by HELEN HARDT
“That’s overdoing it,” I said. “I own three pairs of jeans and a few T-shirts and flannels. Plus this shirt I’m wearing.”
Reid ignored me. “Make that ten suits plus the two tuxes. A camel hair overcoat for winter. And then if you could do the foot measurements, I’ll get them to our cobbler.”
“Are you going to measure me for boxers too? Socks? Condoms?”
Dieter laughed…sort of. “No, sir.”
Reid was right. The measuring only took a few minutes, though he came perilously close to my goods when measuring my inseam.
Once Dieter had written everything down, he brought out what appeared to be hundreds of fabric samples.
“Wool for suits.” He handed me a booklet of samples.
I looked through the fabric. Some of the colors were so close I couldn’t tell the difference. I handed it off to Reid. “You choose for me. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“Fine.” He sighed. “Not like I won’t be doing everything else around here anyway.”
I rolled my eyes. “Look, Reid. I know you wish you were in charge. I wish you were too. This sure as hell isn’t what I expected for the rest of my life.”
“I know. Dad fucked us all over.”
“Give yourself a raise, then. You should be making at least what I’ll be making.”
“Believe me. I will be.”
“What am I making, by the way?”
“Cushy eight figures, Rock. Plus options and benefits and Dad’s Manhattan penthouse, as soon as it’s cleaned up and the detectives are done gathering evidence. You’re doing fine.”
Cushy eight figures. Damn. Whether it was ten million or ninety-nine million didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be able to spend that much money in a dozen lifetimes. I’d made a cool fifty K in a good year of construction, and it had been more than enough to suit my modest needs.
“So what do you think?”
I jerked my head back to Reid. “About what?”
“These for your suits.” He pushed several pieces of fabric into my hands.
“What are they?”
“Wool.”
“They don’t feel like wool.” I imagined the heavy sweaters I wore in Montana during the winter.
“They are.”
Dieter approached us and took the fabric Reid had chosen. “Wool is a very versatile fiber, Mr. Wolfe,” he said. “It can be woven into coarse yarns or very fine silky thread, and everything in between.”
“Whatever. Yeah, these are fine.” Just what I needed. A lesson in textiles. Christ.
“Let’s see the cotton poplins and oxfords for his shirts,” Reid said.
Dieter brought over another booklet of samples.
“You a fashion expert now?” I said to Reid.
“I know how to dress myself for the business I’m in. Something you should learn. Something you will learn.”
I eyed my youngest brother. Sharp dresser, that was for sure. I’d have taken him for a designer suit guru, not personally tailored. He was even slightly taller than I was, and I was no slouch at six-three. My little brother had grown up.
Reid chose my shirt fabric and then we went through soft silk for ties. Solids, paisleys, stripes… By the end my eyes were bugging out.
“Can you have a suit ready by tomorrow?” Reid asked.
“Sorry, sir. Next week at the earliest.”
Reid pulled out his wallet and peeled off a couple of Ben Franklins. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Dieter pocketed the bills. “It will be here by seven in the morning. I appreciate your business. But I’ll have to send over a premade shirt and tie, plus some shoes.”
“Fine,” Reid said. “Thank you, Dieter.”
Dieter bowed—yes, he fucking bowed!—and left.
Reid looked at his phone. “Time for our conference call. They’re breaking ground in Vegas today. Go to the conference room. I need to make a quick call first.”
16
Lacey
I’d spent the weekend at the office. I had no shortage of work, and it was the best way to keep my mind occupied.
Even so, my thoughts strayed to Rock Wolfe more than once.
Now, back at my office once again, I faced a morning of no appointments. Nothing to keep my thoughts from grazing over to Mr. Asshole Extraordinaire.
I wasn’t falling for him. I’d known him for all of three days, had spent not more than five hours with him—though they were five pretty exciting hours. Still, I had relationships with leftovers in my refrigerator that were longer.
It had been a fuck. Several fucks, actually. Several amazing fucks.
But it was over.
Derek Wolfe, my client, was dead. Other than seeing that his estate was taken care of, I was finished with him and his family.
Saying goodbye to Derek Wolfe was no hardship. My thoughts wandered to the sixty-five-year-old dead billionaire.
Someone had shot him in the head in his Manhattan penthouse.
Derek Wolfe had no shortage of enemies, and he’d employed a highly paid security team.
Yet someone had managed to breach the unbreachable.
The police had questioned me along with everyone else who had even a slight relationship to Derek Wolfe. As far as I knew, they didn’t have any leads yet, but it was still early. He’d only been dead for four days. The body had been autopsied and then cremated. None of the family seemed remotely interested in a funeral or memorial of any kind. Not that I blamed them.
And why was I ruminating on this?
Because Derek’s death had brought his son into my life.
And Rock had fucked me and walked right out again.
My phone buzzed.
“Yeah?” I said to Charlie.
“Reid Wolfe for you, Lacey.”
Not the Wolfe I wanted to talk to, but I took the call anyway. “Hi, Reid,” I said into the phone.
