Blackmailed by the Billionaire Brewer (2 page)

“Must be the people who didn’t get through on the phone.” Piper quashed a sudden sense
of foreboding and put it down to irrational paranoia and hangover. “Any clues as to
what’s been coming in?”

“I’d never read another person’s emails!” Sophie wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Honestly,
what do you think I’m like?”

“Holy crap.” Piper stared with horror at the computer printout her supervisor had
slapped onto her desk, and then flinched as she accidentally knocked a stack of Passion
Creek Brewery beer coasters onto the floor. “Please tell me this is a first-day-in-the-office
joke. You do this to all the new temps, right? It’s not for real?”

“Sorry, kiddo, this is all too real. You’ve been here three hours and have somehow
managed to pay every supplier we owe in Japanese yen instead of dollars.” The older
woman adjusted the box of reindeer-shaped bottle openers she was carrying. “And our
biggest hops supplier has been yelling down the phone at the boss already.”

“No…” Piper had been preoccupied by all the phone messages and emails she’d discovered
from Matt DeLeo the night before, and it was seriously looking like she’d had a one-night
stand with a stalker. He hadn’t been threatening, but he’d said he needed to speak
with her about something important, something that had to be done face-to-face. He
said the same thing over and over again via every method of communication. It was
a matter of urgency, apparently.

“Yup. And it gets worse. The boss is here. Just got back from a research trip and
he’s furious. The big guy wants you in his office
now
.”

“Perhaps it would be better if I just got my coat and left?”

The supervisor, known affectionately in the office as Super, shook her head. “Try
that and he’ll set the security dogs on you. He can’t stand cowards.”

“I’m no coward!”

“Great. Then get up to the boardroom PDQ and take what’s coming.”

“PDQ?”

“Pretty darned quick.”

“We meet again. Piper Reilly. Hard to believe we’ve been living in the same city for
the last few years.” His eyes were penetrating, his smile deadly, and her blood ran
cold. “Welcome to my team.”

Matt DeLeo.

“For fuck’s sake.” Her immediate instinct was to walk straight out, but she still
needed this job and, like it or not, he was now her employer. Piper held her breath.
This couldn’t be happening, it was too bizarre. Matt DeLeo was an itinerant barman
in Florida with tycoon fantasies, not the boss of a Colorado brewery in a designer
suit. She must be hallucinating. He looked seriously angry, and those brown eyes were
darker than she remembered. He also looked seriously sexy, all shaven and smart.

“That should be my line,” he said, and ran a hand through the black silk of his hair.
“Do you know how much your currency screw-up is going to cost me?”

She fisted her hands behind her back and did her best to control the confusion and
anger welling up inside her. “If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with some lunatic stalker
leaving messages s for me all over the place, I might not have been so distracted!”

“I only wanted to talk to you.”

There were so many questions buzzing around her mind that she didn’t know where to
start. “Well, guess what? I didn’t want to speak to you, but now you have me cornered,
and I’d love to know how you managed that. Perhaps you can tell me what’s so damn
important. It was one night, Matt, not the beginning of anything, and I want it to
stop right now.”

“Please, sit down.”

She felt sick to her stomach. The currency error, the fact that she needed this job
to pay the mortgage, and Matt DeLeo looming large before her were all enough to make
anyone’s knees wobble. She’d get through this latest pile of crap. “I’ll stand.”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “Fine.”

The dark way he was looking at her made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
“Is there any reason why you can’t ask the bank to reverse the incorrect transactions?”

Her voice sounded brittle and she wanted to shiver at the way he was staring at her.
Matt DeLeo. In Passion Creek, lording it behind a great big boss man desk. Sheesh.

“No, no, no. It doesn’t work like that, Red.”

She didn’t remember him being this exasperating, but then she hadn’t been exactly
sober the last time they’d spoken. “My name’s not Red. Don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like being walked out on before I’ve made breakfast.”

