His Illegitimate Heir Read Online Free Page A

who wasn’t quite black and wasn’t quite white—he looked vaguely familiar. Something in the nose, the chin...those eyes...
    He looked a little bit like Chadwick Beaumont.
    Sweet merciful heavens. He was a Beaumont, too.
    Her knees gave in to the weight of the revelation and she lurched forward to lean on the coffee table. “Oh, my God,” she asked, staring at him. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
    Richards snatched his hand back and put it in his pocket like he was trying to hide something. “I can neither confirm nor deny that—at least, not until the press conference on Friday.” He moved away from the conference table and toward his desk.
    If he was trying to intimidate her, it wasn’t working. Casey followed him. He sat behind the desk—the same place she had seen Chadwick Beaumont too many times to count and, at least three times, Hardwick Beaumont. The resemblance was unmistakable.
    â€œMy God,” she repeated again. “You’re one of the bastards.”
    He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Everything about him had shut down. No traces of humor, no hints of warmth. She was staring at the coldest man she’d ever seen. “The bastards?”
    â€œBeaumont’s bastards—there were always rumors that Hardwick had a bunch of illegitimate children.” She blinked. It all made sense, in a way. The Beaumonts were a notoriously good-looking group of men and women—far too handsome for their own good. And this man... He was gorgeous. But not the same kind of blond handsomeness that had marked Chadwick and Matthew Beaumont. She knew he would stand out in a crowd of Beaumonts. Hell, he would stand out in any crowd. “He was your father, wasn’t he?”
    Richards stared at her for a long time and she got the feeling he was making some sort of decision. She didn’t know what—he hadn’t fired her yet but the day wasn’t over.
    Her mind felt like it was fizzing with information. Zeb Richards—the mysterious man who was rumored to have single-handedly driven down the brewery’s stock price so he could force AllBev to sell off the company—was a Beaumont? Did Chadwick know? Was he in on it or was this something else?
    One word whispered across her mind. Revenge.
    Because up until about thirty-seven seconds ago, Beaumont’s bastards had never been anything but a rumor. And now one of them had the company.
    She had no idea if this was a good thing or a very, very bad thing.
    Suddenly, Richards leaned forward and made a minute adjustment to something on his desk. “We’ve gotten off track. Your primary reason for barging into my office unannounced was about résumés.”
    She felt like a bottle of beer that had been shaken but hadn’t been opened. At any second, she might explode from the pressure. “Right,” she agreed, collapsing into the chair in front of his desk. “The problem is, some of my employees have been here for twenty, thirty years and they don’t have a résumé ready to go. Producing one on short notice is going to cause nothing but panic. They aren’t the kind of guys who look good on paper. What matters is that they do good work for me and we produce a quality product.” She took a deep breath, trying to sound managerial. “Are you familiar with our product line?”
    The corner of Richard’s mouth twitched. “It’s beer, right?”
    She rolled her eyes at him, which, surprisingly, made him grin even more. Oh, that was a bad idea, making him smile like that, because when he did, all the hard, cold edges fell away from his face. He was the kind of handsome that wasn’t fair to the rest of humanity.
    Sinful. That was what he was. And she had been too well behaved for too long.
    She shivered. She wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with the smile on his face or the fact that she was cooling off