As one hand guided the steering wheel as the car pulled out of the parking lot, his other hand slipped into his pocket, feeling the sharp points of those fish hooks tucked into his wallet. These hooks were meant for the thief, whoever fucked this whole situation up.
Hook would make sure that the poor, sorry asshole learned never to mess with the cartels' money.
Chapter Four
*
I pulled up at the "Hamptons Estate" that my phone had guided me towards, but frowned as I looked up the driveway. There must be some sort of mistake here, I thought to myself in confusion.
Yes, there was a house here, and yes, the numbers on the house matched the address that I'd gotten off the phone book, but this wasn't even close to earning the title of "estate." If I had to put a label on the place, I'd probably call it a cottage, probably with the word cozy somewhere in the same paragraph.
It wasn't a bad looking place, I said to myself as I cruised around the block, trying to figure out if this was just a side property that belonged to one of the big mansions on either side. Nope. The number of the address only matched this cute little red brick cottage, tucked back behind a large oak tree that dominated the front yard. This was the address of "Hendricks, D", the only Hendricks listed for the Hamptons.
For just a moment, as I brought the little Mazda to a stop, I considered that maybe I was at the wrong place. Perhaps this Hendricks wasn't related to Rob at all, and he did keep his house under an assumed name after all. That would at least explain the lack of reporters camped around here, hoping for a shot of the Wall Street Bad Boy.
Still, I wouldn't be a good reporter if I didn't at least get out of my car and investigate. I climbed out of the driver's seat, brushed some of the crumbs of the muffin I'd eaten on the drive up here off of my shirt and pants, and then headed up the driveway to the cozy little house.
I pushed my finger down on the doorbell button, but didn't hear any activity from inside. I pushed the button again to an equal lack of response, frowning. Moving in another step closer, I pressed one ear against the door as I pushed the bell a third time.
Nope. No sound of ringing inside. I raised my knuckles and instead rapped hard on the door, producing a satisfying knock that echoed through the home's interior.
"Yes, coming! Just a second, dear!" a faint voice called out to me after a moment.
That didn't sound like the voice of a young man. Sure enough, as I stepped back from the door, it opened to reveal a gray-haired, elderly little senior citizen, who blinked curiously up at me from behind thick spectacles.
"Hello, dear, can I help you?" she said politely, leaning on a cane. Something about it seemed odd, but most of it was hidden in interior shadow, and I kept my eyes on the woman's face.
"Your doorbell doesn't work," I pointed out.
She nodded, not moving. "I know." She kept waiting, clearly not planning on letting me in.
Something about her looked familiar. "Um, yes, I'm looking for Bobby - er, Rob Hendricks," I replied politely. "I'm not sure if I have the right house..."
"Bobby? How do you know him, dear?" the senior citizen asked.
Subterfuge, I decided, was not the best approach to use here. "My name's April Carpenter," I said, assuming correctly that the woman wouldn't recognize it from any of my articles in Grit. She didn't seem like our typical reader. "I was friends with Carrie Hendricks back in high school - Rob's cousin. I was hoping to get back in touch with him."
The little gray-haired woman didn't respond, but just frowned at me. Her eyes looked quite sharp behind those thick spectacles, I realized. I told myself not to underestimate her, and so plunged onward.
"I'm also a reporter with Grit magazine," I said after a deep breath, hoping that I wasn't shooting myself in the foot by revealing the truth. "I was hoping to get an interview with Rob after the recent news, share his side of the story. I thought that maybe, because I knew him when we were both younger, he might be willing to open up and talk with me, instead of some other reporter that he doesn't trust."
"Uh huh," the woman replied, tilting her head a little to one side to regard me but still not moving aside to invite me in. "Grit? I've never heard of that magazine. It's not one of those dirty ones that you buy in gas stations, is it?"
I hastily lifted a hand up to my mouth to stifle a little laugh. "Uh, no. Definitely not. I mean, we're probably for sale there, too, but we cover a lot of hard-hitting things. Scandals, stories on the War on Drugs, on-the-ground interviews in war-torn countries, exclusives with pirates, that kind of thing. Have you ever heard of Vice?"
