A Taste of Temptation (Las Vegas Nights 3)

“We have to talk about why you’re here.”

“I don’t want to.”

“If you expect me to give you three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I’m going to need to know why you’re being blackmailed.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Did you kill someone?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“That’s a relief,” Harper muttered. She left the table, needing activity to think. As she crossed the room, a dozen ideas sprang into her mind. She picked the most likely one and turned to confront her mother. “You stole something.”

“I’m not a thief.” Penelope stubbed out her cigarette and reached for another, but Harper beat her to the package.

“No more smoking.”

Her mother glared at her. “You are trying to provoke me into telling you something you’re not ready to hear.”

Why not? Harper mused. Her mother had been aggravating her for years. “I’m trying to figure out what could be worth three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“Actually it’s a million.”

“A mill...?” Harper crushed the cigarette package in her fist.

Penelope pouted. “It’s a small price to pay compared to the consequences.”

“What sort of consequences?”

“Life or death.”

Now her mother had gone too far. “This is serious, Mother. You need to talk to Grandfather.”

“I can’t. He’d demand to know why I was being blackmailed. I can’t tell him.”

“Give me some idea what the blackmail is or I’m going to call him.”

Penelope shot her daughter a wounded look. “There are some indelicate photos that if they got out would be very damaging.”

Unsure how her conservative mother defined indelicate, Harper sought clarification. “Surely it can’t be that bad.”

“It could ruin us.”

Us?

For a second Harper wasn’t sure whom her mother was referring to. Penelope certainly hadn’t worried about her daughter’s welfare when she ran off to Florida.

“Who is ‘us’?” she questioned, her voice scarcely audible.

Her mother looked startled. “Why you and I, of course.”

Harper knelt beside Penelope. Taking her mother’s hands, surprised by the icy chill in her fingers, Harper squeezed just hard enough to capture Penelope’s full attention.

“If this involves me, you need to tell me what is going on.”

“I had an affair,” Penelope whispered, unable to maintain eye contact with Harper. Her mother was something other than mortified. She was afraid. “If that came out—” She broke off and shook her head.

Was something besides her mother’s reputation at stake? “Who was it?”