A Convenient Scandal. Kimberley Troutte

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Nineteen

       Twenty

       Epilogue

       About the Publisher

       History of Plunder Cove

      For centuries, the Harpers have masterminded shrewd business deals.

      In the 1830s, cattle baron Jonas Harper purchased the twelve-thousand-acre land grant of Plunder Cove on the now affluent California coast. It’s been said that the king of Spain dumped the rich land on the American because pirates ruthlessly raided the cove. It is also said no one saw a pirate ship after Jonas bought the land for a rock-bottom price.

      Harpers pass this tale on to each generation to remind their heirs that there is a pirate in each of them. Every generation is expected to increase the Harper legacy, usually through great sacrifice, as with oil tycoon, RW Harper, who sent his children away ten years ago.

      Now RW has asked his children to return to Plunder Cove—with conditions. He is not above bribing them to get what he wants.

      Harpers don’t love, they pillage. But if RW’s wily plans succeed, all four Harpers, including RW, might finally find love in Plunder Cove.

       One

      Jeff Harper pressed his forehead to the glass pane of his floor-to-ceiling living room window and watched the mass of reporters swarming below.

      They couldn’t get a good shot of him at this height, since he was twenty-two floors above Central Park, but once he stepped outside his building they’d attack. Every word he said, or didn’t say, would be used to bury him—shovel after shovel piled on top of his rotting career.

      Dammit, he hated to fail.

      Before this week, Jeff had been able to live with the invasion of his privacy and had learned to use the cameras to his advantage. The press followed him around New York because he was the last unmarried prince of Harper Industries and a hotel critic on the show Secrets and Sheets. Paparazzi photographed his dinner dates as if each one was a passionate love match. His name had appeared on the list of America’s Most Eligible Bachelors for the last three years running. When pressed during interviews, he always said there was no special woman in his life and he was never getting married. The author of the article inevitably wrapped up with some bogus statement about “Jeffrey Harper just needs to find the right woman to settle him down.” Which was a big hell no.

      Why end up like his parents?

      He’d mostly put up with the press until he’d seen his own backside plastered across tabloid front pages with the headline “Hotel Critic Caught in Sex Scandal.”

      Sex scandal. He wished.

      He’d been set up.

      And the incriminating video had gone viral.

      The show he’d created and nurtured was canceled. Everything he’d built—his career, his reputation, his lifelong passion for the hotel industry—had exploded.

      Just like that, Jeff was done.

      If he didn’t fix this, he’d never regain what he’d lost.

      Only one person might hire him at this point. Of course, he was the one person Jeff had vowed never to beg.

      Grimacing, he dialed the number.

      The phone rang once. “Jeffrey, I’ve been waiting for your call.”

      Not a good sign since Jeff never called.

      “Hey, Dad. I was wondering...” He swallowed hard. This was going to be painful. “Is the family hotel project still on the table?”

      A year ago, when Jeff’s brother had returned home to Plunder Cove, their father had offered to put Jeff in charge of converting the Spanish mansion into an exclusive five-star resort. He liked the idea more than he’d dared admit. Hotel design, development and management had been his dream career since he was old enough to put blocks together, and he’d steadily worked to become an international expert in the field. But it was more than that. He couldn’t put into words why turning his childhood home into a safe place was important. No one would know why using his own hands to reshape the past meant everything to Jeff. Yet...he’d declined his father’s offer because RW was a mean, selfish, poor excuse for a father, and he’d never respected Jeff.

      But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and all that.

      “You’ve reconsidered.” RW stated it as fact.

      Did he have a choice? “The network pulled my show. I’ve got time on my hands.”

      “Wonderful.”

      Strange word to use under the circumstances, but his father sounded pleased. The tightness in Jeff’s chest loosened a bit when he realized he didn’t have to beg for the job. He’d half-expected his father would make him grovel. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

      “There’s one condition.”

      He should have guessed that. Those three words lifted the hairs on the back of Jeff’s neck. “Yeah? What?”

      “You’ve got to improve your image. I’ve seen the video, son.”

      Jeff paced his living room. “It’s not what it looks like.”

      “That’s a relief because it looks like you had a quickie in the elevator at Xander Finn’s hotel with a hotel maid. Low-class, son. Harpers pay for suites.”

      Jeff ground his molars together. “I paid for a suite.”

      He just hadn’t had time to use it while he was undercover exposing a social injustice.

      Jeff cared about people and used the power of his name and his show to set things right. The great RW would never understand why Jeff went out of his way to expose the megarich like Xander Finn.

      Weeks earlier, Finn had threatened bodily harm to the Secrets and Sheets crew if they stepped inside the gilded doors of his most expensive Manhattan hotel. The threat had made Jeff wonder what the man had to hide. He’d filmed the episode himself, and the dirt he uncovered would show viewers how badly customers were being ripped off by one of the richest men in New York.

      Little did Jeff know that he was about to become the one to “break the internet,” with ridiculous GIFs and memes.

      The latest one said, “Those who can, run a hotel; those who can’t, become sex-crazed critics.”

      “Success is all about image,” RW was still talking over the phone. “Yours needs an overhaul, Jeffrey. Didn’t you know hotels have video cameras in the elevators?”

      “Of course, I do. I was set up!” Jeff slammed his teeth together to keep from blurting out what really happened in the elevator. His father hadn’t shielded him from abuse when he was six; why would he shield him now?

      No, except for this job offer—with conditions—Jeff was on his own. Always had been.

      “Wait.” A flicker of foreboding licked up Jeff’s spine. “How did you know I was in