by Lexi Blake
She couldn’t explain to them that she thought it had been the presence of Kyle Hawthorne that had done her in. Like he always did.
After all, he’d been the one to kill her.
The door came open and two kids strode out. Carys and Luke Taggart. Carys was fifteen with auburn hair, and Luke was eleven and already had an inch on his sister. Neither looked like Kyle, but they might be a fun way to twist a knife in his heart since she knew how much he cared for his half siblings.
They walked by, chattering like the sheep they were about something Aidan had done and how someone named Kala was going to end up in military school if she didn’t stop making trouble.
She barely heard them since that door was taking a while to close and she could see him.
Kyle. The love of her life. The man she intended to pay back for the hell he’d put her through.
She didn’t know if she would kill him yet. He really was too beautiful to die, but love was supposed to be forever. It wasn’t supposed to wilt simply because one of the lovers found out the other understood the world and her place in it. He’d folded quickly when he’d discovered her side job and brought the CIA down on her head.
She’d barely survived him. He’d cost her everything, even her face since she’d needed surgery to hide the fact that she wasn’t as dead as they thought she was.
Yet here she was—just a girl standing in front of a boy’s hospital room asking him to love her.
Her cell phone buzzed and she sighed because the door was closed again, and it would be a while before she got another glimpse of him. She stepped away and answered the call. She didn’t need to look at the number. There was only one person who ever called. Kyle had cost her all her other relationships. Not that there had been many. A few women and men she referred to as friends. Her mom had been useful from time to time.
Now there was only the man on the other end of this call, the one who sent her out to do the bidding of her bosses.
“Hello?”
“I’d like to know why I’m hearing rumors about Drew Lawless buying Genedyne.”
Fuck. She felt her jaw tighten. She’d wondered why the tech billionaire had visited the day before. He’d shown up with his wife and kids and disappeared into the hospital room Kyle was sharing with Greg Hutchins. Lawless wasn’t in her group. The truth of the matter was Lawless wasn’t big enough to be welcomed into the Consortium, even if he hadn’t been an uptight Boy Scout no one trusted. But he was big enough to do some damage. “I suspect Taggart called him in. Or Hutchins. He’s done some work for Lawless’s company over the years, and he’s still friends with Lawless’s brother-in-law. I suspect he’s trying to save Noelle LaVigne’s work.”
“But we wanted to quash LaVigne’s work. It isn’t in our best interests to have the price of helium go down at this time,” the deep voice said.
“Then we’ll have to find another way because I seriously doubt Lawless can be convinced to change his mind.” Her own brain was working, putting together the hows and whys. “I’ve heard he’s putting a lot of money into quantum computing. Having access to cheap helium will help enormously until he can figure out how to make the systems work at a more reasonable temperature.”
The fact that quantum machines still only functioned at near absolute zero was a drawback Lawless would love to solve, and apparently he meant to do it by buying himself a tech think tank and all of the research ever done under Jessica Layne’s name.
“I don’t like it and neither does the board. LaVigne found Madison Wallace’s research and released it to the public. Do you understand what that means?”
It meant that somewhere down the line a whole bunch of people might not die from cancer or need ridiculously expensive treatments. Still, he was overreacting. “So our medical groups should get right on that.” She sighed. “I know this has been a clusterfuck of a week, but at least Layne won’t be a problem anymore. I’ll ensure we have a few of our people embedded at the new Genedyne so we can keep an eye on anything coming down the pipeline and perhaps discredit the research we need to.”
“See that you do. I’ll call you in a few days with a new assignment.”
The line went dead, and she slid the phone back into her pocket.
The Taggart kids were coming back, sodas in hand after what must have been a visit to the vending machines. They’d picked up a friend.
Mae Beatrice Vaughn. Such a silly name for a whore. She actually looked way better with all those bruises. It was unfortunate that Layne and her men had failed to do any long-term damage to the idiot her Kyle made puppy eyes at.
