Obsession (Steel Brothers Saga Book 2)

by HELEN HARDT

  I was about to go back on that promise.

  I didn’t delude myself for a millisecond that Larry’s reason for wanting me to dig up information on the Steels had any validity, but I had my own reasons for wanting to know more about them, and with the city’s sources at my disposal, I’d be in a great position to find out exactly what I wanted to.

  So I smiled and nodded. “Absolutely. Glad to do it. Is there any type of information in particular that you’re looking for?”

  Larry handed me a stack of manila folders. “There’s been some speculation that Bradford Steel was involved in organized crime and money laundering.”

  Talon’s father? “I guess I don’t understand why that’s of any importance. Bradford Steel is dead. Do you have reason to believe the Steels are still involved?”

  “That’s part of what I want you to find out, Jade. Even if they aren’t, a lot of their assets might be seizeable as dirty money. Our evidence goes back further than Bradford. His father, George Steel, was also allegedly involved.”

  “And what evidence might this be?”

  Classified. I heard the word before he said it.

  “I’m afraid that’s classified.”

  “Isn’t this a little out of our jurisdiction? Shouldn’t the FBI be involved? Or at the very least the Colorado Bureau of Investigation?”

  “Are you questioning me?”

  “I’m just trying to understand exactly what you’re looking for.”

  “Take a gander through the files I just gave you. They’ll be a good starting point. I don’t want to bring in the Bureau unless we find anything hard. That’s why we’re keeping this local and under wraps for now. No reason to screw up the lives of nice people like the Steels if you don’t have to, right?”

  I nodded. “Right. I understand.”

  I understood all right. Larry wanted to screw the Steels, and I doubted it had anything to do with organized crime or dirty money.

  So I’d be doing three investigations. I’d investigate the Steels for Larry. I’d also investigate the Steels for myself. And third, for Marj. Last week, she and I had done a little investigating of our own in the basement of the ranch house. We came across her birth certificate, giving her first name as Angela, something she never knew. Her father had always told her that her first name was Marjorie and she didn’t have a middle name. We also found the marriage certificate for Bradford and Daphne Steel, Marjorie’s parents. The certificate had listed Daphne’s maiden name as Wade, rather than Warren, which Marjorie had always thought it was.

  I took the file folders. “I’ll get right on it. When do you need this information?”

  “As soon as possible, though I don’t have any particular deadline. I’m more interested in accurate information, and I think you’ll have to do some digging to find what I need. So I don’t expect you to be in any hurry. Just do the best you can and keep me apprised every few days.”

  I nodded. “Understood.”

  “And in the meantime, if I need you to work on something more important, I’ll just pull you off this for a few days.”

  I nodded again and left. I walked into my office and sat down at my desk. Before I even looked inside the file folders, I decided to do a little investigation of my own.

  I keyed in the appropriate passwords to access Colorado records. First, the marriage certificate.

  I typed in Steel, Bradford and Wade, Daphne.

  Nothing.

  My skin chilled. I had seen the original marriage certificate with my own eyes, and it was between Bradford Raymond Steel and Daphne Kay Wade.

  I got my bearings and typed in Steel, Bradford and Warren, Daphne.

  Bingo. Everything else on the certificate was the same—their birth dates, the date of the marriage, the signatures…

  My heart did a jump. Was the marriage certificate that Marjorie and I found a forgery? Or had someone gotten into the Colorado database and changed Daphne’s name?

  Next I accessed records of birth. I pulled up Jonah’s, Ryan’s, and Talon’s. All were identical to the copies we’d found in the Steels’ basement. I inhaled and typed in Angela Marjorie Steel.

  No record.

  I typed in Marjorie Steel.

  Bingo again. Marj’s birth certificate popped up, minus her unknown first name.

  Why would anyone change these? Again, I wondered if the documents we found were forgeries or whether someone had accessed the Colorado database. That would not be an easy thing to do.

  Unless one was a city attorney maybe? I shook my head, erasing the thought. Larry had the same access to the files that I did. He didn’t have authority to change them. If he had that kind of authority, he certainly didn’t need me to do his investigating for him.

  I couldn’t imagine who might have that authority and who the Steels—or possibly someone else—could’ve gotten to make the changes. Or why they wanted the changes made anyway.

  I made quick copies of both documents to show Marj later. Then I opened the first folder on the stack Larry had given me.

  It was full of bank-account records from the Cayman Islands. Criminals often kept their money in Cayman banks due to the bank secrecy laws and reduced taxation. Those were also perfectly good reasons for anyone with a lot of money to bank there…and the Steels did have a lot of money. More so than I could’ve even imagined, as I cruised through these bank accounts.

  There were bank accounts in all of the Steels’ names and many in names I assumed were dummy corporations set up to move funds around. Still, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The Steels had money. That was certainly no crime. And just because they banked in the Caymans didn’t automatically mean their money was dirty.

  The next two folders contained more bank accounts, some of which were hopelessly outdated.

  My eyes were bugging out from looking at all the numbers.

