by HELEN HARDT
“For the right amount of money, you can get just about anything here. You want me to get her back?”
“God, no. Though if I’d known a fuck was in the running, I might have been a little more open to it. The idea of a lap dance kind of disgusts me. I don’t want to explode in my jeans like some teenager.”
“I hear that one. They don’t do much for me either.”
“Did you talk to your friend?”
“Shit.” I’d forgotten about Hoss. He’d sounded like he was ready to play ball. “You okay here?”
“I don’t mind watching. They just need to leave me alone.”
“That might be difficult. You’re the best looking guy in here. The male Riley Wolfe.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been compared to my model sister. Being pretty is part of the problem. Women want someone rugged like you and Reid.”
“Wait a minute. Is that why you think women don’t go for you?”
“What else could it be?”
“Uh…women don’t usually have a problem with great looking guys, Roy. The issue is your introversion. You have “hands off” tattooed across your forehead. Anyone can see it.”
“That’s not true.”
“That is true. Look around. Pick any woman in here. Loosen up a little and let her know you’re interested. I guarantee you’ll get lucky.”
“The only women in here are strippers, Rock.”
“First of all, you’re wrong. Most of the servers are women. As for the dancers, a lot of them are nice girls who just want to make a living.”
“You just said I could get whatever I wanted for the right price.”
“I said most of them are nice girls. There are definitely a few who—” I looked toward the bar. “Shit!”
“What?”
“The guy I was talking to is gone.” Damn. He’d been ready, too, and instead of paying him off, I’d rescued my brother from a stripper.
“Stay here,” I told Roy. “Pick out a pretty girl who’s just dancing and getting tips. Make eye contact. Open up a little. You’ll see what I mean. I’ll be right back.”
“Rock…”
I ignored him and sped to the door. Maybe I could catch Hoss.
I saw him, all right. His bike was speeding out of the parking lot.
Damn. I’d been sure he was going to talk. My own fault. I gave him a chance to change his mind.
I walked back into the club, sighing, but then a smile spread on my face. Roy was talking to one of the servers. Good for him. He’d decided against a stripper. The server was tall and thin, blond and blue-eyed. Fair skinned. A perfect contrast to Roy’s darkness.
I didn’t want to intervene. My brother badly needed to get lucky.
I texted Roy quickly that I was heading home and left him to his night.
50
Lacey
I awoke to the beginnings of an orgasm.
Rock was between my legs, licking and sucking.
“Rock!” I whispered urgently. “Where’s your brother?”
“The other bedroom,” he said, his chin glistening.
“Stop it. He’ll hear us!”
“Do I look like I care?” He winked and then returned to what he was doing.
I closed my eyes and sighed. Might as well enjoy it, though I vowed to remain quiet.
The climax rolled through me swiftly, and I grabbed bunches of the cotton sheets, arching my back and attempting to moan quietly.
In another moment, Rock was on top of me and inside me, pumping, pumping, pumping…until another climax rose within me.
“That’s it, baby. I can feel you coming. God, Lacey. God!”
He thrust into me more deeply than ever, and I no longer held back.
“Rock. Oh, Rock!”
We stayed joined together until our orgasms slowed, and then he rolled off of me. I laughed softly. “So much for me being quiet.”
“This is my house, Lace. You can be as loud as you want to be, especially when a guest is uninvited.”
“He’s your brother.”
“He’s still uninvited.”
“Is he okay?”
He shook his head. “Damned if I know. He’s hiding something, something he wants to tell me. He flew across the country to get to me.”
“I’m not sure he came here to talk to you about anything.”
“You mean you don’t think he’s hiding something?”
“No. I agree with you there. He’s definitely hiding something. But I don’t think he came here to talk, Rock. He came here to run away from something.”
“He wasn’t running away. He knew I’d be here.”
“True. But he also knew you’d be back in a couple days. There wasn’t any reason for him to fly here just to talk to you.”
“That’s true.” Rock sat up in bed. “Something’s eating him for sure. I should check on him. Then I’ll make some coffee.”
“Sounds good.” I leaned forward and kissed the back of his tanned shoulder. “I’ll be out in a few.”
After Rock left, I went to the bathroom and ran a brush through my disheveled hair. I was about to wash up, when my cellphone buzzed.
A Manhattan number I didn’t recognize. “Hello, this is Lacey.”
“Lacey, it’s Charlie. I’m so sorry to bother you over the weekend, but it’s urgent.”
“Yeah? What is it, Charlie?”
“A detective came to talk to me at home last night. Late last night, actually. It freaked me out.”
“Shit. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I asked to see his badge and then called the police dispatcher to make sure he was legit. He was.”
“Was it that detective who came to the office?”
“No, it was a different guy. A little younger.”
“What did he want?”
“He had a lot of questions…” She hedged. “About you.”
My stomach dropped. After yesterday morning, this was the last thing I needed to hear. “What did they ask you, Charlie?”
