Indecent Proposal by Molly O'Keefe Read Free Book Online Page A

she wouldn’t have been hurt. Those men wouldn’t have kicked her. Beaten her .
    “Harrison.” Brody’s hard voice worked on some instinctual level and he brought his head around to stare at the man. “You did it. You did it just right.”
    “It was you, actually,” he said, his voice catching on emotion and exhaustion.
    Brody had always been an impossibly cagey guy, and the years since he’d started working for the family only made him more so. His dark eyes both lauded him and damned him, which Harrison guessed was fair considering their history. The Montgomerys had not been kind to Brody Baxter.
    “What you did,” Brody said. “There aren’t ten guysin the world who could have done that as well. She’s safe, because of you. I was just the muscle.”
    He thought of the days in New York, talking to senators and lobbyists. Retired generals. The assistant to the President’s chief of staff. Had all of that been time wasted?
    Trying to get all of that done on his own, holed up in a hotel room, avoiding press and family. Had that been a mistake?
    They heard Ashley in the back, stirring. She’d been in and out of sleep, disoriented and confused, and Harrison didn’t want her to wake up alone and scared. He began to shift to his feet, but his arms would not help him. His knees were jelly.
    “I got it, man,” Brody said, clapping his large hand on Harrison’s shoulder. “Try to get some rest.”
    Harrison sagged back into his seat and let the big man go sit beside his sister. Briefly, he wondered if this was going to be a problem. Ashley had, at one time, caused quite a scene over Brody.
    But Harrison found he did not have the energy to be worried. He couldn’t even follow the thought to any conclusion.
    He propped his elbows up on the small foldaway table and scrubbed his hands through his hair and down over his face. When was the last time he showered? Changed his clothes? Slept?
    The answer to the last question came in a vision of a tattoo, a woman wrapped in seaweed and vines being pulled underwater, her blond hair a cloud around her composed, nearly blissful face.
    Ryan.
    Perhaps it was his general defenselessness, or exhaustion, but the thought of Ryan Kaminski slipped into his skull like an assassin.
    He couldn’t count that night as a mistake. It was thefirst time in his life a woman had slept with him without knowing his family. Without one eye on his connections and his money.
    Ryan had picked him, for him. And not at his best. At the very lowest point in his life, she’d held out a hand.
    What kind of person did that?
    What kind of person found such weakness and confusion interesting? And not just a little … What had happened in that room destroyed him. It wasn’t just the incredible sex, but the honesty. The honesty had been addictive and erotic and rare. So rare he hadn’t realized what a kingdom of lies and half-truths he ruled, until meeting her.
    And ironically, he’d lied to her. A lie by omission was still a lie. Maybe worse because of its intrinsic cowardice.
    Harry. No one ever in his life had called him Harry.
    Oh God , he had to stop thinking about her.
    It was one thing to cling to the mysterious woman and that charged night like a lifeboat while waiting to find out if his sister was alive or dead, but they were returning to the real world. Real life.
    And in real life he was Harrison Montgomery, the favorite son of a fifth-generation political family out of Atlanta. And in three months about to be a congressman. The representative in the House for Georgia’s fifth congressional district.
    His father was finishing up his last term as governor of Georgia, and appropriately going down with the sinking boat of corruption and scandal that had been his life’s work.
    And in order to wipe the mud off his family name, to return some pride to his sister and himself and future Montgomery generations, Harrison’s role, his mission, was to be without weakness. To give no rumors thechance