It's a Trust Thing: DotComGirls, #1

By Peggy Jaeger

Nell Newbery has trust issues. It's hard to trust when you're the daughter of a fallen financial scion who bilked people out of billions. Nell's done everything in her power to keep away from men who see her as their ticket to fortune and fame. All she wants to do is run her ultra-successful business, HELPFUL HUNKS, in peace.

But it wouldn't hurt to find a guy who doesn't know a thing about her father's felonious past; one she can give her heart to and trust it won't come back to her battered, bruised, and broken.

 

Is Charlie Churchill that guy? On the surface he seems perfect, all polished manners and quiet mirth. Nell's convinced he knows nothing about her, other than she likes superhero movies and views junk food as a food group.

 

Can she trust him to be what he appears to be? Or is he just pretending?

 

For Nell, trust is everything in life…and in love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peggy Jaeger
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393716273

Peggy Jaeger

Peggy Jaeger is a contemporary romance writer who writes Romantic Comedies about strong women, the families who support them, and the men who can’t live without them. If she can make you cry on one page and bring you out of tears rolling with laughter the next, she’s done her job as a writer! Family and food play huge roles in Peggy’s stories because she believes there is nothing that holds a family structure together like sharing a meal…or two…or ten. Dotted with humor and characters that are as real as they are loving, she brings all topics of daily life into her stories: life, death, sibling rivalry, illness and the desire for everyone to find their own happily ever after. Growing up the only child of divorced parents she longed for sisters, brothers and a family that vowed to stick together no matter what came their way. Through her books, she’s created the families she wanted as that lonely child. When she’s not writing Peggy is usually painting, crafting, scrapbooking or decoupaging old steamer trunks she finds at rummage stores and garage sales. As a lifelong diarist, she caught the blogging bug early on, and you can visit her at peggyjaeger.com where she blogs daily about life, writing, and stuff that makes her go "What??!"

Book preview

Chapter One

That old expression if you want something done, give it to a busy person describes my life to perfection.

I was already late for the two-hour lecture I’d agreed to give at Columbia Business School. And I say agreed with my tongue in my cheek.

When Dean Arnold Dietrichson, an old friend of my mother’s from her cotillion days, emailed and asked me to fill in for a professor who’d requested time off to visit a sick parent, I ignored the missive. And the two follow-ups he’d then sent. When he called me directly, I couldn’t come up with an excuse fast or truthful enough to squeak out of it. Public speaking is the last in a long laundry list of things I never want to do. Having my fingernails removed one by one without anesthesia and shaving my head supersede public speaking, so that tells you how much I didn’t want to do what I was about to do.

A scheduling issue had disrupted my afternoon and I found myself two men short for a moving job I’d booked weeks ago for an extremely influential client. It took me two and a half hours, seven pleading phone calls, the promise of an extra day off, plus time and half for the two guys who finally agreed to come in.  I toyed with the idea to add sexual favors to the asking price if no one agreed.

That would have been an empty promise, but desperate times...you know?

My business, Helpful Hunks, rents gorgeous twenty and thirty-something between-jobs male actors and models by the hour to do all the things you can’t—or don’t want to—do.

Are you a woman living on your own and need shelving put up but don’t know the business end of a hammer from a screwdriver? Call me. Are you relocating from one small New York apartment to another and don’t want to pay the exorbitant cost a commercial moving business charges to move the meager stuff you own? Check out my website. Need heavy furniture rearranged? Boxes brought in from storage? Someone to help relocate mom’s belongings from her home to her new assisted care facility? Send me an email.

The idea for the business came to me in college. I was my first client. At a spit above five foot, and with a mother residing in a psych facility and a father who was a guest of the state, I had no one to help me lug all my stuff into the dorm room I’d be living in for the next four years.

When a group of upper classman who were involved in a project offered to help me in order to gain service points for their frat house, I readily agreed. Flirty, fit, and hunky-hot, the guys got all my crap moved in one one-hundredth of the time it would have taken me on my own. While I watched them heft and heave my trunks, luggage, books and bed linens, a little idea wormed its way into my entrepreneurial brain.

Despite my father’s mortifying public trial and his subsequent incarceration, Dennison Newbery’s business acumen-laced DNA flowed through me.

Before sophomore year began, I’d already hired a few classmates over the summer break to aid anyone who needed help moving into dorms and student housing. For a nominal fee, of course. My profits that year paid for the next two years of my education.

