Seducing an Heiress (21 page)

Gripping the arms of her chair, she struggled to control her fury. Dakota didn't understand what Trey wanted from her, but she understood one thing. No one did this to someone she cared about. No one.

The battle was on and she'd use every skill she'd ever honed in the twelve years of living in this house to win. One way or another she was getting Trey out of here.

She pulled in a deep breath and gave her father a calm look. "You want something. What is it?"

"What every father wants. My daughter at my side."

"I'll be glad to stay," she lied. "After you let Trey go."

Her father laughed, a dry chuckle that sounded rusty from disuse. He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a short stack of papers. "Sign where you see an X and you have a deal." He slid the packet toward her.

She narrowed her eyes. "What is that?"  

"Never do anything without a contract. Peters understood that." His attention shifted to Trey, studying him like one would an inferior meal. "Did you know I was considering him to replace me? Pity." 

His wintry eyes landed back on her, reminding her of a spider's after all. 

"What about his sister's file?" Dakota asked, refusing to be baited. "If I sign, he's fulfilled his deal with you and he gets the information." 

"If you agree to all my terms, it's his."

"Don't Dakota!" Trey shouted. The guards raised their fists to strike and her father shook his head.

She felt a sense of relief, almost gratitude and realized that was exactly what she was supposed to feel. A pointless gesture calculated to soften her up. Everything her father did had a purpose designed to get people to do exactly what he wanted and needed. 

Trey had said he needed her in order to close the sale of Dakota Nights. Needed her desperately, apparently. If she could stall, maybe she could figure out why and use it against him.

First she had to get Trey away from security.

"I want everything in writing," she said.

An unpleasant gleam of interest curled through her father's eyes. 

"And I want to read over the contract before I decide anything. Trey can help me." 

"Maybe I underestimated your potential, Dakota." He signaled the guards and they released Trey.

"Escort my daughter and Mr. Peters to her suite, if you would Marcus," he said to the guard behind her. "Have a tray sent up. And a first aid kit." 

His eyes bore into hers. "I'll expect to find you ready to satisfactorily conclude our business in the morning, Dakota."

*  *  *

The door shut behind them and Dakota allowed herself a small sigh of relief. She was glad they'd put her in her old rooms. Familiar territory was always a plus when the odds were stacked against you.

She picked up a thick turkey sandwich from the tray one of Marcus' minions had brought and started wolfing it down. "You should eat something," she said to Trey around a mouthful.

Picking up the other sandwich, he looked at it skeptically. Finally he took a bite, chewing cautiously on the uninjured side of his mouth. 

While she finished her food, Dakota wandered around her old bedroom, still decorated the same as it had been when she was a teenager. As she did, she carefully looked for anything that could hide a microphone or lens. Audio she was used to, camera made things a little more challenging. 

Trey watched her outwardly casual inspection, his gaze alert. "We should go over the contract. We don't have a lot of time."

"These rooms have been mine since I was thirteen. I want to make sure everything's just the way I remember it," she answered for the benefit of any audience they might have. 

She wondered if he understood. How could he? No normal person could fathom what life in this house had been like. As bad as it was, she knew now it had only been the tip of the iceberg. 

"I always liked these rooms," she said loudly, looking carefully at the glass eye of a plastic cat alarm clock. They'd planted a bug there once. No reason they wouldn't use it for a camera. 

Just to be sure, she turned it to the wall. "I had an incredible view. I could see everything that went on here. All the time."

She tossed Trey another pointed look. His eyes held a touch of amusement. 

"I know," he said. "My favorite view would have been from the window." He shot his gaze to the curtain rod and then away.

Appreciation for him swelled up inside her. They might get out of this, yet.

"These are new," she said, pretending to admire the frilly white curtains. The curtain rod was thick and ornate and hadn't been there when she'd left. 

There, on the left end of the rod, a tiny little green light.

Trey ignored the window and moved to the French provincial desk under it. Picking up the contract the guards had laid there, he settled into the matching chair and pretended to read. 

Dakota scanned the room, wondering how the hell she was going to disable the camera without tipping them off. She wondered if her bottles of nail polish were still here.

Opening the side drawer in the desk, she hit pay dirt. White too. In her previous life she'd always been a classic nail kind of girl and now it was going to pay off. She palmed the polish and grabbed a pen that was beside it.

Laying the pen next to Trey's elbow, she kept moving around the room. After a moment or two, she sat down on the frilly canopy bed that dominated the middle of one wall and as casually as she could, let her gaze roam over her surroundings. 

"Ahh! A roach," she shrieked, contorting her face in horror as she zeroed in on the wall next to the window. She jumped up and dashed over to the desk. "Trey, give me your shoe!"

 "What's wrong with your shoe?" he said, peering at the place where she'd been pointing.

"I'm wearing tennis shoes. Give me your blasted shoe," she hissed, unscrewing the top of the nail polish with one hand. "I'm going to kill it. Here, help me up."

She pushed on his shoulder to get him out of the chair and then used it to climb onto the top of the desk. Careful to keep from looking directly at the camera, she focused instead on the fictitious insect crawling next to the curtain rod.

With a heroic swing, she whacked the wall right next to the camera with the solid leather heel of Trey's Robert Wayne shoe. That ought to shake the audio up a bit. 

Bracing the hand with the nail polish brush just above the rod, she whacked the wall again.

"You almost had it that time," Trey said from below, aptly fulfilling his supporting role.

Dakota tilted the brush just above the lens, which they'd cleverly hidden in the rounded end of the rod. 

With a mighty swing, she slammed the wall and slopped the polish over the lens at the same time. "Got it!" she crowed. She checked her work and added another coat for good measure.