  I felt like I was working at cross purposes. I both did and didn’t want to find something. I certainly didn’t want to find out that the Steels were involved in anything illegal, but I did want to find anything that might help me uncover the secret that Talon was keeping and that Jonah and Ryan were helping him keep. These bank accounts did nothing to help me figure out why the marriage certificate and name certificate had been changed.

  I doubted any of their money was dirty, at least not the current Steel money. I had witnessed how hard both Jonah and Ryan worked at the ranch. Talon too, when he was out at the orchards. He knew his stuff, and I couldn’t wait until the Fuji apples were ready. And the peaches… Colorado Western slope peaches… Nothing better.

  More bank statements in the next folder. Had Larry only given me bank accounts?

  At one o’clock, I took a quick break to walk over to Rita’s Café and have some spinach quiche, and then I got straight back to work.

  At about two thirty, Larry walked into my office. “How’s it going?”

  I looked up from the millionth bank account I was reviewing, my neck now stiff and aching. “Still looking through the files.”

  He let out a chuckle. “Yup, there’s a lot of them. If there’s one thing the Steels have, it’s money.”

  I smiled. “Is there anything specific you want me to look for?”

  “Just anything that doesn’t look quite right. The fact that they bank in the Caymans and in Switzerland is a red flag, as far as I’m concerned.”

  I nodded. “It can be. Though they might just bank there because of the laws.”

  “I thought of that, but better safe than sorry. Let’s see what we can find.” He walked out the door.

  Why did I have the distinct feeling that the city of Snow Creek was paying me to do someone else’s dirty work?

  I left right at five o’clock, my eyes crossing from all the numbers. One more folder to look at, but it would wait until tomorrow. A whole day’s work, and all I had learned was that the Steels were loaded. That they’d always been loaded.

  I stopped at Rita’s again, got a sandwich to go, an
d headed down the street to my hotel. Living in a small town was great. Everything was within walking distance. I might not like it when winter came, but right now was perfect. By winter, maybe I’d have saved up enough for a car.

  Up in my room, I shed my work attire, washed the makeup off my face, and got into a pair of cutoffs and a David Bowie T-shirt. I hadn’t brought the extra file home as I normally would have. I really needed a break from those numbers. I grabbed a bottle of water out of my mini fridge and sat down on the bed to eat my sandwich.

  Midway through my first bite, a knock sounded on the door. “Hold on,” I said, my mouth full of turkey.

  I gulped down the bite, took a quick drink of water, crossed to the door, and opened it.

  Chapter Five

  Talon

  She just stood there, looking luscious in those damned Daisy Duke shorts of hers and a David Bowie T-shirt. I’d have thought she was too young to be a Bowie fan. Whatever. The word “Bowie” was stretched out across her delicious tits.

  Had it just been three nights ago that I had kicked her out of my house and out of my life? She stood, her hands on her hips, her ruby lips glistening, her golden-brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, and my groin tightened. How had I ever thought I could live without her?

  I loved her. I’d had a hard time admitting that to Ryan last night, because I had actually been admitting it to myself. But did I? Really? I didn’t even know what love was, at least not this kind of love. Perhaps I was feeling something else entirely. I probably didn’t possess the capacity to love.

  Still, the words “I love you” were on the tip of my tongue as I looked into her silvery-blue eyes.

  “What do you want, Talon?”

  Her. I wanted her. Just seeing her again made my dick hard, but I couldn’t just grab her and kiss her, not after how I’d treated her.

  “Are you going to actually speak, or are you going to just stand there with your mouth hanging open?”

  Then again…

  I stepped through the doorway, gripped her shoulders, pulled her to me, and pressed my lips to hers.

  She opened for me instantly, as I knew she would. We couldn’t resist each other. Was she as obsessed with me as I was with her?

  Smack! She broke the kiss and pushed me away from her. Hard. My back hit the wall right next to the door that was still open.

  “Stop it,” she said, her eyes on fire. “That isn’t going to work this time.”

  “It worked every other time,” I said.

  “Every other time you hadn’t kicked me out of your house and out of your life. This is bullshit, Talon. Nothing more than bullshit. Now I asked you once before. What are you doing here?”

  What was I doing there? I couldn’t answer her when I didn’t know. All I knew is that I had to see her, touch her, know she still existed in the universe. “Do you…want to go to dinner?”

  She pointed to half a sandwich and a takeout bag from Rita’s sitting on the bed. “I’ve already got dinner, and I’d like to get back to it. So please leave.”

  I turned and closed the door to her hotel room, locking the deadbolt.

  “I told you, leave.” Her full lips trembled.

  God, I wanted her. My body reacted to her very presence. I quivered before her, the effect as unsettling as it was arousing. How had I been so stupid to think that kicking her out of my home would make the desire go way?

  I hadn’t been that stupid. I’d known I’d never be free of her.

  Could she help me? Could she heal me?

  No one could heal me. I was a broken man, a shattered soul. But when I was with Jade, in her arms, her lips on mine, I became someone different. Someone almost…special. Special didn’t make me any less broken or any less shattered, but it gave me something I’d never had before.

  Hope.

  “I said leave,” she repeated.

  I owed her that much. I would go, and I wouldn’t come back until she invited me. I turned toward the door, my gaze zeroing in on the peephole at eye level. Please, Talon. Leave her in peace. She deserves that. Hell, she deserves the best.

