She shook her head. Her gorgeous hair was a deep, burnished auburn. It would look beautiful spread across his pillow while she took his cock. “I’m boring. Poor little rich girl. Not so rich anymore, but that’s okay. Where are you two from?”
“Dallas,” Burke replied. “We grew up in the suburbs, but we live in the city now.”
They had a very nice condo with a great view. It had three bedrooms. One for Cole. One for Burke. And one ridiculously oversized master bedroom for the women they shared. They hadn’t shared in a while beyond the occasional one-night stand. Cole was sick of them. He wanted more. But now wasn’t the right time. Jessa wasn’t the right girl, as much as he wished otherwise.
The conversation flowed, more easily than ever before. Cole found himself drawn out. Usually he let Burke do the charming and he just joined in for the sex. But he really talked to Jessa. He and Burke joked about their childhood and the twin pranks they’d pulled on friends and teachers alike. God, he’d forgotten the fun they used to have. He’d been so mired in the job, the danger. How long had it been since he just relaxed?
He took another long sip of the Scotch as a slow Christmas song began. Burke got up and held out his hand to the woman in front of him. Damn, his brother was smooth.
“Dance with me?” Burke asked, a hint of a smile on his face.
Jessa looked around as though assuring herself that they were truly alone. “Sure, but on once condition. I get to dance with Cole, too. Don’t say no. It’s Christmas Eve, and I want a present.”
He never danced. He wasn’t sure he could. And yet after Burke finished twirling her around, Cole found himself standing and taking her in his arms, his hand curling around her little waist. He practically sighed when she put her head on his chest.
What the hell was he doing? This was a bad idea. But the moment she snuggled closer, he knew there was nothing he could do except sway to the music. The snow fell on the streets of New York just outside the window and, despite the danger and the world’s seedy underbelly awaiting him, Cole Lennox felt happy for the first time in what felt like forever.
CHAPTER TWO
Present Day – Virginia
The chill in the air hit Burke’s lungs like a knife to his chest. He forced the air in deeper as he moved them outside the house, toward the car.
Them. Not just Jessa, but Caleb, too. Their son. That truth hammered at him. If the tiny mop of black hair didn’t give the kid away, there was the fact that Jessa hadn’t been around any man for the last year except Angus. Who, it turned out, was a cat. So it was a pretty damn good bet that Caleb was theirs.
After all, she’d only had two lovers in her whole life.
How had the PI they’d hired gotten it so wrong? Another question for another time.
Cole stood by the car. “I couldn’t find anyone else in the house, just that fucking cat. He’s in the car. Obnoxious furball. I called the cops. Let’s get Jessa away from the house in case that idiot of Delgado’s is telling the truth.” Cole frowned as Jessa hurried to the car, the baby swaddled in a blanket against her chest. “Is that another damn cat? No more. The first one has a seriously bad attitude. I won’t mention his breath.”
The blanket came loose, and Caleb gave a little gurgle, his tiny head turning to take in the newcomers. Unlike his mother’s grim face, Caleb’s was happy. He grinned, showing off a completely toothless mouth.
“That’s a baby, Burke. What the hell?” Cole’s mouth hung open.
If the situation hadn’t been so goddamn dire, he would have reveled in his brother’s surprise. Nothing ever fazed Cole. Even when they had been jumped by ten armed Taliban fighters in an Afghan backstreet, he’d merely killed his half, shrugged and said “I told you so” before popping open another black-market beer. Burke took the opportunity to snatch the keys from his brother’s hands. “Your powers of observation are staggering. Get in the car. We need to reach the cops. Jessa, get in.”
She shook her head. “I’ll take my car. I have Caleb’s car seat.”
Burke felt his patience slipping. Did the gravity of this situation not register with her? “You will get in the car now. Goddamn it, Jessa, someone just tried to kill you. That asshole said he planted charges around your house. Charges mean shit blows up,” he snarled. “We don’t know how many eyes are on us right now. Get in the car.”
