by Lexi Blake
She sighed. “Then I should get to work. I bet he’s been on a morning flight, and even if he came in first-class the food was likely terrible.”
“Ian Taggart doesn’t fly commercial, baby. We sent the jet for him.”
She went up on her toes and brushed her lips against his. “Well la-di-da. I happen to fly private all the time and you can’t get a real kitchen at thirty thousand feet. I’ll be better.” She broke off from him, moving back to the sliding door that led to their bedroom. “Am I alone in a sea of vengeful men?”
“You are indeed.” He thought she would have been more worried about that than she obviously was. “Though I think Mia and Case are coming back with Taggart. Ellie and Riley are in New York for a couple of days.”
She walked through the room and to the door that led to the main rooms of the condo, her bare feet shuffling along the floor. He couldn’t help but stare because her hips swayed so sweetly in those jeans. She strode through the door and stopped as she came upon Drew and Hatch sitting at the dining room table.
“You two should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Drew’s eyes went wide but Hatch grinned.
“For what? You’re going to have to be more specific because I have a lot to be ashamed of, darlin’,” Hatch said, obviously amused.
Carly wagged a finger Hatch’s way. “You shouldn’t tease him. You might make him self-conscious and I happen to think he’s an excellent lover. He’s absolutely the best I’ve ever had and he should be proud that he managed to make someone as delicate and ladylike as me scream that way. I won’t have you shaming him into a lesser performance. Am I understood?”
What his brother hadn’t managed to do Carly did with a few prim words out of her mouth. He felt himself flush. Where the hell had that come from? Sex had made her way more take-charge than she’d been before.
Or had that tigress merely been napping for a few years? Had happiness made her spine straighter, her Southern accent a little deeper? He’d made her happy and that brought out her sassy side.
It also made Drew’s jaw drop. While Hatch laughed, Drew stared at Carly and then slowly nodded.
“I won’t make fun of my brother again. He’s obviously an amazing lover,” Drew said slowly.
Carly nodded as though satisfied and then turned on her heels and set off for the kitchen. “Excellent.”
“I love her already,” Hatch said in a whisper everyone could hear.
Drew finally chuckled. “Well, at least she’s not easily intimidated. She’s going to need that.”
“I’ve had to work with some of the nastiest people in the world for years,” Carly said as she opened the fridge. “Just because I sometimes act like a mouse because it’s the best way to get through a day doesn’t mean I’m actually a mouse. Someone stocked this kitchen. Nice. How about muffins?”
Drew stood up and closed his laptop. “How about you tell me what you know about Shelby Gates?”
“Drew, I thought I explained we were going to leave her out of this.” Bran had already had the conversation once this morning.
Carly started getting out ingredients and placing them on the island with the efficiency of a professional chef. “What is the evil one doing to Shelby?”
“When did I get to be evil?” Drew asked with a deep frown.
“When you decided to set me up,” Carly replied. “I was looking for a date and you came in and decided your revenge was more important than my love life.”
“It is more important,” Drew replied.
“See?” Carly pointed out. “Evil.”
Drew stood his ground. “I do believe that getting justice for the deaths of my parents is more important than your social life. Besides, as you’ve already pointed out, your social life was very lively this morning.”
Carly winked Bran’s way. “Ah, but that was thanks to him. Not you. Tell me something, Dr. Evil. Would you have been the one in bed with me if Bran hadn’t foiled your plans?”
Drew turned to him. “I don’t know how to answer that question and now she has a knife. If I say yes she could get mad because that means I would have followed through on my plan to seduce her. If I say no, she might think I don’t find her attractive. Her personality profile didn’t come off as reckless and unstable. Are you sure she’s the same woman?”
Bran had to laugh. And fall even harder for Carly because so few people managed to throw Drew off. His brother looked seriously worried that the hot brunette might come at him with a knife if he got the answer to her question wrong.
“I would definitely have been in bed with you, darlin’,” Hatch offered. “And it wouldn’t have been for some mission.”
She ignored him, preferring to stare at Drew.
“I think she’ll probably accept a simple apology.” It was time to let his brother off the hook.
“I’m sorry I was going to use you to further my plans for justice,” Drew offered. “Bran was obviously smarter than me on this one occasion. He thought you would be a better partner than a pawn. Turns out he was right.”
“Forgiven,” Carly said with a smile.
Drew turned his way. “She’s more trouble than Ellie. She might be more trouble than Mia.”
The door came open and the devil they were speaking of strode in. “No one is more trouble than me! Bran!”
Mia crossed the room quickly, throwing herself into his arms. One of the drawbacks of spending so much time with Carly was having to skip the time he would spend with his baby sister. He hugged Mia tight. Of all his siblings, she was the one he was closest to. Perhaps it was because they were nearest in age or the fact that he could still remember how she’d clung to him when they’d separated them. How he’d told her she had to be brave and he would come for her.
How he’d failed.
“She’s right, you know.” Mia’s husband followed her in. “I can’t think of a single person who causes more chaos than my wife.”
