Lone Star Baby Scandal (Texas Cattleman's Club: Blackmail 7)

Please no. There was really only one other thing it could be. If she took into consideration the recent intense cravings for hot-fudge sundaes and strawberries with tuna fish, it limited her choice of mystery illnesses down to one. She could be pregnant.

She’d been so seduced out of her mind by Clay the night of the masked charity ball in May, she honestly couldn’t swear they’d used protection. Stupidly she hadn’t thought about it. Until now. They had made love into the wee hours of the morning. Neither seemingly could get enough of the other. And how many times had he kissed her awake only to take her again? And again. And she’d not wanted him to stop.

She could go on worrying about her suspicion or she could face the facts in a doctor’s office. She would make an appointment today. She couldn’t think any further ahead than that. After wiping her face, she brushed her teeth and reentered her bedroom to get dressed for work. It had been a challenge not to fall into Clay’s arms every time he walked into her private office knowing she must keep up appearances in front of the rest of the house staff. She’d always left her door open for employees to come to her if Clay was otherwise tied up in meetings or on the phone. It would look odd if she suddenly started closing her door. She was probably overthinking the situation, but her mind had ceased to rely on common sense.

But if she was carrying his child, her situation would go from difficult to practically impossible in a heartbeat. If for no other reason than knowing Clay had made it clear a long time ago he didn’t

need nor want any emotional attachments. Marriage and becoming a father were about as emotional as you could get. With his lifestyle, a child just wouldn’t mix. But he had every right to know. This was not something she would keep from him. But that said, she would wait and hopefully choose the right time to tell him.

Right now he was involved with something bad going on with Everest. He hadn’t shared what it was but each time one of the board members for that company called, his whole demeanor changed. He never asked her to take a message or tell them he would call them back. Sometimes Clay would open the inner door with fires of anger blazing in his eyes. Other times he would just step through and disappear out of the house. Sometimes the glow on the phone line would go out and still he didn’t open the connecting door. Something was definitely up but until he chose to confide in her, all she could do was maintain as much normality as she could.

Sophie stepped outside into the morning light and locked the side door of the little rental cottage behind her. For heaven’s sake, she was getting ahead of herself. She was worrying about the outcome of a situation that hadn’t as yet been confirmed. Maybe she’d been hit with a flu bug.

And maybe cows could fly.

* * *

Clay had just poured a second cup of coffee when Sophie pulled her car into her parking spot. He watched as she opened the door and stepped out. She looked flushed and her brows were drawn into a frown. Not typical for Sophie, who was the most positive person he knew; she always had a smile for everyone. He hoped she wasn’t sick.

He couldn’t help but speculate what was wrong. Had she received bad news from her family back in Indiana? Was she covering up the fact that she wanted to stop their affair? Technically were they even having an affair? When she was in his arms, she gave him just the opposite impression. He still wanted her to move in with him. Or he wanted to set her up in a luxury apartment closer to the ranch than the cottage she was renting. To hell with what anyone would think. Let the town’s gossips do their worst. It was none of anyone’s business but their own. He could give her anything she wanted and he wanted to do so. The only thing holding him back was Sophie. A more independent woman he’d never met.

The door opened and the smile of greeting was back on her face. Was he imagining she was working to keep it there?

“Good morning,” he said as she put her small briefcase on top of the desk and began taking out her laptop and assorted notes.

“Good morning to you.” She smiled her response. “Sorry I’m running a bit late. I seem to have caught a bug. You know, the kind that hits your stomach.”

Ah. “If you need to take the day off...”

“No. Thank you, but I’ll be fine. If it doesn’t let up I might take you up on your offer later on.”

Before Clay could walk over to her, the phones began to ring and Sophie, always efficient, began to answer the calls while still unpacking her laptop.

“John Dunn for you on line two,” she said then quickly answered another line.

Clay nodded and walked to his office, located directly beyond Sophie’s smaller one. For this call he closed the connecting door. Word had reached him a month ago that someone was spreading gossip about his Everest cloud-computing company, even going to the extent of running stories and commenting in online forums about how the mainline computers had been hacked and the information stored there was no longer safe. That Everest had been compromised. He’d had administrative IDs checked out thoroughly to confirm security and systemically reset to new passwords. Sweeps of each area of the system had been painstakingly tested for any virus or malware susceptibility. Absolutely nothing was found.

All security measures were in place and an in-depth security audit had been performed, researching each account on the infrastructure. When nothing came to light, all employees and administrators hired within the past year were scrutinized, their references rechecked, and finally a new interview had been conducted with each, this time by both the cleared administration and the security division. Everything checked out. He couldn’t have asked for a better overall picture of Everest and its working components. If the buyers’ information that was stored on Everest had been compromised, damned if he knew how they’d done it.

He had instructed John Dunn, head of Everest security, to run individual reports for each company and have a specialized team review each one. It was thousands and thousands of clients and it would take many man-hours to accomplish. But it was all he knew left to try. Unfortunately, none of it had stopped some clients from pulling their accounts and taking their info elsewhere, which was slowly mounting to millions of dollars lost.

“Yeah, John,” he answered the phone, dropping down into his dark brown leather chair.

“Just thought I should touch base with you. We’ve cleared the larger accounts and are half through the rest. So far we’ve found nothing to indicate our cloud was breached. The bad news—we had eight more companies pull out last night. One was Stratfire Inc., which, as you know, was a multimillion-dollar account.”

“Any luck on finding out who is behind this?”

“We tracked the online articles back to the screen name Maverick.”

Clay immediately sat forward in his chair. He knew that name. He’d heard it before. It was some hateful, malicious character who had been blackmailing and exposing the secrets of Royal Texas Cattleman’s Club members for months now.

“John, check out that name in relation to the TCC. I’m not the first business he’s attacked. We need to find this bastard and shut him down once and for all. And place a call to Sheriff Nathan Battle. He’s the sheriff here in Royal. If anyone else has experienced similar, he would know. He should be able to fill you in on what has transpired with the other victims of this Maverick.”

“I’ll get right on it. Do you have any leads I could start with?”

“Check with Chelsea Hunt. Someone mentioned she was experiencing similar harassment regarding her chain of steak houses. I think she may be able to head you in the right direction.”

“I’m on it. I’ll report back as soon as I know anything.”