Chief

by Lesli Richardson

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also by the Author

  Author's Note

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Sneak Peek - Dignity (Determination Trilogy 1)

  About the Author

  Meet the Chief…

  Behind every good man is a good woman. That’s what they say.

  They’re wrong. Even my wife would agree.

  The truth is, behind every good man is a real bastard—that would be me.

  I knew from the day I met Owen that the only way I’d ever get him was to make sure I took whatever it was he loved and wanted most and hold it so close to me that he couldn’t help but come with it.

  He did.

  And now…now there are people who want to tear the three of us apart.

  I’ll die before I let that happen.

  I am Carter Wilson, chief of staff to the governor of the great state of Florida.

  And, according to him and my wife, a bastard extraordinaire.

  Chief

  Governor Trilogy

  Book 3

  Lesli Richardson

  http://www.LesliRichardson.com

  Chief

  Governor Trilogy Book 3

  Copyright © 2018 by Lesli Richardson

  First E-book Publication: September, 2018

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This work may not be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means currently available or available in the future, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, for free or for sale, without express written permission from the publisher and author.

  Distributing copies of this e-book to others is a violation of international copyright law and infringes the rights of the legal copyright holder. This e-book may not be shared, copied, sold, given away, offered as a contest prize, or otherwise distributed to anyone other than the original purchaser. Distributing this e-book as part of any collection, or with any type of resale permission, is also strictly forbidden and a violation of copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This is my livelihood. PLEASE do NOT share, upload, or otherwise distribute this book. When people buy my books, it pays my bills. Please don’t steal from me. If you want me to keep bringing you more stories, I need to be able to pay my bills, so I ask that you please legally purchase my books. If you want to give this file to someone else, please purchase them a copy from a legal retailer. The links are on my website. Thank you.

  www.LesliRichardson.com

  Also by the Author

  Sign up for my author newsletter, where I post info about both my Lesli Richardson and Tymber Dalton pen names, and never miss a new release or update!

  http://eepurl.com/cXKR7v

  Writing as Lesli Richardson:

  The Bleacke Shifter Series

  Bleacke’s Geek

  Geek Chic

  A Bleacke Wind

  Bleacke Spirit

  The Great Turning Series

  The Great Turning

  The Great Turning: Into the Turn

  The Great Turning: Future Ages

  Governor Trilogy

  Governor

  Lieutenant

  Chief

  Determination Trilogy (Coming December, 2018)

  Dignity

  Diligence

  Desire

  Of Boardwalks and Bison

  Cross Country Chaos

  Poly (Coming February, 2019)

  Lesli Richardson is better known by her more prolific Tymber Dalton pen name. Check out her website for more info on all her titles under both her pen names, including full book and series listings, trivia, character information, and more.

  http://www.tymberdalton.com

  Honest reviews are greatly appreciated and can help boost a book’s rankings on retail sites. Thank you!

  Author's Note

  Florida politics are messy, nasty, sexy, brutal, funny, insane, impossibly complex, and a lot of fun to write about. (Mostly because they’re messy, nasty, sexy, brutal, funny, insane, and impossibly complex.)

  Since the focus of this trilogy isn’t the politics so much as it is the people, I’ve taken certain liberties and simplified a few things here and there.

  But the kinky shit is absolutely realistic.

  This is book 3 in the Governor Trilogy. Some events referenced in this book take place in books 1 and 2. Therefore, it is recommended that the books be read in order.

  Dedication

  To Hubby, for everything he does. To Sir—He knows why.

  To my bestie & PA, Trish, who believed in Carter when I introduced him to her.

  And massive thanks to Sadie Haller for the pep talks!

  Chapter One

  Now — Election Night

  They say behind every good man is a good woman. That’s sometimes true.

  In this case, behind one particularly good man is a real fucking bastard.

  That would be me.

  A bastard extraordinaire, as Owen dubbed me so many years ago. But he also knows he’d never be where he is without me. We both know that. All I did was watch him, figure out what he wanted, needed, and loved…and then gave it to him.

  With a few strings attached, of course.

  I wouldn’t be a bastard if I didn’t do that.

  I grew up the youngest of seven boys in a house that valued stereotypical masculinity above all. My dad was Airborne. My mother was an Army brat. I wanted to go to college, but if I’d broken from family tradition and failed to enlist after that, I would have faced life-long shit from my family.

