Lexie (3 page)

Without his touch, she felt weirdly bereft. Adrift. “For what?”

“For things to go from bad to worse.”

She clutched her purse, still needing something to hang on to. “Are you always so optimistic?”

“Pragmatic.”

Unfortunately, she was too. And in her experience, bad to worse was usually the way things went.

Chapter Two

Of all the days to be late…

Lexie stuffed her purse into her desk drawer and swept up the marketing report and her stack of proposals. The Mountain Dew and her granola bar still cluttered her desk, but she ignored them. She looked at her watch and winced. If there was one thing her father deplored, it was tardiness.

Cutting out into the hallway, she hurried towards the main conference room. As bare and empty as the office had felt last night, today it was too bright and lively. She never showed up this late. Oversleeping just wasn’t something she let herself do, yet Rowe had thrown off her routine last night. Her wince drifted into a scowl.

Bad to worse was right…

She didn’t like being blindsided, and the man had come at her from every angle—mentally, emotionally and physically. Their confrontation had left her rudderless, which was a condition she was
not
used to. It had made her even more anxious for today, and she’d stayed up late trying to go over everything one last time from memory. Somehow, she’d fallen asleep without setting her alarm.

Self-consciously, she swept a hand over her hair. It had been an irresponsible slip.

Giving herself a mental shake, she stood up straighter and focused on the double doors at the end of the hallway. It didn’t matter what had happened last night or this morning, she was here now and she
was
prepared. Her fingers curled around her bound proposals.

Gathering her confidence, she reached for the ornate brass handle and let herself into the back of the room.

It was packed. Extra chairs had been brought in, and people were still milling around and grabbing seats. She used the cover to slip to the side of the room. The carpeting silenced her heels as she moved towards the conference table, but it didn’t take long before people noticed her. Conversations turned hushed and whispered. A few people pointed, and more than one raised an eyebrow. Lexie’s skin tightened. She was expected to set an example, she knew.

Glancing through her eyelashes, she searched for an open seat at the head of the table. She wasn’t surprised when the only one available was next to Cameron Rowe.

She inhaled deeply. She’d let him slip under her defenses last night, but she refused to let him see how much it had affected her. Today, right now, she was ready for him.

As if sensing her, he turned his head. His gaze collided with hers, but she met it. When she saw what it held, though, she almost stumbled.

He was angry.

No, strike that. He was livid.

She stopped in her tracks. He stood behind his chair with his hands clenched around the seatback. The leather stretched, dangerously close to ripping, but it was the look on his face… His jaw was clenched and his dark eyes burned. Anger rolled off him in waves.

“Well, look who’s finally decided to grace us with her presence.”

Lexie glanced across the table. The words hadn’t come from the outsider. They’d come from her brother, Landers, the Director of Sales.

“Good morning,” she said, refusing to let him get under her skin too.

“What’s good about it?” Lowery mumbled. Her other brother’s chin was pointed at his toes. With the way his hands were stuffed into his pockets, everything about him was directed downward. He looked as if he would have melted through the floor if he’d had the choice.

Lexie’s eyes narrowed as she evaluated her siblings more closely. They were congregated on the opposite side of the table, a virtual wall of unhappy blondes. Landers glowered while Lowery stood shaking his head with… Was that
pity
? Tara’s blue eyes spit contempt, but even her hair was ruffled and out of place. Worst of all, though, Blaire was ready to cry.

An uneasy feeling prickled between Lexie’s shoulder blades. She’d walked into the middle of something.

But what?

She turned back towards Rowe. He might be breathing flames, but his anger wasn’t directed towards her. No, his energy circled around her, almost as if it was encompassing her. Her family, though… She could feel the tension radiating from the other side of the table.

What would pit them against each other like this?

Her jaw slowly unhinged. The
bastard
. He’d told them about his plans to get rid of her.

“You promised you’d wait,” she hissed.

His gaze jerked to her face.

“You told them,” she accused.

Landers took an aggressive step forward. “You knew about this, Rowe?”

Cam’s look pinned the younger man in place. “No, I did not.” He stood up straight, pushing himself away from the chair. The leather sagged in relief and didn’t immediately spring back into shape. “Enough. We need to take this out of here.”

“We’ll deal with it right here, right now,” Landers snapped.

Rowe tilted his head towards the gathered audience and lifted his eyebrows. One glance towards the rest of the room reminded everyone that the employees were watching the interplay with rapt attention. “So you don’t care if everyone knows there’s infighting amongst the family?”

“Outside.” With only one word, the Underhills snapped to attention—all of them. Their father had spoken.

Lexie spotted Julian seated at the head of the table. She didn’t know how she’d missed him before. Usually larger than life, her father was quiet and almost stiff in the way he held himself. She knew that tone of voice, though, and he was not amused.

“Now,” he growled.

He pushed his seat back and headed towards the door at the side of the room. Everyone followed. She automatically fell into line too, but Cam stepped in front of her, separating her from the pack. The move made her stomach sink. It sided her with him—or him with her.

Infighting amongst the family,
he’d said. It wasn’t difficult to see who was the odd one out.

“Why are they so upset with me?” she whispered at his back. “Did you tell them I offered up their employees for the layoffs?”

He stopped so abruptly, she nearly ran into him. When he looked over his shoulder at her, she realized how close she’d really gotten. His brown eyes were always dark. With his temper, they’d turned black. The intensity in that gaze should have pushed her back to a safer distance, but a whiff of his aftershave surprisingly made her want to draw closer.

“You don’t know what this is about?”

