Hightower Affairs 2: Bedding the Secret Heiress (2 page)

“I’ll do my best to deliver smooth, punctual flights.” Ripping her hand free, she spun on her heel and hustled her boots out of the throne room. Killjoy Trent shadowed her to The Sphinx’s desk.

“Lauren, Gage is a close personal friend.” He pitched his voice low enough not to carry back through the open door of his office. “Don’t blow this or you’re out of a job.”

Ah. The catch. She rocked back on her heels. Trent had assigned her to work for a spy—one who would help him find grounds to get rid of her.

Wasn’t that a show of brotherly love? She bit back the urge to tell him to kiss her butt. But she’d deal with Trent’s tricks until she got what she needed. Then she’d tell him what he could do with his big head and bad attitude.

“Piece of cake, big brother. I’ll treat your buddy like precious cargo.”

The obvious grinding of his teeth when she called him
brother
nearly made her laugh out loud. Score one for baby sister. But she knew better than to let down her guard. This battle was far from over.

Angel or badass?

Gage’s gaze tracked Lauren Lynch out of the room. The woman was a walking contradiction with her big teal eyes, flawless honey complexion and the black leather biker gear hugging her lean curves.

The bone-jarring effect of her touch had been an unwelcome surprise. Even if she weren’t Trent’s sister, she was too young for him, and he had no time or inclina
tion for complications—not when he was this close to reaching his goal of having Faulkner Consulting be the best in the industry and having six million in secure investments.

“Your announcement was a bit premature,” Gage said the moment Trent closed the office door. “You haven’t convinced me to fly with Hightower Aviation yet.”

“I will.”

Maybe. Maybe not. But he’d give Trent a chance to state his case. He owed him that much. “Lauren gives you a hard time.”

“But she’s smart enough to keep from crossing the line and giving me grounds to fire her. She has my mother wrapped around her little finger.”

“Are you sure? Jacqueline’s pretty sharp. You have to give her credit for keeping Hightower Aviation from going under after her father died and yours dropped the ball. She even managed to take HAMC international by convincing her jet-setting friends to employ your services on their pleasure jaunts.”

Trent sat behind his desk. “Mom’s been hoodwinked this time.”

“How does this involve me? Your message said you needed my help, but you left out the details.”

“Eighteen months ago Mom flew to Daytona. Shortly thereafter she began making large cash withdrawals of between twenty and thirty thousand on a regular basis. She’s returned to Daytona bimonthly since then.”

“Is it company money?” Embezzlement would be bad news.

“No, it’s my mother’s personal funds, but her accountant called me with a heads-up. I ordered him to
alert me to any unusual transactions. Remember my father’s stunt? And yours?”

Gage’s gut tightened. “I remember.”

He might have only been ten when his father overextended himself, borrowing against his business and their home until he’d lost everything, but living in the family car for six months wasn’t something Gage would ever forget. Trent was the only one Gage had ever trusted with those details.

“Why would Jacqueline suddenly go off the deep end now?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. If Mom’s judgment is faulty or if she’s getting senile, then I need to get her off the board of directors before she does serious damage.”

“You’re going to need more than speculation to unseat her.”

Trent glanced at the papers on his desk. “Mom’s spending and visits to Daytona escalated a few months before Lauren moved to Knoxville. Lauren is from Daytona. My guess is she discovered her birth mother had deep pockets and decided to cozy up and dip her hands into them.”

“Lauren doesn’t look like a con artist.”

“Don’t let those big blue eyes and her innocent girl-next-door look fool you. If I didn’t have good reason to suspect she’s tapped my mother’s financial vein, I wouldn’t have called you.”

Trent, like Gage, wasn’t the type to ask for help. That his friend had called meant he was desperate. “If your mother is channeling money to your baby sister—”

“
Half
sister,” Trent corrected. “And the only reason I believe that is because I had a DNA test done during her employment screening process.”

“Is that legal and does Lauren know?”

“I doubt she knows, but she signed a waiver allowing us to test for whatever we wanted when she took the job. I tested for everything.”

“She came up clean?”

“Unfortunately. Ditching her would have been much easier if her drug tests or background check had revealed even a hint of something questionable. Hell, even her credit history is clear.”

Trent really had it in for the girl, but he’d never been the type to overreact or jump to conclusions. Because of his family’s wealth Trent had always been a target for gold diggers, and his radar for them was unmatched. He must have good cause for his suspicions about Lauren.

“You’ve asked your mother about the cash?”