"How many more of those things do you think there are?" 

Dakota climbed down from the desk and recapped the bottle. "The whole house is full of them, but that's not what I hate most about roaches," she said as she put the polish away.

"No?"

"What I hate most is the way they're always there, even if you can't see them, listening." She gave a dramatic shiver, just incase security could hear shivers. "Gives me the creeps."

Trey peered up at the curtain rod. "I can see how it would."

"Well, we better get to work. How about some music? I concentrate better with music." She crossed the room and flipped on the big radio she'd kept on her dresser just for this purpose. Still nice and loud. Just the way she liked it when she'd wanted to have a personal conversation.

Gee, it was good to be home.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Here take these," Dakota said, quietly. She handed him the glass of water she'd gotten from the bathroom and a couple of aspirin.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Trey said in a low, hushed voice that she could barely hear over the radio, even standing this close. He tossed back the pain pills and chased them with a slug of water.

Dabbing alcohol onto a cotton ball, Dakota leaned over him. "You probably wouldn't have believed me. What kind of person bugs his daughter's room and taps her phone for heaven's sake?" 

"A lot of them? But none release a sex tape of her just to get a boost in sales. I should have realized."

"What were you really doing in Dad's safe?  Brace yourself." She dabbed gently at the cut on his lip.

Trey winced, but otherwise held steady. "Never even saw it. I went to the office to work up a report on the opal company we're about to acquire. I was hoping to show that selling it next quarter was more profitable than dumping the Dakota Nights line now. When I got here for a meeting, they locked me in a conference room." 

His gaze swept over her face, his eyes emerald green against the bruising under them. "Jamison's using me as leverage against you." 

"That's why you were trying to make me angry at you."

"It was still a long shot. They showed me a security tape catching me stealing the coins. It was impressive. I was almost convinced myself that I'd broken into the safe." 

Fury at her father tightened her gut as she put the alcohol back into the first aid kit. "Should I tape your nose?"

"Won't do any good and would hurt like hell."

"You talk like getting beat up isn't new for you."

Trey touched the bridge of his nose experimentally. "Let's just say I've cracked it before."

Moving to the bed, Dakota sat down. Now that the initial triumph of disabling security's spying system was over, discouragement settled over her like New York smog in August. She hated to admit it, but she had no idea how to get them out of this mess.

According to the contract, if she decided to comply, she'd be signing over her life to the Dakota Nights line for the next eight years with an optional clause of five more. 

Not only that but the job description was so vague, it sounded like she'd be obliged to do anything that was necessary or required of her whether under Jamison Enterprises or some other party of the first part--as in any future buyer. 

Whatever way she looked at it, the contract was nothing short of indentured servitude. To top it off, her instinct told her that what would be required of her would not be something she'd want to do. 

Sales had shot through the roof when her father released Jack's tape. What if the future buyer had in mind more of the same?

She didn't want Trey to go to prison and she didn't want to sign that contract. Her worry deepened.

"Is that your mother's jewelry box?" Trey asked, pulling her from her gloomy thoughts.

Looking at the simple polished wood case made Dakota wish more than ever that her mother was still alive. She missed her terribly. She'd been her only ally in the few years they'd lived here when Dakota was a child. 

"Something's been bothering me about that story you told," Trey said, getting up to look at the box. He ran his fore finger along one of the inlaid bands of light wood that decorated each end. "Why did she think it would keep you safe? Did you ever look to see if something was hidden in it?"

"Are you kidding? Half my adolescence I fantasized that my real birth certificate was in there and my real father was coming to claim me." The old pain from that dead dream poked at her and she stared at the box. 

"Do you mind if I look? Antique cases sometimes have hidden compartments." 

"Help yourself. The lining on the top is already slit open. It was one of the first places I looked."

Trey picked up the box and brought it to the bed. The mattress dipped as he sat down, partially rolling her into him. Pretending she didn't notice the warmth of his thigh where it pressed against hers, Dakota watched as he carefully opened the antique case and ran his long, sensitive fingers along the edges of every compartment.

Flipping the box over, he examined the bottom. "What's this?" he asked, touching the inside of one of the little brass legs.

"Some kind of flaw in the casting, I think. I've pressed and poked at that rough place with everything I could think of. Nothing ever happened."

"Feels like there's a small opening there."

Trey got up and went over to the desk. He hunted through the drawers for a moment and came back with a couple of metal paperclips. When he sat down, he opened them both up, pressing the end of one tightly together and leaving the other one straight. With the box clenched between his knees, he delicately worked the bent end into the space he'd discovered and then added the straight one.

"What are you doing?" Dakota asked leaning over to get a better look.

"Picking the lock." Trey moved the paperclips around, his face tense with concentration.

"Of course." She sat back, amazed he knew how to do this. Also a little disturbed. "And you learned this how?"

"One of my foster brothers thought it was funny to lock me in the storage shed. There was a little knot hole next to the latch with the padlock. He never figured out how I was getting free. My foster mother never understood why there were always paperclips in my pockets either." He gently rotated one of the paperclips and a small snick of sound came from the box.

"Textbook," he said, his voice filled with satisfaction. He lifted the box from his lap and turned it right side up.

The bottom swung open and a fat envelope landed face down on the carpet. Dakota stared at it, dumbfounded. Something
had
been hidden in the box. Excitement and trepidation churned through her. She picked up the envelope and turned it slowly over. 

When she saw her name written across the front in her mother's flowing script, her hand started shaking. She shoved the envelope at Trey. "You open it."

"She left it for you," he said, refusing to take it.

Her heart quailed at the thought of experiencing old wounds, but she knew she had to face it. Her mother had felt this was important. Maybe there was something here that could help them now.