The purple-haired moron wasn’t worthy of Kyle, but in some ways Julia understood. What they’d had had been so passionate, so overwhelming, that he needed a bleating sheep in his life after their relationship.
She watched as MaeBe walked along with Kyle’s half siblings. The door came open, and there was no way to miss the light in Kyle’s eyes when he caught sight of the trio.
Her heart clenched and she hated the fact that the look on his face wasn’t for her.
He was her one weakness. She should slip into his room and end it, but she couldn’t.
Perhaps it would be more fun to burn his world down around him.
Starting with his family. He loved his brother David. It might be fun to play with him. Yes, that would be a good start, but in the end she would take them all down.
* * * *
“Grace, he’s fine. He took a bullet to the lung, covered it with duct tape, and still managed to take out the bad guys,” Sean Taggart was saying.
“Uh, I took two bullets, and Kyle wouldn’t share the duct tape, so you might ask him to share that sandwich.” Hutch looked to the sad cup of gelatin the nurse had brought him as a snack and prayed the celebrated chef would take pity on him.
“Eat your Jell-O, dude.” Kyle gave him a shit-eating grin. Getting shot and going through surgery had done odd things for his mood. The normally taciturn guy had been positively cheery since they’d wheeled them into this room for a couple of days recovery.
Grace sent her son a frown and brought a second bag over to Hutch’s bed. “Of course we brought you some lunch. And a slice of chocolate cake.”
His stomach rumbled.
“Should you be eating that?” Kyle asked. “I got a lung shot, but you got hit twice in the abdomen.”
“It missed my stomach.” He’d been lucky. A couple of days here and he could recover at his place, where Noelle and her stepmom had already been working to make the house more comfortable. They’d been shopping in between Noelle taking meetings with Drew Lawless.
That had been his idea. Even with Jessica Layne dead, there were legal difficulties involving all the research that had been done at Genedyne and who owned it. Drew Lawless had been happy to pick it all up for a multimillion dollar song, and Noelle was going to take the lead when it came to the research portion of the new company.
“You both deserve good food,” Grace said with a smile as she put the bag on his tray. “After what you two went through, you should both take a nice long rest. I’m happy to hear that Noelle’s parents are staying with you for a while.”
“Lila’s going to stay for a week. She wants to make sure I recover all right.” Noelle’s stepmom was a force of nature who’d had everyone in the hospital hopping. “Her dad is taking her brothers back to Louisiana tomorrow. They’re afraid I might be too fragile to be around the boys. They like to destroy things.”
Her brothers were awesome and sweet. Armie LaVigne was on the scary side, but once Noelle had explained how he’d taken that second bullet for her, he’d warmed considerably.
“They seem like lovely people,” Grace said. “And your Noelle is so smart.”
She was smart and kind and so gorgeous it hurt to look at her. He already missed her.
“Hey, did they figure out who the other agent was?” Sean Taggart had been filled in on the entire op.
“MaeBe and Noelle both gave us descript
ions and we had a police artist sketch the suspect, but she’s a ghost,” Kyle admitted. “I don’t think we have to worry about her again. She did her job and she’ll move on to the next one.”
“Now that we found the material Madison Wallace hid in Noelle’s locker, there’s no reason for anyone to come after Noelle for anything but to curry favor with the new boss.” It had felt good to be able to make that happen for her. Genedyne would be what it was supposed to be. It would be a place where scientists tried to change the world.
“I can’t believe you just put it out there,” Grace said with a shake of her head. “That was an amazingly generous thing to do. The company could have kept it.”
“Noelle wanted to do it, and she convinced Lawless.” His future wife had a huge heart. “Madison’s research is promising, but it’s in its infancy. Now there will be a race to see who can make it work first. And that means we might cure cancer. There are things no one should put a price tag on.”
Grace looked down at him. “Do you know how proud your mother would be of you?”
