Billionaire's Contract Engagement (Kings of the Boardroom #3)(51)

All four men’s mouths rounded into Os.

There was marked silence, and she regretted having blurted out that fact. Love was girly stuff, and none of the men looked like they had a clue what to say or do next.

“Look, I appreciate you guys. I love you all to pieces. I don’t know what I would do without you. I don’t expect you to fix this for me. I’m thirty years old. Not a little girl anymore. The days of me coming to you with my scrapes and boo-boos should be well behind me. I’ll figure out something. I just needed a place to lick my wounds and regroup.”

Adam frowned. “Now, you wait just one damn minute. You’re family, Cece. I don’t care how old you are.”

Even Dalton scowled and nodded his agreement. Noah merely squeezed her hand and told her bluntly to shut up.

“You’ll always be my little girl and their little sister,” her dad said in his soft, gravelly voice. “That don’t change because you go away to college, get a fancy degree and get a job that beats you down every chance it gets.”

She winced at the direction this was heading.

“We love you and we’ll always be here for you to come running to. You got that?”

“Yeah, Dad, I do.”

“Now come here and give your old man a hug. Sounds like you’ve had one hell of a week.”

She scrambled up from the couch and threw herself into his beefy embrace. She squeezed for all she was worth and inhaled his scent.

“Love you, Dad,” she muffled out against his shirt.

“I love you, too, Cece. Don’t you forget it, either. Now back up and tell me more about this Evan fellow and if I need to round up your brothers to go beat him up.”

Evan’s office staff was avoiding him. Not that he could blame them. He’d arrived back on Tuesday, acting like a bear with a sore paw. He’d briefly touched base with his assistant, long enough to tell her not to hurry back in to work and to remain with her granddaughter as long as she was needed.

He’d gone over his last conversation with Celia until it rolled like video footage through his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it to turn off.

It was his own fault for pursuing Celia so relentlessly. She’d been hesitant from the start, and he’d ignored all the warning signs. He’d never become serious about a woman who didn’t put him first. And he damn sure wouldn’t be involved with a woman who put more importance on what the world around her thought about her than on her relationship with him.

He scowled when a knock sounded at his door. One of the secretaries poked her head in and held up an envelope like a shield.

“This just came for you, sir.”

“Bring it over,” he said, waving her in.

She hurried over and all but threw the envelope at him before beating a hasty retreat out of his office. He shook his head. He hadn’t been that bad since he’d returned two days ago.

Okay maybe he had.

With a sigh, he glanced at the envelope. It was an overnight package with the name of some corporation from San Francisco he’d never heard of before. It was marked extremely urgent.

He opened it and to his surprise it only held a folded newspaper. Nothing else. No letter, no explanation.

He pulled it out and it fell open on his desk. It was turned to a specific page, and when he looked down, he saw Celia’s picture, only it wasn’t one he was familiar with. She looked different. Maybe younger?

And she looked terrified in the picture. She had one hand up like she was trying to avoid the camera.

Frowning, he scanned the article. He was so pissed by the time he got to the end that he had to go back and read it more carefully.

The photo was indeed of a younger Celia when she lived and worked in New York. She’d landed a position with a prestigious advertising firm one year out of college. She’d done impressive work and then she’d been promoted to senior executive—above several other junior executives who’d been there longer.

A relationship with the CEO had been quickly revealed, and Celia had been named in the divorce proceedings between the CEO and his wife. Celia had fled New York in disgrace to return home to San Francisco, where she took a job with the smaller, on-the-rise Maddox Communications.

Only last week, intimate photographs of Celia Taylor with billionaire Evan Reese had appeared in another article the day after Reese had reportedly signed a multimillion-dollar advertising contract with Maddox.

Blah, blah, it went on and on, vilifying Celia and along with her, Maddox Communications. His stomach churned, and he felt the urge to go vomit.

His gaze caught the latest issue ofAdvertising Media . Fresh off the press and delivered just this morning.

It was just as Celia had said. The announcement was there for the world to see, but it was tainted by those photos.

He picked up the paper and stared at it again. There was no way. No way in hell she’d done what they accused her of. He hadn’t known Celia for long, but he damn well knew she wouldn’t have done something like this. If she did have a relationship with this bastard, it wasn’t so she’d get a promotion.

He wanted to go kill someone. Preferably whoever had started this smear campaign. No one messed with the woman he loved and got away with it.

All the air left his lungs in a painful jolt.

Loved?

He liked Celia. Liked her a damn lot. She was beautiful, vibrant, sexy as hell. She was a great lover and partner. He had fun with her. He loved her company. But did he love her?