“Mostly about your connections to Derek Wolfe.”
I cleared my throat. “And…what did you tell them?”
“Only what I knew. He was a new client of yours that you inherited from Robert Mayes. They poked and prodded, but I didn’t know the answers to any of their questions. Lacey…are you in some kind of trouble?”
I paused a few seconds. Then, “I didn’t do anything wrong, Charlie.”
“I know you didn’t, but someone sure thinks you did.”
“Listen, don’t talk to anyone else until I get back, okay? Especially not late in the evening like that. I smell a rat.”
“I do too.”
“Good. We’re on the same page.”
“I shouldn’t have let him in, but he checked out.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Charlie. Just lie low until I get back tomorrow, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
I sighed. That meant she’d lie low, but if someone came to her door asking more questions, she’d cooperate.
I couldn’t ask any more of her than that. My nerves jumped as I quickly washed up and pulled on jeans and a light blue tank top. I padded barefoot out to the kitchen where the welcoming scent of coffee greeted me.
Rock and his brother sat at the table. If the Wolfe men weren’t the most gorgeous beings in the universe, I didn’t know who were. Roy’s long hair was pulled back into a ponytail. It was straighter and calmer than Rock’s, which was now cut short. They both wore jeans and were bare-chested.
Damn.
If I weren’t totally in love with Rock, I’d actually be contemplating a threesome right about now. Not that either of them would ever do it. The Wolfe brothers didn’t share. I knew that instinctively.
I swallowed. How could I be thinking of a threesome when I was being investigated for murder?
“Hey, babe,” Rock said. “Coffee?”
I motioned for him to stay seated. “I’ll get it. Good mor
ning, Roy.”
“Morning.” Roy sipped his coffee.
“Roy and I have been talking,” Rock said. “We think it’s best that we go back to New York right away.”
“Don’t expect me to disagree,” I said. “I just got a pretty distressing phone call.”
Rock lifted his brow. “Oh? What’s going on?”
“Apparently a detective questioned my assistant last night. At her home. At nine p.m.”
“Nine p.m.?” Rock lifted his brow further.
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t sound right,” Roy said.
“I agree,” Rock said. “I’m definitely not liking this one bit. You two get packed up. I’ll call and get the jet ready to move.”
Rock and I made it back to my apartment by late afternoon with the time change. I plunked down in my recliner.
Now what?
Rock’s gun—the same model, though not the same gun, that had killed his father—was missing.
Rock’s fingerprints were on the gun that did kill his father, despite the fact that Rock had been two thousand miles away when the murder occurred.
An unidentified woman had told her gynecologist that Rock had gone to New York.
Rock’s brother Roy was hiding something—something he flew across the country for.
I’d nearly been arrested in Montana, and now a new detective was sniffing around my assistant after hours.
What did it all mean? And why?
The limo driver dropped our bags on the floor.
“Thanks, man.” Rock handed him a few bills and then closed the door.
We were alone.
Now that I was back in my own home, reality abruptly sank in. I was being investigated for murder. This was no joke. It was truly happening.
Rock pulled out his cellphone. “Time for some damage control.”
“What can you possibly do?”
“Me? Not much. My money? That’s another story.”
I stood. “No, Rock. Don’t go bribing people. Please.”
“You were okay with me paying Hoss.”
“I wasn’t exactly okay with it. Besides, this is totally different. We’re talking police detectives here, not a Harley-riding attorney.”
“Doesn’t matter, babe. I didn’t learn much from the asshole prick who fathered me, but I did learn one thing. Everyone eventually has a price.”
I didn’t doubt his words. But I was an attorney. An officer of the court. I couldn’t let this happen.
“Please. Promise me you won’t do this.”
“This is on me, Lacey. These people are going after you to get to me. I have to put a stop to it. One way or the other, this won’t end well unless I nip it in the bud right now.”
“We’re both innocent. We have to trust the system, Rock.”
“The system?” He scoffed. “Do you know how many times my old man gamed the system? And those are just the things I knew about before I left home at fourteen. Even my warped mind can’t imagine what he did from that point until his death. And frankly, this shit has Derek Wolfe smeared all over it.”
“The man is dead.”
“So? He put something into play before he died.”
“He was murdered. He had no idea he was about to die, Rock.”
“Maybe he did. Maybe he knew he’d been marked, and he decided to fuck me over from the grave.”
“I doubt it. You said yourself his money could buy anything. If he knew he was marked, he’d have paid someone off, or taken care of whoever marked him first.”
Rock didn’t bother denying it. He knew I was right.
“What else could be going on?”
“Hell if I know.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “My dad made lots of enemies in his lifetime. I suppose there could be one he never knew about.”
“He was cocky,” I said. “Maybe he got too cocky.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he overlooked people who might have a grudge against him.”