Jessa’s head swiveled as though she was looking for whoever stood in the darkness watching. Her hand went protectively over Caleb’s head, cupping his whole body against hers. She eased into the front seat of the rented SUV and closed the door.
Cole simply stared at the spot where she’d stood.
Burke glared at his brother and opened the driver’s side door. “Snap out of it.”
He pointed back to the house. “We’re just going to leave her husband to die? She won’t forgive us.”
“There is no husband. Angus is the fucking cat. She wasn’t trying to save her husband, Cole. She was trying to save Caleb, her baby.”
Cole frowned and shook his head. “That baby can’t be more than a few months old. If there’s no husband, that means…”
“Caleb is our son, yes. Well, one of our sons, biologically speaking.” Biology didn’t matter in their case. A simple paternity test would tell them nothing of importance. This was their son. It didn’t matter who had actually provided the DNA. Like everything in their lives, it was shared and identical. Caleb was theirs.
“How the fuck did the investigator miss this?” Cole snarled. “We’ve been getting reports for a year, and he didn’t think to mention that she was pregnant? And why would he think Angus was her husband? Can’t the idiot tell the difference between a man and a cat? She had our baby. She’s been dealing with this all alone.”
Burke totally understood his brother’s fury. He felt it himself. The idea of Jessa in a hospital giving birth without either of them to hold her hand made his heart clench and his stomach turn. “Not here and not now. We have to go.”
Cole nodded. Burke could feel the anxiety coming off his brother in waves, but there was no time to calm him down. Burke breathed a sigh of relief when Cole acquiesced, getting into the back of the SUV and shutting the door with a hard thud.
Burke hopped in, his heart twisting at Cole’s words. God, his brother was right. Jessa had been alone. They hadn’t even known she needed them, despite all of the money and effort they’d put forth to have a PI keep tabs on her. How the hell had this happened?
He started the car. The night around them was quiet. The baby cooed. The cat meowed. But the tension between the human adults was thick and pervasive. Burke gunned the car, and it flew down the road.
“Which way to the police station? I’d rather not be sitting ducks here waiting for them.” The station would be a good, safe place to stash Jessa and Caleb while he and Cole figured out which of Delgado’s henchman had taken over the business and was looking for a little revenge.
“When you get to the road, take a left.” Jessa’s hands trembled. Caleb patted his mother’s face as though he could sense her fear and was trying to soothe her. “Why are you two here? Who was that man? He came out of nowhere. I was cleaning the brushes after working on a painting, and he just walked in.”
That explained the turpentine. “What did you hit him with?”
“I was using some ashes from the fireplace to mix with the paint. It was kind of a metaphor. I’d put them in a bucket and used a poker to stir them. Luckily, I’d brought those to the basement to clean, too. So that’s what I hit him with.”
Their Jessa fought tough when she had to. “You did the right thing, sweetheart.”
“Who was he? What does he want with me?”
Burke opened his mouth to answer her, but the sound of an explosion cracking through the air cut off his reply. A loud boom split the night, and the rearview mirror showed the brilliant flash of orange and red as Jessa’s pretty house went up in a ball of hot orange flames. He could feel the heat of it down the road. Burk
e fought to maintain control of the car as the earth shook. All around him pieces of the house rained down. They hit the top of the SUV like pellets striking tin.
“Oh, my god.” Clutching Caleb, Jessa cut her gaze out the back window to gawk at the devastation that used to be her home. She gasped, and tears coursed down her cheeks.
Burke was about to reach for her hand when his cell rang. Goddamn it. He didn’t need to deal with his secretary or a client now. Jessa was far more important. He ignored it.
“Answer it, Burke,” Cole said gravely. His own cell was in his hand as he held it up so Burke could see it in the rearview mirror. “I just got a text. Marco Delgado wants to talk to you.”
Marco Delgado. The bastard Ricardo’s son. At least he knew who they were dealing with now. But it wasn’t good—at all.
“Who are you talking about?” Jessa asked, panic rising in her tone. “Who is Marco? Is he the bastard who just blew up my house?”
