My Secret Life. Lori Wilde

a pet?

      Katie pleaded with her mom and dad. They’d resisted. She made lavish promises. They balked. She found a stray and fed him cheesy puffs from her lunch to get him to follow her home. Their maid had called the animal shelter.

      Finally, realizing how determined she was, her father had relented. He told her if she could prove she was responsible enough to take care of an animal, then she could have one. His test consisted of Katie caring for an egg as if it were a puppy.

      She had to take the egg with her wherever she went, making sure never to leave it behind. Keeping track of that egg had been darned hard for an eight-year-old, but after two weeks without a misstep, she was picking out names for her puppy.

      Then on the last day, Katie ran to greet her father at the front door as he returned home from work, the egg clutched in her hand. In her excitement, she’d tripped and fallen. Splattering the egg across the foyer in a vivid yellow splash of yolk.

      She’d been inconsolable. Her parents were right. She was too irresponsible for a puppy.

      Her stern yet loving father didn’t hold the accidental egg smash against her. He’d taken her to the nearest pet store and let her pick out the dog of her choice.

      She had selected an exuberant cocker spaniel exactly like this one. Same honey-colored coat, same chocolate-brown eyes. She had named the puppy Duke. It had been the happiest day of her eight-year-old life.

      Then she’d gotten Duke home and Brooke had immediately started sneezing. Her sister sneezed all through the weekend, her eyes swelling up, and her nose running. Daisy had taken Brooke to the doctor the next day and they’d returned home with the news that Brooke was highly allergic to dogs.

      Katie had been forced to give Duke away. Even now, sixteen years later, she still felt the awful punch to her stomach when she thought about it.

      “Hey, little guy,” she cooed, and crouched down to the puppy’s eye level and put her hand to the window front. He tried to lick her fingers, his pink tongue rubbing wetly against the glass.

      From past experience, she knew that if she scooped him up in her arms his fur would feel soft as doll hair and he’d lick her face until she ended up on the floor giggling breathlessly while he nibbled at her ears.

      Her stomach clutched. A mixture of emotions melded inside her—tenderness, regret and lingering irritation with her sister Brooke’s allergies because she had been forced to miss out on the joys of puppy ownership. Petty maybe, but it was how she felt.

      You could have a puppy now.

      No, it was too late to relive her childhood. There was no room in her busy life for a dog. Maybe someday, but not now.

      “Gotta go,” she whispered, rising to her feet and waving goodbye. “There’s a party waiting and I’ve got a gorgeous man to seduce.”

      The puppy whimpered and the wagging of his tail slowed. He sensed she was about to leave him.

      “It’s better this way, truly. You wouldn’t be happy at my place. You’d be cooped up all day by yourself. It wouldn’t be fair to you. I’m only thinking of your best interest.”

      The cocker spaniel stared at her with his big, adoring eyes.

      Her heart ripped. This was silly. What was the matter with her? Getting sentimental over a dog. He was adorable. Someone else would buy him. She had no reason to feel guilty.

      But somehow, she did.

      She had to shake this feeling, had to shrug off the sadness weighing down her shoulders. Had to stop thinking about her mother and Duke, the puppy she’d only had for a weekend, and Tanisha’s eerily accurate assess ment of her.

      Fun.

      That was what she needed. A strong drink, loud music, a roomful of people dressed in colorful costumes.

      And a man to seduce who wouldn’t look at her in the morning the way this puppy was looking at her now.

      Head down, she rushed away, trying her very best to outpace the mental demons with which she had no desire to wrestle. She was going to that party and she wasn’t about to let anyone or anything keep her from seducing her pirate.

      2

      FOR MOST of his adult life, Liam James had been all about the job. Nothing mattered more to him than the real-estate company he’d built from the ground up and molded into a multimillion-dollar empire by the time he was thirty.

      He loved his work and excelled in a crisis. It was the worrying beforehand and afterwards that did him in. He was always on the lookout for trouble. And in an odd way he was relieved when it came.

      Troubleshooting was what he knew. Lack of trouble made him uneasy. Edgy anticipation. That was his true nemesis. It threw him off his game.

      And he was feeling edgy tonight.

      Especially since he was dressed in this ridiculous Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack Sparrow costume. By the time he’d made it over to the costume-rental place, this was the only disguise left in his size. He’d already spotted three other Jack Sparrows at the party. Apparently the costume-supply companies had gone overboard on the pirate theme this year.

      “What the hell am I doing here?” he muttered under his breath, and scanned the collected crowd at the Ladies League charity masquerade party.

      The expensively decorated ballroom was filled with ultrathin, cosmetically enhanced women and self-important, overfed rich men in lavish costumes. The kind of highbrow shindig Liam loathed.

      The question was rhetorical. He already knew the answer.

      He was here to get an up close and personal look at the man whose seed had spawned him. The man who’d never acknowledged him, nor sent his mother one penny of child support beyond the three hundred dollars he had thrown at her thirty-two years ago, when he’d told her to get an abortion.

      That man was Boston’s incumbent mayor, Finn Delancy. Who was up for reelection and was pegged to win it by a landslide.

      For years, Liam had imagined this meeting. The moment when he introduced himself and told him, “Thanks for nothing, you worthless son of a bitch. My mother and I made it fine without you. And FYI, blue blood or not, I can buy and sell your ass three times over.”

      But now that he was here, and it was the moment of truth, Liam wasn’t sure exactly how to go about it.

      The mayor wore a cowboy costume—ten gallon hat, spurs that jangled, leather chaps, the whole nine yards. He looked utterly foolish but that didn’t stop a bevy of beautiful young women from collecting around him like bargain shoppers to a fire sale.

      According to Liam’s mother, Jeanine, Finn had more sexual charisma than Bill Clinton and JFK all rolled into one. He gritted his teeth and fisted his hands. Personally, he couldn’t see the appeal.

      “Something the matter, boss?” asked Liam’s right-hand man, Tony Gregory. Tony was dressed as one of the band members from KISS and damn if he didn’t look seriously freaky. Not at all like his normal affable self. “You seem uptight.”

      Liam gave a sharp shake of his head. “Nothing’s wrong.”

      “So tell me again why I’m here?” Tony cocked his head and sent Liam an assessing gaze.

      “My date and I decided it was better if we just stayed friends, so she’s not coming tonight. I had the extra ticket.” He couldn’t really call her his girlfriend. They’d only gone out a few times. “There’s no sense letting two hundred dollars go to waste.”

      What he didn’t tell his most trusted confidant was that he badly needed moral support. Willingly admitting a weakness wasn’t something he did, not even to himself. He’d known Tony since their days at Harvard School of Business, but he’d never told him his deepest secret—that he was the bastard son of one of the most influential men in Boston high society.

      “You