He wasn’t going to mince his words, that much was obvious. She softened her tone in
the hope he might be placated. “That was very thoughtful, but I didn’t want breakfast.”

“I don’t like being walked out on, period. Leaving like you did was damn rude.”

He looked so hot in that suit…

She gave herself a mental shake. “I had a plane to catch.”

“Ignoring my emails and phone calls was rude, too.”

He was right, she had been rude, but no way was she going to admit it. “Look, I’m
here in a professional capacity. What happened between us in Florida was a mistake,
fun as it was, and me ending up in your finance department is the most cataclysmic
coincidence.”

“I see what you mean.”
He stroked his chin. “Very awkward.”

“I want to put things right if I can, and obviously I’ll leave immediately if that’s
what you want. Just tell me what I can do. I
am
sorry.”

“There may be something you can do to fix this.”

“It would be really great if I could.” Piper felt sweat prickle on her top lip as
he shot her a cold look.

“I have a solution,” he said.

“You do?”

“I’m going to hire a new accounts payable clerk immediately.”
His dark eyes glowed. “You get a shiny new job.”

She willed herself not to feel any kind of relief or hope, because she could sense
she was on a hopeless losing streak. “Doing what?”

“Being my official companion for the next few weeks.” His teeth bit down on his broad
bottom lip for a second. “And the promotional face of my new product. I want you to
be Passion Creek Brewery’s poster girl for my latest launch.”

Piper let out an incredulous laugh. “You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh yes, you are.”

“You get to keep your clothes on, if that’s what you’re worried about. No topless
shots, just your lovely face smiling over a big glass of my best foaming beer.” He
grinned, but the expression was forced and cold like a predator about to take a great
big bite out of its prey. “It doesn’t look like you have much choice unless you want
me tell the agency how badly you screwed up that payment run this morning. It costs
me. I should invoice them for that. I have salaries to pay.”

“The agency will have insurance to cover this, right?”

“Maybe they do, but what are the chances of them placing you in a position of responsibility
again? They have a reputation to consider, and I do believe they have a review section
on their website.”

“You wouldn’t!”

He shrugged. “Think what you like, but they’ll be pissed when the woman I asked for
by name, because she’d been personally recommended to me, is fired on her first morning.
Can you risk it?”

“You asked for me by name? How did you know which agency to call? I never told you
my last name.”

“In Sanibel, you mentioned you did occasional temp work to make ends meet.” He flicked
her business card across the desk. “And that fell out of your purse. You have an unusual
name, and there aren’t that many temp agencies in Passion Creek.”

She stared down at the silver scrap of a card and cursed herself for being so careless.
“I can live without work from that damn agency, DeLeo. Do what the hell you like because
I’m not going to be your poster girl.”

“Pretty name you have for your business. I like it. It must be doing well if you’re
willing to flush your temping career down the toilet.” He fixed her with a hard stare.
“Not sure it would survive if word got out about some of the things you told me in
Sanibel. Passion Creek is a small town when it comes to scandal.”

“Scandal?” Piper’s mind raced as she tried to remember what she’d told him, but almost
everything beyond seven that evening in Sanibel was a sparkly blur. “What things?”

Matt laughed. “Seriously? You can’t remember? Piper, all those cocktails made you
tell me
everything
.”

Hell, what had she said? There were so many things lurking in her past that she considered
hidden forever. Surely she hadn’t been drunk enough to mention any of them? “Nobody
will believe you,” she said in a strained voice. “And nobody in Passion Creek will
be interested in what I may or may not have done.”

“Not even the unsolved mystery of who sprayed a big dick symbol on Pastor Zimmerman’s
front door?” He grinned wickedly. “Won’t do a lot for your wedding favor sales.”

“I’m beginning to hate you.”

“And I still have a pair of your black lacy underpants. Think I might frame them and
put them up behind the bar with your business card.”

