Cinderella Blackmail: A Romantic Comedy by Dallen Maggie

Author:Dallen, Maggie [Dallen, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-12-02T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

Dinner wasn’t scary. Far from it. In fact, Mackenzie found herself wishing the elder Hartley would do something evil and Machiavellian, if just to provide some entertainment. As it was, the whole affair was mind-numbingly dull.

Jacob sat on her left and to her right was the gray-haired, immaculately groomed wife of one of the senior executives. Jacob’s attention had been monopolized by the gentleman across from him and after being introduced to the crowd in general, it appeared no one had any interest in talking to a reporter—especially not the uptight Queen Elizabeth wannabe to her right.

She tried to focus on what the senior Hartley was talking about but it mainly seemed to revolve around golf, a topic that wouldn’t exactly capture the imagination of her readers. Come on, do something dastardly, snotty old coot.

But dinner passed with no excitement, just benign, utterly dull civility.

Her first sniff of a story came after dinner, when everyone had gathered in small groups for post-dinner drinks in the lavish living room. She was returning from the bathroom and passed Martin and Jacob in conversation with two other executives.

What was most striking was not the words that were being said, but the tone—namely, Martin Hartley’s dismissive behavior toward his son. As she was passing, Jacob was answering a question one of the other men had posed but his father cut him off, speaking over him as if he’d never spoken at all. Interesting.

Then later, just when she was about to start yawning from boredom again, she caught the tail end of a conversation between father and son. No one else seemed to be paying attention—but then no one else there was a reporter looking for a story. Or maybe they were just used to witnessing the father and son dysfunction and couldn’t be bothered to care. But for Mackenzie, it was jarring.

It started when someone paid a compliment about the house. Senior Hartley told those around him the story of how he’d built his empire from scratch and judging by the vacant stare in Jacob’s eyes, this was a story he’d told often. Toward the end, she noticed Jacob stiffen beside her and sure enough, that was when his father launched into a speech about how different it was for his son. How Jacob had grown up in the lap of luxury, sharing knowing smirks and quips with the other older men in the room. The implication being that kids these days—“kids” like twenty-eight-year-old Jacob, presumably—were spoiled rotten.

Jacob remained quiet beside her but there was no ignoring his unease, though Martin Hartley and the others didn’t seem to notice.

Mackenzie felt a fire burning in her gut. She was pissed on his behalf. The realization might have shocked her if she wasn’t so consumed by rage at the elder Hartley. Sure, he was saying pretty much the same thing she’d been saying since they’d first met all those years ago. But this was his father. And these were men who worked alongside Jacob, some of them even worked beneath him.

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