Front Range Cowboys (5 Book Box Set)

by Evie Nichole

  “I cheated on my wife.”

  He sank back into the chair and put his hands over his face. If Daphne hadn’t known better, she would have thought the man was about to start sobbing his eyes out. No. Wait. Yes, he was absolutely starting to cry. What. The. Hell? When had the entire world gone crazy?

  “How long can you put this off?” Daphne licked her lips. She didn’t want to change jobs. She didn’t want to move out of her office or try to find a new place to work and start at the bottom of the ladder again. It wasn’t fair. None of it was. So, she aimed to figure all of this out. “Is there some kind of deadline or legal bullshit on Justin’s request or complaint?”

  “No. In theory, I have thirty days to respond.” Abernathy sniffled and reached for a tissue in his front jacket pocket. “But I don’t want to let things go that long. I’m afraid Justin will get impatient and show the photographs to my wife.”

  “Yeah, he’s good with a camera,” Daphne agreed bitterly. “He’s probably angry that I turned his attempt to make Met Hernandez look like a drunken moron into a chance for the guy to come out smelling like roses.”

  “So, Justin was the one who took the damaging photographs of Met Hernandez and sent them to the Tattler?” Abernathy sounded mystified.

  How could this man be in the business of public relations and seem so naive when it came to all of the dirt? Not only that, but he had his own dirt! He made his fortune protecting other people’s dirt and then had the audacity to go make his own? Hello?

  “Did you not think you were going to get caught cheating?” Daphne could not help it. She could not understand why this man had been unfaithful to his wife. “You’ve been married for decades! Why would you do anything to screw that up? I’ve met Blanche. She’s a really nice lady. Did you get bored or something?”

  “No.” Abernathy was now really squirming right there in the chair before her desk. What had he done? It had to be horrible because he was acting like there was a guillotine hanging over his head. “I—uh—I met a young lady here at the office.”

  It all clicked, and Daphne was absolutely unable to contain her groan of disgust and despair. “For heaven’s sake! You slept with Carolina!”

  “She’s a very talented young lady,” Abernathy squeaked. “You would have to spend some time with her, but I think you’d really like her.”

  “I wouldn’t like her at all sitting in my desk. And I would like her even less if I were any other employee in this company and I found out that she was screwing her way up the ladder to the top.” Daphne shook her head. What was wrong with this man? “I expected better of you. I really did.”

  The idea of quitting her job to go elsewhere so Mr. Abernathy could stick his mistress in her job and not get caught doing it was preposterous. She could not abide the thought of just giving up. That meant she had to find out what Justin was really up to. He had to be doing something illegal. Met’s brother had hired that private investigator to see what he could dig up on Justin. Surely that wouldn’t be hard. The guy had always been bragging about his connections in law enforcement that allowed him to get away with pretty much anything he wanted.

  Daphne drummed her fingers on her desktop. The rhythmic noise helped her focus. She needed help. She was so frustrated and confused right now that she was spinning mental circles in her head. There had to be a way to tie all of this up and make Justin Sorenson pay for his misdoings. He had threatened her, threatened Met, threatened Abernathy, and he was constantly prying into people’s private business.

  “Justin is an opportunist,” Daphne murmured to nobody in particular. “Where would he see an opportunity to make those pictures pay? Where would he find someone willing to trade him favors in exchange for his harassment of a Hernandez?”

  There was only one person that fit that description, and his name was Captain Paul Weatherby. There had to be a connection. And when Daphne found it, the whole thing would come tumbling down like a house of cards.

  “Don’t do anything just yet,” Daphne told Abernathy. “So help me God, if you put Carolina in my office, I will string you up by your toes. I’m not resigning.”

  “You’re not?” He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to be happy or sad about that. “But what about Carolina’s promotion? I promised her something.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have let your dick do the talking, sir.” Daphne pointed at her boss. “And you’ve got some explaining to do. It’s time to come clean with your wife. Even if she leaves your ass, it will at least be out of the shadows and unable to be used as a weapon against you. Get a clue, sir. This is what we do, remember?”

  He sighed and lifted himself out of the chair. “Why do women have to be so pushy?”

  “Because we spend all of our time cleaning up after men,” Daphne retorted. Or at least today that’s what it most certainly felt like.

  Chapter Thirty

  Unbelievable. At least that’s what Met Hernandez felt about the sudden text from Daphne Evans. He stared down at the screen of his smartphone for all of two seconds before clicking the button on the side to lock the phone and then slipping the thing back into his pocket. Maybe if he just didn’t respond, kind of like she’d been doing, she would get the message. He turned his attention back to Zach and his friend Ryan, who were currently showing him around The Players Club.

  “So, at the moment, the place is set up like a standard night club,” Met mused. He pivoted in a circle and took it all in while Ryan nodded and started pulling permits and contracts out of a folder.

  As with most clubs and bars, the place looked very different in daylight hours. Met was no stranger to these places. He’d been in honkytonks from California to New York. He’d seen them with themes that changed every few months to neighborhood watering holes that hadn’t changed a thing in decades. It all depended on the crowd, the intent, and the resources available.

