Uncovered (17 page)

My
pussy contracted around his cock, driving him to thrust harder. One of his
hands moved from my hip to my hair, tangling in the straight platinum strands
as my body arched and bucked against his.

He
groaned. “I can’t get enough of you.”

“Don’t,”
I cried out, clawing my fingernails over his muscled back. “
Don’t
.”

His
mouth covered mine, and his tongue invaded my mouth, demanding more, refusing
to let me back down. I accepted his challenge, molding my body to his as the
orgasm built. A moment after I came, spiraling into oblivion, I felt his body
go taut, and then he pulled out of me quickly, his hardness against my thigh.
Before he could finish on my body, I wiggled out of his hold.

He
watched me, his blue eyes darkening as I fell to my knees, and rounded my lips
around him, pulling and sucking, wanting everything from him. Then, with a
guttural roar that seemed to echo through the house, he let go.

I
tasted him. Tasted him and myself, and I was on
fire
.

I
shook my head fiercely, my hair a blanket between my face and his body, and
once I could breathe enough to speak, I heard myself moan, “No, Oliver, don’t
ever get enough.”

*

For
the second night in a row, when I dragged my tired body into my apartment after
work, we had company. Whoever was here reclined on the couch, so I couldn’t see
his face, but Pen was sitting on the floor in front of him, running her tongue
worriedly over the tiny gap between her front teeth. One thing for sure, it
wasn’t Oliver, because the second my best friend’s blue-gray eyes lifted to me,
she stopped talking, and her posture slumped.

“Finally! I’ve been texting you all
night, Gem.”

“I had … a few things to take care of,” I
said tentatively, thinking that Linc had decided to move his trip back to L.A.
up a few weeks. After the third degree he’d given me over the weekend, I
wouldn’t be surprised. Peeking over the couch, shock snapped me upright when I
saw another familiar face—a man I knew could probably hack into every bit of
technology in my apartment in a matter of minutes.

“Hello, August,” I greeted Pen’s longtime
associate and friend.

Sitting up, he turned and dipped his head
in acknowledgement. “Gemma.”

Keeping my stance behind the couch, I
rested my weight against the leather and dug my hands into the cushion. After
what felt like an eternity, I exhaled, exasperated.  “You’re both looking at me
like you want to say something, so spit it out.”

I was sore from last night and in a mood
from spending another day transcribing recordings for Margaret. I just wanted a
bath.

A bath and my boss’ son—the reason behind
my exhaustion and aching muscles.

Pen looked down for several seconds, and
when she tilted her chin back, all thoughts of Oliver took a backseat. Her
expression was conflicted. Conflicted and hesitant. Waiting for her to speak, a
ball of pressure started to form in my ribcage. She was about to say something
that would rip me apart—that much was obvious.

When my father died, Mom and I were
living in New York. After school, she had met me on the sidewalk like usual,
walking all twelve blocks back to our apartment in silence, her beautiful face
worked into a series of worried lines. She hadn’t told me about my dad until
after we got home, but I’d never forgotten the look she wore all the way there.

It was just like the one marring my best
friend’s face at this very moment.

Pen’s chest heaved as she got off the
floor. Reaching over to the ottoman, she picked up a packet of papers I hadn’t
noticed before and held them close to her chest.

“Sit down,” she suggested, none of the
usual gaiety present in her voice.

Numbly, I walked completely into the
living room and lowered my butt to the edge of the armchair. “You figured out
the court documents?” I whispered, but she shook her head.

“Your mom—she didn’t have any real reason
to suspect anything. You were her kid, and she thought you’d been wronged; she
was just looking out for you.”

A sob hitched in my chest, and I didn’t
know if I was more relieved or furious. If this was over, I could go back to
Vegas. But if this was over, that meant my caller had been wrong. That I’d
dredged up old doubts for no reason.

That I would be saying goodbye to Oliver.

“So we came here for nothing?” I was
unable to keep the hysterical edge from my voice.

Once again, Pen moved her head from side
to side. Her hand was trembling so violently, the papers fluttered together when
she handed them to me. Even though I looked down, studying the last will and
testament of Gregory Robert Emerson—my father—she continued speaking.