Damn, she’d forgotten about those. “You’re insane if you think you can get away with
this.” She snatched up the business card and thrust it into her jacket pocket. “You’re
seriously threatening to blackmail me if I refuse to be your smiley beer girl?”

Matt DeLeo tipped his head to one side and smiled. “Blackmail?” Then a nonchalant
shrug. “I want you as my poster girl, and I want to see you again. So if that’s what
it takes to get me what I want, then I guess so. Blackmail. Technically.”

Chapter Two

Her cheeks were flushed pink, just like they’d been after they’d first had sex on
the sofa back in Florida, and Matt couldn’t help but silently congratulate himself
on reeling her back into his orbit. Poor Piper must have one hell of a guilty conscience,
because the only vaguely scandalous thing she’d told him about in Florida was the
Zimmerman graffiti. He’d been bluffing about knowing more. He wondered what secrets
she had hidden away in that pretty head. He’d love to know more about her, but his
victory was her loss, and she was angry. She was also scared and he didn’t want her
like that—he wanted her to be having fun again.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said. “The blackmail side of things.”

Piper huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “So you’re a decent guy who just
does the
nice
kind of blackmail, not the hard-core extortion type?”

“I am a decent guy, and I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to
do.” He cracked a smile, but didn’t receive one in return. “We’ll have a blast, just
wait and see. I’ll show you things you’ve never seen.”

“I don’t want to wait and see. I want certainty, all the ducks in a row. I want to
know exactly what you expect of me as your companion and poster girl
,
because being financially ruined might be preferable. And, for the record, it sure
feels like I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do.”

He bit the end of the pen he was holding. “Okay, sit down and we’ll talk this over.”
He gestured to the chair on the opposite side of his desk and dropped the pen onto
the polished wood as she slid onto the black leather chair. The pencil skirt she was
wearing pulled tight across her thighs and slid up a few inches to reveal a neat pair
of black, hosiery-covered knees. Knees that had been on either side of his head at
one point. He coughed. “As you now know, I own this brewery.”

“Not an IT tycoon, like you tried to convince me you were in Florida.”

“You didn’t believe me anyway.”

“I have an instinct when it comes to opportunistic liars.”

He whistled through his teeth and allowed her a second to look smug. “I started up
Xtreme Analytics LLC in Boulder. Heard of it?”

Her smile faded. “Nope.”

“They develop software you need for cutting-edge IT indexing and provide consultancy
services to some of the biggest corporations in the world. Some say it’s helped make
Colorado the new Silicon Valley.”

“And you’re in an office at the back of a Passion Creek brewery now because…?”

“Because I sold out after I made my first few millions, fed my necktie into the shredder,
and chased my dreams instead of gathering at the water cooler with the rest of the
herd. I do what I want, Piper, when I want.”

She nodded slowly and looked warily around the office, her gaze landing on a stack
of beer crates and some metal barrels. “Your dreams included a lot of beer.”

“A lot of beer, a lot of brewhouses, and a lot of bars. I was working undercover as
a barman last week, researching new outlets in Sanibel. It’s the best way to gauge
the market. I have real estate investments, too–dull, but it’s good to have a backup
plan. I don’t ever want a boss over me again.”

“Nice.”

“Better than that.”

Piper adjusted herself in her seat and stretched her spine, which pushed her breasts
forward. Her icy glare indicated she’d noticed him glancing at them. “Better than
sex?” Her tone was sharp, but the edge in it made a zap of excitement hit him between
the legs.

He paused before answering, locking her gaze with his until it felt like his blood
was beginning to simmer. “Sometimes, depends on the quality of the sex.”

Piper sighed deeply and looked away. “You’re not low enough to insist I have sex with
you as part of being your
companion
, are you?”

“Of course not,” he said slowly, “but it might not be all that bad considering what
you said you’d like to do to me in Florida.”

“I was drunk, so were you, and I never expected to see you again.”

Matt made a tutting sound and stood up from behind his desk. “Are you saying you used
me, Miss Reilly? Used me for your own sexual gratification, no strings, and no questions
asked?”