Trent nodded. “And she locked up tighter than Fort Knox. If she has nothing to hide, then why keep secrets?”

“I hear you.” But Gage lived by the opposite theory. He didn’t believe in revealing anything unless required. “What about Lauren? Did you ask her why she relocated?”

“Lauren gave me some bullshit about her father wanting her to meet her Hightower siblings as a reason for her move to Knoxville, and she claims she knows nothing about the money.”

“Why wouldn’t your mother have given Lauren money sooner? Why wait twenty-five years?”

“Maybe Mom didn’t know where Lauren was or she could have been giving her smaller amounts over the years that didn’t catch the accountant’s notice. But we never heard a whisper about Mom’s little mistake until she showed up on our doorstep, pilot credentials in hand and expecting to waltz into a job. Do you know how selective Hightower Aviation is in hiring?”

“Lauren doesn’t meet your standards?”

Trent’s scowl deepened. “Other than her lack of a college degree, she exceeds them. But, Gage, she’s too damned young to have the résumé she’s claiming. I just haven’t been able to prove she’s lying. Hell, I’ve checked and rechecked her credentials and put her through a battery of physical and mental testing, looking for any reason to reject her. I even forced her to sit through hours of training in a flight simulator before allowing her in a real cockpit. But the little smart-ass aced all the tests and refused to quit.”

That earned her a dose of grudging respect. “Maybe she’s simply a good pilot.”

“Nobody’s that good at that age.”

“You were.”

Trent’s entire body tensed and Gage regretted his words. Trent had practically been raised in a cockpit. He’d been eager to join the Air Force as a pilot after college, but his father had nearly destroyed HAMC by incurring gambling debts that had jeopardized the company. Trent had been forced to abandon his military career plans to clean up his father’s mess. By the time he’d dug HAMC out of the negative spiral Trent’s dream had been supplanted by the necessity of remaining CEO of HAMC.

“I apologize. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“Forget it. It was a long time ago. I’m over it.” Trent cleared his throat. “Here’s what I know. My mother hid her pregnancy then gave Lauren up for adoption to her natural father rather than tell my father she’d gotten knocked up by one of her lovers.”

“Your father must have known. As Jacqueline’s husband he would have been Lauren’s legal father despite her biological paternity. He would have had to agree to relinquish.”

Trent raked a hand through hair a shade lighter than his half sister’s dirty blond. “Dad claims he doesn’t remember the ‘incident’ or signing any forms. My guess is he would have done anything to keep my mother funding his gambling addiction. Remember, HAMC was a smaller operation back then, and the majority of Hightower money came from my mother’s family. Consequently, Dad turned a blind eye to all her affairs. My grandfather probably greased the wheels to keep things quiet.”

“All valid points.” But despite her biker gear and attitude, Lauren didn’t give off the greedy bitch vibe. “Lauren doesn’t look like a woman being showered with gifts from a wealthy benefactress. She’s not wearing jewelry, makeup or designer clothes.”

“She drives a twenty-thousand-dollar motorcycle, a sixty-thousand-dollar truck and flies a quarter-million-dollar airplane. What does that tell you?”

That she’d fooled him. But hadn’t he learned the hard way that women often promised one thing and schemed to get something else altogether? Gage’s anger stirred. “She’s damned good at hiding her avaricious nature. But I repeat, what does this have to do with me?”

“Until I can get the cash flow dammed I need you to keep Lauren out of my hair and away from my mother.”

“And from your phone message I gather you believe I can do that by using Hightower Aviation’s services for free.”

Trent nodded. “Flying a private jet rather than a commercial airline will save you time. You’ve canceled our last three dinners because you claimed you needed to be in two places at once due to two of your team members being out on parental leave.”

“Right.” Yet another reason why Gage would never
have children. They were a distraction. Recent family additions had turned two of his best consultants—one male, one female—into babbling, sleep-deprived fools. He wasn’t letting anyone get between him and a steady, secure income. And he didn’t want anyone depending on him.

“I can help you, and in turn, you can help me,” Trent added. “If I don’t cut off the money leak, then Mom could be tempted to dip into Hightower Aviation funds the way my father did. For the next two or three months you’ll be out of town more than in. If Lauren is your pilot, she will be, too. That works for me.”

Gage’s collar suddenly felt like a noose. As convenient as having a plane at his beck and call might be, he’d never been comfortable with the freeloader role—a circumstance Trent knew only too well. “Faulkner Consultants can afford HAMC’s services. Draw up a contract.”