His mom. She’d been caught in such a bad place, and sometimes he only remembered her crying and wanting to hide. But there had been times when she’d snuck in late at night and crawled into bed with him and held him when he’d been sick. When she’d told him she loved him.
“I hope so.” He often wondered what would have happened if his mother had lived. She would have loved Noelle.
“I know so,” Grace promised.
And then the door opened and Carys and Luke were back with the drinks they’d gone to get, and MaeBe walked in with a smile, though her face was still healing. Grace had a huge hug for MaeBe, and Kyle seemed to have lost interest in his food because all his attention was focused on her.
It wasn’t a minute before Noelle walked in and brought all of the sunshine in the world with her.
“Hey,” she said, moving to his bedside. “Lila and I bought dishes and all new sheets for the bed. Yours are terrible. I hope you don’t mind.”
He reached for her hand. “I supplied our house. You make it livable.”
It hadn’t been a home without her. She leaned over and kissed him and then they were all talking. MaeBe was describing how she was definitely taking more self-defense classes. Grace was talking about David’s research, and Sean was going on about the new specials at Top.
Hutch sat back and enjoyed the family he had.
Hours later, while Noelle napped in the chair beside him, Hutch relished the quiet.
“Hey, man,” Kyle said softly. “We’re friends again, right?”
He would be friends with any dude who could duct tape his own body and make it up the stairs in time to knife a guy who was trying to kill him. “Yeah.”
Kyle sighed. “I think you know more about me than you’re saying. I think Michael followed me for a couple of days.”
This was one subject they hadn’t broached. “If he did, it’s only because Big Tag was worried.”
“I was calling a man named Drake.” Kyle let the admission sit for a moment. “That night I snuck out of your house, I called Drake. He was my handler when I did work for the Agency.”
“I know him.”
“I don’t work for him anymore,” Kyle said. “But he was there on the worst day of my life. I don’t think I make it through without Drake. There’s a day that I’m trying to piece together, and he’s helping me. It’s got nothing to do with McKay-Taggart, and the woman at the center of it is dead.”
“Julia?”
Kyle groaned. “Damn, Tag’s good. Yeah. She’s gone. She was working for some bad people and tried to drag me into it. Just know that it’s over and I’m not working for anyone but Tag.”
“Okay.” He believed Kyle. He understood what it meant to have a dark past. He hoped Kyle could find the light.
“I’m going to take you up on that beer someday,” Kyle said quietly.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Hutch promised.
It was what family did. They were there when a man was ready to change.
Noelle’s hand reached out to find his.
He squeezed it and let himself rest.
Epilogue
Papillon, LA
Six months later
Michael Malone looked out over the patio of the bed and breakfast where Hutch’s wedding reception was taking place. He felt that familiar sense of joy with a twinge of regret that he got every time he’d gone to a wedding in the last five or six years.
A lot of his friends had gotten married. His twin had married years ago. JT and Nina had two kids Michael adored. Everyone was settling. Even his ex-fiancée. He’d gotten that invite in the mail and wondered why he’d made the freaking decision to stay friends with her.
Because she was a good woman who deserved all the happiness in the world. She simply hadn’t been right for him, and he hadn’t been the man for her.
He was starting to think there wasn’t a woman in the world for him.
“Hey, did you try the punch?” Big Tag moved in beside him. He’d ditched his jacket and tie and seemed more relaxed for it. “There’s a lot of rum in this sucker.”
“Yeah, it’s an interesting place. And Hutch’s new inlaws seem cool.” They were all out on the dance floor, swaying to the music and enjoying the evening. Hutch was in the middle of it all, his new wife in his arms.
“Oh, this whole place is insane,” Tag said with a smile. “I like it.”
Tag always had loved some well-intentioned chaos. “Did you like the gator? They act like run-ins with large reptiles are no big deal.”
Tag shrugged a big shoulder. “Hutch says his name is Otis and he’s kind of the town’s mascot. I thought he smelled like ass, and he made me happy my girls are content with Bud, who can be easily groomed.”