She shook her head. Of course not.
"Well, we try and tell the stories that people really should know, to give them the full story instead of what they just hear on the news," I finished, only feeling a little twinge of guilt at giving this speech. This sounded more like the stories that Teddy wrote than anything I put into the magazine - unless people really needed to know how to spice up a comfortable marriage with trips to a sex toy boutique. I wanted to say more, but I forced my mouth shut, waiting and hoping that I'd said enough.
The woman scrutinized me for another minute, making me fidget. Just as I was about to turn around and give up, however, she finally relaxed, smiling up at me.
"Why don't you come in for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, dear?" she asked, moving aside and holding the door open for me.
Neither of those things sounded particularly appealing, but I told myself that I could choke down a biscuit and some tea if I needed to do so to get a story. "Thank you," I said, stepping into the little cottage after the woman.
"My name's Diana, by the way," the little woman called over her shoulder as she bustled down the hallway to the kitchen, and I nodded. That would be the name from the phone book - Diana Hendricks. "I'm Bobby's grandmother."
"Bobby? It's Rob, Granny - how many times do I need to tell you?"
I froze at that voice. Now that was the voice of the Bad Boy of Wall Street! It sounded deep, powerfully commanding and masculine, and it came from up ahead of me. I quickened my pace, stepping into the kitchen, and then froze.
There he was - Rob Hendricks, larger than life, sitting at the little kitchen table and looking like he belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine.
I felt my mouth drop open slightly, but I couldn't seem to regain enough control to close it. A little part of me had assumed that the newspaper just happened to get an uncommonly good shot of the man, and that he wouldn't look nearly as attractive in person.
My assumption had been wrong.
"And who are you?" Rob asked, as I gaped at him. "Let me guess - you're here to ask my poor granny to subscribe to some magazines for you?"
"What? No!" I looked down at my clothes. "Um, I'm April Carpenter. I was friends with your cousin, Carrie, when we were growing up. I'm here because I want to interview you."
I'd never imagined that I'd get such an utterly annoyed, angry glare from such a handsome man. Those piercing blue eyes bored right into me, making me feel like a little kid caught with my hand in a cookie jar. I opened my mouth to try and defend myself, but I didn't have anything to say. I probably looked like a total idiot, my mouth moving like I was pretending to be a fish.
"Bobby, I think you should talk with this young woman," Diana spoke up, unknowingly saving me from continuing to stand there and wordlessly gulp air. "She seems nice, and she might actually listen to your story instead of accusing you like the others."
I straightened up, nodding like a puppet. "Yes, I'll totally listen! Grit is all about getting the real story, getting both sides, not just saying the same thing as what everyone else publishes-"
Rob held up a hand and glared at me, making my mouth snap shut mid-sentence. He turned his attention to his grandmother, but she didn't seem nearly as affected by his annoyed glare as I felt.
"Granny, I've talked about this with you already," he groaned, as if he'd had this argument dozens of times before. "No one wants to listen to my sid
e. The whole country just wants to hang me out to dry, string me up as the symbol of everything that's wrong, without hearing anything I have to say. The only way I can prove my-"
"I'll listen to your side," I jumped in, the words coming out of me in an explosion.
Rob just glared over at me, making me wither in my ballet flats, but Diana nodded as if she'd anticipated this and moved forward, pulling out one of the chairs for me at the table. "Good girl. Now, sit, and I'll get some tea and biscuits, and Rob can tell you everything."
I sat down, aware of Rob's eyes following my every movement, with less enthusiasm than he'd probably feel in a proctologist's office. "Thank you," I said up to Diana, well aware that she was my only ally in the room at the moment.
"Oh, it's no trouble, dear," she tittered back to me as she ambled over to her stove and cranked on a burner under an ancient, battered looking tea kettle. "You look like a very nice woman. You're not single, are you? Bobby has been having some trouble with the ladies as of late, and you seem like a nice girl-"
"GRANNY!" Rob thundered, and he rose up from his chair. I gaped up at him as he towered over both Diana and me, angry like a vengeful Norse god. "That's enough!"