  “Is the place equipped with a kitchen?” Met asked Ryan. He had so far noticed that there was a catwalk and balcony area upstairs in the rafters that were currently unused, and a front area that had once appeared to hold tables and chairs or booths.

  “We do have a full kitchen,” Ryan admitted. He glanced at Zach and then shrugged. “But we never had the resources to hire a cook or anything. And offering a menu seemed like overkill when we mostly have college students looking for a drink and a hookup.”

  “Food is a fantastic way to get people to stay,” Met murmured. He headed toward the bar and took a look behind it. The setup was standard, but it was neat and tidy. Zach was certainly a good bartender/manager to have on staff.

  Ryan was a pretty normal sort of bar or club owner. He’d purchased the place as a joint venture, and the other partners had gradually sold out or had become more or less silent as they moved on to other things. Ryan was now middle-aged with a family and a successful landscaping and snow removal business that took up most of his time. He didn’t necessarily want to get out of the bar business. He just didn’t have time to run it. As far as Met was concerned, this suited him just fine.

  “So, you have capital?” Ryan was apparently having some trouble trying to figure out exactly how Met fit into this whole scene. “I’ll admit you don’t look like the type.”

  Met flashed Ryan a quick grin. “My family is in ranching. I think it would be a good idea for all of us to diversify just a little, but that comes with a certain cost.”

  “Meaning what?” Ryan now looked miffed, as though he were afraid that Met had just wasted his time. “You have to ask your parents or something?”

  “No.” Met chuckled. The idea alone was obnoxious. “I mean that we would have to be able to have our ranching business somehow present here. Either in sponsoring pay per view events. Perhaps in some of the décor or other things. I’d have to speak to my older brother Laredo. He’s the business brains of the outfit.”

  “Wait a second.” Ryan pointed at Met. “Your family is the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company?”

  “Yes.” Met
cocked his head to one side. These days there was always the possibility that someone had read that ridiculous article. “Is that a problem?”

  “No!”

  Ryan waved his hands in front of him so emphatically that Zach rolled his eyes. The bartender had been silent for the duration of the meeting. It was hard to tell what his thoughts might actually be, but it was apparent that he didn’t have a whole lot of respect for his boss as a businessman.

  “What do you think, Zach?” Met prompted.

  Zach’s solid gaze settled on Met, and the man shrugged. “I think we need an overhaul. I think we need a new theme. This nightclub thing is tired. The lighting is bad. People have trouble conversing because the acoustics are horrible. And I think a menu would be a good move. We get requests for bar food all the time. I think if students could come here and get a quick bite to eat and then dance for a while, we’d have a huge crowd every night of the week.”

  “So, a bar and grill type of thing?” Met was liking this guy more and more. “A friend of mine owns Cody’s, and that’s what they’ve gone with. It works really well, but some of that is their location too.”

  “We are downtown,” Zach agreed. “I don’t think we can just jump into a Western theme and survive the change. I think pay per view events are a great start. I think fights and games and even pro rodeo events would pull in a bigger crowd. I think we should do something with the school too. Not be sponsored, but use their sporting events to push our business.”

  “Really?” Ryan looked surprised and maybe a little skeptical. “The university games are where people go to watch. They don’t watch them on television here.”

  Wow, this guy was shortsighted. Met grunted and tried not to be rude when he spoke. “No, but we could snag the after crowd. Have a drink special tied to the ticket stub or even spirit wear. It works well for other bars.”

  “Exactly!” Zach was nodding emphatically. Then he pointed at Met. “I like this guy, Ryan. He’s way better at this than you ever were.”

  “Well, he’s got to put his money where his mouth is.” Ryan wasn’t looking particularly confident about that.

  Of course, Met wasn’t totally confident about that either. So, he just shrugged. “Put together a proposal, then. Show me what numbers you need. That’s the only way I’m going to know if I can do this now or not.”

  His phone started buzzing away in his pocket. Good God. Was she calling now? Met pulled out his phone and pushed the ignore button. Zach was staring at him. Met didn’t want to alienate the man. Daphne was his friend, but Met was likely going to be his boss. And it wasn’t like Daphne hadn’t put herself in this position anyway with her bizarre behavior.

  “Do you have an issue at home?” Zach asked casually.

  Met carelessly lifted his good shoulder. “Hard to say. Daphne has been refusing to return my phone calls or texts. She had an article published about me that used some explicit information I hadn’t actually given her permission to divulge to her writer friend.”

  Zach whistled. “Ouch, man. Sorry.”

  “And now she’s calling me and texting me and presumably wants something since she refused to respond to my WTF about the article a few days ago.” Met could tell that Zach was not taking sides or automatically choosing to go with his old friend’s perspective. Met could certainly respect that.

  Zach frowned and scratched his chin. “She’s definitely a bit of an odd duck. But that isn’t like her to just cut off contact with someone. She’s that girl who will tell you in concise and a perfectly reasonable and logical manner how you pissed her off and exactly what you’re either going to have to do to fix it or that it’s unfixable and she wants nothing else to do with you. She’s just direct. You know?”