“I wanted to make certain before I told
you anything, but that guy who called you was on to something.” Pacing the
living room, she dragged her fingers through her dark hair. “Are you reading
it?”

Gripping the pages with both hands, I cleared
my throat. “This is the exact same document I looked at in Scott’s office the
day I came to L.A. to meet Margaret. Pen, I—”

“Flip to the other stack,” August spoke
up, his deep brown eyes pitying. Taking his advice, I turned to the second set
of stapled documents.

It was almost identical to the
first—there was my father’s name again—but instead of
Margaret
Manning-Emerson
peppering every page, another name glared up at me.

Gemma Angelina Emerson.

Gemma Angelina Emerson.

My
name.

My head was spinning when Pen spoke up,
but her words broke through the barrier. “August had a friend compare the
signatures to your parent’s marriage certificate and your birth certificate. It
looked legitimate because Michael Scott was your dad’s attorney and the
witnesses’ names were there, but even their signatures didn’t match up to the
original. The one with
your
name.”

I mumbled something—words that sounded
like gibberish to my own ears—but my best friend must have understood because she
bent in front of me, nodding slowly.

“The will Margaret and that douchebag
attorney filed—it was a forgery. Gemma … you were screwed. Just about
everything that woman has laid claim to is yours.”

Truth

noun
  \
tro
͞
oTH

The quality or state of being true.

“
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
”

-Oscar Wilde

The
truth hurt.

The truth, even though it worked in my
favor, burned with so much fury it nearly demolished my small body, making me
want to crawl back into the shadows.

Several minutes after Pen’s revelation, I
sat on the floor in my bathroom, my knees pressed up to my chest and the back
of my head tilted against the door. I could hear snippets of my best friend’s
and August’s conversation on the other side, but I wasn’t even paying
attention. I was desperate to wrap my head around this new truth.

Why my stepmother and Michael Scott would
do something so horrible to me.

I’d been a child when she screwed me
over, and then she’d had the audacity to offer me a settlement when I
approached her for help surviving alone.

My lips parted, and I exhaled brokenly.

I’d been a child, but she hadn’t cared
that I was the daughter of her dead husband. She had been more interested in
what my dad had left in trusts for me. I hated her for that.

And every tiny shred of humanity she’d
shown in the last month couldn’t fix that loathing. I didn’t even want to try
and let it.

Scrubbing the heels of my palms over my
eyes, I swiped away the salty tears that scalded my lids and cheeks. I had what
I wanted—the truth—but now I needed so much more.

I needed to know why Margaret and her
attorney—the attorney my father had obviously trusted—had done this to my dad,
to me?

Fisting my hands, I swallowed back the
weakness, willing myself not to bow under the invisible blows of defeat
pummeling my body, but it was hard. So damn hard, my stomach churned.

“Don’t crumble now,” I told myself. When
that day came—
if
it came—Margaret would fall right alongside me.

I dried my eyes and picked myself up off
the tan tile. With shaking hands, I fixed my appearance in the mirror, washing
the mascara that streaked my cheeks—three ragged lines on each side.

Gripping the counter, I leaned close to
the mirror and glared at the delicate face staring back at me. “Uncover, expose,
and get the hell out of there,” I whispered. And though my brown and amber eyes
were bloodshot from crying, the terror that was there my first day at Emerson
& Taylor was mixed with something new.

Determination.

Anger.

Combing my fingers through my platinum
hair, I exited the bathroom and returned to the living room. August and Pen
were on the couch, their heads bowed together as they studied something on his
laptop. When she noticed me, Pen snapped the computer shut and leaped to her
feet.

“I figured it was best not to bother
you—” she started, but I interrupted instantly.

“What do I need to do to take this bitch
down?”

Wiping her palm over one of her peacock
tattoos, Pen worried her lips together. She looked over at her shoulder at
August, who’d started returning his laptop to its bag. Turning back to me, she
took a tentative step closer. “There are a couple avenues we can take.”

“Pen, I’m heading out,” August declared
from behind her as he pulled the strap of his bag across his body. 

She held up a finger and gave me a
pleading look. “One second, I promise.”