Amazingly, Diana didn't seem bothered by his anger. "Oh, fine," she sighed, turning and flapping her hand at Rob. "I'll leave the two of you to talk alone, but Bobby, I really do want you to talk to this young woman. You keep on trying to explain whatever happened to me, even though it's all totally over my head. Maybe she'll have a better idea of what happened, and can help you out."
Rob turned and glared at me, his expression making it clear that he sincerely doubted that I'd be able to help him in the slightest, but Diana didn't seem to notice.
"I think I'm going to go out for a walk, maybe visit some of my friends around the block, see if they've got any hot new gossip," Rob's grandmother continued. "And Bobby, I expect this nice young woman to still be here when I get back, understand?"
Those last words, like all of Diana's comments, sounded light and cheery - but right at the end of the sentence, I caught a hint of iron command in her tone. Suddenly, I understood how this wrinkled, smiling little senior citizen was able to stand up to Rob's forceful personality and physically imposing appearance.
Rob, too, must have heard the ring of command in that last sentence. "Granny, can you at least not bring that thing you insist on using as a walking stick?" he asked. "One of these days, a cop is going to end up arresting you by accident - or else he'll just shoot first. Do you really want to do that to me?"
What about her walking stick? I dropped my eyes down to the cane that Diana held - and my eyes popped wide open.
This cute, cheery little grandma, with her round little cheeks and thick spectacles, was leaning on a double-barreled shotgun! I could see, when I peered a little closer, that someone had screwed some sort of platform with rubber tipped feet onto the end, so that the barrels didn't directly impact with the ground, and had also shaped the stock of the gun into a more comfortable grip to slip into the hand. Still, even a coat of dark brown paint over the barrel and trigger apparatus couldn't hide the fact that Diana Hendricks was leaning on a deadly weapon for support!
Diana saw my wide eyes. "Oh, don't worry, dear," she reassured me. "It's not even loaded. And everyone knows that I use it as a cane."
I nodded, trying to think of how to respond. In the silence, however, Diana turned and ambled out of her kitchen, leaving the kettle on the burner, a tin of biscuits sitting on the counter, and Rob glaring at me.
Well, I'd found my interview subject, at least. That was a start.
Now, I told myself as I tried to meet those angry, icy blue eyes, I just had to convince him to trust me.
Chapter Five
*
A minute after leaving us, ambling along with the support of her double-barreled shotgun cane, we heard the front door close behind Diana as she left the little cottage.
This left Rob and I alone in his grandmother's kitchen, looking silently across the table at each other. The only sound came from the kettle sitting on the stove as the water inside started to boil.
Rob glared over at me, and I did my best to not flinch away from his gaze. This was good, I told myself, trying to convince myself that the words were true. I'd found the man, and he wasn't currently being mobbed with other reporters, probably because he was hiding out with his grandmother. This meant that I still had a chance at securing the exclusive story.
Now, I just had to convince him to tell me.
After a few minutes of squirming under his glare, I finally got up to lift the whistling kettle off of the stove's burner. I turned the stove off and poured the steaming hot water into a mug, in which Diana had thoughtfully already placed a tea bag for me. I caught a whiff of the boiled water hitting the dried leaves and wrinkled my nose, but it was too late to decline the offer and put it away.
I carefully carried the steaming mug back over to the table, adding the tin of biscuits that Diana had left out on the counter. I opened up the tin, removed a biscuit from inside, and then waggled my eyebrows at Rob as I popped it into my mouth. There, take that, Mr. Cold and Angry Wall Street Trader! I'm not intimidated by you!
He kept on glaring at me as I chewed - man, these things were dry. Finally, after swallowing my bite of somewhat moistened biscuit, I cleared my throat.
"Look, just tell me what's going on, off the record," I said, trying to sound reasonable. "Don't worry about me being a reporter. Tell me the truth, I won't write down anything, and then you can see if I believe your side of the story."
Rob looked back at me like I left a bad taste in his mouth, but finally sighed. He reached up with one big hand, sweeping his fingers back through his thick golden hair. This motion left his hair slightly tousled, and annoyingly made him even sexier. I tried to tell myself that mussed hair ought to ruin his model appearance, but I couldn't convince my libido to give up the fantasies of him.