“No way. We both know how you feel about large capital expenses. I explained on the message machine before you came in. This one’s on me.”

“You laid out a sketchy plan, but there’s more involved here than you let on.”

“Damn it, Gage, get the chip off your shoulder. How many times do I have to tell you that you don’t owe me or my family anything? Trust me on this. If you can occupy Lauren for a couple of months,
I’ll
owe
you.
Keeping the parasite away from my mother is going to save me more money in the long run than you leasing a plane or buying fractional ownership in one is going to generate.”

Gage’s molars ground together. He’d swallowed more humble pie than he could handle in a lifetime. Never again. “Trent—”

“I need your help, man. Don’t make me beg.”

Gage ran a hand over the tense muscles of his neck. “Then we do it my way. Draw up a short-term contract. If it saves me time and money, then I’ll renew when the term ends. If not, I’ll at least know I paid my way.”

Trent’s jaw jacked up. “That’s not necessary.”

“It is for me.”

Trent’s mouth opened, but closed again without further argument. “Fine. If you can manage to find out Lauren’s intentions while you’re at it, that would be even better.”

Gage recoiled. He’d been waiting thirteen years for an opportunity to repay the debt he owed his former college roommate, but there were some boundaries he wouldn’t cross even for his best friend. “I won’t be your snitch.”

“I’m not asking you to sleep with her or marry her to get information. Just find out how long she intends to be a boil on my ass.”

“If Lauren is the mercenary bitch you claim, then I’ll tell you what you need to know to protect yourself and your assets. But that’s it. Nothing more.”

Trent’s brow creased as he considered Gage’s offer. “Deal.”

T
he rasp of a suit-clad leg brushing her shoulder shattered Lauren’s concentration. She looked up from entering data into the navigation screen as Gage squeezed through the narrow opening between the cockpit and passenger cabin.

“Mr. Faulkner, we’re about to take off. Please go back to your seat and buckle in.”

“Call me Gage, and I prefer sitting up front.” He folded into the copilot chair on her right.

“I’d rather you stay in the passenger cabin.”

He reached for the seat belt and clicked it in place. “Are you afraid I’ll see you skip a step in preflight preparations, Lauren?”

Her teeth clicked together. He’d been an aggravation from the moment he’d insisted on carrying his own bags on board. The HAMC rulebook stated that her job as pilot was to greet each passenger and personally
carry on and properly stow any weighted objects they brought along. The last thing she needed to do was give her half brother a stupid infraction to use against her.

“I never skip steps.”

“Good. Do you have a spare headset?”

The mercury in her mental thermometer climbed and her ears burned. “We’re flying a Cessna Mustang because you wanted to work on the way to Baton Rouge in the luxury of a spacious cabin. You even requested no flight attendant on board so you wouldn’t have interruptions.”

He kept his gaze leveled on hers, not giving an inch. An odd tension seeped into her midsection.

“I awoke hours before my alarm went off this morning and accomplished what I needed to do before I left for the airport. I’d rather sit up front where I can see.”

Disliking the invasion of her space and the breach in protocol, she grappled for patience and stretched her lips into a smile. “There are six windows in the back. Besides, on an overcast day there’s not a lot to see from thirty thousand feet. I’ll be flying above the cloud deck.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

She counted to three, trying to rein in her temper. “The seats in the cabin are larger, more comfortable and they recline. You could catch up on your missed sleep during the flight.”

“Not necessary.”

Her knuckleheaded half brother had probably asked his spy to annoy her as much as possible, and judging by the gleam in Faulkner’s dark eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw he knew he was getting under her skin like a splinter.

“If you’d mentioned your preference for sitting up front earlier, we could have cleared it with the office and
conserved fuel by taking a smaller plane rather than fly five empty seats.”

“That would have cost us speed and time.”

She couldn’t argue with facts. A smaller plane would have flown slower and lower than HAMC’s smallest jet. “Allowing passengers in the cockpit is against HAMC protocol.”

“Call your brother.”

“Half brother. I can’t. As you no doubt know, he’s tied up in a board meeting all morning, and his dragon lady won’t put calls through.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with me in the copilot seat.”

But she would take this up with Trent when she returned home. Her father’s number one rule echoed in her head.
The customer is always right—unless safety is involved.
Resigned to Faulkner’s unwanted company, she conceded, “There’s a spare headset beneath your seat.”

Most pilots, including her, brought their own equipment, but Hightower Aviation always provided extras. She hated to admit it, but HAMC went first-class all the way by providing luxuries for its passengers and crew that Falcon Air couldn’t afford.