She frowned at him and then shrugged. “I guess I did, but that doesn’t mean I’m going
to have sex with you again, understand?”

“I’m not expecting you to sleep with me as part of this deal, Piper. I’m not that
much of a jerk and, for the record, I don’t sleep with my employees.” He still hadn’t
figured out how to deal with the not mixing business with pleasure rule that had been
such a big part of his life until now. Sleeping with your staff was a Bad Thing. “But
you can’t deny we were on fire in Florida. Chemistry like that doesn’t just disappear
because you want it to.”

She swallowed. “You’re different than the guy I met in Sanibel. He was laid back,
a drifter with tattoos who knew when to stop asking questions. He wasn’t wearing a
suit, he wasn’t my boss, and he wasn’t blackmailing me.”

“I can lose the suit any time you like,” he said and shucked off his jacket.

She paused for a second and swallowed. “You know exactly what I mean. We were equals
in Sanibel and now we’re—”

“We’re still equals. Look at this as a business deal if that helps.” Yes, they were
equals and she was more of a contractor than an employee. So maybe the fine print
of his moral dilemma could be amended to permit some consensual adult fun. “You came
here to work and I’m still letting you do that with many added benefits you didn’t
have this morning.”

“Like unfettered access to your underpants? No way.”

She was fixated by the potential sexual implications of his proposal, which was good.
The fact that it was at the forefront of her mind meant she felt something, and there
was no reason to think it was in any way bad. He’d never had sex like it. They were
more than compatible. And he really wanted Piper as his gorgeous poster girl as well.
She could take his spring launch to another level entirely. So was he insane hoping
he could have both those things when Piper didn’t want to give him either of them?

He jabbed his toe against the leg of his desk. “Okay, I admit I wanted to see you
again, to finish what we started in Florida, but things have moved on beyond wild
sex and cocktails.”

“How so?”

“The upside of this deal is that we can help each other.”

“Deal?” She shook her head and the cold beams of light filtering through the window
turned to rubies as they landed on her hair. “Blackmail is what it is. You admitted
it yourself. I should walk out right now and call your bluff.”

He was a champion bluffer. “So long, then.”

Piper frowned but didn’t move, and he caught her gaze flicker momentarily over his
torso. “The terms, DeLeo. Let’s get on with it.”

“I’m launching a new product and I need a pretty woman on my arm for all the promotional
stuff.”

“Talk about sexist. Can’t you be a big boy and do it on your own?”

“Nope. I’m promoting a new beer for the spring into summer season. I want to create
a buzz for it while pushing my existing products. I also need a face—
your face
—as a promotional tool to put on beer coasters, billboards, that kind of thing.”

“I guess I should be flattered you think I’m up to it.” Her eyes then flared with
suspicion. “Unless I’m being ridiculed. It’s not a before and after, is it? This is
the ugly duckling before she drinks the magic beer and turns into a beautiful swan
who looks just like Angelina Jolie?”

His head tipped to one side and he smirked. “So not my style. You look good, and your
colors complement all the branding I have in place. It’s aesthetics, not gimmicks.
I want simple, but evocative, maybe just a little bit vintage to be on trend. I knew
you were the woman I’d been looking for the moment you came within three feet of me.”

“Oh.”

That seemed to have shocked her. “The brand name of the beer is PCB No. 68, and I
want it to be successful so I can move on to my next project.”

“Sounds like a tractor.”

“Stands for Passion Creek Brewery.”

“And the significance of the number? One bottle short of a sixty-nine?”

She was sharp. “Good thinking, but no, even I’m not that juvenile. The brewhouse address
number is sixty-eight. I was going to call it Passion Creek Pink until I remembered
PCP is a recreational drug.”

“Pink…this beer is pink?”

“Yep.”

“I can’t think of anything worse.”