  So I enlisted. Unlike my brothers, who took ROTC in college, I go in straight out of high school to get it over with. Earned me a Purple Heart for my efforts, which got me a medical discharge, a disability pension, the adoration of my family…

  …and led to me meeting Owen at the start of our second year of college at USF in Tampa, where we were randomly assigned as roommates in the dorm.

  In retrospect, I’m good with that trade-off.

  The main obstacle in my path to winning Owen’s heart was Susannah Joleen Evans. Which, all things considered, wasn’t nearly as difficult to overcome as I’d thought it’d be.

  There’s a reason Owen and Susa call me the bastard extraordinaire—it’s because I am a bastard.

  They’re absolutely right.

  Unfortunately, I learned the hard way early on that being a bastard was the only way to survive. It would also be the only way to get what I really wanted.

  I wanted Owen.

  * * * *

  The three of us have a tradition now on election nights. We rent space for that night’s party at the same downtown Tampa hotel we’ve always used, and we reserve a suite there for us for after the party. Once the results are in, and the party ends, and we can finally peel ourselves a
way from the supporters and campaign staff and press to retreat to the safety of our suite, I’m usually reflective.

  Tonight, the night of Owen’s re-election, is no different.

  It’s hard to remember the man I was twenty years ago when I first crossed paths with Owen at the beginning of our second year of college at USF in Tampa.

  By the time I met Owen, nearly every last bit of good has been burned from my soul. What little good is left is scorched, seared, and I show it to no one.

  That’s what it feels like, anyway.

  The perfect emotional makeup to be an attorney, it would seem. Cold, calculating, exposing no weakness.

  During my first year of school, I keep to myself, study my ass off, and while I’m pleasant to my immediate fellow dorm occupants, I enforce a polite distance. I keep what little vulnerability I have left locked down tight.

  I pretend my nightmares are about what happened that day in the desert, and sometimes they are.

  Mostly, they’re not.

  I hated the roommate I was given my first year. Sure, I could have not turned him in to the RA for underage drinking in our room.

  But by turning the kid in and getting rid of him, it meant I had a room entirely to myself.

  I wasn’t going to complain about that.

  Hey, wasn’t like I didn’t warn the kid I’d do it, either.

  Don’t give me a hard time about it. He and his friends were breaking the law and putting both my freedom and my scholarship in jeopardy.

  Fuck that shit.

  My plan for my second year of college is to do the same thing—observe my roommate, evaluate them for weaknesses, and then obliterate them. They’d never see me coming.

  Until Owen enters my life and that plan disintegrates.

  I know I’m in love with Owen from the moment I first set eyes on him. I thought Owen was fucking gorgeous when I first walked in to my newly assigned dorm room and realized he was my roommate. He was hot and had no clue that he was, which made him even hotter. Polite, fumbling, innocent, apologetic, a bundle of nerves and submissive, chaotic, low-key needy energy that drew me right to him.

  I thought he was charmingly adorable when I realized he couldn’t fold clothes or make a rack worth a damn, and the harder he tried, the more flustered he grew.

  I thought he was heartbreakingly endearing when I learned more about him, his childhood. The bitch who’d given birth to him and who also emotionally tortured him for his entire life.

  I recognized his fragility, wanted to tuck him close to my side, protect him from the world, and never let him out of my sight.

  I wanted my arm around his shoulders, my collar around his neck, my ropes around his body, and his mouth around my cock.

  I wanted to do whatever it took to win this man over and make him happy. Make him mine.

  As I get to know him, it’s almost as if the charred shell I’d withdrawn inside of to protect myself has suddenly shattered, leaving me vulnerable for the first time in years.

  Wanting to be vulnerable to Owen, and not even knowing how.

  It makes me immediately shift my plans from wanting to learn everything about him so I could weaponize it against him, to wanting to know everything about him so I could make him mine.

  I…needed him.

  It also scares the fuck out of me.

  Unfortunately, I recognize that, from the moment Owen sets eyes on Susa just a few days later, he’s in love with her. That nearly makes me hate my future wife on sight. The last thing I want to do is share Owen with Susa Evans.

  Until I realize who she is and what she can do for Owen.

  And once I finally admit she has the power to make him happy in ways I never can.

  It also means my life quickly distills down to one point—I need Susa to get Owen. Which I suspect won’t be too hard, because it doesn’t take me long to suss out that Susa’s attracted to me. This works to my advantage, meaning far less effort required on my behalf.

  Am I proud of that?

  Not particularly. Not that I give a fuck, either.

  Soon after Owen and I meet Susa and go over to her house that first night to help rid her of her ex-boyfriend, Owen makes a very apt joke about him being a well-trained pet.