Gage removed the gear from the bag and plugged the headset into the appropriate jack as if he’d done this before, then sat back in his seat with his long-fingered hands relaxed on his thighs.

Muscular thighs, not desk jockey thighs.

Client.

She diverted her stray thoughts, assumed her strictest flight instructor persona and met his gaze. “If you have sunglasses, put them on. Don’t speak until I tell you I’ve finished with the control tower, and don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you. You may not need
to concentrate during the flight, but I do if you want me to keep this baby in the air.”

The corners of his lips twitched, and she almost smiled back. “That would be preferable to the alternative.”

Of crashing. Like her father.

The swift stab of pain caught her off guard. She squelched her grief and focused on entering her flight plan data into the computer. It took twenty minutes to finish her preflight check, get clearance and put the plane in the air—twenty minutes during which Gage silently observed her every move like an eagle waiting to strike.

When she was in the cockpit she was all business all the time. Her father had taught her that was the only way young pilots lived to become old pilots. An airplane was the one place she knew she was good—
damned
good. But Gage made her second-guess her actions instead of doing them instinctively. Before him, no other passenger or pilot had ever disrupted her concentration.

She hated being conscious of each shift of his body in the leather seat, the rise and fall of his chest and the spicy tang of his cologne. And while she couldn’t hear him moving and breathing through her noise-canceling headphones, she could feel his presence in the close quarters of the cockpit.

His steady regard made her very aware of her scraped-back hair, lack of makeup and unpainted, short-clipped nails. He made her feel feminine. And lacking. Not a pleasant combination.

Once she reached cruising altitude, she glanced at him and straight into those dark eyes. Her stomach swooped as if she’d hit an air pocket and the plane had dropped. “You can talk now. If you must. Speak in a regular tone of voice. I’ll hear you loud and clear through the headphones.”

“Why flying?” he fired back without hesitation.

A familiar question. She shrugged. “I grew up around airports and never wanted to do anything else.”

“What did you do before joining Hightower Aviation?”

Her half brother had probably asked Gage to grill her. Careerwise, she had nothing to hide, nothing that she hadn’t put in her résumé. Still, unsure of his agenda, she chose her words carefully. “Fifty percent of the time I’m a flight instructor. The rest of the time I fly charter jets for Falcon Air.”

“What’s Falcon Air?”

He certainly had a talent for faking genuine interest while pumping her for information. “My father’s charter plane company.”

“Is he running it while you’re gone?”

She flinched as the unintentional arrow sank deep into her chest. Would the pain ever stop? “No. He recently…died. My uncle is acting as general manager.”

“My condolences.” Cool words devoid of emotion.

“What is it you do exactly, Mr.—Gage?” Not that she cared, but she’d rather talk about him than herself and risk inadvertently revealing something she shouldn’t. If word got out that her father might have committed suicide, then Falcon Air would lose business. Their clients would not be inclined to hire a company that flew faulty planes—or worse, engage a pilot who might take a deliberate header into the Everglades with them on board. And finances were iffy enough already.

“I’m a business consultant. I assess companies and make recommendations for improvements, specifically targeting ways to make them financially secure by eliminating waste and increasing productivity.”

“You do that internationally?”

“Yes. Did you decide to search for your birth mother after your father’s death?”

She stifled her frustration as he volleyed the topic back to her. “No. She came to me.”

“You must have been surprised to meet her.”

“Meet her? I don’t know what Trent told you, but I’ve known Jacqui all my life. I wasn’t aware my father’s on-again-off-again girlfriend was my mother until my eighteenth birthday when she and my father decided to share the information. I didn’t know Jacqui was married until after my father’s funeral when she told me my father wanted me to meet my sib—her other children.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’ve known Jacqueline for years?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of mother was she? A generous one, I’ll bet.”

More innuendo. She rolled her eyes and then scanned the sky for traffic. She’d had a load of the same attitude from all but one of her half siblings. They seemed to think she was looking for handouts and a free ride, but what she wanted was something Jacqui could give her without putting a dent in the Hightower heirs’ inheritance.

“I just told you Jacqui wasn’t a mother at all. And no, she didn’t shower me with expensive gifts. My father wouldn’t have allowed it. Nor would I have accepted them.”

The disbelief written all over his face ticked her off. One, because this stranger had judged and assumed the worst of her, and two, because Trent had probably filled Gage’s ears with lies. It was one thing for her half brother to resent her and hate her guts, but it was low and crass of him to spread his poison professionally. She
knew he had. Otherwise, the other HAMC employees wouldn’t give her the cold shoulder.

