Marrying the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page A

eardrum-shattering levels in the open lounge.
    The beat pounded through him. Hard. Harsh.
    Yeah, he needed this, needed to obliterate the tension of the last few hours.
    He flung his suit jacket onto the couch, stalked across to the bar, poured himself a double-shot whiskey and sculled it.
    The deafening riffs spilling from a state-of-the-art surround-sound system matched his mood. Raucous. Discordant. Abrasive.
    He slammed the glass down, the blaring noise a perfect match for his inner darkness.
    He would’ve rather flung the glass at the nearest wall and watched it shatter with a ‘screw you, you stuck-up snobs’.
    Being professionally snubbed by his fellow corporate mining giants tonight had seriously rankled.
    Personally, he didn’t care what the high society his father had ripped off thought of him, but he needed them to expand his business and that meant attending functions like tonight.
    A major pain in the ass.
    He needed to re-enter their business circles, needed to convince them he was nothing like his morally corrupt father. Schmoozing the upper echelon of corporate Melbourne was a necessary evil for what he had planned with Maroney Mine expanding beyond the west coast.
    But the way they’d looked at him earlier, as if he was the worse kind of scum... Damn it, how could he score business meetings with a hostile crowd who wouldn’t even acknowledge him?
    He braced himself against the window sill, oblivious to the million-dollar view of Melbourne many storeys below, tension bunching his shoulders.
    He deliberately played techno-punk-grunge when he was this wound up. No lyrics. All racket. Music far removed from his parents’ favourites, Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi.
    Great, just what he didn’t need after the evening he’d had, thinking about his folks.
    He’d been doing a lot of it lately with Denver’s appeal looming and the constant media harassment begging him for any snippets he could provide. While he’d told them to shove it—in more polite terms, of course—he half expected his mum to show up to vouch for the old crook.
    He couldn’t fathom why a beautiful, wealthy woman like Jacqueline Blaise had stuck by his deceitful dad following his arrest when the ugly truth had finally spilled out.
    Until her double betrayal. Then everything became frighteningly clear.
    He’d been twenty-four when Denver had been jailed for embezzling millions, when he’d known deep in his heart that Jackie had also been an accessory despite the police never finding proof of her culpability.
    She’d introduced Denver to her rich friends.
    She’d cultivated a high-society clique that included Denver despite knowing the criminal background he’d come from. Apparently Denver’s own father had been murdered in a drug deal gone wrong, a petty criminal trying to rip off a dealer.
    His folks never talked of it but Jax had looked it up on the Net when he was thirteen, after he’d overheard Gran berating Jackie for her shoddy taste in men. After reading the full story on his grandfather, Jax remembered feeling relieved that his dad was nothing like that.
    What a joke.
    His mum also hadn’t blinked twice about helping Denver rip off her moneyed friends, people her family had known for decades.
    And with Denver incarcerated, she’d simply waltzed out of Jax’s life without a backward glance.
    The mother he’d trusted, the mother he’d loved, gone, just like that.
    Now, ten years later, Denver had drummed up another appeal and he wouldn’t be surprised if Jackie came back.
    Not only had Jax’s love for his mother taken a serious hit, but he’d lost respect for her too. How could he not, when she buzzed around his charismatic father no matter what he did, yet didn’t give a stuff about her only child and had severed contact with him for a decade?
    He’d dealt with her treachery years ago and had finally moved on, but it galled him that Denver had once again raised his ugly head at a time when Jax was finally on