“Shelby Gates is giving her a damn run for her money,” Drew complained.
“Well until you’ve had a wife die in front of your eyes, come back from the grave to insist on taking fifty percent of your company, and then proceed to die again only to be revived and give you twin hellions, you can’t talk around me,” a deep voice said.
At one point in time, Bran had thought Case Taggart had to be the biggest dude he’d ever seen. Not even close. Case’s big brother was six foot five and at least two hundred and forty pounds of pure Viking muscle.
Hatch got up and shook hands with the big guy. Drew came forward as well, while Mia was looking into the kitchen.
“I heard she was here,” Mia whispered. “Is everything all right with her?”
Bran couldn’t help but smile. “Everything’s awesome. Carly, come and meet my baby sister.”
Mia’s eyebrow arched as she looked between the two of them. He could see the silent question in her eyes but he’d done enough talking about his romantic life in front of people who didn’t need to know what kind of a lover he was.
“Carly, this is my sister, Mia. You’ve met Case Taggart, and the even bigger dude is his brother Ian Taggart, who runs the security company we’ll be working with.” He couldn’t help the way he ran his arm around her shoulder or how he stood a little taller because her arm wound around his waist.
Taggart nodded Carly’s way. “Nice to meet you, but I’m a get-to-the-heart-of-the-matter kind of guy. Would someone like to explain to me why I’m trying to take down the woman who invented luscious lemon cookies? They’re my favorite. I have a moral problem with taking out a woman who can bring something like that into the world. I don’t care about your revenge, Lawless. Those cookies bring joy to the world.”
Carly raised her hand. “I actually perfected that recipe. It’s a slightly different take on Mrs. Miller’s lemon shortbread. She used to bring it to potlucks in
our trailer park. I made it lighter and added the powdered sugar.”
“Patricia Cain is just a figurehead, Ian,” Case said with a sigh.
Ian ignored him and nodded Carly’s way. “Then we’re protecting the girl. I’m going to need you to talk to the Pie Maker.”
“Don’t even let him get started. He says he’ll protect you, but what he’ll really do is collect you. His brother runs a restaurant in Dallas and Ian’s set on gathering all the best cooks to work there and personally feed him,” Mia said with a groan. “You can’t take her back to Dallas. I think my brother would have an issue with that.”
Bran tightened his arm around her. Big Tag was definitely not collecting his girl. It didn’t matter that he would only use her for her cooking skills. Those belonged to Bran, too.
“You’re all weirdos,” Carly said with a grin. “Now I’m going to make some muffins. Why don’t y’all have your meeting at the dining room table and I’ll listen in. I’ll also double the recipe and maybe cook some eggs because I know how this one eats. I’m going to assume the rest of you do, too.”
Mia shook her head and took Carly’s hand. “You have no idea. I’ll help. Talk loud, guys. Just because we’re cooking doesn’t mean we’re not here.”
He watched as his sister and his girl walked off and started whispering to each other.
“That’s trouble right there, brother,” Case said with a shake of his head.
Trouble looked pretty good to him.
—
“So I’ve already made contact with the fire department and you’re not going to like what I found out,” Taggart said an hour later.
“It wasn’t an accident.” Bran had been thinking about it ever since the incident. Well, he’d been thinking about it when he hadn’t been accusing his brother or making love to Carly. It was too convenient. He didn’t believe in coincidences.
And then there had been the haunted look in Patricia’s eyes as she’d stared back at the building. She’d changed when he’d told her that there had been a gas leak. She’d lost her angry-diva ways and gotten quiet, contemplative even.
He hadn’t talked to Carly about it. He wasn’t even sure she’d noticed the change in Patricia’s attitude. They’d gone to the hospital and not seen or heard from Patricia again with the single exception of an e-mail agreeing to meet with Ian Taggart and requesting that Bran attend the meeting.
It was set for two p.m. later in the day, and he was so glad Carly wouldn’t be there.
“The initial report is that someone tinkered with the gas line,” Taggart explained. “They weren’t even subtle about it. Someone took a small knife and cut the line. The investigator was adamant that the whole thing was a piece of shit anyway and he’s looking at the art gallery because they were violating several safety codes, but it was obvious someone had cut the line.”
“The cameramen usually carry one of those small tool kits with them.” Carly placed the plate of muffins on the table. “You know, like a Swiss army knife.”
“A Leatherman tool,” Hatch corrected. “It would contain a knife. But wasn’t the cameraman one of the people who got sick?”
“We’re not looking at Mike Davis. He’s been with the crew for a long time,” Bran said.
“Mike’s a solid guy.” Carly slid into the seat beside him, her leg brushing his and making his whole body come alive. Simply being around her seemed to make him more aware of everything. “I can’t imagine he would do anything like this. He’s got a wife and three kids. Now, the other guy hired on recently. His name was Tim something.”
Taggart was on top of it. He slapped a file down on the table. “Tim Connors. He hired on with Cain Corp two months ago and according to passport records fled the country for South America at ten p.m. last night before anyone could stop him. He barely made his flight, but it touched down before the authorities could find him. He’s in the wind now.”