Maybe he should get a dog and forget the whole wife and kids’ thing. He and Fido could live happily until Fido died and he had to start over again.
He was getting maudlin in his old age.
“You okay?” Taggart asked him the question like he was worried.
When the boss got worried, he tended to do things. Like set a man up. Michael smiled what he hoped was his brightest smile. “Of course. I’m at a wedding. There were some pretty cute bridesmaids.”
Tag’s eyes rolled. “Yeah, you’re really into the mid-twenties set. All of Noelle’s friends are babies.”
He hadn’t noticed. He didn’t notice much of anything these days. He worked a lot. He sat through family events he didn’t truly feel a part of. He was drifting and completely unsure how to get back on track. “It’s probably better that way. Hutch can be surprisingly mean when it comes to revenge. Or pranks. Adam is still talking about the colonic his smart toilet gave him.”
That got Tag laughing. “Ah, good times, man. Good times.”
He took a sip of his punch and then put a hand on Michael’s shoulder.
Michael knew that shoulder pat. It was Tag’s I-need-a-favor shoulder pat. “What is it?”
“Am I that easy to read now? Well, it’s probably true. I’ve got a job for you when we get back to Dallas.”
That wasn’t anything new. “I figured you would. You keep us pretty busy.”
“It’s a job of a sensitive nature,” Tag allowed.
“Okay. What’s it involve? The Agency? Are we still looking for the woman who set Noelle up?” He’d like to find her. “Is it about Kyle?”
“I’m not worried about Kyle anymore,” Tag admitted. “He’s a good kid. He’s got some shit to work through, but who doesn’t? No. It’s more about the client than anything else. The job itself is pretty straightforward. I’ve got a client who’s worried about his business. He thinks he might have a corporate spy in his midst, and he needs someone to get close to the woman to find out what’s going on.”
Close to meant he might have to romance someone. The thought made him sigh. “Tag, I don’t know that I’m the right agent.”
“It’s Vanessa Hale.”
> He turned to Tag. “The film star? She’s in Dallas?”
Tag nodded. “She’s left the industry entirely. She was raised here. Her mom died recently, and she moved home. She’s living in the house her mom left her.”
Vanessa Hale had made a splash a decade ago when she’d first shown up on-screen. She’d been declared a rising star, but somewhere along the way she’d gotten off track. He didn’t follow the Hollywood gossip, but even he had heard about the starlet’s scandals and her marriage that had everyone labeling her a gold digger.
“Isn’t she married to a billionaire?” She’d married some old man and become a trophy wife and sparked a million tabloid stories.
“Oh, he died last year and her husband’s son took her to court, and she got left with nothing. She was given a pittance, and that was sucked up by legal fees,” Tag explained. “She came home with very little.”
He had to admit, he was intrigued. And Vanessa Hale was a beautiful woman. At least she had been. “Are you saying she’s being accused of spying on someone?”
“She took a job a couple of months back, and now there are some problems with the firm,” Tag explained.
“Why me?” The truth hit him. “Damn it. You think she’ll get close to me because of who I am.”
His father and brother ran Malone Oil. Michael worked but had a trust fund that would always ensure a certain type of woman found him attractive. He was bait.
“I don’t think that will hurt. My client thinks you might be able to draw her in,” Tag said. “She’s described her perfect man, and you fit the bill physically. Dani’s gotten close to her. That’s another worry.”
Suspicion flared hard. Tag had buried the lead on this one. “Dani? Danielle Lodge-Taylor? Ian, is the client Julian Lodge?”
“Yes, and Vanessa Hale, as a new employee in Julian’s financial firm, gets club access. I need you to go into The Club and find out what’s going on with her.”
It would be a tightrope he would have to walk. Julian Lodge had been Big Tag’s first investor and now a friend. He wasn’t merely a client. Julian was part of Ian’s family.
