Tisha obviously did not care. She pointed at Jason and her gaze narrowed in a rude as hell glare that made his skin crawl with irritation. How could she make him feel like such a loser and a little boy again all at the same time? It was like she was shoving him in that stupid kennel once again and making him feel like the most worthless son on the planet.
“You need to stay away from that woman. That reporter. That bitch!” Tisha snarled. It was obvious that something else had happened between Jason’s mother and Skye Kincaid and it had not been good. “I spoke with that piece of trash earlier this morning. She was dumped on a doorstep! Did you know? She wasn’t even a wanted child. Her parents didn’t want her. They were probably addicts or something equally horrible. Who knows and who cares, right? But you need to realize that a woman like that cannot be good for you. She’s trash. And I want you to think carefully about your future, Jason. You’re too important to waste on some bitch from the wrong side of the blanket.”
The wrong side of the blanket? For just a moment Jason could not believe that his mother had actually used such a phrase. Who did that? Who talked about a human being in those terms? And what kind of woman went to what had probably been a public place—the coffee shop—to confront someone and to tell them that they were too worthless to date a son that Tisha didn’t even like?
“So.” Tisha apparently thought that Jason’s silence somehow indicated his complicity. She was actually pulling out her phone as though she intended to show him a photograph. “My friend Alaina has a daughter about your age. Eleni is a wonderful girl. She has a degree in education from Baylor and she’s a second grade teacher in Highland Park. It’s not the best area, but that’s not bad for a young teacher. You know?”
“Mother. Shut up.”
“Excuse me?”
“I told you to shut up because I am not interested in your friend’s daughter. I don’t want to date some girl who you deem is perfect for me because of her pedigree. I prefer to pick my friends and my dates because of their personalities, you know? Something Dad should have done before he decided to leg shackle himself to you.” Jason was so angry that he was having a tough time keeping a lid on it. His hands were clenched around the edge of the desk and he could hear the wood creaking as his nails started to elongate. He needed to shift, but there were still a few loyal token employees on the floor who might see him.
“Jason…”
“Get. Out.” Jason snarled at his mother until she backed away from his desk with wide blue eyes and a very peevish expression on her face.
Then Tisha did something very stupid. She decided that she was his mother and that she should be able to put him in his place just like she had when he was a boy. It was a foolish attempt at control that Jason was not even going to try and respect.
“Jason, you had better get control of your temper. Do you understand me?” Tisha wagged her finger in Jason’s face.
Jason snapped his teeth so close to her finger that Tisha actually squeaked as she yanked it back. Then she began backing toward the elevator. “Tonight!” Tisha called out. “Dinner at the house. I’ll have Aliana and Eleni there to meet you. They’re looking forward to it. Just be home about seven o’clock and you’ll be in plenty of time to meet them.”
“I don’t want to meet them. And your ass had better go up to accounting and find out why people aren’t getting paid. Do you understand me?” Jason was absolutely losing it right now. He was going to completely go off the grid if Tisha did not get out of his sight as soon as possible.
Finally the elevator dinged and Tisha stepped inside. Jason did not miss the way she pounded at the buttons trying to get the door to close and the thing to leave Jason and his anger behind. Tisha was obviously afraid of him. Good. She should be afraid. She should be very afraid because he was absolutely done with her nasty controlling behavior and rude derisive commentary on his life.
Skye.
The thought of her alone was enough to help Jason calm down. He sank into his chair once again and put his head in his hands. His mother had paid Skye a visit that morning. She had presumably belittled and invalidated poor gentle Skye for no other reason than Tisha felt threatened by the possibility that her son would eventually settle on a woman that Tisha had no control over.
“Mr. King?” A young man hesitantly approached Jason’s desk. Jason looked up and tried to smile. It wasn’t the employee’s fault and Jason could see two other men right behind the young man. “Is it true that we might not get paid for months?”
“I don’t know yet, Evan,” Jason said heavily. “I haven’t been able to get a good answer from accounting and I need to go upstairs and talk to my brother to see what kind of a plan we can put in place to keep our employees paid while there is apparently some kind of probate issue going on.”
“I can’t wait any longer to get paid,” Evan told Jason, wringing his hands. “Will you be upset if I quit? I need to pay my rent. My wife is about to go on maternity leave. She has her own job with benefits, but I’m going to be the only income for the six weeks she’s on maternity leave and I have to get paid.”
“Right.” Jason pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket. He had about five hundred bucks in it. He didn’t have much money right now either, but he had a roof over his head and food to eat because he was a King and he still basically lived at home. That was a lot more than these people had. Jason took Evan’s hand and slapped the cash into it. “Consider this a baby gift. Go on. Get out of here. You have your job if you want it back by the time we get this straightened out. So go ahead and take care of whatever you need to. Hopefully I can put some pressure in the right places and you’ll see some cash deposited in your account within the week.”
Evan bit his lip and nodded. Then he and the remaining three employees in the department went ahead and left for the day, probably for good. It wasn’t like Jason could blame them. No pay. No reason to stay. It was a pretty simple equation really.
