Blackmailed Into His Arms. Margaret Mayo
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to have to tell people eventually if you keep spending so much time with the man.”
“I haven’t spent any time with him. This is the first time he’s called me all week.”
“Yes, but you flew to Vegas with him and stayed there almost a week.”
Elena crossed her arms beneath her breasts and tapped her foot on the carpeted floor in agitation. “I flew to Vegas on business,” she corrected. “No one knows I went with Chase or what we did while we were there.”
“I know,” Alandra murmured pointedly, crossing her arms in a mirror image of her sister’s pose.
Elena raised a brow. “What are you saying? That you’re going to blackmail me, too?”
Honestly, was she giving off pheromones to signal that she was ripe for the picking? She’d gone thirty-three years without being bribed or strong-armed into anything, and now she was about to be manipulated twice in the same month. And once by her sister, no less!
But Alandra quickly put the quash on any concerns about that.
“Of course not! What kind of sister do you think I am?”
Dropping her arms, she stalked forward and took Elena’s hand, tugging her to the set of pastel-striped armchairs by the window.
When they were both seated, Alandra said, “I’m worried about you, Elena. First you tell me you’re being coerced into sleeping with this guy to help Pop save the company. And I understood your reasons for going through with it, really I did. I’d have probably done the same thing. But now you’re standing here nervous about meeting the man’s parents and worrying over what to wear when you do. Do you realize what that means?”
Elena blinked. It meant she was nervous about meeting Chase’s parents, and that she wasn’t the ever self-assured fashion plate her sister was, didn’t it?
“It means you care,” Alandra informed her gently. “If this were just a business arrangement, you wouldn’t care how you looked tonight. You’d have probably gone in the same outfit you wore to work today and not given it a second thought.”
“That’s not true. I care how I look,” Elena protested, but the words came out with so little confidence, even she didn’t believe it.
“Of course you do. But you looked fine in what you were wearing this morning. And that song you were humming when you got home from Vegas tells me you weren’t exactly chained up in Chase Ramsey’s bed all week, forced to be his love slave against your will. I think,” Alandra added, tipping her head to the side, “things between you are starting to get serious.”
Elena swallowed past the lump in her throat, her heart pounding like a kettledrum. Once again, she was reminded that she could keep no secrets from a sister who knew her so well. For better or worse, Alandra could see straight through any attempts at subterfuge.
The air shuddered from her lungs. Her shoulders slumped and she let her chin fall to her chest. “I’m in trouble,” she admitted, barely loud enough to be heard.
Her sister leaned forward, her expression going serious as she laid a hand on Elena’s knee. “You’re in love with him?” she asked.
Elena shook her head, slowly, almost as though she couldn’t quite believe it herself. “I don’t know, but I think I’m close.”
She raised her head and met her sister’s understanding eyes as her own started to sting and grow damp. “I’m really, really close.”
Nine
Between her nerves over meeting Chase’s parents and her disturbing conversation with Alandra before leaving, Elena’s stomach was in knots. Her palms were sweating, her knees were shaking and every once in a while, her chest tightened so much, she could barely draw a breath.
When Chase pulled up to the house at six on the dot, Elena made her sister stay in her room. The last thing she needed was for Alandra to race down the stairs to catch a glimpse of him or be caught peering around the corner like a child on Christmas morning, trying to catch Santa Claus piling presents under the tree.
But even though Alandra bided by her wishes and stayed out of sight, Elena knew she was watching from the upstairs window as Chase helped her into the car and they pulled away.
On the drive, she tried to make small talk, tried to respond with some modicum of sensibility when Chase spoke. But inside, her blood and muscles and bones felt as though they’d been touched by a live wire. She was surprised he didn’t notice a glow in her eyes or sparks shooting from her fingertips.
The Ramsey ranch was on the other side of Gabriel’s Crossing, but they still arrived much too soon for Elena’s peace of mind. Chase’s shiny silver luxury car bumped down a long, rutted dirt driveway, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them.
A dark blue pickup truck was already parked in front of the house. Chase pulled up beside it and cut the engine.
For a moment, they sat there, neither one making a move to get out. Elena stared at the front door, fully expecting it to fly open and the stuff of nightmares to pour out.
Alandra was right; it meant something. Despite her better judgment, she was falling for Chase, and falling hard. And for some reason, whether or not his parents liked her felt like a very big deal.
She wished it didn’t. She wished she could convince herself that this was merely another business dinner he’d asked her to attend. Meeting his parents felt entirely too much like something a girlfriend would do.
A girlfriend, not a mistress.
The click of the door latch releasing on Chase’s side of the car interrupted her thoughts and she hurried to open her own and climb to her feet. Brushing her hands on the legs of her slacks, she took a deep breath and tried to calm the jumble of anxiety tightening her stomach.
She was his mistress, she reminded herself as brutally as she could. Not his girlfriend, not his fiancée, not even, really, his lover. This might be his family, but to her, they were simply another group of strangers she needed to entertain and impress to fulfill her part of the bargain.
Chase met her at the front of the car, only steps from the narrow porch that ran the full length of the front of the house.
“Ready?” he asked, seeming to sense her reluctance, even though she was doing her best to tame it.
She swallowed hard and let him take her hand, pasting on a wide smile she didn’t quite feel. “Of course.”
He led her onto the porch and through the front door. Voices assaulted them as soon as they stepped into the house. Male and female, one on top of the other.
They moved through a wide, homey living room that took up the front of the house, and down a short hallway that opened into a dining room filled with people—the source of all the noise.
Two men sat at one end of a long pine table already set with plates and silverware. One was older, one younger, but Elena could tell right away that they were related. Chase’s father and brother, she would guess.
Beside the younger man stood a high chair with a brown-haired little girl seated inside, seemingly content to occupy herself by chewing on the wrong end of a small plastic spoon.
While Elena was taking in her surroundings, a swinging door opened and two women came out, both carrying a bowl or platter in each hand as they smiled and chatted.
“Chase!” the older of the two cried the moment she spotted them standing there. She quickly set sliced pot roast and buttered green beans on the table, then rushed toward them.
“Hi, Mom,” Chase said, returning the woman’s hug as she threw her arms around him and squeezed.
When they separated, his mother turned to face Elena. “And you must be Elena. Chase told us he might bring you along.”
Elena returned her greeting