THE CALL FROM Ethan Sinclair came in the next day. Dylan sat on the edge of her seat and listened as I set up the interview for the following morning. Then I calmly hung up the phone before she and I jumped out of our chairs and danced around the office.
“So the interview’s tomorrow?” Dylan asked when we finally settled down enough to speak.
“Yep.” I rubbed my hands together. “Ohmigod, we need to close the office and go shopping.”
“No we don’t,” she replied, her tone emphatic. “We went shopping before we opened the office. You know, last week? We have plenty of business clothes to choose from.”
“But do we have anything from the line of ‘I can spy on dirty cheaters without getting caught’?”
Dylan giggled. “I don’t think that’s an actual line of clothing.”
“Well it should be, because that’s what we need. I could always go for Thug Barbie again.”
“You promised Jake no more wearing lingerie in public.”
“I’m sure I can find something else.” I whipped out my cell phone and started scrolling through my contacts. “In fact, I bet Monique will know exactly what we need.”
“No…not Monique,” Dylan groaned.
Monique was my personal shopper. Dylan still hadn’t forgiven her for their last encounter. “How can you still be upset with her? You looked gorgeous in that gown.”
“I know!” Dylan agreed. “But you guys tricked me.”
I laughed. “Dylan Linn James, you are not that stupid.”
“She had me try on sixty-three hideous dresses before she trotted out the one you’d already decided I’d wear. That counts as a trick in my book.”
“Yep, we had to fool you into looking good. What does that say about you?”
Dylan snapped her mouth shut and glared at me. Then her glare turned into a very satisfied, and slightly frightening, smile.
“What? No snappy comeback?” I asked.
She shook herself. “Sorry. I was stabbing you and Monique in my mind.”
“Sometimes you’re a little scary,” I said, dialing Monique.
Dylan giggled maniacally.
An hour later, Monique met us at Anthropologie, where we found the perfect interview outfits. The next morning, we arrived at Ethan Sinclair’s office at eight forty-five. It was only a few blocks from our office, but miles away in terms of style. There was no doorman for the dilapidated building, so we had to call up to be buzzed through the security door. The elevator was out of order (and looked a bit shady anyway), so we took the stairs to Ethan’s third-floor office where a mousy receptionist seated us before disappearing into the adjoining room.
Moments later, a handsome, dark-haired man in a rumpled suit introduced himself as Ethan Sinclair and showed us into his office. He gestured us toward seats barely better than folding chairs while he sat behind a well-used desk and slid a manila file across the desk at us.
“What’s this?” I asked, reaching for the file.
He smacked a hand over it, trapping it to the desk, while he pulled a sheet of paper from the top of his file cabinet. “Sign this first.”
I skimmed the paper while Dylan asked what it was.
“Typical non-disclosure to protect the privacy of myself and my clients,” Ethan provided.
After I confirmed the non-disclosure didn’t set us up for failure (or liability) we signed the form, he filed it away, and then released the folder. I picked it up and started thumbing through it while Dylan scooted her chair closer so she could see.
“This is your first job,” Ethan said. “My client, Mary”—he pointed to a photo of a plain-looking woman in a conservative dress—“is convinced her husband, Greg”—he pointed to the big man in a business suit standing beside Mary—“is cheating on her with his coworker.” He picked up another photo and added, “Jean. There’s a copy of Greg’s work schedule in the file. What I need you to do is follow him and catch him in the act with Jean, or any woman other than Mary for that matter. Snap a few pictures, bring them back to me, and I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”
I’d done some charity event planning for my family but hadn’t ever officially been interviewed before. But this didn’t seem like an interview. I looked to Dylan, whose forehead was scrunched up in confusion.
“And this is…our interview?” I asked Ethan.
He gestured at a stack of files on his desk. “I don’t have the time to even post an ad, much less interview investigators, so I figured we’d just go ahead with a trial run. You get proof of him cheating, you get paid and I give you another file. You don’t get proof, you don’t get paid or another file and we go our separate ways. Nothing gained, nothing lost.”
Well that was pretty cut and dried, but it didn’t sound anything like the business practices we’d learned in class. “What about a retainer?” I asked.
He chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “I just started my own practice and am busting my ass to keep it afloat. If I could afford a retainer, you’d be sitting in better chairs and I’d be hiring a PI with references.”
“Well, we charge one hundred fifty per hour, plus expenses,” I countered.
“We do?” Dylan said, then added quickly, “I mean, we do.”
“I’m not paying for your on-the-job training,” Ethan said. “Mary will fork out five hundred for proof, but that’s it, so you want one-fifty an hour, I suggest you get proof in three hours.”
“Uh…what if Greg’s not stepping out on Mary?” Dylan asked.
“Oh, he’s cheating,” Ethan replied.
Intrigued, I asked, “How can you be so certain?”
“I’ve been doing this long enough to know, but trust me…even if I were a blind man sitting in on their mediation, I would have been able to see it.”
“That sucks for Mary,” Dylan said, studying the photo of the two of them.
I glanced back at the file, my blood boiling, my hatred of cheaters overtaking my ability to study the information with any kind of logic.
