Page 2 of His Wild Seduction

The night I’d learned of his betrayal was ingrained in my brain for eternity and each horrifying image was replaying itself like one of those little tourist flip books you bought at a museum or gift store.

Yes, I’d thought about him over the years. But I never expected to see him again.

What am I doing here?

I inhaled a deep breath and squeezed my hands on my lap beneath the wide boardroom table. I couldn’t afford to show weakness. Not where he was concerned.

But tell that to my heart.

It seemed that useless muscle was doomed to repeat past mistakes.

Oh, it quickened the second I recognized him. Stuttering in my chest like it had a mind of its own.

Why should he still affect me after all this time?

Squeezing my hands again, to the point of pain, I gritted my teeth, betraying no emotion.

Josef’s dark gaze zeroed in on me. He was every bit as intense as I remembered.

The only difference was I could no longer tell what he was thinking. And the not knowing was driving me mad.

My gut twisted, every instinct I had screamed at me to get the hell out of there. To run while I could. To get away from his maddening presence and the pain of our past that kept slapping me in the face every second that ticked by.

And yet, despite my natural instincts for self-preservation, I couldn’t move. It all seemed surreal.

I’d just been notified Franklin, the man I’d once thought was my father, had just gotten out of surgery.

He’d been moved to the Intensive Care Unit after a heart attack sent him to the hospital late last night.

But Franklin Gray was not my father by birth.

Yes, it was his name on the birth certificate. And yes, I suppose he’d raised me after my mother’s death.

Well, not really him, more like the nannies and bodyguards he’d hired to watch over me.

Including Josef.

I had a rather complicated history.

My mother was already pregnant when she conned Franklin, a well-known tycoon, into marrying her.

But anyone with eyes in their head would know I wasn’t his. Both my mother and stepfather were thin, tall, with dark hair and brown eyes.

I was barely five foot three, curvy as fuck, with bright red hair—the bane of my existence—and green eyes surrounded by copper eyelashes. I had a smattering of pale freckles across my nose and shoulders and on my stomach. I absolutely abhorred them when I was a child.

The point was it was obvious he was my stepfather, not my bio dad whose name I still didn’t know. But the embarrassing truth of it was I didn’t know he wasn’t my father until the day I turned eighteen.

I closed my eyes tightly, pushing away that terrible memory.

Franklin Gray might not have donated any biological matter to my birth, but he was all the father I’d known at the time. I had no idea who my real father was. His identity was a total mystery.

The trick my mother played, hoping to pass me off as his daughter backfired. He found out and treated her differently afterwards. It proved too much for her to handle.

Goddamnit. I hated it when those thoughts consumed me. Grief over my parentage was something I’d spent years in counseling sessions to come to terms with, and I was in a good place now.

Really, I was.

But sometimes I wondered if I wouldn’t have been better left in a firehouse.

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