Jason got up from his desk and headed toward the elevator himself. There was no point in sticking around down here. Maybe if this department sort of failed, the rest of them would too. And then it would trickle upstairs until finally Orion got off of his oh-so-important ass and did something about it. Until then maybe Jason would just go put a bug in his brother Edward’s ear about the company going under and see what happened in the next few weeks.
The elevator doors whooshed open and Jason stepped inside. Unfortunately that put him face to face with Orion. His brother frowned and pulled out his phone to check the time. It was almost as if Orion figured that even though he didn’t have a time clock, Jason did.
“Orion,” Jason murmured with a nod. Then he pushed the button for the sixth floor and the accounting department.
Orion frowned and gestured to the elevator buttons. “Where are you going?”
“Not that it’s really any of your concern,” Jason began. “But I’m about to go and talk to Edward in hopes that I can get him to look into the payroll problem we are apparently having before our whole workforce quits.”
“Excuse me?” Orion raised his dark brows as though he had absolutely no idea what Jason was talking about. “What payroll issues?”
“Excuse me?” Jason retorted. “Are you trying to suggest to me that you don’t know what’s going on with the payroll department?”
“No! Why would we be having payroll issues?” Orion scowled at Jason and it was readily obvious that he was certain Jason was making this up. “And actually, why are you here to begin with? I thought that you quit. You were all upset about the whole division of the inheritance and that bullshit. So you put your tail between your legs and ran home crying.”
Jason was utterly taken aback by the venom in his brother’s voice. Why was Orion behaving this way? But maybe that didn’t matter right now. Fine. Orion didn’t want Jason’s help or input or anything else. But he needed to understand that there was something very serious going on anyway.
“Look,” Jason growled.
“You might not like me or have any use for me in this company, but your employees aren’t getting paid and they are quitting. I got a phone call today because two people walked off the job. It’s been two weeks since they got a check. Nobody has gotten a check since Dad died. I haven’t either. And now you can put that count of people quitting to the entire department down there. They’ve all quit because our idiot mother stood there in front of them and explained that because of probate it could take months before anyone gets a paycheck again.”
“What?” Orion exploded. “You lie!”
“No. I don’t.” Jason didn’t rise to the bait. He did not escalate. He remained calm and he deserved a freaking medal for that. “But you’d better get your head of your ass and acknowledge there’s a problem before this whole company collapses around you.”
Chapter Twenty
There was something rotten going on at King Security Solutions, Inc. The coffee shop had been buzzing with excitement about Tisha Olivares-King’s visit to the shop. But as soon as those who had witnessed the society queen’s embarrassing eviction from the shop told their friends about what had happened, those same friends chimed in with dozen of stories about employees not getting paid, claims of some sort of probate argument, and then concerns about whether or not the big Dallas employer was going to fold altogether now that Mac King was dead.
“I heard that the family is broke and that they’re just pretending to still have money!” One man in a rumpled pair of dress slacks and a sweaty blue dress shirt told his coffee companion. “I heard that the whole accidental death thing was supposed to net some kind of life insurance payout, but that it turned out that there wasn’t even a policy!”
It was getting harder and harder for Skye to concentrate on the column she was writing. The wedding dress from Paris just wasn’t capturing her attention. She was too busy wondering if there was some truth to these rumors. Why else would Tisha come down to the coffee shop to tell Skye to stay away from her son? If the family was really broke they were going to need every man to marry a rich girl just to keep their heads above water!
“Hey.”
Skye tried to keep typing and keep ignoring Lou, but that was nearly impossible. The entire day was a wash anyway. But Skye really had to stay on task with this stupid story. Carolyn Phillps wanted it for the next edition of the paper. Staying on task meant ignoring Lou.
“Psst! Come on, Skye,” Lou said in a mournful voice. “Please tell me you’ve heard something about this supposed collapse of the King family empire.”
“Actually. No.” Skye did not turn toward Lou when she spoke the words. “I haven’t heard a thing. But then it’s not like the family has some kind of responsibility to keep me informed of their dealings. Jason and I are just acquaintances.”
And that was actually stretching it a bit. Although upon reflection, Skye did know their family secret and that had to be worth a little something. At least in the connection way.
“You have to realize that this is really important, right?” Lou pressed. He was leaning away from his table and toward Skye’s almost like a school boy trying to pester a classmate while the teacher was talking. “It’s a big deal. These people are saying the whole company is going under.”
“These people are pissed because they aren’t getting paid,” Skye reasoned. “Maybe there is a probate problem. I don’t know what the deal is. Jason has never said. And it isn’t any of my business.”
“Uh huh.” This time it was Marvin chiming in. “But you want to stop reporting the society news, right?”
Oh. So that was the angle they were taking, was it? Skye pursed her lips. She did want to become a regular reporter trying to dig for the news in and around Dallas. That was true. But she wasn’t entirely sure this meant she should be digging into Jason’s family problems in order to do it.
“That’s why you made this deal with Jason King to begin with, right?” Marvin pressed. “You were hoping that he was going to provide you with a real story. Right?”