Burke was glad to see Cole’s hand on her shoulder. His brother whispered to Jessa, attempting to soothe her. Burke dealt with the problem at hand as he drove, gravel crunching under the tires, and answered. “This is Burke.”
“Welcome back to the States, Mr. Lennox. You’ve been gone for so long. I trust your flight went well.” There was a silky satisfaction to Marco’s voice.
“You’re the one who sent us the text.” There was no doubt. Jessa hadn’t called them when she was pregnant. She hadn’t texted yesterday. In fact, she’d never meant to talk to them again. He compartmentalized that realization to deal with at a better time.
“I thought it was time we talked. You killed my father.”
“No,” Burke corrected, his jaw tight with tension. “I put your father in jail for selling young women to bordellos in South America. Some guy doing life shanked his ass.”
A fitting end, in Burke’s opinion. It had saved them all the effort of a trial. He and Cole had seen what happened to the women the elder Delgado had sold to his friends in South America. He could still see their haunted eyes. Some had died. Others had lost their souls. He didn’t feel a moment’s remorse about that fucking bastard’s fate.
“You might not have thrust the blade in, but you made it possible. Family means something to me. Did you think I would let this pass?” There was a slight pause on Marco’s end. “Since your parents are gone, I went after the next best thing.”
It took everything he had to keep his hands on the wheel. He knew what Marco meant. Jessa.
“How the fuck did you know about her?” Burke held the phone in one hand, his other tightening on the steering wheel. He didn’t want Jessa to hear this conversation, but he didn’t see a way around it. He had to figure some things out and quickly.
“You have several people on your payroll, Mr. Lennox. Employees are not family. I learned that the hard way. It’s quite easy to bribe someone. You should know. That’s how you got to my father. By the way, I already killed Michael. He died squealing like a pig.”
Michael. The young man had been an up and comer in the Delgado organization when he’d had an attack of conscience. Michael had been willing to push the man’s drugs, but not to sell young women into prostitution. He’d become their informant. And his conscience had gotten him killed. “What do you want? I’ll meet you. It was my doing. I took the case. I’ll take the blame.”
A disbelieving snort ripped across the line. “It’s never just you, Lennox. It’s you and that brother of yours. I thought long and hard about killing one of you, but that lets one of you off too easy. I wanted both of you to suffer as I have, grieving. Then I remembered the delectable Miss Wade. Unfortunately, by the time I tracked her down, she was pregnant. I believe in karma. Nor am I completely cruel. I don’t intend to harm the boy.”
“You don’t think killing his mother would harm him?”
Beside him, Jessa gasped, a trembling sound full of fear. Burke tried to block her out and focus. Almost as soon as he wished for Cole to comfort her, his brother’s hand caressed her shoulder again. Burke listened to Marco again.
“I’m making a deal here, Burke. I’m a reasonable man, but I like to gamble. I’ve been setting this game up for months now. The pieces are all in place. We begin soon.”
God, this fucker was insane. But smart. Burke brought the car to a stop at the edge of the road. Once he had Jessa secured by the police, he would call in the feds. He began to turn left.
“Do you really want to go that direction, Mr. Lennox?”
Burke stopped, pressing his foot on the brake. The asshole was still watching them? Of course. He must have eyes on the entire road that led up to Jessa’s property.
Her gaze darted around them nervously. “What’s wrong? The station is about a mile to the west. Let’s go.”
He shook his head. “We have eyes on us.”
Cole’s gun was back in his hand. Through the mirror, Burke could see his brother watching. His free hand came up, gently pushing at Jessa. “Get on the floorboard, baby. You and Caleb stay down.”
Jessa went without a protest.
“I’m not coming to you as long as she’s in the car,” Burke insisted. “Let me take her and the child to the police, then I’ll come in. So will Cole.”
There wasn’t a word of protest from Cole, but then Burke hadn’t expected one. As usual, he and his brother were in synch. They loved Jessa. They would do anything to save her, even die.
