Sarah Anderson – His Son, Her Secret (страница 1)
“I need to tell you…” Her words were still little more than a whisper.
“What do you need?”
Her eyes widened again as his face got within inches of hers, and she exhaled, something that sounded a hell of a lot like satisfaction. His gut twisted. Despite her lies and betrayal, the messy ending to their relationship and the long year on a different continent—despite it all—he wanted her.
“The job,” she said in a voice that didn’t even make it to a whisper. “I want the job, Byron.”
And she didn’t kiss him, didn’t tell him she was so sorry she’d picked her family over him. At no point did she apologize for lying to him.
“Right, right.”
She couldn’t be more clear. She was here for the job.
Not for him.
* * *
His Son, Her Secret is part of the Beaumont Heirs series: One Colorado family, limitless scandal!
His Son, Her Secret
Sarah M. Anderson
Award-winning author SARAH M. ANDERSON may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out West on the Great Plains. With a lifelong love of horses and two history teachers for parents, she had plenty of encouragement to learn everything she could about the tribes of the Great Plains.
When she started writing, it wasn’t long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and to see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought they’d go.
Sarah’s book
When not helping out at her son’s school or walking her rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well tolerated by her wonderful husband. Readers can find out more about Sarah’s love of cowboys and Indians at www.sarahmanderson.com.
To Joelle Charbonneau and Blythe Gifford, who took me under their wings when I was new and clueless, held my hands when I stumbled, and who even became friends with my mom. Thank you for being guides on my journey, ladies!
Contents
“This place is a dump,” Byron Beaumont announced. His words echoed off the stone walls, making the submerged space sound haunted.
“Don’t see it as it is,” his older brother Matthew said through the speaker in Byron’s phone. It was much easier for Matthew to call this one in, rather than make the long journey to Denver from California, where he was happily living in sin. “See it as what it will be.”
Byron did another slow turn, inspecting the extent of the neglect as he tried not to think about Matthew—or any of his older brothers—being happily engaged or married. The Beaumonts hadn’t been, until recently, the marrying kind.
Yet it hadn’t been so long ago that he’d thought
Once again, Byron was the one who didn’t conform to Beaumont expectations.
Forcibly, he turned his attention back to the space before him. The vaulted ceiling was arched, but the parts that weren’t arched were quite low. Cobwebs dangled from everything, including the single bare lightbulb in the middle of the room, which cast deep shadows into the corners. The giant pillars supporting the arches were evenly spaced, taking up a huge amount of the floor. Inches of dust coated the low half-moon windows at eye level. What Byron could see of the outside looked to be weeds. And the whole space smelled of mold.
“And what will it be? Razed, I hope.”
“No,” Byron’s oldest half brother, Chadwick Beaumont, said. The word was crisp and authoritative, which was normal for Chadwick. However, the part where he lifted his daughter out of his wife’s arms and onto his shoulders so she could see better was not. “This is underneath the brewery. It was originally a warehouse but we think you can do something better with it.”
Byron snorted. Yeah, right.
Serena Beaumont, Chadwick’s wife, stepped next to Byron so that Matthew could see her on the phone. “Percheron Drafts has had a great launch, thanks to Matthew’s hard work. But we want this brewery to be more than just a craft beer.”
“We want to hit the old company where it counts,” Matthew said. “A large number of our former customers continue to be unhappy about how the Beaumont Brewery was sold away from our family. The bigger we can make Percheron Drafts, the better we can siphon off our old customers.”
“And to do that,” Serena went on in a sweet voice at direct odds with a discussion about corporate politics, “we need to offer our customers something they cannot get from Beaumont Brewery.”
“Phillip is working with our graphic designer on incorporating his team of Percherons into all of the Percheron Draft marketing, but we have to be sensitive to trademark issues,” Chadwick added.
“Exactly,” Matthew agreed. “So our distinctive element can’t be the horses, not yet.”
Byron rolled his eyes. He should have brought his twin sister, Frances, so he would have someone to back him up. He was being steamrollered into something that seemed doomed from the start.
“You three have
Matthew looked at Serena. “Did you show him the workroom?”
“No. I’ll do that now.” She walked toward a set of doors in the far back of the room. They were heavy wooden things on rusting hinges, wide enough a pair of Percheron horses could pull a wagon through them.
“I’ve got it, babe,” Chadwick said as Serena struggled to get the huge latch lifted. “Here, hold Catherine,” he said to Byron.
Suddenly, Byron had a baby in his arms. He almost dropped the phone as Catherine leaned back to look up at her uncle.