“Hey, Lacey. Look. I just want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For my brother. I would have called sooner, but I didn’t want to bother you over the weekend.”
“Which brother?”
That got a laugh out of him. “Certainly not Roy. He hardly said a word during the reading of Dad’s will. Rock had no right to make that remark about your…uh…undergarments.”
I chuckled softly. After all I’d experienced with Rock, I’d nearly forgotten about his comment. “It’s okay. He’s far from the first of his kind I’ve dealt with.”
“Well, don’t worry. He won’t be bothering you anymore. You’re off limits, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m going to tell him so.”
“Oh.” An odd feeling swept over me.
One I didn’t want.
“That’s kind of you,” I said to Reid.
What was more important was what I didn’t say. That I didn’t want to be off limits to Rock Wolfe.
No. I wanted to be back in his bed. Back in the bed of a supreme asshole, but back there nonetheless.
“No problem. I’ve got my work cut out for me, but I’m determined that my brother is going to make a go of this. For all our sakes.”
“I think he’ll do fine.” And I meant it.
“Truthfully? He has a lot of potential, but there’s a lot you don’t know about Rock. He’s volatile. And he can be downright dangerous, according to my mother.”
“Dangerous? How?”
“I never could get her to elaborate, but good kids aren’t sent off to military school.”
I couldn’t argue the point.
“If I can tamp that part of him down, he’ll be fine.”
Dangerous? Not Rock.
Volatile? Yes.
But dangerous?
No, Rock wasn’t dangerous. He was passionate, driven, provocative.
Not dangerous.
Rock Wolfe wouldn’t hurt another living soul. I was sure of it.
17
Rock
After the conference call during which I’d uttered abou
t four words, Reid took me around and introduced me to Carla, my secretary, and Jarrod, my executive assistant.
“Why do I need a secretary and an executive assistant?” I asked him.
“They both worked for Dad, and now they work for you.”
“Great. I’ll try to live up to his grand standard of shittiness.” I rolled my eyes.
“Think what you want about Dad, but he treated his employees well. Jarrod has been with him for four years, and Carla for a whopping fifteen. She’ll be retiring soon, and you can hire a brainless blonde with long legs, if you want. I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
“Reid, come on. How the hell was I supposed to know Dad treated his people well? He treated me like shit.”
“Yeah, he did. There’s a lot I don’t know about what went on between you two. Maybe someday you’ll tell me.”
“Not likely.”
“Our father was a dick. Bigtime. But you had to do something.”
“I didn’t do shit.”
“Brother, good kids don’t get sent off to military school.”
Yeah? And good fathers don’t rape their little girls.
“Fuck you,” was all I said.
I’d been a hothead. I knew that now. Instead of trying to do the bastard in myself, I should have gone to the police. But now, as an adult, I knew my father had probably had law enforcement in his back pocket.
My words seemed to jar Reid back into work mode. I tried not to hold what he’d said against him. He was my little brother, and I’d protected him as well. Though how he could live in that house and not know…
We stopped in a kitchen. “Coffee?” Reid asked.
“Man, it’s not even noon yet. I feel like I’ve had a full day. Yeah, coffee. Black.”
Reid poured us each a cup and then led me to his own corner office. He gestured to one of the cushy chairs in front of his desk. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
I sat and took a sip of the hot coffee. “Not strong enough.”
“That’s the coffee for the staff. Jarrod will make sure your coffee is exactly how you like it.”
I set the cup down on the edge of his desk. “Get him in here, then. This isn’t worth drinking.”
“Word of advice. Treat Carla and Jarrod with respect. They’re here to make your life easier, but they won’t have a lot of incentive to do that if you make theirs hell.”
“Then I’ll fire them and hire new flunkies.”
“Christ, Rock. Turnover costs money. Carla and Jarrod are excellent employees. Why risk losing them? They’re also very nice people.”
“Why’d they work for Dad, then?”
“I told you. He treated his employees very well. Way better than he treated his family.” My brother shoved his hand through his hair.
Reid looked troubled, and for the first time, I wondered something.
My eye throbbed. I’d had black eyes courtesy of my father many times, but this one felt like it had sliced into my brain. Alexandria, our nanny, gave me a raw steak. “Hold this against your eye, sweetie. It will help. I get you some aspirins.”
Alexandria was the only person in the household who showed any of us any affection, and even that wasn’t a lot. A pet name or two, sometimes a kiss on the forehead when we went to bed. Never a hug. Never a smile.
My fourteenth birthday was only two days away. Aside from the throbbing in my eye, my back and my legs also hurt. Growing pains, Alexandria said. I’d shot up six inches over the summer. I was two inches taller than my mother now, and I was always starving.
Except for now.
Right now I felt like I was going to retch.
But I wouldn’t. I’d hold it back as I’d learned to do. Wasn’t worth it. I wouldn’t do anything to show the rat bastard who was my father that his actions bothered me.
I’d stopped crying over his beatings five years ago, and three years ago, I’d perfected holding back puke.
Four more years.
In four more years, I’d be eighteen, and I’d get out of this house for good.
