Chapter One
Divorce Diva Daily recommends:
Playlist: “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor
Movie: He’s Just Not That into You
Cocktail: Slow, Comfortable Screw
Beck Blackwood could kill them.
Every one of those uptight, conservative pricks.
Beck’s fingers curled into fists as he paced his office, oblivious to the million-dollar view of the Strip. He liked his office perched on the highest floor of the tallest tower in Vegas. King of the world. No other feeling beat it. Apart from sex, but he’d even given up on that while finagling every detail of this deal.
This deal…
He stopped in front of his desk and slammed his fist against the prospectus, the pain not registering half as much as having a boardroom of investors hedge around his win-win deal because his company wasn’t respectable enough. Translation: he wasn’t respectable enough.
Damn it, he thought he’d left his past behind.
He’d thought wrong.
Didn’t matter he rivaled the richest guys in town for penthouse space, property investments, and fast cars. Because of his lifestyle choices—single, heterosexual guy who enjoyed his freedom—and the City of Sin he chose to live in, they didn’t deem him worthy. Throw in the PR disaster when his site manager was found in a compromising position with an apprentice on one of his prominent constructions recently, and the fate of Blackwood Enterprises had been sealed.
Vegas loved a scandal. Sex between a married guy and a barely eighteen-year-old girl? The press attacked. Every newspaper article had shown his building site, with his company’s name boldly emblazoned with its signature cactus. Damned if the thing didn’t add a phallic connotation to every word printed.
Never mind he’d fired the manager and set up counseling for the teenager if she needed it.
Never mind he’d been working his ass off trying to recoup losses the company had sustained in the crash of 2008.
Never mind he’d spent the last eighteen months living and breathing this deal to build hotels across the country that would see company profit margins soar again.
Blackwood Enterprises had been crucified. All his hard work down the toilet because they didn’t deem him good enough.
Fuck them.
He’d sat in the boardroom after presenting projected statistics that would’ve had guys with half a brain salivating, rage simmering, as each and every one of the pompous bastards scrambled for excuses.
Too big a risk.
People are still talking about your company, and not in a good way.
The face of this project needs to have solid family values.
What they were basically saying was that because one of his employees screwed up and he didn’t have a band on his ring finger, he wasn’t good enough.
Bullshit.
His intercom buzzed and he glared at it, not in the mood for interruptions, not in the mood for anything unless it involved eight signatures on the construction deal of a lifetime.
“What is it, Simone?”
“Mr. Robinson wanted to remind you about the function you’re planning.”
He bit back his first response—Screw Lou.
“Tell him I’m on it.”
“Will do, Mr. Blackwood.”
“And I’m incommunicado for the next hour.”
It’d take him that long to calm down.
“Okay.”
The intercom fell silent and he flung himself into a chair, ready to tackle a stack of quotes. However, the requisite quick glance at his inbox stalled when he glimpsed an email, every word from Stan Walkerville punctuating his disillusionment at losing out on the deal of the century.
Beck’s gut twisted. Stan, the unofficial appointed leader of the investors he’d been counting on earlier today, reiterated his disappointment they wouldn’t be building the biggest chain of hotels America had ever seen.
Not half as disappointed as he was.
The fortune he’d amassed meant jack if they didn’t consider him reliable enough. What did the old farts expect, for him to marry to become the biggest name in construction in the country?
Frigging great, he was back to this.
His foolhardy plan.
It had first come to him in the meeting when the investors were delivering their verdict because of the tainted Blackwood name. He’d wanted to yell, What the fuck do you expect me to do, pull a wife out of my ass for respectability?
While he’d wisely kept his temper in check at the time, the dumb idea had stuck in his head like a burr, no matter how many times he dismissed it. Stupid thing was, he’d analyzed it from every angle and he kept coming back to it.
He needed instant propriety to clear his company’s name and get the investors on his side again.
A wife would do that.
Shit.
He re-read the email. Twice. Focused on the last line.