A chill went through Bran’s system. “He must have gotten desperate. His time was ticking away. More than likely he thought he’d get through the job faster than he did.”
Carly shook her head. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Are you saying the camera guy was trying to kill me?”
“I don’t think it was you,” Bran murmured.
“Give me a rundown of the night, Bran.” Taggart leaned back after grabbing a muffin.
It made more sense now that he was looking at it from a logical perspective. “That last shot of the night was late. It was scheduled to be done an hour and a half before they finally called in the family. Some of that was our doing. We made sure the stepdaughter showed up drunk and out of control because we switched the bodyguards around.”
“Was he trying to get the whole family?” Mia asked.
Carly’s hand reached for Bran’s. That felt right, her palm sliding along his and nestling there for comfort. “He only got me.”
“But you were wearing Patricia’s cape. No one else was wearing anything like it.” Bran squeezed her hand, trying to give her some of his strength. He wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her again. “What if he ran out of time and decided that his main target was better than nothing at all? I don’t think he was after you. I think he was after Patricia.”
“But I’ll beat him the hell up when we find him anyway,” Taggart said. “Because he could have killed you and these muffins are incredible.”
Taggart often thought with his stomach. “You’re looking for the guy?”
Taggart shrugged as though it was no big deal to be able to get a man on the ground in South America within twenty-four hours. “He’s our best bet to know exactly what’s going on. I have a team in Cartagena right now. They’ll find him and figure out who hired him, because there’s no way there wasn’t some money on the line with this job. However, I know this guy wasn’t a pro. I think he really did hire on for the business, but then one week in there was a deposit of ten grand into his bank account from an account in Switzerland.”
Drew sat up straighter. “That’s the system they used to pay the assassin who killed my parents.”
“Yes, it’s not the same account, but it’s from the same bank,” Taggart agreed. “I have someone looking into that as well. Tim Connors received another payment yesterday of five grand. He was hired to make this look like an accident. I’m with Bran. He panicked when the timeline didn’t go his way and he overcompensated. He should have nicked the line. That would have been easier. Or he could have loosened it. The gas would have discharged during the shoot, but slowly. He could have shut the door for sound purposes and suddenly that small room becomes a casket for a whole group of people.”
“But we created enough chaos that the shoot ran late,” Drew pointed out.
“He panicked, and when he thought he saw Patricia Cain walk into the room, he pounced and prayed for the best,” Taggart concluded. “I’ve got him on CCTV running down the road toward his car two minutes after Carly was locked in. He didn’t stay to ensure the job was done. He ran as fast as he could and he prayed, and that is precisely why I think when my guys catch up to him he’ll likely be a corpse.”
“He took the money but didn’t do the job. Why are you so certain it’s Patricia they were after?” Carly asked.
Everyone stared at her like she was the slow one in the room.
“Fine,” she conceded. “My boss is a horrible human being and there are lots of people who want her dead. But that whole family is awful. I think you should look into them first. They all stand to gain if Patricia’s out of the way.”
“Particularly Kenny Jr.” He’d been thinking about this a lot, too. He’d watched the man all night long. Kenny’s eyes often strayed to Carly. He’d made sure he got close to her several times. “He thinks Carly is his stepping-stone away from real estate and into TV production. He wants to take over after his father dies.”
Taggart nodded. �
�I’ll see what I can find out about any wills that might be on record. And I’m definitely looking into the money angles. I find it interesting that it’s the same bank from twenty years ago. I also worked up a profile on your girl Gates. Interesting lady. She’s an investigative reporter. She worked for a couple of newspapers until her brother died a while back and then she took over his project, which was an exposé book of our fair queen of mean.”
“You’re investigating Shelby?” Carly’s eyes had widened.
Bran squeezed her hand. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?” Drew’s question came out on an icy huff. “You’ve been out of touch, brother. She’s becoming an annoyance I might have to deal with. She’s been investigating every single one of us. I’ve had to hustle to keep her from putting the Lang family and 4L Software together. She came damn close to figuring it out. I had to work hard to keep her out of those records. I sicced the feds on her and that woman still managed to talk her way out of it.”
“What? You tried to have her arrested?” Carly gasped. “She’s not trying to hurt anyone.”
He needed to do some serious damage control. “Baby, it’s important that we keep our covers or this whole thing falls apart. We can’t have a reporter out there asking questions and possibly printing something that would give us away. I assure you that if Patricia Cain hears the name Lawless, she’ll be on her guard and we won’t get a second chance.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Carly offered. “She started this because I needed some information. I didn’t tell her anything, but she’s got a good instinct for a story. We’re close friends and she’s a good person at heart. If I tell her to back off, she will.”
“I doubt that,” Drew shot back. “Did you know she’s requested our parents’ autopsy reports?”
“Why the hell would she do that?” Hatch was getting red in the face.
“I have no idea,” Drew replied. “But I will find out. If she’s planning on doing some kind of a hatchet job on my parents, I’ll do more than sic the feds on her. I’ll bury her.”