“Oh yes.” Lou bobbed his head up and down so emphatically that his ponytail started to slide over his shoulder. “She wanted to tell a story to everyone about the King family. She wanted to report the real news about a guy who might have been murdered!”
“Stop. Both of you!” Skye threw her head back and groaned. “Would you knock it off? What am I supposed to do? Go marching into the King building and just demand to see Jason and Edward because I want to get answers for the people of Dallas on when they’re going to pay their workforce?”
The guy in the rumpled slacks and sweaty dress shirt pumped his fist in the air. “Yes! Get us answers! I need a freaking paycheck!”
“Ugh!” It wasn’t like Skye didn’t care about these people and their problems. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to find answers for them. It was more that she was afraid that her own past was going to come back and bite her in the ass. “I’m not some underdog savior of a reporter. All right? I’m just a journalist.”
“You’re afraid,” Lou mused. “I get it. That woman put herself right in your face and rattled your cage pretty badly. That’s no fun for anyone. But I would have expected better of you.”
Skye stood up and put her hands on her hips. She tilted her head to one side and glared down at Lou. “Seriously? You would have expected better? How? What could you possibly be talking about? You don’t know me. You don’t know my past or what I’ve had to put up with in this stupid town. Maybe it just reminded me that I shouldn’t give a shit about Dallas!”
“Now that’s just not nice!” Tom’s meandering sort of drawl made Skye want to pull her hair out by the roots. “You need to be nice to the people who have been reading your column in all of its ridiculousness for the last several years just because they want to support you in your journalistic endeavors.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Skye rolled her eyes. She started to gather up her stuff. She was going back to her crappy little apartment if this is what she was going to have to deal with. “You don’t read my column, Tom. You never have!”
“I do too,” Tom argued. He swatted Lou with one hand. “Don’t I, Lou?”
“All the time,” Lou lied. It had to be a lie. None of them read her column. They always made fun of her for what she wrote anyway. It was rather disheartening on most days, but also understandable since the old men weren’t exactly her target market anyway.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Skye whipped around with the full intention of telling whomever was bugging her now that she was going home. Then Skye realized that she was standing face to face with Carolyn Phillips and that this was probably not going to end well. Something on Carolyn’s face suggested that Skye had done something very, very bad. Or at least bad enough that it was going to put an end to all of Carolyn’s goodwill regarding Skye and her eccentricities.
“Did you finish the story on the French wedding dress?” Carolyn snarled. Her upper lip actually curled as she glared down the scant two inches between her and Skye’s height. “It was supposed to be for today’s edition.”
“And it’s done. I just need to email it to you.”
Carolyn pointed to the table that Skye was just vacating. “Then where in the hell are you going? There’s free Wi-Fi here, right? Send it to me.”
“I need to go home. I’ll send it from there.” Skye did not add that she wanted to read it over one more time and make sure that the language was just right. Carolyn would not appreciate that. Carolyn didn’t care about the language or the style or even the tone of a piece. She just wanted the dramatic effect. The more drama, bullshit, and idiocy the better. “I’ll have that to you in about twenty or thirty minutes and then I’ll be working on the next piece.”
“The next piece?” Carolyn pulled a scrap of paper out of her bag. “What next piece? We haven’t discussed what you’re going to do next, have we? You need to focus on the King family. I want the sordid details of the affair between Tisha and Tex. Do you get
me?”
“There is no sordid affair so therefore no sordid details exist,” Skye said in a flat tone. She was getting tired of this argument. “I thought we talked about this. The relationship is inappropriate, but this is mostly because there are conflicting money issues and then there’s the management thing too.”
“Bullshit!” Carolyn snapped. “I want the affair. I want it now.”
Skye bit her lip. “I can’t give it to you.”
“Then you need to get me this French dress story right now!” Carolyn pointed to the table. Then she folded her arms over her chest and started slapping her toe on the cement floor. “I will wait and you will email me. Now.”
Skye had never experienced anything quite like this before in her life. It was a bit like a bizarre hostage situation. She really could have just left. That was an option. It certainly was. She could have just walked away and left the shop and emailed Carolyn whenever she wanted. There was nothing preventing that. And yet Skye had a feeling that it would not have been a good idea if she wanted to remain employed by the newspaper.
Hmm. What was finally giving Skye that vibe after all of the months and even almost a year now of struggling to balance Carolyn’s satisfaction with that horrible task of hanging onto Skye’s integrity?
“Fine.” Skye sat down. She pulled out her tablet and opened a new email. She attached the file and sent it. The whole process took less than a few minutes. But the entire time she could feel the gazes of her coffee shop family boring holes into her back. “Here. I emailed it,” Skye told Carolyn. “Does that satisfy you?”
Okay, so that last bit was probably a bit on the snarky side, but Skye was getting a bit tired of all of the drama from Carolyn’s constant need for more and more dirt and lies. The woman didn’t give a shit about a true story. She just wanted the sex and the lies because she was so convinced that this was the only thing that sold.
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 15
