Pledged to His Wives

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

All we wanted was a fucking Rolodex, I thought.

Mona Isringhausen stood between our group and the door to Marcie’s office.

The bolt had been thrown, locking us in, and even if it hadn’t, my chief of security Tasha Davis was leaning against the frame, her pistol raised halfway from her hip to her shoulder.

Mona had taken no chances in ambushing us this morning.

Well, in ambushing one of us in particular.

Caroline.

Marcie’s gaze flickered from the antique Rolodex in her hand to Mona, then to Tasha’s gun. “What the hell?” she gasped, her jaw dropping. “Mona, there’s no reason to—”

“There is every reason,” Mona growled. Her eyes hadn’t left Caroline since the moment she stepped into the room—as far as my shark was concerned, there was nobody else here.

“I ran this woman the day I hired her, Marcie. Everything came back clean. The only thing I noticed was that maybe she’d been hired a touch too recently at Morning Harbor to be completely beyond suspicion.

” She glared at the makeup artist like she was more angry at herself for not catching the deception than at whatever Caroline was hiding.

“But she got along so well with everyone. And then Jack asked me to do a little extra digging.”

Somehow, Caroline managed to smile. “So it was Jack who caught me,” she said, glancing over at me. The crystals hanging from her throat swung in her cleavage. “You’re a good man, Mr. Avery—”

Mona wasn’t listening. “If the next words out of your mouth aren’t your actual name and the name of whoever hired you to infiltrate this family, Tasha is going to explain to you the definition of the phrase ‘pistol-whipped’. In detail.”

With that look on her face, she reminded me of Samantha charging down the stairs of my house with a bat raised over her head, ready to do violence to Jessamyn Fawkes.

At a moment like this, I couldn’t not remember the rumors of how many bodies my mentor’s former head of HR had buried during her tenure at Ramsey Engineering.

Whatever Caroline was, I didn’t want her to become one of them. All joking aside, I did not want to see Yukiko try and bury someone in our backyard.

“Mona,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Tasha. For God’s sake, put down the gun—”

“—Jack!?”

Jesus, I’d almost forgotten the phone. It was still nestled between my ear and my shoulder, and I could hear Yukiko’s voice coming out of the speaker, confused and upset.

“Jack, are you there? Samantha is practically incoherent—she keeps saying something about her mother…?”

Dear God, I thought. My head wife was trying to make heads or tails of the fact that Samantha was having a breakdown in our kitchen back at the house, while my head of PR was about to perform an ‘enhanced interrogation’ on the Avery Company’s newest employee.

Victoria Ruocchio couldn’t have fucked my life up with this level of efficiency.

They don’t think Dawn’s my mom. Samantha’s words rang in my skull, like a magic spell from some fantasy novel.

We’d spent the last several days terrified that my babygirl had inherited a fatal genetic disease from her mother, and now the test was telling us she was clean—and that the samples didn’t even match.

How the hell was that even possible?

I could hear Samantha crying in the background of the call. It was loud enough that everyone else in the room could hear it, too.

Never before in my life had I wished so badly I could be in two places at once.

I wanted to teleport to the kitchen, throw my arms around Samantha and Kiki and assure my babygirl that whoever might have brought her into the world, her last name was Avery now and that was the only thing that mattered.

And I wanted to spend all morning helping Mona figure out who the hell Caroline really was and where she’d come from.

Shit, I realized. Marcie and I are supposed to be meeting with Tallulah in two hours. To get her to sign Harrington Structural up as a client of the Avery Company and steal them out from under Victoria…

Maybe I needed to be in three places at once.

I looked around, weighing my options. And had a realization that rocked me right back on my heels.

Of all the people standing in that office, it was Caroline who looked the most like she understood what I was going through.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” the makeup artist said, her voice low and soothing. “But right now, Jack and Marcie need to get back to the house. Samantha just learned something terrible about her parents—”

“You don’t get to tell us what to do,” Mona snarled. “Not today. Not ever. You’re going to tell me who you are and who sent you, because my patience has already run the fuck out—”

Tasha lowered the gun a fraction. “Wait, what happened with Sam’s parents?”

Mona whirled on her. “Tasha!”