Business school, a business loan, and a solid marketing plan after I graduated, and here I was.

With the scheduling headache solved, I then spent the rest of my day playing business catch-up and deleting the numerous emails I’d received from media outlets. The anniversary of my father’s public fall from grace was fast approaching and I’d been fielding daily requests from news editors and media mavens for a quote or a sound bite about the event. After fifteen years you’d think they’d have forgotten about my father and grabbed on to a new and more egregious scandal.

No such luck.

If their plan was to wear me down by annoying me, they were sorely mistaken in their efforts. After a decade and a half of silence on the subject, I wasn’t about to start talking anytime soon.

When I finally shut my computer for the day and glanced down at my phone, it was after six.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

I sprang out of my chair and tugged my briefcase from under my desk, managing to bang my hip on the desk edge at the same time.

I cursed again.

That doesn’t sound good, a voice from the doorway proclaimed.

I’m late, I told my best friend, Ella Jones, who stood there in all her natural gorgeousness. Five nine with curly hair down to a miniscule waist, she was my opposite in every physical way imaginable. From the color and length of our hair—mine is short and white/blonde—to our height and even our dispositions. Despite that, or maybe because of those differences, we’re closer than most sisters related by blood. I’m supposed to lecture tonight.

What time does the class start?

In forty-five minutes. I shoved my phone and laptop into my briefcase.

I’ll call you a car so you don’t have to battle flagging down a taxi in rush hour.

While she tapped on her cell phone, she followed me out to our shared reception area.

Ella runs an elite cleaning service called Dirty Damsels, and she’d started her company the same time I’d started mine. We’d been besties and roommates all through college and beyond. Sharing office space proved beneficial from a financial standpoint, and a friendship one. I locked my office door and tossed the keys into my briefcase then walked to the elevator.

All set. I sent the car specs to your phone, she told me.

A tiny ding blew from inside my briefcase, signaling the text.

See you in the morning. And have fun tonight.

Fun is a relative term, I said as I waved to her while the elevator doors closed.

Downstairs, my ride was waiting outside our office building.

Traffic was, as usual, miserable. You’d think on a random Tuesday evening in July in my beautiful hometown of Manhattan, I’d be able to get uptown in a timely fashion. 

Nope.

Thankfully, my driver was silent as he concentrated on maneuvering through gridlock as quickly as he could. I used the quiet travel time to go over the notes I’d made for the evening’s lecture.

I’d titled my talk Is the glass ceiling worth shattering? A valid question to the class of what I was assured were all female MBA students climbing the never-ending ladder of business success. I’d peppered my talk with jokes and anecdotes about my life as a female business owner – all true – and hoped the subject matter, dry as it was, would be offset by the telling of my strange journey to success.

My one hope for the evening was I wouldn’t be questioned about my father or anything to do with the events that had sent him to jail and thrust our family into financial ruin. I’d kept a low public profile since college. You’ve never seen my face in any society affair photo, and I’m more a homebody than a club girl. The gossip rags have had a hard time finding anything salacious or shade-worthy concerning me to print. But in this age of heavy search engine optimization, anonymity is a thing of the past and anyone can Google my name to find out all the gory, seedy, horrible details of my father’s fall from grace. Many times over the years I’ve toyed with the notion to change my surname. Why I never have is a mystery I grill myself about whenever the anniversary rolls around.

My driver got me to the university with a scarce ten minutes to spare before the lecture began. One of my lifestyle pet peeves is tardiness. I hate it in myself, in others, and especially in my employees. Luckily, I was able to find the correct campus building with ease due to the Dean’s explicit instructions. I sprinted once I was out of the car.

A lifetime of congenital clumsiness had prevented me from ever wearing anything taller than a tiny kitten heel. A higher heel spelled complications in situations that involved doing anything with my feet and legs in tandem – like walking. It’s been said by my friends that I can trip standing still.

They’re not exaggerating, so today I’d donned a pair of well worn and much loved ballet flats as a precaution against any movement mishaps. The last thing I wanted to do was trip while I was lecturing.  Not in this age of camera phones where my ungainliness could be uploaded and Instagrammed to the world in a heartbeat.

I should have added walking up stairs to that precaution because three steps away from the second floor landing I slid, stumbled, and slipped.  Honesty, who but me could fall up the stairs?