  He isn’t wrong.

  His narcissistic mother has trained him in many ways, both subtle and blatant—ways that Owen doesn’t fully understand, at the time.

  That also works to my benefit.

  It means I will have a much easier time training him as my pet. But to do that, it means I also have to train Susa, and convince her to want Owen as her pet as much as he wants to be her pet.

  To get her to want to keep Owen as her pet as much as she wants to be my pet.

  Because, ironically, Susa is in love with me.

  I suppose a good man, upon discovering a girl nearly ten years younger than him is in love with him—a girl who’s also the object of his best friend’s affections—would have walked away from the situation.

  I am not a good man, and have never claimed to be one.

  I am a bastard.

  In this case, it works in my favor.

  Not only do I not discourage Susa’s affection, I nurture and groom it. Shamelessly.

  Also in secret, because—ironically—I don’t want to hurt Owen. It’s easy to convince Susa to keep things quiet, too, and why. Because she cares about Owen. Is attracted to him, even.

  But it’s me she lusts after. Once I realize who she is, who her father is, then yes, I absolutely have to have her.

  We need her if I’m ever going to get Owen elected governor. More accurately, we need her father and his pull over movers and shakers in the GOP if we’re ever going to gain traction to make a successful third-party run.

  While I did my time in the Army and not the Marines, the motto Improvise, Adapt, Overcome applied there, too. Especially in-country.

  I apply it to this situation.

  Hooah.

  Thus a heavenly third-party union is forged in the tropical fires of Hell that are Florida politics. I wouldn’t subject Owen to allegiance to one party or the other. Fuck both of them. Both have strengths, and both have even more weaknesses.

  Fatal flaws. Flaws I refuse to inflict upon Owen’s political career. I’d rather lose honestly as a third-party candidate than bend over and whore him out to the elephants or the jackasses.

  Neither of them are good enough for him. We’d build something from the ground up, something better.

  Something we could look back on and be proud of.

  Something that was ours.

  And we have, even if Benchley Evans publicly “jokes” that our status as Independents somehow contributed to his heart attack.

  No, asshole, that would be too much booze, a shitty diet, and smoking cigars for over forty years that did it to you.

  Your daughter achieving what she has in her career should be considered the crown jewel in your life’s accomplishments, not something to fucking joke about with a wink and a nod to your buddies that indicates you all think she did this because of you, not in spite of you.

  More accurately, to spite you.

  I think all these things, but I hide them behind smiles and well-placed yes, sirs and no, sirs when talking to the man.

  I’m a bastard, but I’m not stupid.

  If I piss him off too much, he’ll do anything he can to hurt Owen, even if it means Susa’s political career becomes collateral damage in the process.

  I know this, because Benchley is as much of a bastard as I am.

  Fortunately, I have more than a little leverage against the man to keep him in line.

  Leverage Susa and Owen know nothing about.

  And, hopefully, never will.

  * * * *

  This has been a long and interesting journey, these past twenty years. Tonight, as I stand here in this hotel suite and watch Susa and Owen at the window, where they’re staring down at the downtown Tampa skyline following our public victory celebrati
on downstairs, I can’t help but smile.

  My pets say I have different smiles, and this one is probably the one they’ve labeled “that smirk.”

  I watch Owen hold his arm out and Susa tucks herself against his side, his other hand coming to rest on her tummy as he drops a tender kiss to the top of her head.

  My sweet pets. I love watching them together. The re-elected governor and lieutenant governor of the great state of Florida.

  Hopefully, in four years, Susa will take Owen’s place as governor.

  And they’re both mine.

  Thankfully, I decided to go for broke and claim both these beautiful souls. Because if I hadn’t, had I run Susa off like I’d originally wanted to all those years ago, she wouldn’t be here to give Owen that gift which I could not, and finally help heal that last lingering wound within his soul.

  She will make him a father.

  The one thing I always wished I could be and never can. Not now.

  Not after the last person I trusted before meeting Owen and Susa turned me into the fucking bastard extraordinaire I am today.

  Chapter Two

  Then

  Most major decisions I make in my life have come about in one of two ways—carefully and thoughtfully, after weighing all the options and available facts, or snap judgments, which are usually reserved for life-or-death kinds of scenarios. Or, barring it appears to be a life-or-death decision at the time, snap judgments I’ve made frequently end up being life-shattering or life-altering decisions, when looked upon in retrospect.

  Throwing myself over my three guys that day in the desert was a snap judgment.