The Danforths: Wesley, Ian & Imogene: Scandal Between the Sheets / The Boss Man's Fortune / Challenged by the Sheikh. Brenda Jackson
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last name before? He remembered attending a charity benefit once and meeting a Dr. James Carmody, a well-known orthopedic surgeon in the city. He also remembered meeting the man’s wife and two daughters. Mrs. Carmody had all but shoved her daughters in Wesley’s face, letting him know the two young women were ripe for marriage if he was interested.
He hadn’t been interested then and he wasn’t interested now. Marriage was definitely the last thing on his mind, although he had to admit that Jake seemed pretty damn happy with it. It still amazed him that his best friend could so easily slip into the role of father and husband like he was made for it.
Thinking of his friend made Wesley recall that Jake had also been in attendance at the charity benefit that night. Jake was better at remembering the names of people than he was, so maybe he ought to run the name by Jake and…
Something suddenly clicked in Wesley’s mind: a conversation he’d had with Jake and Larissa just a few weeks ago when they’d told him about a newspaper reporter who had been the one to find out about Jake being the father of Larissa’s three-year-old son, Peter. The reporter had threatened to blow the story wide open. Since Jake hadn’t known he had a son, Larissa had done the smart thing in going straight to Jake before he had a chance to read it in the newspapers.
Jake had immediately done the honorable thing and asked Larissa to marry him. She’d been reluctant at first, but then she had eventually agreed that it was in the best interest of their son for her and Jake to marry. What might have begun as a marriage of convenience between Jake and Larissa was now a marriage of love. There was no doubt in Wesley’s mind that his best friend was deeply in love with his wife.
Again, Wesley racked his brain as to where he had heard the name Jasmine Carmody before. He seemed to remember that the reporter who had dug into Jake and Larissa’s past had been named Jasmine something.
Deciding to solve the puzzle once and for all, he picked up the phone and placed a call to Jake. Less than ten minutes after talking to Jake, Wesley was slamming the phone down in anger. The woman who’d had the nerve to trespass on his property and rummage through his garbage was not a homeless person. In fact she was a long way from being penniless and probably didn’t know the meaning of being destitute. But worst of all was the knowledge that Jasmine Carmody was a reporter and he outright despised reporters. She had played on his kindness and had made a complete fool out of him.
He stood and crossed the room to the window and gazed out, trying to calm his anger. No matter how many times he saw it, he thought Savannah’s riverfront was breathtaking. What had once been a row of cotton warehouses was now a plaza that consisted of shops, restaurants and offices. He had been smart enough to know the value of investing in waterfront property for both his business and personal use.
His thoughts shifted back to Jasmine Carmody. The woman had actually been going through his garbage looking for something she could use in her campaign to discredit Abraham Danforth. In his opinion that made her nothing more than a self-serving piranha of a reporter.
She didn’t care who she hurt as long as she got her story, and from what he’d seen the other night, it appeared she would go to any lengths to get it. Just what had she hoped to find? Even if he had something he wanted kept confidential, did she think he would have been stupid enough to toss it in the garbage?
He couldn’t stop his thoughts from drifting back to his college days and thinking of Caroline Perry. Caroline was a journalism student he had dated while a member of the Georgia Tech football team. He had really cared for her and would even go so far as to say he had actually loved her. But he had found out too late that love had been the farthest thing from Caroline’s mind and all she had wanted from him was a story. She’d been interested only in breaking a story on steroid use by the football team. He had been devastated when he learned she’d only been using him. She had taken the information that he had shared with her in strict confidence and had written an article for the school newspaper. In the end, he had gotten kicked off the football team and was shunned by his teammates. Since then, he’d never trusted another reporter, and as far as women were concerned, he would love them and leave them. He would never give his heart to another woman again.
He walked back to his desk. Jasmine Carmody had made a grave mistake. She would find out the hard way that no one, and he meant no one, made a fool of Wesley Brooks.
Talk about close calls again, Jasmine thought as she let herself into her apartment. She and Ronnie had gone over to Wesley Brooks’s home during their lunch hour, only to find he had locked the gate.
Determined to get onto his property anyway, she had attempted to climb the massive wrought-iron gate only to hear Ronnie’s warning moments later that someone was coming. She had barely made it back down safely to the ground, and she and Ronnie had hightailed it to the nearest bushes, when Wesley Brooks had pulled up in his vintage red Corvette. How were they to know that he would be coming home for lunch? And then when he had leaned out of the vehicle to punch in the numbers to open his security gate, he had glanced around as if he had known she was out there somewhere hiding, which was ridiculous. There was no way he could have known since like the last time, she had parked her car out of sight.
Jasmine tossed her purse on the sofa and went into the kitchen feeling totally frustrated. She and Ronnie had come pretty close to being discovered. Millionaire or no millionaire, why couldn’t the man have a schedule that they could figure out? He had a tendency to appear when you least expected him.
She was about to take some leftover lasagna out of the freezer when she heard the phone ring. She decided to let the answering machine pick it up just in case it was Evelyn or one of her stepsisters. There was no way she could deal with any of them right now.
She had just closed her freezer door when the deep, husky timbre of a male’s voice floated across the living room and reached her alert ears all the way in the kitchen.
“Good evening, Ms. Carmody, this is Wesley Brooks. I believe I have something of yours and if you’re interested in getting it back, I suggest that you meet me tonight at seven o’clock at the original D&D Coffeehouse. The decision to show up is strictly up to you.” The phone clicked loudly when he abruptly ended the call.
Jasmine stood shell-shocked, rooted in place. She could hear the sound of blood rushing fast and furious to her brain. Wesley Brooks knew who she was and had found her locket. And from the sound of it, although his voice had remained rather calm, she had picked up on more than a tinge of anger in his tone. The man was definitely not a happy camper.
A shiver lapped at her nerve endings as she glanced down at her watch. He wanted them to meet tonight at seven and it was almost six now. The first thought that came to her mind was not to go, but then she knew if she didn’t show up she might as well kiss her locket goodbye and she couldn’t do that. Right now he was holding the ace and evidently he knew how to play it.
She sighed deeply, wondering what sort of explanation she could give him that would sound plausible as to why she had been on his property that night, then quickly decided there wasn’t one. The bottom line was that she had trespassed and had been going through his garbage. Hell, he had caught her red-handed and she’d been careless enough to leave evidence behind.
She wondered how on earth he had traced the locket back to her and decided it really didn’t matter. Besides, she didn’t have time to ponder the question of how she had gotten caught, not if she wanted to meet him at the time he had mandated in his phone call.
As she put the lasagna back in the freezer, she headed toward her bedroom. She would take a shower, get dressed and leave to meet the one man she had hoped to never see again.
Wesley checked his watch. Jasmine Carmody had less than five minutes to show her face. He hoped she would be on time because the last thing he felt toward her was tolerance. She had already pushed the wrong buttons with him and he wouldn’t suggest that she tried pushing any more.
Although he hadn’t seen her again since that night, he had a feeling that she had shown up on his property sometime today, right before he had come home for lunch. When he had rolled down the window to punch in the numbers to open his security gate, he had noticed the footprints