My arms flailed, my brief case tumbled down behind me, and the papers I’d been holding flew around me like confetti at a parade when I dropped them to brace myself against face planting into the marble.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." I landed with my palms splayed flat on the stair. The slap of my flesh meeting the hard step reverberated around me, and my forearms trembled with the force of the hit. My left shin slammed against the stair tread, the sharp edge of it connecting right under my rounded kneecap. One of my consignment store Kate Spade ballet flats popped off and plummeted downward, chasing after my briefcase.

For a moment I went stone still, shocked at the loudness of my hit in the stairwell and the immediate pain filling my hands and knee.

I said a silent prayer of thanks no one had been a witness to my gracelessness and then took the prayer back when a voice drifted up from below me.

"Good Lord. Are you okay?"

Why do people ask such a stupid question? Obviously, I wasn’t. I’d just fallen flat on my face, my lecture papers were strewn about me as if they’d exploded out of a canon and, because this was me of the lousy luck, my laptop was probably damaged beyond repair.

Right as I was about to toss the questioner a snarky retort, I felt a hand wind around one of upper arms and haul me up as if I weighed nothing more than a breath of air.

My dress had three quarter sleeves but even through the cotton the warmth that oozed from the hand heated my skin as if touching it bare.

Can you stand? the voice asked.

While the hand oozed with warmth, the voice flowed with a sultry, sensual cadence that shot straight to my insides and heated all the parts of me that had been experiencing an arctic frost of late.

Well, a lot more than of late.

Deep toned and sexily accented like Prince Harry’s, I’d bet ten bucks it was English to the core.

I think so. With my free hand on the rail, I righted and gingerly placed my unshod foot flat on the stair tread. My knee ached, but I could tell nothing had broken. I was going to be sore tomorrow, though, for sure. And bruised without a doubt. My fair skin always looked like I’d been in a ten-round prizefight whenever I banged it against anything.

I lifted my gaze to tell he-of-the-Tom-Jones-soulful-voice I was okay and the words stuck in the back of my throat.

Concern wrinkled a high brow and the skin at the corners of his eyes. And, goodness, what eyes. A clear blue, reminiscent of the waters of the Caribbean. I’d never seen that color on an actual human before and it was beyond striking. Thick, blond hair tinged with gray at the temples was cut short along the nape. My gaze slid from his gorgeous eyes down to cheeks carved from alabaster and dusted with a salt and pepper, well-groomed beard. My glance flitted to his mouth and the air stuck in my throat finally broke free in a gasp. Full and luscious, smooth skinned and deep blush in color, they were the most perfect lips imaginable. For a hot second the ache in my hands and knee disappeared to form a totally different kind of ache in my core.

I blinked, shuddered, and teetered a bit when I recognized the alien sensation swimming within me as awareness.

Sexual awareness.

Those beautiful lips tugged down at the corners as he stared at me, worry in those compelling eyes. His hand tightened on my arm.

Steady. That silky voice slid all over me.

I-I’m okay. Really. I tried to move out of his hold but he wasn’t having it.

Are you sure?

Yes. Thanks. I’m fine. Well, I rolled my eyes as he continued to peer at me, I’m a little banged up and embarrassed, but fine. Really. I fall all the time. Everywhere.

Shut up, Penelope.

Sir Sexy didn’t look all that convinced, but he did let go of my arm.

It’s true. And now I’m late. I bent to retrieve the notes that had gone helter-skelter when I’d stumbled. I didn’t relish going back down the steps to get my briefcase, but I was saved from having to when Sir Hotness did the honors.

After taking it from him I slung the strap over my shoulder. Then he handed me my wayward shoe and I held onto the railing while I slipped it back on.

Thank you.

Are you sure you’re okay?

I nodded. I’ll live. Thanks again, but I’ve gotta get going.

Where are you heading?

I blinked, wondering why he’d asked.

Room 265. It’s supposed to be right up these stairs.

He gave me a quick head bob. It is. Come on, I’ll show you.

Oh, no, really. That’s okay. I can find my way. You’ve done enough. I don’t want to make you late for wherever—I flapped my free hand in the air—you need to be.

Those amazing lips twitched at the corners turning his intriguing face into a whole new level of handsome.

I happen to be going in the same direction.

He held out a hand to indicate we should move up the remaining stairs.