  But my feet were stuck in blocks of concrete.

  “Run, boy. Run.”

  The evil laughter of the three masked men whirled around the boy’s head, almost visible—black swirls of smoke morphing into devilish images.

  “What are you waiting for, boy? We’ve left the door open for you. Can’t you see the light up there? How long has it been since you’ve seen light, boy?”

  The boy stood at the bottom of the stairs in the cold dark cellar where he was kept. They had finished with him and then led him, his legs wobbly like jelly, over to the landing, where the open door pointed the way to daylight.

  To salvation.

  His legs itched to run, to scramble up the stairs and never look back.

  But they would never let him go. This was a tease, just like all the other teases that amused the three monsters. He’d tried it once before. He’d gotten to this top of the stairs and then been grabbed and forced back down. His punishment had been taking the big one, the one with the tattoo of the flaming bird, into his mouth.

  “Go on, boy. You can go. We’re done with you.”

  How he longed to escape. How he wanted to keep running until his legs could carry him no farther.

  But his feet were stuck in blocks of concrete.

  I couldn’t leave. I wanted to leave for her sake, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. Too weak to climb the stairs away from her. She had a hold on me. I didn’t understand it, but it was there. As sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, it was there.

  I turned to face her, her hands again on her hips, her red lips swollen from our brief kiss. I walked toward her slowly, taking in all of her sweetness, her goodness, her pure heart. When I was close enough to touch her arm, I looked into her steely blue gaze and muttered only one word.

  “Please.”

  The beautiful lines of her face softened. “That might be the first time I’ve ever heard you say that word, Talon. Outside the heat of passion, that is.”

  The fact that she was right hit my gut like a brick. Had I become so hardened by my life that I was incapable of common courtesy?

  I had.

  I touched one of her cheeks, thumbing the apple. Her skin was soft as silk under my fingertips. She closed her eyes, turning into my hand. She softly grazed my palm with her lips.

  I lowered my head and touched my mouth to hers. She opened, as she always did, but this kiss was different. Then it dawned on me why.

  I was giving her a kiss.

  Such simple words. So simple and so apparent, but something that had eluded me for so long.

  Instead of taking a kiss from her, I was giving a kiss to her.

  And it was a sweet kiss indeed.

  She slid her soft tongue against mine, infusing me with her strawberry-champagne essence. She melded her body into me, her soft breasts pressing against my chest. Though my dick was hard, as it always was in her presence, my first thought wasn’t getting into her pants as it usually was. My first thought was showing her that I could give too.

  I had wanted to solely give to her for a while now. Perhaps I had begun that journey, but with this kiss, I gave with all my heart and soul. Everything that I was, broken as it might be, I gave to her with that kiss. I gave it to her without any idea of getting anything in return.

  And in all the giving, I received something so much sweeter. The kiss she gave me back was more beautiful and more profound than any kiss we’d shared. It wasn’t our most passionate kiss, it wasn’t our most ferocious kiss, but it meant so much more than all of those kisses put together.

  I love you, Jade. I love—

  She broke the kiss, stumbled backward, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Please,” I said again. I pushed her farther back until her legs hit the bed and she sat down. I sat next to her and kissed her again, softly, slowly, sliding my hand down, cupping one of her soft mounds. I pressed
my lips to her beautiful mouth, and then I pulled back and simply looked at her for a few scant seconds. Then I kissed her again. I pulled her tank top up and unclasped her bra. God, such beauty. Jade was a goddess. She didn’t resist as I licked her nipples. They were hard, but I tamped down the urge to pinch and bite them. I tongued them gently, and then I returned to her face, kissing those full cherry lips once more.

  I slid my lips over her neck. She reached up and cupped my cheek, her fingers warm and satiny. I lifted my head and looked into her eyes, her blue gaze melting me. With her thumb, she tugged on my lower lip.

  “Take off your shirt,” she said.

  I shook my head. I wanted this to be about her first.

  I stood and pushed her down so she was lying on the bed. I slid off her Daisy Dukes and her underwear and spread her legs as I knelt on the floor. Slowly I stroked my tongue up her slit while I reached forward and grabbed her breasts, squeezing them lightly.

  She moaned. God, the sweet sound. I could never live without hearing those melodic sighs from Jade. I gave one nipple a slight tweak. Not a hard pinch like she was used to from me.

  “More, Talon. Pinch me.”

  I shook my head between her thighs and continued to lick her glossy folds. Her musky apple taste tantalized me, and I inhaled, savoring the smell as well as the flavor. My God, she was amazing. Her sighs drifted to my ears, and I couldn’t help myself. One arm wandered upward, and I pinched a nipple.

  She jerked beneath me. Another soft moan escaped her lips.

  I continued to eat her, sucking out her sweet cream. Her juices gushed over my chin.

  When she was good and swollen and I could feel her on the edge, I shoved two fingers inside her heat. She climaxed around me. Every one of her contractions convulsed through me, taking me to the highest peak in Colorado. Each tremor, each quake—I felt them as if they were my own, my pulse racing, my cock throbbing.