  “Then, it seems weird that she’d just go no contact, huh?” Met was willing to trust the man’s instincts. “That makes me want to call her back just to see what the hell is going on.”

  “You should do it,” Zach encouraged. “It can’t hurt. Right? And doesn’t it drive you crazy wondering what her reasons were? I can’t stand that stuff with women. I want to know why and how. And I don’t want them to just tell me it’s because that’s how they felt at that moment.”

  “True dat,” Met said with a laugh. Then he pulled out his phone. “All right. I’ll call and see what’s up.”

  He stepped away from the other two men. Zach had started up a discussion with Ryan about some other ideas he had been tossing around with the other employees about drink incentives and other fads that might encourage customers to open their wallets.

  In fact, Met was so distracted listening to Zach and Ryan that it took him a moment to realize that Daphne had picked up her phone. “Hello? Hello, Met? Are you all right?”

  Was he all right? What was that about? Met frowned into his phone and tried not to let himself be too skeptical and possibly even rude to the woman about her personal issues. “I’m right here, Ms. Evans. How can I help you?”

  “Ms. Evans?” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Met, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” Okay. Now she was going to get it. Was she actually trying to pretend that there was no weirdness between them?

  “Are you kidding me?” he growled into the phone and took a few more steps away from Zach and Ryan for privacy. “You’re asking me what’s wrong after we slept together on Sunday night, spent the night together, and then you decide to basically never answer a phone call or to return a text again?”

  “Oh. Well, yes.” She sounded uncomfortable. Good.

  That didn’t make him feel any more willing to be forgiving towards her though. “You basically used me to get that additional information. Then you presented my personal business—the things that I had divulged only to you—to your stupid friend Carson so he could write his smashing story at my personal expense! How am I supposed to feel?”

  “The same way I felt when I realized you’d been lying to me about the drinking,” came her angry retort. “The same way I felt when I saw the article in the Tattler complete with photographs that proved you’d been drinking until you were practically too drunk to walk!”

  “I did not pass out!” Met insisted.

  She fired back almost instantly. “I never said you did. I said you could barely walk. You brother had to go fetch you because you could not drive. That’s a big deal, Met. You’d preached to me less than forty-eight hours before I saw that article that you weren’t doing that anymore. Oh, did I really believe you were still drinking to get drunk every night?”

  She paused for breath, and he actually started to feel bad. What the hell? He wasn’t the one in the wrong. She was. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling guilty. Except that he had kept that one incident from her. He had concealed from her that he had stayed at Cody’s. It was that one night. It wasn’t multiple nights. And yet the admission was one of those horrible things that had the potential to make someone feel as though they had been lied to multiple times.

  “Look,” Met said heavily. “Let’s not rehash this crap anymore right now. Okay? Why are you suddenly calling me? I figured you were done dealing with me and that our association was through.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Excuse me?” He was pretty sure he hadn’t heard that right. “You need my help? What for?”

  “My boss is sleeping with one of my coworkers. Justin found out. He’s filed a complaint with the labor board and wants his job back. My boss wants me to quit so Justin can work here and he can give his mistress my office.”

  It all came out in a huge rush, and Met found his head spinning. Well, at first it was spinning, and then he pretty much felt like he was going to go off the deep end with anger. “What the fuck?” The words burst out before he realized how she might take them. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I was just trying to express my complete irritation that your boss could be such an idiot!”

  “That’s all right.” Her laugher was weak, but it was there. “I had the same rea
ction. Which is why I need the name and number of that private investigator. I need to find something on Justin, and I need it quick. It has to be dirty and bad and absolutely ironclad. You know what I mean?”

  “And where do you think this is heading?” Met knew the woman too well to believe she didn’t have this all mapped out in her head.

  “I think Justin is working with your Captain Weatherby. I think that’s the connection.” She dropped those words like a nuclear bomb.

  In fact, Met was absolutely speechless for a moment. He could not imagine what his expression was at that moment. There was every possibility that he looked stunned because both Zach and Ryan were now staring at him and had halted their conversation to look at Met as though he had grown a second head.

  “Are you all right, man?” Zach called across the empty club. “Is Daphne all right?”

  Met waved his hand and nodded his head, but Daphne had already heard the voice behind him. “Is that Zach?”

  “Yes.”

  “My friend Zach from The Players Club?” She was sounding equal parts curious and maybe freaking out. “Why are you talking to Zach?”

  Apparently, she had momentarily forgotten her master plan. Met sighed. “I’m talking to Ryan too. I’m looking into buying into this place, and we needed to go over business details.”

  “You’re buying that place?” She was now shouting into her phone.

  Met held his own phone away from his ear. Then he sighed. “Meet me here. All right? I’ll have the investigator come too. Then we can talk about what we know, what we don’t know, and what it is you think you know.” There. That was very comprehensive.

  “Fine.” Wait. Was she mad? “I’ll be there in like twenty minutes.”

  “We’ll be here.” Met sighed and hung up his phone. Then he sent the investigator a desperate text. Hopefully the guy was able to meet them. Otherwise Met was pretty sure Daphne was going to castrate him or something equally horrible.