All the plans she made with Raymond were falling to pieces. From the moment they’d met, he had promised her the world and hadn’t delivered on any of it. They lived a comfortable life, but it wasn’t what she had dreamed. Shannon wanted the big house and to go to the best parties, to travel the world, and, for the hell of it, to change cars if it didn’t match her purse. She wanted to live frivolously and do whatever, whenever.
At the beginning of their relationship, Shannon had lived the dream. Raymond was handsome and wealthy. He was also prince charming who just so happened to really love women . . . a lot. She needed to lock him down before someone else did. Shannon managed to do that by convincing him she didn’t believe in sex before marriage.
They were married within three months of meeting. Shortly after the marriage, their carefree lifestyle came to a screeching halt.
Raymond began to complain about the amount of money she was spending which made Shannon suspicious. She couldn’t understand why he was so concerned about money if he had the financial means he’d said . . . unless he didn’t have it.
The final act that doomed the relationship and convinced her he hadn’t been truthful about his finances was when he put her on a monthly allowance. An allowance! That’s when she began to look into Raymond’s background. She could have killed herself for not doing it before they were married. The more she pulled on the little string of untruths, Shannon realized it formed a huge ball of lies and deceit. Hell, she could deal with a few lies because she’d told a couple of her own. Shannon could even deal with Raymond and his womanizing. What she couldn’t deal with was being broke. That was where she drew a line in the sand.
Shannon learned that not only did Raymond not own properties all over the world but that he also wasn’t the majority shareholder of The Hadley Group. He was on the payroll for THG and deeply in debt. He’d been living it up on company credit, and someone turned off the spigot.
Raymond McNeil duped her and was pretending to be someone he wasn’t. It was her own damn fault for not doing her due diligence. Shannon knew it would be impossible to live the life she dreamed if he were genuinely living from paycheck to paycheck.
What pissed her off, even more, was how easy it had been to be manipulated. It was her own lack of curiosity when it came to Raymond’s business that allowed for it. She honestly didn’t care what he did as long as the money was flowing. But now, she understood why he tried his damnedest to keep Shannon away from his business and the real majority shareholder—Garrett Hadley. That’s who he was pretending to be. While he hadn’t taken on his name, Raymond was pretending to be Garrett.
Raymond was still pretending only he didn’t even know it.
Once Shannon learned the truth, she remembered thinking why be with an imitation when the original was so much better? Shannon never told Raymond she discovered the truth. She just divorced him or at least thought she had when she made a play for Garrett.
Garrett was single and had the means to give her the lifestyle she craved. He was as different from Raymond as night and day.
Garrett wasn’t interested in living the champagne parties, or the life that came with it. Shannon had to adjust to lure him in. It wasn’t easy, but she played along because he had the big house, only he wanted to fill them with children. Children weren’t really in Shannon’s plans. She pretended to be everything he wanted and it worked. Garrett asked her to marry him.
Raymond lost his mind when he found out. Shannon had to convince him it was all about the money in order to keep him quiet. The truth of the matter was, it was mostly about the money, but the sex with Garrett was incredible too. Security and great sex? It was a lethal combination that Shannon would be crazy to give up.
Shannon manipulated Raymond into not blowing it for her. After a night or two to think about it, she presented him with a deal. She would pay him for his silence. Raymond agreed to her financial proposition only adding one stipulation. Shannon would have to resume their affair. Shannon was all right with it. What was a little sex with Raymond every now and again? If she were honest, combining Raymond and Garrett would have made the perfect man.
For over a year, everything worked well. Raymond got a perverse sense of satisfaction knowing he was sleeping with her. It was dialed up even more when Shannon got pregnant the month Garrett had been gone to Japan working on a project. Instinctively, she knew the child wasn’t Garrett’s, but Raymond forced her to secretly take a DNA test that proved he was the father.
The moment the baby was born, Raymond called him the Golden Child and began to hatch a plan to take over The Hadley Group. He wanted it all—Garrett’s business, his wife, and his son. He had two out of three already but wanted to go for the trifecta.
Shannon hated knowing that on any day of the week her world could have been blown