While they whispered back and forth, I
lowered my numb body to the chair and clung to the armrests. Ignoring the sound
of my phone ringing from inside my purse, I stared at the stack of documents
that were now strewn out on the coffee table until my vision turned hazy.

 “Gemma,” August said loudly, breaking my
daze. I lifted my chin to see him by the front door. Although we barely knew
each other, I could tell he felt sorry for me by the way his shoulders curled
forward and the sluggish shake of his head. “I’m sorry it took us so long.”

My chest hitched. He and Pen had done me
a favor, solved something I hadn’t been able to even after I was placed right
in Margaret’s trajectory, and he was telling me sorry?

Sagging back in the chair, I cleared the
dryness from my throat. “Thank you,” I said shakily. “You have no idea what
you’ve done for me.”

Turning red from my praise, he dipped his
head in a nod and then looked at Pen. “If I find anything else while I’m here,
I’ll be in touch. I’ll call you about that Campbell thing in a day or two.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts.
“Thanks for everything.”

The moment he was gone, she locked the
door and returned to me. She dragged the ottoman over to the chair. “Gem,” she
started tentatively, “Are you going to be alright?”

“How do we take her down?” I asked again.
I would worry about
alright
after this was all completely resolved. “I
want to know why she did this, Pen. I have to know.”

She fidgeted her hands. “We can go the
legal route. But if we do that, we’re going to have to really nail down our
story because there’s a good chance we’ll be bent over if we’re not smart about
it.” Jabbing her finger at the coffee table, to the paperwork, she took a breath.
“That is
all
we have to go on, and even though I
know
it’s right,
it’s going to be hard as hell to prove because both witnesses and your father
have died. It’s our word against Margaret and a douchey attorney who was
well-respected before he retired.”

“Both witnesses are gone.” I murmured,
and she gave me a pained look.

“Virginia Carroll, the former VP of E
& T, died of pancreatic cancer two years ago, and Nick Fairbanks passed
away in a car crash a few years after your dad’s heart attack.”

“How convenient for Margaret,” I choked
out, but I was thankful to Penelope Connelly for discovering all this. And I
was ashamed of myself. The stranger who’d called me had been right. No matter
how much I thought of my father, how much I still loved him, I hadn’t cared
enough before five months ago to untangle our history.

I’d been too afraid of feeling the sharp
pain of rejection again.

Bending forward, I rested my head between
my knees, letting the blood flow to my face. “You want to tell Linc, don’t
you?”

When she spoke, she surprised me. “Fuck.
That. Crap.”

I sat upright. “Okay,” I breathed, “so
since you don’t want to involve your brother, what’s behind door number two?”

“You keep working for Margaret. You go
into that office tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and we keep
digging until we figure out everything that happened. There has to be a paper
trail somewhere, Gemma. There always is. We just have to find it.”

“And once we have that paper trail?”

“
Then
we go to Linc.” From the
unease in her voice, I could tell she’d never planned to involve her older brother,
but if there was one person who’d make sure we went about exposing Margaret the
right way, it was Lincoln.

“We can figure out another way,” I said,
but she snorted.

“I can handle my brother.” She touched my
knee, and I examined her chipped metallic nail polish. “We’ve got this bitch,
Gem. Now we just need to drag her and Michael Scott down. You’re already in, so
use whatever information you can. The woman from marketing. Finley-Bitchface-Scott.
O—” Before she said his name, she froze and cleared her throat.

“Oliver.”

“Yes. Oliver.” She slid closer to me and
dropped her voice to a warning whisper. “You
can’t
fall for him, Gem.
Because the end of this will tear you two apart.”

Wrapping my arms around my body, my
fingers pressed into places his hands had touched last night. I held back the
shiver and tried like hell to suppress the emotion, but it didn’t work. I
wanted him just as much as before.

At last, I nodded. “I know that, Pen.”

*

Margaret
was out the office the next day taking care of last minute details for her
Friday flight to Paris, so I didn’t see her again until our nine-thirty ritual
on Thursday morning.

She was at her desk when I walked through
the French doors, and rage pounded my ears as I approached her with her
customary skinny latte.