Her face did say it all, but he chose to ignore her disgust. “This is Passion Creek,
the town that has love and romance at its heart. I want to exploit that. After all,
50 percent of our visitors are female and I think they’re going to like this brew
a lot.”

“I hope you’re not expecting me to join them in the experience.”

“Having your face promoting this is all part of attracting the female demographic.
I want ladies drinking beer to become more cool and sophisticated. Elegant. Refined.
Drinking cold white wine is getting boring, and cocktails are sugary and expensive.”
He ran his hand across his jaw and watched her apple-green eyes follow the movement.
“You might have to pretend a little, but why not try something new? It might surprise
you.”

She made a frustrated sound at the back of her throat. “I’m going to have to pretend
one hell of a lot. Give me
terms
. Contract duration, remuneration, confidentiality clauses, adherence to all known
employment laws. Etcetera. I want them.”

He rolled his shoulders lazily. “I want lots of things, but it doesn’t mean I always
get them.”

“Really?” she snapped. “I’d love to see the list of things Matt DeLeo wants, but can’t
have. Santa let you down last year?”

A bitter thrill shot up his spine and he resumed eye contact. “The contract will run
for four weeks starting today. I’ll pay you three times what you’re on now plus overtime
at time and a half. I’ll cover all your expenses, because I need you looking super
hot.”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I’m not hearing this.”

“Clothes, hair, pedi, mani, fake tan, reiki, whatever you need.” He cocked his head
to get her attention back on his face. “You see? I understand the needs of high-maintenance
women. And as for confidentiality, I won’t tell anyone your darkest secrets if you
don’t tell anyone you’re a girlfriend of convenience as well as my reluctant beer
pin-up girl.”

“You said companion, not girlfriend. And my secrets aren’t that dark.”

“Not on a world scale maybe, but bad enough to keep Passion Creek gossiping for a
few years.” He blew air through his teeth. “Heck, I’m still blushing when I think
back to the things you told me in the Parrot Bar. And then later, back at the condo—”

“I don’t think we need to go into all that,” she said, her voice catching.

She was bluffing just like he was, but this cat-and-mouse game was fun. He wondered
again what she thought she’d told him after drinking her way through the cocktail
menu. It was tantalizing. “Then that’s okay. I’ll keep it all to myself if you go
along with what I’m suggesting. And if you want to use my body again–”

“I don’t.”

If Piper made the first move, he’d have nothing to feel bad about, would he? She was
a contractor for a set period of time and if she chose to seduce him…he was only flesh
and blood, after all. It might not happen as quickly as he’d like it to, but it would.
It was arrogant of him to have that sense of certainty, but the sexual tension between
them crackled in the air already. He would play it cool and she would come back to
him in the end.

He smiled contentedly. “A few weeks, all expenses paid, lots of parties, a good wage,
and a priceless opportunity to push Silver Bells and Cockle Shells.”

She looked surprised. “I can do that? Promote my business?”

“Why not? It’s not as if we’re in direct competition or anything. I can get the media
team to run off some extra photo shoots for your own use. Maybe in time we can talk
about your products and how they could be useful to the brewery, our bars, retail
outlets. The possibilities are endless.”

There was a hint of a dreamy smile forming. He was doing something right at last.
Her voice lost its sharp edge. “Cool.”

“So?”

“So…I have no real choice.”

“But it’s not so bad after all?” He saw her slender throat move as she swallowed before
she spoke again.

“Will all this be happening in Passion Creek?”

“Mainly, but we might need to go out of town now and then. Problem?”

“Maybe.” She frowned. “I have a pregnant cat in the house.”

“Okay, we can probably sort something out about that.”

“And a sister. Also pregnant.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Maybe she thought he was a little dumb, but he could tell when he was being conned.
“And the due dates are?”

“Both pretty much imminent.” She must have seen the incredulity he was feeling displayed
all over his face. “I’m not lying.”

Of course she wasn’t.
Much
. “So the daddy, he can take care of your sister, right?”