Lexie’s lips tightened. She hated admitting she didn’t have the inside track. She had to work overtime just to stay on top of things. Somehow, though, this one had gotten away from her. She gave a quick shake of her head.

“Did you see the morning paper?”

She’d barely had time to run through the shower and get dressed.

“Alexandra!” The command came from the hallway, and it pricked her as well as a needle to the behind.

She jerked up straight, but her hands turned slippery. She felt the stack of proposals in her arms shift and hurried to adjust it, only the plastic covers were slick. With her fumbling, they slithered against each other and right onto the floor.

Behind them, the conference room fell silent.

Heat crawled up into Lexie’s face. She hated being in the limelight, especially when it came to her family. It was inevitable that she’d be singled out, but this was more so than usual. Embarrassed by the mess, she knelt to clean it up. Hidden from the attention, she tried to find her center.

Suddenly, Rowe was right beside her. His shoulder brushed against hers as he picked up proposals from underneath the nearest chair. Energy sparked again, making goose bumps rise on her arms, yet when he spoke, his voice was quiet. “They found out about the billboard. It’s on the front page of the
Cobalt News
.”

She looked at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m assuming this has some kind of marketing spin…or it’s the idea you wanted to tell me about last night. Just explain how it all connects with UAI, and I’ll support you.”

He might as well have been speaking Greek. “I don’t understand.”

The door squeaked open, and Blaire poked her head through. “Lexie…”

“We’re coming,” Rowe said. “Tell everyone to meet in my office.”

He stood and cupped her elbow to help her up. Out of ingrained habit, Lexie took a deep breath and braced herself.

She found him watching her like a bug under a microscope. The way his dark gaze raked over her face made her feel exposed. Naked. She couldn’t hold it, so she concentrated on the proposals in his hand. When she reached out again, he handed them to her. She spotted another behind the potted plant beside the door, but she knew her father wouldn’t wait much longer.

Patience had never been one of his virtues.

She followed Rowe down the hallway into his office. Her family waited for her, their displeasure even more apparent away from the crowd.

Her father stood behind the desk, pacing its short length. His face was red—too red—and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He blustered when he got upset. Yelled and stewed, then calmed down just as quickly. With one glance, though, she saw that he was more than upset. It was as if all the blood in his fingers had been pumped to his head.

His blue gaze settled on her the moment the door closed behind her. “I want an explanation, young lady.”

He hadn’t yelled, but she drew back anyway. “For what?”

“
For what?
” He banged a clenched fist down on the desk, and every one of her brothers and sisters jumped. “For embarrassing our company. Sullying the family name. Degrading yourself. Where do you want me to start?”

Lexie felt like Alice down the rabbit’s hole, but everyone else seemed to know what was going on. Her brothers were looking at her just as fiercely as her father, although Lowery had more shock on his face. Tara appeared to be enjoying Lexie’s discomfort, but Blaire was worrying a divot in the carpeting with her heel.

Lexie summoned her calm. “Cam says this has something to do with billboard advertising we did?”

“
We
did?” her father snapped. He gestured jerkily at Landers, who tossed the morning newspaper onto the desk. It slid unopened towards her, coming to a stop at a cockeyed angle. “That’s all you, my dear.”

Lexie scanned the paper, but the headline on the front page only confused her more…something about a billboard along the interstate causing controversy. She turned the paper so she could read it better. They hadn’t done any billboard advertising for over a year, and the longest their ads remained on display was usually sixty days. To her knowledge, all of Underhill’s ads had been papered over long ago. She looked at the grainy, black-and-white photograph. It didn’t even come close to their branding. It was—

Her.

She blinked and looked again.

It was
her
.

She snatched up the paper. The billboard advertised The Ruckus, a biker bar on the other side of the river. She’d heard of it but had never been there. She didn’t tend to frequent the bar scene, and this one had a reputation that kept her away.

Yet there she was in all her glory.

In the shot, she was looking sultrily at the drivers passing by along the highway. Kohl eyeliner made her eyes smoky, and her hair hung like a dark waterfall over her shoulders. Her lips were parted, red and glossy. As seductive as the expression was, though, it clearly wasn’t what was generating all the hoopla. It was what she—or the model—was wearing. The bustier didn’t cover much, but it certainly…
boosted
. Her breasts nearly spilled out over the top right onto the roadway.

Only they weren’t her breasts. Lexie shook her head. The billboard couldn’t look this much like her in real life.

“This isn’t me.” Although every time she looked at the shot, she thought it was. No wonder everyone else did too. “It’s not,” she insisted. “Or…maybe it is, but somebody Photoshopped it. But…it
can’t
be. I’ve never posed like this.”

She wouldn’t even know how. The woman on the page was the embodiment of sex. Mystery and intrigue. Definitely the forbidden. If she tried to act like that, people would turn away laughing.

Nobody was laughing now.

“Alexandra Marie, don’t you
dare
lie to me.”

“Father, I’m not.”

Tara planted her hands on her hips. “She’s been locked in her office the last few weeks, working on something. None of us knows what it is.”

“So this is our new marketing campaign?” Landers asked incredulously. “You’re farming yourself out as a T&A model?”

Lexie’s breath caught, so offended she didn’t know how to respond.

“Watch it.” The snarl in Cameron Rowe’s voice made everyone pull back.

Lexie forced her shoulders not to hunch, but she shrank a little inside. As much as she tried to fit in, she always felt like the oddity, but she’d never had her entire family against her. For God’s sake, the hatchet man was the only one siding with her.