“Jacqueline wanted you to join Hightower Aviation?”

“This is a temporary gig. Jacqui knows I’m going back to Falcon in a few months.”

“Why a few months?”

“Why twenty questions?” she countered.

“I’m curious. Most people wouldn’t willingly walk away from the level of luxury associated with the Hightower name.”

“I’m not most people, Mr. Faulkner, and I’m not a Hightower. If we’re going to work together, you’d better get used to that. And if Trent put you up to this interrogation, then please tell him he’ll have to come to me himself for answers.”

Not that she’d ever reveal the full truth behind her presence in Knoxville. Her reasons for being here were no one’s business but hers, and she’d be damned if she’d feed Gage Faulkner anything he could carry back to Trent to be used against her. If she did, it could destroy Falcon Air, and then she’d have nothing to return home to.

Gage’s gut told him Lauren was hiding something, and his gut was never wrong.

She’d clammed up as soon as the conversation about her mother had become interesting, and no amount of questioning, subtle or otherwise, had gotten her to open up again during the flight. But getting answers was his specialty.

He flashed the ID badge Hightower Aviation had provided for him at the security guard. The man waved him through the doors to the tarmac. “Have a good trip, sir.”

Gage nodded his thanks, exited the terminal of the
small suburban airport and approached the jet. Trent had been right. Traveling via private carrier was a lot less hassle than flying a commercial airline. Faster in, faster out allowed for more time on the job and less in transit. Gage had to admit he liked the efficiency.

Tired, but satisfied with the preliminary information he’d gathered on the project he’d come to Baton Rouge to assess, he checked his watch. Because of the security check-in time savings he was an hour early. When he’d left Lauren seven hours ago she hadn’t seemed concerned at being stranded with nothing to do for the majority of the day. In fact, her eyes had sparkled and her body had practically vibrated with excitement as if she couldn’t wait to be rid of him. Not a common occurrence for him. Women—when he made time for them—enjoyed his company.

But not Lauren.

She’d given him her cell number and asked him to call when he finished his business and headed toward the airport, claiming it would allow her to prepare the plane for takeoff before he arrived. He hadn’t called. Arriving early fit in with his plan to catch her doing whatever it was she did to fill her day. Her activities might give some clue as to her intentions.

The door to the Cessna stood open and the stairs were down as if waiting for visitors on this warm October day. He climbed on board, and the plane rocked slightly under his weight. Lauren abruptly sat upright in one of the plush leather passenger seats and lowered the feet she’d had tucked under her to the floor. She had a laptop computer resting on her thighs. “You’re back.”

“Did I interrupt something?”

“No. I was just…killing time.”

But not in a relaxed way, judging by the tension around her mouth and eyes.

The setting sun streamed through the window behind her, painting coppery streaks in the slightly disheveled dark blond curtain hanging past her shoulders. Her uniform hat rested on a nearby table and her jacket draped a seat back. She hastily closed the open top button of her shirt, covering a V of pale honeyed skin.

“You were supposed to call so I could get the preflight done and get you into the air faster.”

She seemed flustered. Was she hiding something?

“My mind was on work.” Not a lie, just not the entire truth and a necessary omission if he were going to play sleuth. He stowed his briefcase in the compartment she’d shown him earlier.

Her eyes narrowed as if she didn’t believe him, and then she typed a few keys. A few seconds later her eyebrows and the corners of her lips dipped. “Jacqui says hello.”

Alarms sounded in his brain. “You were online with your mother?”

“Yes.” A flicker of irritation crossed her face. “Instant messaging.”

Lauren closed her computer, tucked it into a leather bag by her feet and rose. She twisted her hair up, clipping it into place then she snatched up her hat and set it on her head. “She remembers you from your college visits with Trent.”

Jacqueline would. The Hightower family had often included Gage on vacations—probably because Trent had told them that Gage had nowhere else to go when the dorms shut down for the holidays. He couldn’t exactly join his father because his parent was usually living in a homeless shelter or on the street. Gage had
no idea where his mother had gone. The old humiliation still burned his pride.

“I wouldn’t have pegged Jacqueline as the instant messaging type.”

“You’d be wrong. She’s quite techno-savvy.”

That translated into trouble. He could physically keep the women apart, but he couldn’t prevent them from connecting via cyberspace when all of HAMC’s planes had wireless access. That was something neither he nor Trent had anticipated. The situation would require reevaluation and a new strategy.