The senator had told her that although his son lived in Dallas, just a little over an hour’s drive away, they rarely saw each other.
Cassidy knew who he was. Everyone in Texas knew Beaumont Reese, a former top-ranked pro-am race car driver. Her dad and her brothers, Brandon and Shawn, had watched him race on TV. Close to Beau’s age, her brothers both had man-crushes on him.
Beau, who was no longer racing, was now co-owner of Texas American Enterprises. Along with his business partner, Lincoln Cain, he ran a billion-dollar corporation.
Cassidy had Googled him, read everything she could find on him. Thirty-five years old, never married, datedwomen for a few weeks at a time but didn’t seem to get seriously involved.
He was a highly respected businessman who ran the marketing side of the company with a talent that helped make it the success it was today. She’d been impressed to learn he donated heavily to charity, especially organizations for children like the Make-A-Wish Foundation and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Several articles mentioned he had been a troubled teen. His juvenile arrest records had been sealed, but Beau spoke openly about his past and gave his money and time to encourage teens with problems.
According to what she’d read, something had happened at the end of Beau’s senior year that had turned his life around, and though he never talked about it, speculation was that the arrest for armed robbery with his best friend and later business partner had been the catalyst. While Cain served a two-year sentence, Beau attended the University of Texas at Austin and pulled in top grades—a big change from his unimpressive record in high school.
He had graduated with honors, but a few months later, tragedy had struck when his beloved grandfather, the late Morgan Hamilton, his mother’s father, had died, leaving several million to his grandson.
Beau had used the money wisely. Reese had hired Cain, who turned out to have a serious knack for getting things done, and along with Beau’s marketing skills, they had built one of the most successful corporations in Texas.
Cassidy knew all about Beau Reese. Still, she hadn’t been prepared for the utter beauty of the man.
Several inches over six feet, with wavy jet-black hair, brilliant blue eyes, and lean-muscled, V-shaped body, Beau was a definite heartthrob. If it hadn’t been for the hard set of his features and the scar running from the bottom of his ear along his jaw, he might have looked like a pretty boy.
Instead he looked like every woman’s dark, midnight fantasy. Minus the contempt for her she read in those incredible blue eyes, she might have felt a twinge of attraction herself. Apparently just being associated with his father was enough to garner his disdain.
Opening the door to the guest house, Cassidy crossed the living room she had set up as an office, arriving at the laptop on the walnut desk against the wall. Like the main residence, the guest house was done in an elegant, traditional motif, with a burgundy overstuffed sofa and chairs in front of a white-manteled fireplace, and a bedroom with a four-poster bed.
The former senator still occasionally entertained VIPs, and when he did, he did it in style. The guest house gave her a place to stay while she was in Pleasant Hill.
Cassidy had only met the senator last week, only officially started working for him last Friday. But the job as his personal assistant wasn’t real. It was merely a cover, a way to explain her presence at his home.
As a private investigator with a Dallas agency called Maximum Security, Cassidy had been hired to look into concerns the senator had about his personal safety.
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” he had said during their interview last week. “I don’t think my life is in danger and I don’t want that kind of negative publicity. But I think I’m being followed. Someone has been asking questions. I want to know who it is and why it’s happening. I want to know what the hell is going on.”
Cassidy had assured the senator that she could find out.
“I’ve got enemies,” he had said. “Every politician has. I’ll give you some names, people I’d like you to check into.”
“I can do that,” she said. “Digging is my specialty. It’s what I do best.” She wasn’t the kind of PI who carried a pistol and ran around chasing criminals the way they did inthe movies—not that she didn’t own a gun and know how to use it. But so far she had never needed a weapon on the job.
The senator had been satisfied with her qualifications and Cassidy had accepted the task. They had come up with a plan that would put her in Pleasant Hill and give her time to figure out if his suspicions were correct and he was facing some sort of problem.
She wondered what the senator and his son had been fighting about. She’d heard them arguing clear down the hall, Beau’s voice on the edge of outright fury, his father’s carefully controlled but clearly unhappy.
She’d find out. She intended to do the job she was hired for, and to do that she would have to delve into every aspect of the senator’s life.
She thought of the handsome older man and bit back a smile. She had a hunch he had chosen her because she was a woman, someone he believed he could control. Cassidy had taken the job because she thought he might actually be in danger.
She was good at what she did and she intended to find out what was going on. If his safety was in jeopardy, she would advise him to hire a bodyguard while she found the person or persons who posed the threat.
She would start by finding out what the trouble was between father and son. Cassidy sat down at the computer and went to work.
* * *
It was his second trip to Pleasant Hill in the last two days, the most time Beau had spent in his hometown since his mother died.
The heart attack that had killed Miriam Reese six years ago had struck completely out of the blue. His father and mother were estranged. His mother had been an absentee parent just like his dad, so making the arrangements to buryher had mostly been a duty, an obligation rather than a deeply emotional event.
It occurred to him he felt more for his unborn half sister than he felt for either of his parents.