With my papers bundled in one hand, my shoe back in place and my briefcase, thankfully, not emitting sounds of my laptop jiggling in a thousand shattered pieces, I gripped the rail and walked – slowly and cautiously – up the remaining steps while he kept an eye on my progress.

My chaperone, because that’s what he was at this point, kept his stride coupled with mine. At the top of the landing he pulled the corridor door open and nodded for me to precede him.

It was easy to find my scheduled room. A scotch-taped notice indicating my name, the course I was teaching, and the time the class started was on the wall next to an auditorium door.

This is me, I said. Thanks again for your help.

His gaze shot from the paper on the wall to my face. With his head tilted a bit to the side, his expression was indecipherable. I couldn’t tell if he was silently laughing at the title of my class, me, or if he was wondering if someone who was as clumsy as I was had personal knowledge and experience with shattering ceilings, metaphoric or otherwise.

You’re welcome, Ms. Newbery. He pronounced my name as if the second e was missing, the b and the r rolling off his tongue together, and not berry the way people usually did. I have to admit, I liked this pronunciation way better. It sounded...classier, somehow. Have a good class. And you might want to ice your knee later on, just as a precaution.

With that, he nodded again, then walked down the long hallway away from me.

The back of him was as interesting as the front. Broad, straight shoulders encased in a sport’s coat that dropped effortlessly from shoulder to hip; endlessly long legs wrapped in fitted trousers. He held himself in a manner my mother would have approved of: erect, like a solider but graceful, like a dancer. I could actually picture him in both a uniform holding a rifle and a tuxedo holding...me.

Holy crap.

I stayed in my spot until he opened a door at the end of the corridor and then disappeared through it without ever glancing back at me.

I shook my head to clear it of the wacky thoughts, opened my own classroom door and entered into what I hoped wouldn’t prove to be one of the nine circles of Hell.

Chapter Two

Two hours flew by like a non-stop Acela train speeding from New York To Boston.

I’d obsessed I wouldn’t have enough material to cover the time allotted for the class, or worse, I’d bore the students to tears.

Both were, surprisingly, incorrect assumptions.

The moment I entered the classroom, all eyes tracked me across the amphitheater-type lecture hall. I took a mental and a physical breath and decided to approach my nerves the way I would if I were at work and needed to solve a problem. I told myself I was the one in charge, the one with the knowledge to impart, the one making the decisions.

A sea of smiling faces stared down at me, anticipation palpable and obvious. I introduced myself while I connected my laptop to the room’s projector, gave my bona fides, and started the lecture by saying If you believe the financial and business worlds are run like an old boy’s club, raise your hand.

When every hand went up, I grinned. Dean Dietrichson told me you were a smart group. He didn’t lie.

When the laughing wound down my pulse did the same and my nerves flew the coop.

And they were a smart bunch. Questions came at me from every corner with each premise I made, clear, distinct, and, well, smart. If these women used their future business degrees appropriately, they would rule the world.

I’m afraid time’s up, I said. My ego did a little jig when several groans floated down to the podium.

One of the young women called out, Thank you for one of the best classes we’ve had all year, Ms. Newbery.

A round of applause rose up and I have to admit, I got a little flustered at the praise.

Can you come back? another called out, when the clapping ceased.

Please? from the back of the room.

I smiled. That will be up to the Dean and Dr. Chang once she returns. But, thank you for asking. I pressed a few keys on the laptop and my work email address appeared on the overhead, You can always shoot me a line if you have any questions.

I watched as cellphones pointed at the board. I rarely – okay never – gave out my email address to people other than clients and employees. But, I knew how hard it was to succeed in business today without connections. Networking was the commerce of Millennials.

Besides, like Ella is always telling me, as women we have to lift one another up because if we don’t, men will step over us without a backward glance.

She’s not wrong.

While they all filed out, off to get after class cappuccinos or to meet up with friends, I disconnected my laptop and sighed. College and to a lesser extent business school, had been a nightmare for me because of my father’s notoriety. Being the daughter of the man more reviled and hated than Bernie Madoff and Ivan Boesky combined, I’d learned quickly most people either, a. avoided me because of what my father had done, b. tried to become my new best friend in order to dig up some dirt about me they could sell to the media, or c. took every opportunity to ridicule, laugh, or humiliate me in front of others.

I’d learned some hard, valuable, lessons about who I could trust and who I couldn’t during freshman and sophomore year in college. In truth, I’d only survived because of Ella’s friendship and Dan Krebs, another freshman who was now our business manager.

