Illusive (Crossroads #2)

Prologue

“I’m determined to convince you to celebrate our victory, beau-frère.”

Ronan Boudreaux snorted in response to Claudette’s statement but didn’t look up from the image glowing on his phone’s screen.

The woman in the photograph was so flawlessly gorgeous that it seemed impossible she wasn’t some artificial intelligence’s electric dream of a woman.

If he hadn’t seen Ireland Elizabeth Vidal in the flesh, he’d still question whether she was a figment of the imagination.

The universe made imperfect things as a rule, but Ireland Vidal proved perfection was possible, even if Mother Nature rarely made the effort to achieve it.

“I’ll celebrate when the out-of-business sign is on the door,” he said, hearing the deepening of his faint Southern Louisiana drawl. His half-sister’s lively Cajun accent was noticeably thicker.

The pad of his thumb brushed across the photo he’d taken just hours before.

Ireland was a tall and willowy beauty, blessed with a fashion model’s long, graceful limbs and delicate curves.

Her inky black hair had fallen in a glossy curtain to her hips as she’d crossed the sidewalk with a confident, sensually feline stride.

He’d caught her in profile but knew her eyes were a dazzling shade of translucent aqua fringed with thick, long lashes.

He’d taken to eating lunch at the same small deli every day, commandeering a spot by the window so that he looked across 48th St. at the headquarters of Vidal Records, the label he co-owned and was soon to dismantle.

Did she know that yet? She could already be strategizing how to manage the crisis of a hostile takeover.

That was assuming her father, Christopher Vidal Sr., was capable of admitting his failures to his only daughter.

She spoke so glowingly of him in the interviews Ronan had watched and listened to, with evident affection.

He’d yet to meet the Vidal patriarch in person, but he knew enough to be certain that while the man was terribly inept at managing a business, he was damn good at concealing the truth.

“Merde, Ronan. With that scowl on your face, you couldn’t look less like someone on the cusp of achieving everything he’s worked toward.”

He lifted his head and caught Claudette’s dark gaze but didn’t visibly react to her verbal jab.

She sat on the silver velvet sofa across from him in the massive hotel suite he’d requested specifically because it was marketed as being designed by Ireland Vidal.

The room’s decor was sumptuous, seductive, and edgy with rockstar flair–not unlike Ireland herself.

Visually, Ireland couldn’t be more different from her father, with his grizzled, faded auburn hair and grayish-green eyes framed by wire-rimmed spectacles. Vidal favored loosely tailored khaki slacks and cardigan blazers—a carefully cultivated look of harmlessness that hid his true devious nature.

“As if I’m any different in the last forty-eight hours of this deal than any other,” he muttered.

But, as usual, his sister had struck to the heart of the matter at once. Claudette had always been both insightful and incisive, with highly evolved self-protective instincts shaped by early childhood memories of abject poverty and neglect.

He set his phone down on the padded arm of the sofa, almost immediately restless enough to rake his fingernails across the metallic velvet.

His agitation was a familiar sensation, one he both relished and resented.

They were at the culmination of a long chase, when his prey’s proverbial jugular was between his teeth, their pulse fluttering against his tongue, but he hadn’t yet drawn blood.

He was a cautious hunter, closing off every possible means of escape before his target even knew they were in danger.

Until he locked the Vidals out of the building for good, he would have to live with the ever-growing anticipation that hammered like a war drum inside him.

Still, Ronan knew this deal was unique. He’d spent his adulthood reshaping himself into someone who could move through society as if he were socialized, leveraging his good looks and Southern drawl to disarm others.

The facade didn’t fit well, leaving him intrinsically uncomfortable, as if he wore a second skin two sizes too small.

He’d always looked forward to no longer pretending to be someone he wasn’t, but now that the day was nigh, he faced a future without purpose. After a lifetime of achieving what he needed to, he realized he had no idea what he wanted.

Ronan resisted the urge to reach for his phone again. Only when he puzzled over Ireland Vidal or lost himself in music did he become preoccupied enough to ignore his restiveness. Ireland had her mother’s striking coloring and lovely features. Were they similar in other ways?