"Fine," he said, reaching out and snagging a biscuit from the tin on the table in between us. "I'll tell you my side, but I don't want you to write up any of this. Not unless you somehow manage to convince me to explicitly give you permission. Got it?"
I nodded so eagerly that I nearly plopped the loose ends of my hair down into my mug of tea. "Go ahead, I promise that I'll keep it all just between the two of us. You can search me if you want to make sure I'm not wearing a wire."
Rob just raised an eyebrow at the suggestion that he search me, and I felt myself blushing beet red. "Not that I want you to search me," I protested, my mouth babbling on while my brain drowned in imaginary visions of Rob standing over me, his hands running over my curves, tugging me up against his strength as he checked every single little part of me for any hidden electronic equipment...
Fortunately, he snapped me out of my awkward fantasies by coughing a couple times, holding his fist up in front of his mouth. "Damn, these things are dry," he groaned, glaring down into the tin of biscuits.
"Yeah, I think all grandmothers get them from the same store somewhere," I said, pulling back my hand as it automatically reached out for another one. "My grandma had exactly the same tin. It's the only explanation."
For just a moment, I thought that I saw Rob's expression soften, almost smiling! It vanished as quickly as it had appeared, but I still relaxed a little, feeling ever so slightly more at ease. "They probably get the plastic covers for all their furniture at the same place," he said under his breath, and I nearly choked as I lifted my cup of tea up to my lips to take a sip.
"I bet," I answered, as my brain drew hearts around Rob's face. Sexy, intimidating, and he also had a sense of humor! He was amazing, perfect - if only it weren't for that whole criminal, about to be charged with insider trading side of him.
"Anyway, here's the basic story in a nutshell," Rob said after another second of gazing intently at me. "I'm being accused of insider trading, but I'm innocent, and I think someone else did it and is trying to set me up as the fal
l guy."
I didn't even bother to hide how I rolled my eyes at him. "Come on, that's what every single Wall Street guy says when he's caught. You think that's enough to convince me that you're totally innocent?"
A little part of me did want to believe that he was innocent, trying to argue that someone as sexy and handsome as Rob would never commit a crime like this, but I knew that this idea was totally ridiculous. Sexy, handsome men could be criminals, too!
Rob sighed. "Yeah, I suppose that it sounds pretty flimsy, but it's the truth. I'd show you the proof of it, but..."
"...but if you had any proof, you wouldn't be hiding out here, because you could prove that you didn't do it," I finished his sentence for him. "Right. So what is your plan, anyway, besides just hiding out here?"
He frowned and just looked back at me for a minute. I tried to match his gaze, unable to shake the uneasy suspicion that he was measuring me - and that I might not measure up. Finally, with a shrug, he stood up from the table. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't because he was about to throw me out of his grandmother's house.
"I'll have to show you," Rob said, and then headed out into the hallway of the house without waiting for a response.
After a second, I hopped up and chased after him, pausing only long enough to snag one last biscuit before I left the kitchen. Okay, they were pretty dry and stale, but they weren't totally awful - and I'd missed lunch, driving up to find this address.
Rob hadn't gone far. Just down the hallway from the kitchen was another room, behind a door that Rob unlocked with a key he produced from his pocket. He stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him so I could follow.
I entered the room, and feared for a moment that I'd managed to somehow stumble into a snowstorm. After a second, however, I realized that the blinding white wasn't from flakes of snow, but instead from sheets of paper.
Paper, paper everywhere. After a couple of minutes, I decided that this room must have been a study or library of some sort; I saw a big desk pushed back against one wall, and a couple shelves of books were back in a corner. But someone had decided to move the files of an entire company into the space, and now stacks of paper leaned precariously over in little skyscrapers rising up from the floor, teetering on the edges of tables and chairs. Some of them stood on top of boxes, the kind of cardboard boxes that seem to always hold files, which I suspected contained even more paper. The place wasn't a total rat's nest of fallen-down, jumbled confusion, but it would only take one strong breeze to convert the stacks of paper into complete and utter chaos.
Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Page 3
