A Merger by Marriage (Las Vegas Nights 2)

“She promised to send me the photo.”

Harper prodded. “Did she?”

“After what happened with JT I haven’t thought to check.”

“Where’s your phone?” Harper was on her feet.

“I left it in my home office when I went to get the files for JT.”

All three women raced to find Violet’s phone. Sure enough, an email from Charity Rimes sat in Violet’s inbox. She opened the message and held it so both her sisters could survey the image.

“That’s not JT’s father,” Harper intoned.

Scarlett agreed. “No it’s not.”

Violet felt a peculiar lightness envelop her. In her hands was a way to save JT. But did he want to be saved? More importantly, would he want to be saved by her?

“We need to go to the police,” Harper said.

“Which police?” Scarlett asked. “It won’t do us any good to take it to the Las Vegas PD because Preston lives in Miami.” She plucked the cell phone from Violet’s grip and began typing. “I’m going to send this to Logan. He’ll know the best way to handle it.”

Twenty minutes later, Scarlett’s fiancé sat on the coffee table and scowled at each of the three sisters in turn. When his gaze settled on Scarlett, he growled, “I thought I told you to drop it.”

“I did.” She gave him a winning smile. “Right after I gave Charity Rimes’s phone number to Violet.”

Logan sighed and shifted his hard gaze to Violet. “Have you spoken with JT about this?”

“We aren’t on speaking terms at the moment.”

That seemed to surprise Logan. “He should know what you’ve discovered.”

She shook her head. “I doubt he’ll take my call. Would you tell him?”

“You’re his wife. It would be better coming from you.”

“I’m the woman he married to get access to his family’s stock,” she corrected him. “And tonight he found out I had a file that Tiberius had put together on him. That I never looked at,” she added when Logan’s expression grew even grimmer.

“Every one of those files should have been burned,” Logan growled, shooting his fiancée an unhappy look.

“What’s done is done,” Scarlett replied unapologetically. “We need to move forward. Preston Rhodes is an imposter and it’s time that caught up with him.”

* * *

Clad in a towel, JT stood in the enormous walk-in closet off his master suite and stared at the array of feminine fashions that occupied half the space. In addition to Violet’s clothes, there were twenty pairs of shoes and assorted purses. Her jewelry was on his bureau, her lingerie in his dresser drawers. The scent of her clung to the sheets. Her cosmetics occupied the bathroom countertops. Traces of her lingered everywhere.

“Damn.”

He’d been unable to sleep the night before so he’d sat in his living room, alternately staring out at his empty swimming pool and reading the file Tiberius had put together on Preston. He’d grown queasier with each page he’d turned. A dozen times he’d started to close the file, but then he’d hear Violet’s voice and knew he could no long pretend that his father hadn’t maliciously sabotaged his competition and blackmailed friends. He’d fled the truth for too long. His father was evil.

Sometime around dawn he’d drifted off. When he woke around six, he’d been having a dream where he chased Violet through a casino, calling her name, but she was always far out of reach. The memory of it left him with a cottony taste in his mouth and an ache in his temples. Interpreting the dream was easy. He’d lost the best woman he’d ever known because he was too closed down to give her the intimacy she deserved.

In the center of the large master suite, his empty king-size bed stood as a reminder of all the things he’d never enjoy again. Violet’s body moving beneath him. Her soft moans. The bite of her nails as she climaxed. The brilliance of her smile in the aftermath of their lovemaking. The utter peace he felt with her nestled beside him.

He could burn the sheets, replace the mattress, hell, even toss out all the furniture, but he’d never be free of the mistakes that had led him to shove her away. Worse, he suspected she’d forgive him for being such an ungrateful jerk if he’d just share with her his feelings about what haunted him. But he’d clung to the secret for so long. It was impossible for him to set it free.

For a moment he was almost grateful to his father for selling Titanium. Staying in Las Vegas would have been impossible. Only with a change of scenery could he hope to adapt to life without her. Not that it was going to be easy. He’d given her access to places inside him that no one else had ever seen. Or was that true? Thanks to the file Tiberius had put together on him, didn’t she already know all his secrets?

From the nightstand, his cell began to ring. Teeth locked together in irritation, JT left the closet and went to answer it.