I have always believed there will be a special place in hell for cheaters, but I became acquainted with the devastating effects of them when my parents fired Yolanda, Asher’s and my nanny. I was ten at the time and Asher was twelve. Yolanda had always been with us, and then one day she was gone. We didn’t even get to say good-bye to her. The only explanation our parents would offer was that our nanny had been fired for “lewd behavior.”
A few years later, during one of our parents’ epic fights, we overheard the truth. We sat at the top of the stairs and listened to Mom rage at Dad. She’d just come from one of her luncheons, where the cousin of Yolanda’s new employer loudly “let it slip” that our father had badgered our nanny for years. The day she told him she’d never sleep with him, he fired her. All those years, Mother had believed Yolanda had come on to him. The worst part about it was that Mother didn’t give a damn that Father had propositioned Yolanda or that he had fired her unjustly when she rejected him. The only thing our mom seemed concerned with was her reputation. She was so mortified he’d dragged our family into the middle of a scandal, she threatened to leave and sue him for everything he had. Like usual, Father threw money at the problem until it worked itself out, and Mother stayed.
After learning the truth, Asher spent years trying to find Yolanda without success, but back then we’d been young and had to hide the search from our parents.
Dylan squeezed my arm, giving me a sympathetic smile. I took a deep breath and closed the file. “We’ll do it.”
“Great,” Ethan said. “Can you start tonight?”
“Yes,” I said.
The lawyer stood, shook our hands, and we headed back to the office to plan.
* * *
If you like this sneak peek, you can purchase Throw Dylan from the Train HERE!
©2017 Piper Davenport
Copyright ©2017 by Trixie Publishing
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States
Alexa
&nbs
p; Portland, Oregon
Eight years ago…
FOR AS LONG as I can remember, my mother has always told me that I was a descendent of the House of Romanov, but unless there was a survivor from the massacre, it would be impossible. But Mama loved her stories and you didn’t argue with Mama or you’d find yourself on her “list,” so we always played along.
I might not have been imperial by blood, but I was Mob royalty… a fact I abhorred. And because of my “royal” connections, I had several secrets I was forced to keep. The biggest one being that I’d fallen in love with the son of a notorious biker and if my father discovered our secret, he’d kill him… then me. I was seventeen, after all, and couldn’t possibly know my own mind. My father had all the power when it came to my life… the father who killed people who defied him, so I was kind of stuck.
My parents moved to the US from Russia one year before my brother was born, and they’d quickly acclimated to their new life, taking over most of the West Coast while managing to keep me in a protective bubble. The bubble had burst the second I’d met Reese Alden and he explained a few things to me about how the world of one-percenter motorcycle clubs and Mobs worked.
“Lex!” my brother snapped.
Sergei pulled me from my thoughts and I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yes, darling brother?”
“Her name is Alexa, Sergei,” Mother said. “Don’t make me remind you of that again.”
“Da, Mama,” he said, and met my eyes again. “Alexa. Are you going to homecoming with Vlad?”
It was family dinner hour (or, as Sergei and I referred to it, the witching hour), so it was imperative we played the adoring children, even if it was far from the truth.
“No,” I said (for the umpteenth time). “I’m not going anywhere with Vladimir Kozlov, Sergei, we’ve had this conversation before.”
“I’d like you to go with him,” Father said, his Russian accent heavier than usual, an indication he was tired.
I scowled at Sergei. This was his doing, the little bastard. I schooled my features and faced my father with a serene smile. “Papa, Vladimir is not respectful to me, and I’d rather not subject myself to his wandering hands.”
My father set his knife and fork down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “He touches you?”
“Alexa,” my brother hissed under his breath.
I ignored him.
“Yes, Papa. Often. It’s disgusting,” I whispered. “And he scares me.”
My brother let out a painful groan, albeit quietly, but I refused to let it affect me. I had to get the Kozlovs off my father’s radar in reference to an appropriate family match. If I didn’t, the second I turned eighteen, I’d be forced to marry Vlad.
“He scares you,” Father said, his voice pitched low.
“Da, Papa.”
“I will take care of this.”
Okay, maybe I’d gone too far. I wanted Vlad off my back, not dead.
“Papa, please don’t hurt him,” I rushed to say. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean to scare me.”
“Solnyshko, I will take care of it.”
Well, crap. Whenever Papa called me his small sun, he was on optimum protect Alexa mode.
“Spasibo, Papa.”
“Pretty sneaky, sis,” my brother whispered for my ears only.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and he was mentally stabbing me to death… I knew he was. I knew this look all too well, over far too many games of Battleship and Connect Four. Pretty sneaky sis, indeed.
Vladimir was a friend of his… a disgusting, douchebag friend, but still a friend. I sighed internally. I’d need to figure out how to minimize the damage somehow.
Dinner finally wrapped up (thank God) and we were excused. My brother grabbed my arm and dragged me up to our suite of rooms, pulling me into his room.
“Does Vlad really touch you?”
“Yes,” I said. “All the time. How do you not know this?”
“Maybe because you didn’t tell me.”
I sighed. He was right. “I’m really sorry, Sergei. I should have.”
“Damn it!” He dragged his hands through his hair. “Dad’s the least of his problems.”
