir.”

“
Introduce her to Tate. Let’s see if he can dazzle her, but make sure he doesn’t let her know he’s
part of the committee. She also doesn’t know my part in it. There’s no need for her to.

“
Yes, sir. When are you coming back to your home in Brisbane?”

“
When it suits me.”

“
Of course, sir.”

Denby Dumaresq strode through the Queen Street Mall, in the heart of Brisbane city, like she was daring someone to question her. She was twenty-five years of age, unmarried and dressed in camouflage combat pants and a bright red t-shirt with the iconic female symbol emblazoned on the front. Her
Blundstone
steel capped boots made a clumping sound as she moved down the street. She was deliberately conspicuous and couldn’t care less. She wasn’t the sort to spend her life hiding out to fit the rules of the time. Many people stopped to look at the woman with the long, flame red hair, defying all convention by being herself. Denby didn’t care. She knew she was going to turn heads but she didn’t want to live in a world where she was supposed to be a housewife clone, dressed like everyone else and too scared to say anything for fear of what someone thought.

Denby had come back to Brisbane after being away a couple of years on a search to find answers.
Because I sure as hell didn’t find them overseas.
When she had first departed Australia, it had been to look for reasons about why her mother had left her as a child. The only lead she had was that Shanelle Dumaresq had gone to London, like so many other Australians, to work and travel. That had been twenty years ago when Denby was only five. No one explained why she had gone and no attempt was made by her mother to contact her nor had her father tried to find his wife.

Hearing him say her mother ‘had made her choice’ didn’t sit well with Denby. What choice? Why?

Who leaves a child behind without an explanation or reason? Her father was no help. He was bitter, arrogant and not interested in the whereabouts of her mother.

“
Forget her.”

“
No.”

“
If she loved you she would’ve stayed.”

“
But—”

“
Denby, you’re under my control now and you’ll obey me. If I say forget her, you will.”

This conversation resembled many they’d had. She was to do as she was told and not bother him with disobedience. Denby, of course, had gone out of her way to be exactly that by swearing, smoking and drinking. The first she enjoyed. The second two made her as sick as a dog. She paid dearly for all her actions when, at fifteen, her father shoved her into an archaic all-girl boarding school that followed eighteenth century beliefs about the education and rearing of girls. They had to act a certain way, dress in a certain manner and her hair?
Good grief. It’s a preposterous color! No
normal person has red hair.
When she told them to ‘get stuffed’ and she ‘didn’t want to be normal’