“The door’s locked, she’s not going anywhere.” Tasha slipped her pistol back into its holster. “Besides, she’s what? One-ten soaking wet? And there are four of us and one of her.”

Marcie and I both relaxed a fraction once the gun was out of Tasha’s hand.

“Jack!” Yukiko’s voice crackled with a blast of static. “Are you okay? Is Marcie?”

I blinked. “Princess, there is a situation at the office,” I said. “I promise I am going to get it sorted as quickly as possible, then Marcie and I are coming home to you and Samantha. I am so sorry that all of this is happening at once.”

Caroline turned to Mona, her eyes going hard. “Let them go,” she said, gesturing at the door. “Please. Jack’s babygirl needs him right now.”

Mona stared at the makeup artist like she’d grown a second head. “You’re completely insane,” she muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. “That’s the only explanation.”

“I’m going to hand you to Marcie for a minute,” I told Kiki over the phone. “She will keep you updated every step of the way, alright? I love you. Tell Samantha I love her, too.”

Before she could say anything else, I handed the phone over to Marcie.

Then I stepped forward.

“You’ve got thirty seconds,” I said, my shadow looming over Caroline. “After that, Tasha’s calling Boston PD.”

“I’m on your side, that’s the important part,” she said, shifting her makeup bag off of her shoulder. “That and I’m glad you caught me. I mean that. I felt rotten about it from the beginning, and I’m glad this family has smart people watching the door. The Avery clan’s going to need them—”

“Shut. Up.” Mona took a step closer, her fingers twitching like she wanted to grab a fistful of Caroline’s hair and force her to her knees. “You don’t get to talk like that to Jack. Not after what you’ve done.”

“All I’ve done is protect this family,” Caroline shot back. “I know you think Victoria hired me, Mona—”

“No, I know Victoria hired you,” Mona said, her eyes narrowing. “Who else could be brazen enough to sneak a mole into the organization right next to Jack’s wives!?”

Caroline let out a laugh. How was she so calm? Even if I’d believed nothing else that came out of this woman’s mouth, I’d believe the part about her being glad she’d been caught. She looked relieved in a way I hadn’t seen since the first time she stepped into the Avery residence.

“Time’s running out,” I reminded her.

Caroline nodded. “I don’t know the name of the person who hired me,” she said.

Mona laughed. It was not a nice laugh.

“I can give you every piece of communication I exchanged with them,” she said quickly.

“The phone numbers and dead-drops they used to contact me, the bank account they loaded with my payment, the account I used to send them back their money. If you found me, maybe you can find them. Lord knows I tried. They’ve buried themselves even deeper than I did.

” She glanced at me. “Whoever they are, Jack, they care a hell of a lot about this family—”

“You’re going to tell us the truth whether you like it or not,” Mona demanded. “Ten minutes in a room with me, Miss Nobody, and you’ll be begging for us to call the cops to take you off our hands—”

“Wait.” Marcie held up a hand. “What do you mean, you sent the money back?”

Caroline pursed her lips. “The client paid me a fortune,” she said, as if we were discussing what movie my wives had watched in the living room last night. “I gave it back. All of it. Every cent. You can look at my accounts yourself.”

I froze. Tasha froze. Hell, even Mona froze, and she’d once had some choice words about what happened to sharks when they stopped moving.

“You really are insane,” Mona said. “You expect me to believe that… what? You’re some kind of do-gooder?”

Caroline was already shaking her head. “You of all people can verify a wire, Miss Isringhausen. I’ll give you full access to my accounts.

” She had already pulled her phone out of her bag, which was good because Tasha nearly drew on her when she reached into it.

“I gave it back because I don’t care about the money.

I wouldn’t take money to protect people who I’d gladly protect for nothing.

This isn’t a job to me any longer.” She looked over at me, tears brimming in her eyes.

“It stopped being a job the second I stepped into your house the first time.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, gently smudging that heavy, strangely-feline mascara.

“And here’s the thing you’re going to want to note, Mona, because it might be the key to figuring out everything.” She paused. “Whoever hired me? I’m pretty sure they knew the effect this family was going to have on me. I think they were banking on it.”

That… that didn’t make any sense.

“Why would you give the money back?” I demanded.

Caroline unlocked her phone and handed it to Mona. I watched my shark go digging like a heat-seeking missile finding its target.