Rock raised one eyebrow. “That’s an interesting perspective. You might be on to something.”
“You never know. At this point, we can’t leave any stone unturned.”
Rock heaved a sigh. “That’s a lot of stones, baby.”
“How many enemies could one man have?”
“Lacey, the man was evil.”
“The man built a billion dollar company.”
“What? You think you can’t have one without the other? Derek Wolfe was not a good man.”
“I’m aware he was no saint, but was he really so horrible?”
He sighed again. “You’re going to have to take my word for it.”
51
Rock
My head and eyes throbbed.
I’d taken a hell of a beating, but I’d kept the fucking bastards out of my ass.
Military school had turned out to be a playground for psychopaths. My father must have known the kind of place this was. He must have.
I’d always thought he hated me. Now I knew for sure.
Hazing, they called it. Most of the guys let it happen, told me it would be over soon. That we’d be doing it next year.
Never. I’d never participate in hazing.
Fucking never.
The cuts healed and the bruises faded.
School years blended into each other.
Then senior year.
Watching the guys in my class—guys who’d been raped years earlier—fuck the freshmen was a horror I would never unsee.
“Come on, Wolfe,” one said. “Take some ass. You’ve earned it. Do it. Do it.”
The words rang in my ears as if chanted by robotic demons.
Do it.
Do it.
Do it.
I grabbed one of them. A bigger one. I was never one to pick on someone smaller than I was. I’d seen my father do enough of that. I was no bully. I was no coward.
Do it.
Do it.
Do it.
I leaped out of the daydream. The thoughts had plagued me since my discussion with Reid about his and Roy’s experiences at prep school. Had my brothers been raped?
Nausea swept up my throat. God. I’d escaped it. I hadn’t forced myself on anyone else, either, despite the masses chanting around me. Oh, I’d given him a good beating for show, but that was where it had ended.
“I need to talk to your assistant,” I said to Lacey.
“Yeah, I want to talk to her too.”
“You think we could go see her at her place?”
“It’s Sunday, and tomorrow’s a holiday.”
“So? This is important, baby.”
She nodded. “I know. Let me give her a quick call.”
I waited while Lacey poked numbers into her phone.
“She’s not answering,” Lacey said. Then she left a short voicemail asking her to return the call. “Now what?”
“We go to bed?” I lifted my brow.
“That doesn’t solve anything.”
“It does from where I’m standing.” I tried to laugh it off. Then, “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’m just not really in the mood.”
“I understand.” I’d been trying to put off the inevitable. If Lacey and I were going to be together, I owed her the truth. Especially since some elusive person was trying to bring her into this. It had been a long day, and it was about to get longer.
“Baby, I need to tell you some stuff.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat.
“All right.” She sat down on the couch this time and patted the spot next to her. “Sit down?”
“I think I need a drink first.”
“I don’t have much. Some vodka and wine, I think.”
A bourbon would have been nice. “Maybe it’s better if I just get it out.” I sat down next to her. “This is hard.”
“You can tell me anything, Rock.”
“I’d like to make you promise you won’t
leave me if I tell you everything, but I can’t do that.”
“Okay. Now you’re scaring me a little.”
I put my hand over hers. “I’m sorry. But I can’t lie to you. It’s some pretty scary stuff.”
“Are you in any trouble?”
“No. I don’t think so, anyway.”
“Have you done anything wrong?”
“Not regarding my father’s murder.”
“Okay.” She bit her lower lip.
“I’m just going to get out with it. All of it.”
She drew her hand away from mine. “I think that would be best.”
I cleared my throat. “I was sent to military school when I was fourteen.”
“I know that. Your brother Reid explained all of that to me.”
“You mean my father didn’t?”
“No. He just said you’d left the family when you came of age. I asked him for more details but he wasn’t forthcoming. All he’d tell me is that he wanted you at the head of Wolfe Enterprises, and if you didn’t do it, the company and all of your other assets would be sold and his children would get nothing.”
“Nice guy.” I rolled my eyes.
“We all know who he was, Rock.”
I sighed once more. Lacey only thought she knew who he was. She knew a ruthless businessman who made enemies through deals. She didn’t know he abused his children, sexually abused his daughter. Sent his sons off to school to be violated. “Lacey, my father used to beat the shit out of me.”
She gasped. Was she truly surprised by this revelation?
“I’m so sorry.” She put her hand back on mine.
“I’m long over it. I never forgave him, but I got far away as soon as I could, and I never looked back. But that’s not what I need to tell you.”
“All right…”
“My parents sent me away when I was fourteen because…” Damn. This was hard.
“Because why, Rock?” She squeezed my hand.
Blurred images catapulted through my mind.
My lack of thought, only instinctual actions—had to protect my sister—as I grabbed a chef’s knife from the kitchen.
The resistance, like the thick skin of a grapefruit, as the knife sank into my father’s flesh.
The panicked treble voice of my sister.