Marco chuckled. “You can take her to the police, but as I said, I’ve been setting up this game for a while now. Ask Miss Wade if she knows a friendly deputy named Fred?”
He looked down at Jessa. “You know someone named Fred, sweetheart?”
She nodded. “Yes, he’s the man we need to talk to. He’s my friend. He’s on the police force here. He’ll know what to do.”
No. He was a fucking small-town spy. A puppet, and Marco was pulling the strings. He’d given them this one hint to prove it. Burke turned away from her, speaking into the phone again. “I get your point.”
“Then you should also know I have friends in the FBI, DEA, and just about every other agency where there are underpaid employees. Oh, you might be able to find the good ones, but do you really want to take that chance?”
Fuck. His eyes met with Cole’s in the mirror. He could see plainly that Cole was following the logic of the conversation without hearing it.
“No police? No feds?” Cole asked, his voice tight.
Burke shook his head slightly.
Cole cursed. He knew how fucked they were. They could take the chance and risk Jessa, or they could run on their own.
“What do you want, Delgado?”
Marco’s voice went ragged. “I want my father back, but since that’s not going to happen, I’ll settle for you feeling just as fucking bad as I do. I am going to kill your girl. If you follow my instructions, I’ll leave your son out of it. If you don’t, then he’ll be collateral damage. I’ve already given you proof of my good will.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I waited to blow up the house until you’d taken the child out. I’d rather not kill the boy, but I will if you force me to. You have twenty-four hours to lose the kid. After that, I come in with guns blazing, and I don’t care who gets a bullet.”
“You do understand that if you hurt her, Cole and I will never stop hunting you.”
“Ah, then our game can go on. I was rather counting on that. Twenty-four hours.”
The line went dead, and Burke felt his stomach roll. The road stretched in front of him. Three choices. Left to the police, right to the highway, or straight into god knew what. Fuck. What if he chose wrong?
“He wants to kill me.” Jessa blinked up at him from her crouched position. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” There was no way to protect her from that. “You can sit back in the seat, sweetheart. We have twenty-four hours to stash our son someplace safe, or he’ll kill Caleb, too. I believe him.”
“Marco. The son. The gambler. Fuck
. I hadn’t even thought about him. He didn’t seem even vaguely interested in his father’s business.” Cole scrubbed a hand across his face, his eyes bleak.
“He’s interested now,” Burke confirmed. “In revenge especially.”
Jessa sniffled as she got back to her seat. “We need supplies. Everything I had for Caleb just blew up. We need a car seat and more diapers and clothes. Formula. He needs formula. He’ll get hungry soon.” She tightened her arms around her son. “God, please let me wake up. Please let this be a bad dream.”
Burke’s heart ached. “Sweetheart, I’m going to fix this.”
Her eyes met his, anger making them flare. “Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that again. I want to go to the police, but I can’t, can I? Some guy hates you and wants to take it out on me, and I can’t go to the police because this jerk has them on his payroll. My nice friend, Deputy Fred, is working for this guy.”
“According to Marco, yes.” He would give anything to take away the betrayal on her face. To remove the danger to her life. “All law enforcement is off the table if we want to be one hundred percent sure of your safety.”
“Seriously? Even the FBI?”
He swallowed, bile in his throat. This wasn’t how he’d pictured their reunion. “We can’t go to them or anyone else. We’re on our own, Jessa.”
“And he’ll spare my son if we take him someplace out of the way?” Jessa’s voice caught, but she had so much strength. She was a mother protecting her child, but she was still listening, assessing, processing. She wasn’t trained for this, but she was handling everything amazingly well. “If I give myself to him, he’ll spare my son?”
“You’re not giving yourself up.” Cole barked.
“We won’t let anyone hurt you,” Burke assured her. “I believe him about not wanting Caleb involved. He would have blown up the house before we fled if he didn’t. We need to get the baby someplace safe. I know you aren’t going to like this, but we have friends, powerful friends. They’ll absolutely protect Caleb. And we’ll protect you.”
Their Virgin’s Secret, Masters of Menage, Book 2 Page 3