Alexandria returned with the aspirin, as she called it. It was actually a large dose of ibuprofen. I guess I should have been thankful for small favors. The beating before this one had been so bad that the nanny had stolen a few pills from my mother’s stash. I didn’t know what they were, but they’d knocked me out like someone had clocked me with a hammer.
“What you do to make your daddy so mad at you?” Alexandria handed me a glass of water so I could swallow the pills.
What had I done? Nothing. I’d put myself between him and my brother Reid. Reid was only nine, but he had a big mouth. He was resting peacefully in bed, his cute face unmarred thanks to me.
I swallowed the water and pills with a gulp. “Nothing.”
“Nothing.” Alexandria shook her head. “You always say nothing. Daddies don’t beat their kids for doing nothing!”
“They do here.”
She gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and then shook her head. “I’ll check on you in an hour.”
Unreal. Alexandria knew exactly what went on here. Though my father took care to keep most of his antics from the house staff, Alexandria’s position as our nanny made it impossible to hide everything.
My father’s money had a way of helping people to look the other way. Alexandria wasn’t a bad person. She was a good nanny, took good care of us. She just wasn’t overly affectionate, though she was more affectionate than either of our parents.
The steak was clammy against my face, but the coolness felt good on my eyelid. I switched my TV on with the remote. Watching with one eye was better than nothing.
My father had never touched me inappropriately. Okay, a lie. My father never touched me sexually. He beat my ass with a coat hanger and a mop handle, to name a few. Maybe it was sexual for him. Maybe he got his rocks off beating his kid. But I was tough as nails and took as much as he dished out, never giving him the satisfaction of one single tear after I turned seven.
He’d beaten Roy and Reid too. I protected them when I could, but when I failed as a big brother, I’d heard their screams. I took them both aside after that and told them never to let the bastard see them cry.
Was it possible that what he’d done to Riley he’d also done to Roy or Reid? Not the kind of thing I could ask my brother—my brother who was wearing his custom-tailored suit and sitting in an office more exquisite than my hotel penthouse suite.
My hotel suite. My mind raced to Lacey.
But no time for that now.
“Reid,” I said, “someone killed Dad. We all know he was a bastard, but who the hell hated him enough to kill him?”
“You. For one.”
“Luckily, I was in Montana.”
“Yeah. And I was kidding, actually. Not that you didn’t hate him. We all hated him. Who killed him? It’s anyone’s guess. It could have been a hundred different people. The cops have their work cut out for them.”
“Maybe we should hire a PI.”
“Why? I’m glad he’s gone. I’d think you are too.”
“Glad the world isn’t being poisoned by his existence, sure. If Roy’s right, though, and the cops are going to come after us, we need to keep our heads up.”
“True enough.”
“I can’t believe he’s forced me into this, but I have to do it for the rest of you.”
Reid let out a soft chuckle. “Believe it or not, I’ve missed you, big brother.”
I scoffed. “You’re the only one.”
“Not true. Roy and Riley missed you. Even Mom.”
“Devil woman? I don’t think so.”
“Why do you hate Mom so much? She did the best she could under the circumstances. She was Dad’s victim too.”
“You’re deluding yourself, man.”
“What could she have done better? She took care of us.”
“She hired nannies to take care of us.”
“Well…yeah. But at least she didn’t beat the hell out of us.”
“We were all bigger than she was.”
“Not always. Not until we hit eleven or so.”
True. Our mother hadn’t beaten us. She’d been indifferent, for the most part. I could have forgiven her that. I could have forgiven her almost anything, if not for that horrible conversation I’d overheard between her and Riley. But that wasn’t my story to tell. It was Riley’s.
“You’re not at all curious who did Dad in?” I asked.
“Not in the slightest, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why you are.”
“Easy.” I picked up the cup of brown water and took another sip. “I’d like to buy him dinner, complete with a Champagne toast.”
That got another soft laugh out of my brother. “Man, I’d go in on that with you.”
“Do you think Roy and Riley would?”
“Roy, yeah. In a heartbeat. Riley’s tougher to figure out. She had a closeness with Dad that Roy and I didn’t share. Maybe because she was the only girl. I don’t know.”
If I hadn’t been sure Reid was in the dark about Dad and Riley, I was certain now. “What kind of closeness?”
“Dad would take her on trips. Big, lavish trips to places like Paris and Barcelona. They even went to Bangkok once. Roy and I finally stopped complaining about it. It didn’t do any good.”
“How old was Riley when she went on these trips with Dad?”
“It started when she was pretty young. Eight or so. They went on until she left for college. Or they might have continued, for all I know. I was already working here by then, and Roy was off in Soho painting.”
Fucking bastard.
I knew exactly what had gone on during those trips.
“I’ll tell you something, Reid. It’s a good thing somebody else murdered that prick. If he hadn’t, I might have.”
18
Lacey
Finally, the day was over, and I couldn’t wait to get home and into a hot bath. If Rock Wolfe was going to take up residence in my head, I might as well let him. I could fantasize while sitting in a luscious citrus steamy bath, a glass of wine next to me.