“I don’t want him dead,” I insisted. “I just want him to stop harassing me, so if you can figure out a way to make that happen, I’ll love you forever.”
He gave me a wry grin. “You’ll love me forever even if I don’t.”
“This is true. You’re kind of a big deal in my life.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you.”
“Am I still driving you to Paisley’s?”
I nodded. “That would be great.”
My parents refused to let me get my license. They felt it was the man’s job to drive, so I was at the mercy of my brother or one of Papa’s drivers, to take me wherever I needed to go. It sucked.
“Grab your stuff,” Sergei said. “Let’s get out of here before they stop us.”
I was already packed for my overnight with Paisley. No one knew I wasn’t actually planning on being there the entire night, but that’s what best friends were for… cover. Especially when said friends had parents who were rarely home.
Paisley Bell had been my best friend since I was ten. We’d met while attending the same private Catholic school and we’d been close despite the fact she was “normal.” I’d been raised to never speak about my father’s business… not that I was told much, but I was an inquisitive child and found out things I shouldn’t have. The only two people I ever told anything to were Paisley and Sergei.
I kissed my parents and then followed Sergei to the car. We drove in comfortable silence to Paisley’s home in the West Hills of Portland and Sergei walked me to the door. Paisley’s parents were out for a few hours, but my mother had spoken to her mother, so the overnight was sanctioned since Paisley’s parents would be home before midnight.
Paisley pulled open the door and grinned. “Hi, guys.”
My best friend was gorgeous with a capital G, and I smiled as Sergei suddenly got taller. He adored her, but she had no time for him, which was good for him. My brother needed to be taken down a peg or two on the conceit board.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, then slipped into the house and closed the door.
“You’re cutting this close, Lex,” Paisley warned.
“I know.” I bit my lip. “Dinner took a little longer than expected.”
Paisley peeked out the living room window. “Your brother’s gone.”
“Okay.” I glanced at my watch. “Five minutes.”
Four minutes and fifty-eight seconds later, I heard the sweet sound of Harley pipes, and hugged Paisley before rushing out the front door and around the corner. My breath hitched as I watched Reese swing his leg off his bike and remove his helmet.
Good gravy, I loved him with everything I had. I made a run for him, his arms coming around me as I slammed against him, kissing him deeply. “Ohmigod, I’ve missed you, sugar bear.”
Reese was nineteen and had always reminded me of a Norse god. Shaggy, dark hair, soft to the touch, fell over his forehead shielding his deep blue eyes when he desired it to. Never to me, though. I always got his full attention when he was with me. I’d given him his nickname mostly because it had irritated him and he got the cutest look on his face whenever I used it… but now he was so used to it, his look was gone, replaced with an expression of loving resignation.
He chuckled. “Missed you too, Freckles.”
I was a sucker for his nickname for me, partly because he was such a badass and there was nothing sexier than a biker badass calling me “Freckles.” But mostly because it was said in such reverence. I used to hate my freckly face until he informed me it was one of his favorite things about me.
His father and my father were the same. Oh, Papa would say that John “Brick” Alden was far below him, but my father killed people for a living while trafficking drugs, and so did Reese’s. The only difference was, my father
flaunted his wealth, giving the impression he was high-class, while Reese’s dad was part of the Rockford Spiders out of Gresham, a nasty and gruff motorcycle club, indicating he didn’t care what impression he gave.
I’d met Reese when my brother dragged me and Paisley to a bonfire out at Cannon Beach two years ago. Reese and his buddy, Ryder, were already on the beach and they had beer. My brother and his friends sniffed them out in zero point two, and Paisley and I had no choice but to go along for the ride.
I’d ended up talking to Reese all night. I was surprised to discover he didn’t really drink much… he said his dad was an angry drunk and he didn’t want to turn out like him.
After that, our relationship was an exercise in subterfuge, which admittedly, made things a little more exciting.
“How long we got?” Reese asked after he stopped kissing me.
“Until midnight.”
“Okay, Cinderella, let’s roll.”
After another kiss, he handed me a helmet and a leather jacket, then I climbed on his bike behind him. Reese drove me to our private make-out hill overlooking Portland. Despite the cold, I felt warm, especially when Reese pulled an oversized sleeping bag out of his saddlebags.
“Is this thing going to give you enough room to get a good smack or two in?” I asked.
“Fuck, baby. Seriously?” he asked, and I couldn’t help but notice his growing erection.
I giggled. I had just discovered I loved having his hand connect with my ass…like, I thought about it constantly, and demanded it anytime we had sex. It had all happened about six months ago when we’d been at Paisley’s parents’ beach house. Paisley and her boyfriend at the time invited us up for the weekend, and they left us alone in the house for a couple of hours. Reese had playfully smacked me as we headed into the bedroom and I attacked him, ripping off my clothes and begging him to do it again. Because the thought of hurting me (even when I begged for it) was abhorrent to him, it took some convincing, but now we both looked forward to our version of a little kink.
“Yes, seriously,” I said.
Reese shook his head. “That stays behind closed doors, I think.”
Dial A for Addison (S.A.F.E Detective Agency Book 1) Page 21