Ella had found herself in the same financial situation as I had after my father went to jail. Her father hadn’t bilked anyone out of their life’s savings in a complicated pyramid scheme, though. He’d died, leaving her stepmother in charge of the family trust. The Evil Bitch, as we’d come to call her in college, had shut off all Ella’s educational funding, leaving her on her own to pay for it. Ella’d done the same thing I had and devised a business while still in school to pay her bills. Being forced to make our own way through life was just another thing we had in common and another reason we’d stuck together through thick and thin.

A decade after we’d finished college and I was still wary of trusting anyone, or bringing anyone new into my life. Hence, the cold and withered girly parts. Thinking of how they’d heated up from looking at my staircase savior, it dawned on me several voices were saying the same thing as they exited the classroom.

A few Hi, Professor Churchill’s and Have a good night, Professor, drifted through my mental meanderings. My sexy rescuer stood in the doorway, smiling and nodding to the women acknowledging him as they passed. His eyes were trained on me even as he responded to them.

I pulled my phone from my briefcase to check my messages, but before I could swipe the face to open it, my gaze lifted to his face and my breath stopped dead in my throat as it had earlier.

I’m not the savviest girl in the world when it comes to knowing if a guy is sincerely attracted to me. I went to an all girls high school so mixing with pubescent boys wasn’t in the cards back then. In college, the first guy I’d ever made out with after imbibing my first beer, snapped a selfie of us with his tongue down my throat and then sold it to a tabloid who published it under the tagline While disgraced Financier is incarcerated his daughter is boozing and sexing it up in college.

That was the beginning of my trust-no-man issue, which still prevailed to this day. My inner radar had been highly honed and perfected over the years and I could spot a potential user, con man, or fame-whore a mile away.

The man staring at me from the doorway didn’t give off any of those vibes.

With his intense gaze focused on me, he entered the room after the last student exited and walked towards me, his stride purposeful yet relaxed.

I was anything but. My hands started to shake and when I finally remembered to breathe, I forgot I was holding me phone and it slipped out of my fingers.

Ella had been after me lately to purchase a strong outer protector for the phone, since my legendary clumsiness didn’t pertain solely to the bottom half of my body. My hands ran neck-and-neck with my feet in the gracelessness department, so dropping my thousand dollar phone had become a bit of a concern. I managed my life and my business with that little device and if I had to replace it, well, let’s just say I’d probably need a few days of pharmaceutical help to deal with the anxiety I’m certain would run rampant through me.

My reflexes, though, are fast. Before the phone bounced from the podium to the floor I caught it.

In so doing, I saved my phone but banged my chin on the bottom edge of the lectern. My jaw slammed upward from the impact, my molars clacking together like maracas. For a brief moment I wondered if I’d chipped one of them. Or maybe more than one of them.

A loud ouch, barked from me with the hit.

Before I came to an upright position he was next to me, that hand that felt as if a hot spring flowed through it, pressed against my upper arm as it had earlier.

Are you okay?

Fine. I cupped my chin in my free hand, and turned away from him so he couldn’t see me roll my eyes.

Let me see. He tugged on my arm to face him then pulled my hand from my chin.

If I’d been thinking straight I would have batted his hand away and commanded he stop touching me. But I wasn’t thinking straight. Couldn’t. The nearness of him, his natural warmth, his utter, well, manliness, all struck me mute and compliant. Those two words have never been used in conjunction with me.

Ever.

From my vantage point below him—he was a good foot taller than me—I was eye level with his chest and the bottom edge of his neck.  I tilted my head back a little bit so I could look him in the face.

His brows were creased again, the corners of his eyes tight as he peered down at me. Or, rather, at my chin.

No blood. That’s good. You didn’t break the skin. But you’re bruising already, he said, shaking his head. That was some wallop.

I always bruise easy. Consequence of being fair skinned.

I watched, fascinated, as one side of his mouth tilted upward.

You can let me go now, I said with more calm than I felt.

His gaze connected with mine and for a moment I simply got lost in the brilliance of his eyes. Deep and unfathomable, warm and hypnotic, they simply captivated me.

As if realizing for the first time he was holding me prisoner, he dropped his hand and took a step backward. He looked...uncertain and confused.

Yeah, well join the club, Professor.

How is your knee? he asked after a moment.

Sore.