“Good morning, Margaret,” I forced
through a cheerful smile. “All set for France?”

Resting her elbows on the glass surface,
she pinched her nose and sucked in a breath through it. “Do I look like I’m
ready, Ms. Connelly?”

I handed her the coffee, which she
practically jerked out of my hand, and for the briefest moment, I pictured the
lid flying off and the liquid covering her cream-colored cashmere and mink
Caroline Herrera sweater.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I offered.

Is there anything else I can do to help
you live in that house that’s supposed to be mine? To help you blow money my
father left for me?

It wasn’t even about the money, but damn,
this was an awful situation.

Biting my tongue, I sat across from her
and folded my hands in my lap. “If you need anything taken care of for your
trip today, I’m happy to run out and do it.”

Tightening her blue eyes into slits, she twitched
her head to either side. “Just do your job while I’m gone. Can you handle
that?”

“Of course. Did you receive the
transcriptions I emailed you?”

“I did, and I have another set for you to
work on in my absence.” Dropping her hand from her nose, her nostrils flared.
“I was surprised to see you did such an exceptional job, I need you to fix the
mess the little cunt who worked here before you made.”

The little cunt.

Her words brought bile to the back of my throat,
and I wondered if she’d used them to describe me before. In spite of the anger
that continued to throb in my skull, I could almost vividly hear the words
falling from her pinched mouth.

That little cunt Gemma.

Somehow, I made a small sound of
agreement and bobbed my head. “I’ll get to work immediately on them. Where can
I find the—”

“I’ve emailed you the mp3 files already.”
Her desk phone rang, but she ignored it. As soon as the shrill sound stopped,
she continued, “The moment you’re finished, email me all the transcriptions and
make sure you CC Philip and Cate. You failed to send the last transcriptions to
them, and they both need them as well. ”

I made a note on my LCD tablet to email
the documents to the company’s VP and CFO. “I’m right on that,” I promised
through a smile that felt like it was poisoning me. “I’ll have them to you ASAP.”

“Then, I need you to—” Her phone rang
again. Letting out a sharp curse, she lifted the receiver and slammed it to her
ear, knocking one of her giant pearl earrings to her desk. “This is Margaret,”
she announced in a clipped voice.

I watched her face transform, from
annoyance to disgust, and I wanted to know who it was. Who would cause her to
feel the exact emotions she inspired in me. When she said the name a second
later, I held back a gasp.

“It is a goddamn birthday party, Finley.
Not the end of the world. If you can’t handle it, please contact my assistant
who will refer you to one of the event planners we’ve used in the past.”
Margaret held her breath while the brunette on the other line said something,
and then she laughed dismissively. “Well, Oliver knows best. Goodbye, Finley.”

Apparently, there was trouble in
paradise, and my curiosity was absolutely piqued.

Making a teepee with her fingers,
Margaret breathed against her hands before addressing me. “I’ll email you
anything else I need, Ms. Connelly,” she said, her tone dismissing me. As I
started to the door, she continued speaking, and my spine stiffened. “My house
guest, Ms. Scott, may call you for help planning my son’s thirtieth birthday
party. As I’ll be in Paris until nearly a week before the event, I would
appreciate it if you gave her a hand.”

I opened the door and looked back at her.
“I’d
love
to help.”

Even though I already knew Finley would
rather saw off her own arm than ask me for anything dealing with Oliver. “Have
a safe flight to Paris, Margaret.”

The second I returned to my office, I
sent Pen a text.

What can we find out about Finley Scott?

*

“I
didn’t realize you were here. Figured you’d be working from home today with
Mrs. Emerson being gone,” Carl told me the following day as I breezed past his
security station a few minutes after noon. Although I was running late, I
turned around to face him, the spiked heel of my secondhand Manolo Blahnik
shoes squeaking loudly on the black granite floor.

“Lunch with Stella.” Switching my purse
to my other arm, I pointed to him. “Do you want me to bring you something
back?”

Stunned, he blinked a few times. Then he
motioned me to his desk. Although I tried to keep my gaze focused solely on
him, as usual, I couldn’t resist flicking my eyes to the massive photo of my
mother to the left.

God, I wished she were here.