Elizabeth Vidal supported the ambitions of the men in her life—her spouses and two sons—by leaving business matters to them, while she entertained, delighted, and otherwise smoothed out wrinkles socially.

Now divorced, she remained at the forefront of high society on the arm of her latest beau, whom she’d been dating for a few years.

But appearances could be deceiving. Perhaps Ireland was her father’s daughter, with the same duplicitous nature.

“That’s exactly my point,” Claudette went on. A lovely, delicately featured brunette, she took after the father they didn’t share. “You should feel entirely different about something so momentous. And don’t tell me again that we haven’t crossed the finish line yet. C'est un fait accompli.”

She wasn’t wrong. There was nothing the Vidals could do to save their company, no leverage they could exploit to change their fate.

Even being related to and protected by Gideon Cross, one of the world’s richest men, was of no use to them because no amount of money could entice Ronan to alter course.

Chris Vidal Sr. had inflicted grievous, unforgivable injury upon Ronan and his family, and it was time to pay for that.

Not with cold hard cash, but with the blood, sweat, and tears that had gone into the making of Vidal Records.

Every possible avenue of avoiding that outcome had been taken into consideration…

…except for Ireland Vidal. And unknowns could never be ignored.

Ronan had amassed a large digital folder of images of her and her family, since they all lived in the public eye.

From those images, he knew Ireland was a natural beauty, but that was all he could attest to with certainty.

While it’d been possible to profile her brothers’ business styles, strategies, and acumen, Ireland remained a mystery.

He’d watched hours of footage of her guest appearances on talent shows searching for the next Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson, and on the red carpet at the Grammys and AMAs.

He had listened to her podcast interviews and made discreet inquiries with those who’d worked with her.

She was said to be funny, irreverent, vivacious, sharply intelligent—and was apparently not considered a threat by anyone who’d worked with her.

She was the family peacemaker or cheerleader as needed.

When Ronan entered a boardroom, he made everyone uneasy, but people were comfortable with Ireland and pleased to be in her company.

Jules and Claudette had dismissed her as a concern from the outset, but Ronan was more cautious.

While her billionaire eldest brother wasn’t involved in Vidal Records’ business these days—which could be argued to have made the takeover possible—Cross could still have lent his sister his experience and expertise.

And her other brother, Christopher Vidal Jr., was a loose cannon with a short fuse.

Whom was she closest to and trusted most?

Whose traits did she emulate or inherit?

The most dangerous hazards were the ones most underestimated.

“I do wonder at times,” Claudette murmured, “if you’ll ever find more than temporary pleasure in anything.” Twirling a strand of her dark brown hair around one finger, she tucked her legs beneath her on the sofa and studied him with assessing brown eyes.

His mouth curved slowly in an attempt to allay her concerns. “Don’t worry about me. I’m quite content with my lot at this point in life.”

As Ronan’s fortieth birthday approached, his family—nuclear and extended—grew increasingly restless with his endless bachelorhood and devotion to business, as if he would ever fit the role of husband or father, or even aspired to.

Instead, one day, when everyone around him was settled and all old debts had been repaid, he was going to retreat from the wider world and looked forward to it.

While he’d learned to act civilized, he was not truly at ease with anyone other than his siblings and a very small group of close friends he’d adopted as family.

Perhaps in solitude, he would find new passions.

Or maybe peace was truly all he needed. Certainly, he could afford to never work again if he so chose.

“At least have dinner with us,” she coaxed. “We’ve had so little reason to celebrate in our lives. It’s a shame to miss any opportunity to do so. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve lost weight since we arrived.”

Glancing at his watch, Ronan stood and stretched, the material of his dress shirt momentarily straining across his shoulder blades.

“Ask me again on Monday,” he deflected. Discussing how they’d both gone hungry as children was not something he wanted to do at any time, but especially not now.

“So cautious,” she teased with a knowing half-smile. “As if there’s anything Vidal could change over the weekend. And what are we to do in the meantime? Jules will go insane if we don’t keep his mind occupied.”

“I’m not suggesting you both shouldn’t enjoy the city. Just that it’s going to take more than reaching the last mile of a very long journey to induce me to do so.”