Page 1 of The Cowboy's Second Chance Bride

ChapterOne

CAL

There was a popular saying about a person bringing a knife to a gunfight. Usually, I was the guy with the bigger gun, but I’d found myself in the fight of my life with someone attacking my company, my reputation, and my livelihood, and I was the idiot standing there with a freaking butter knife. I never saw this attack coming.

In the last eighteen hours, so much had happened it was hard for me to keep up. I was dog-tired, man. It had been a long time since I’d last slept. A few hours after shit went sideways in Peru, I’d flown back to Seattle at the urgent request of my mother and Paul, my PR guy.

I rubbed the wound on the upper half of my left arm and tried to wrap my mind around all that had happened in such a short time. I was surrounded by my mother, Paul, Jace Shepard—my best friend—and one of the company’s field agents and medical expert, Citra Smith. They were all encouraging me to sheath my knife and charge forward with the big guns.

Which was stupid. Did they not know me? Of course, I was going to strike back and strike hard. But I had to first get a sense of the land mines. And there was this little thing called strategy.

My opponent was wily, cunning, and heavily armed with smart lawyers, and he’d come out swinging, hitting where it hurt the most—my brand and reputation. For a securities expert, trust was of the upmost importance. Clients had to believe we knew what we were doing, that our guidance was solid, and that was never a problem when my company, Optium, only focused on two roles—providing executive protection and training and educating schools on threat assessments.

Up until that moment, all my clients had cared about was me keeping them and their families alive. Even if I had to die to do it. Which was a main reason why I didn’t have a personal life. And that had never mattered until eighteen hours earlier, when all of my personal information had been trotted out and showcased to prove Optium had no business launching its new division.

A new division that we’d kept top secret for over a year. A new division that wasn’t supposed to launch for another six months. A new division with a secret project that focused on personal safety—at home, in dating, and in internet use—and what to do if you found yourself in a scary situation. There was even a dating app in the works.

All this started because Citra’s sister once had a bad experience, and she’d felt helpless. No one should feel helpless. Enter Project ProtectedLove. That was a working title.

Yeah, it was not our area of proficiency, which was why we were taking the time to get it right and have experts test and give input. We were learning to make it our area of expertise.

But none of that mattered. Because when our secret project was leaked, our biggest competitor, Hitchens and Sons, sprang into action, swiping at our jugular by launching a smear campaign to discredit Optium—and me—in order to own the consumer narrative. Also, I was sure they were pissed because in all of our research, we used them as an example of what not to do.

“Have you figured out how Hitchens and Sons got our intellectual property? Was the leak hired by them? Where are we with that?”

PR Paul leaned against the wall. “Took Spoon just under four hours to find the leak.”

Benjamin Spoon was Optium’s best IT guy. I trusted him with my life. Which was why only Paul, Citra, and I felt comfortable with asking Ben Spoon to find the mole. Because, of course, there had to be an internal mole. How else would Hitchens and Sons have gotten our intellectual property?

“It took Citra less than fifteen minutes to break him,” Paul continued.

Citra smiled. “The little weasel. Once Spoon confirmed it, I caught up with him in the break room. He had no idea we were onto him. Nearly pissed his pants when I told him he was caught red-handed, and he almost fainted when I introduced him to our lawyers. He’s been holed up since then.”

“Fuck,” I mumbled, anger welling up and threatening to spill over.

Apparently, someone didn’t know the rules of Optium’s fight club.

“You ready to hear the worst part?” Paul asked.

“Christ, it gets worse?”

“Guess who turned our employee—found out our mole was having trouble with one of his kids and wanted to send him to a military school. That’s all it took.”

I knew the answer before Paul said it.

“Your dad. He was also the one to give Hitchens the intellectual property.” Paul held up a manila envelope about half an inch thick. “I’ve got the paper trail right here. That and the mole’s confession when Citra cornered him. He was paid handsomely by your father, which is good because he will use it all on lawyers for breaking his NDA. And also, your dad is funding Hitchens’s updates on their app.”

“Of course he is,” my mom mumbled.

I rolled my thumb around my right temple, hoping to ease the tension. Hitchens and Sons already had a foothold in the market. They had customer reviews and had built brand knowledge. With our intellectual property, they could improve their crappy dating app to include better safety systems. If we wanted to do this division and the project, we were seriously behind in the race. Like, several laps behind. This was not good.

“I’m not sure if your dad knows we caught him. We’ve kept our mole locked up tight,” Citra said.

I shook my head. “Dalton isn’t going to care if we find out he’s behind this. He wants me to know.” I rubbed the bandage on my arm again.

Paul cleared his throat. “We have to decide where we go from here. Do we cut our losses or stay in the game?”

PR Paul, as I liked to think of him, was a tall, lean guy with wire-rimmed glasses. He looked average and unremarkable. Neither of those words would describe Paul’s personality. He was savvy and cutthroat—just what I and Optium Security needed. In the short six hours since the media had turned on me specifically and on Optium as a side note, Paul had not only worked out the mole and confirmed they looked to be coming from Hitchens and Sons Security but had also learned that these attacks were funded by my dear old dad. And in pure Paul fashion, he’d already devised a solid plan.

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