by Moriah Jovan
He leaned down, his fists on the table, and got right in Knox’s face, his voice hard. “I want to fuck her.”
Knox stared at him and Bryce took a second to thoroughly enjoy his shock—then he noticed that Knox’s eyes were the same ice blue as Giselle’s. And Taight’s. Shit. Bryce sighed with an odd combination of confusion, relief, and guilt, then shook his head at himself.
Resignedly, he cast a glance askance at the carafe of orange juice and signaled a waitress. “Sandra, please take this back,” he muttered, swiping it off the table and ignoring what Knox would want. “A steak and a salad for him, the usual for me and a big bowl of tzatziki. Water. Lots of it. Please.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Knox sneered once she’d left. Bryce slid into the seat across from Knox. “I see you’re on a first-name basis here.”
Bryce ignored that and grabbed a sugar packet to have something to occupy his hands. “You have a lot of explaining to do and I don’t need you passing out before you answer all my questions.”
“Screw you. I don’t owe you anything.”
Bryce’s jaw worked in thought and he stared down at the table. He said nothing because he couldn’t dispute that. Strike two. How else had he willfully misjudged the only man who’d ever told him the truth, no matter how nasty or painful?
“Michelle lied to you,” Knox groused. “I never touched that crazy fucking bitch you married. You know that and you always have. It was just easier for you to blame me than your own shitty judgment in women—especially considering the fact that I hated her and I specifically told you not to marry her. And on top of all that, she was a blonde and skinny as a rail.”
“You’re right,” Bryce admitted with a heavy sigh. “I knew. I didn’t want to disbelieve her and . . . I’m sorry.”
Knox grunted. “That’s a helluva way to split that hair. I’m the one who should be holding the grudge. Do you actually know how many other men she was sleeping with?”
“No. What I do know is that the men she liked were a lot smaller than me.”
Knox looked at him for a moment and then murmured, “Tell me something. If I could’ve proven it to you, would you’ve listened to me?”
Bryce looked off toward the belly dancers without seeing anything at all. “No. I was too invested in avoiding the kind of women I like.”
They sat in companionable silence for a long while, their friendship having begun in college and never really waning except for Bryce’s determination to be angry with Knox for something he hadn’t done. And, as he always had, Knox promptly forgave and forgot.
“You and Taight are related to Giselle,” Bryce finally said.
Knox barked a laugh. “Don’t tell me. It’s the eyes, right?”
Come home with me tonight . . . Please. I need you.
“I’m going to assume, for the sake of my own sanity, that neither of you is her brother.”
“Cousin,” he confirmed with alacrity. “Close enough to be creepy, not close enough to contaminate the DNA, and legal to breed in twenty-three states.”
“So Fen—”
“Fen’s her and Sebastian’s uncle by marriage. Our mothers are sisters.”
Their food came then and conversation ceased as they ate. Knox’s grumpy mood changed markedly once he got some real food in him and the orange juice wore off. It’d always been that way, Bryce remembered absently, thinking that they’d taken up where they’d left off. Nobody would have guessed that they hadn’t spoken in a dozen years.
“I want to know about Leah Wincott,” Bryce finally said, when it was clear that Knox had given all he intended to give him concerning Giselle. At least for now—and at this point, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know anyway.
“Well, I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I never thought you did.”
Knox’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth as he stared at Bryce. “You didn’t?”
Bryce had never seen Knox so shocked so many times in the course of an hour. “No,” he replied warily, wondering where Knox’s mind had gone. “Fen’s the only likely candidate.”
“What do you know?” he demanded.
“I don’t know anything,” Bryce returned, irritated. “You’ve got no reason to kill her; he’s got every reason in the world and I don’t know anyone who really thinks you killed her. Your problem is your reputation versus his reputation. It’s not like you don’t have a track record.” After a minute, he gestured at Knox with his fork. “I’m listening. Start talking.”
“Fen killed my father. Insulin overdose. Obviously looks like natural causes for an old diabetic with heart disease.”
Bryce’s eyebrow rose.
“Remember I told you my mom kicked me out of the house when I was fifteen because I accused her of having an affair with Fen? And I went to live with my aunt and cousin?” Bryce nodded, recalling his shock over finding out that his roommate was the heir to a fortune and how that had come about—
“Giselle was the cousin?”
“Yes. Well, the proviso is dated just about a week after Trudy kicked me out, and then my dad died the week after that. I tell you what. That proviso’s been the bane of my existence, stuck in professional limbo, never feeling like I had a place in life until I turned forty. And hell, when I was fifteen, forty-year-olds were damn near on their deathbeds.”
—and all the sleepless nights when the nineteen-year-old heir had paced their dorm room trying to figure out how to pass the next twenty years or how to weasel out of the course his uncle had set for him. “What was your father thinking?”
Knox sighed. “I don’t know.”
“So . . . how do you know Fen murdered your father and why haven’t you had him investigated?”
“After you and I parted company, Giselle and I were over at the estate clearing out my old bedroom. We went to Fen’s office to ask him something and overheard him confessing to his bishop. I’ve had him under investigation ever since. Short of exhuming my father—and insulin is damn near the perfect weapon, so I haven’t bothered—I can’t find anything.”
“Did you confront him?”
“Yes. He didn’t deny it.”
“So he’s had it in for you since.”
Knox waved a hand. “He likes me and he’d rather not kill me. First, I’m the heir. That just looks bad. I’m the most conspicuous person in ten counties and the FBI camps on my doorstep. I disappear, Fen’s suspect number one. Second, I have a reputation that he doesn’t dare breach since, you know, the entire city thinks I’m capable of murder.” Bryce smirked and Knox rolled his eyes. “Fen doesn’t have the balls to come after me, vicariously or otherwise. Third, he’s squeamish and he has an unfortunate tendency toward half-assed contrition: He won’t dirty his own hands; he’ll confess to the bishop and get excommunicated—but he won’t give any of it up. Fourth, after Giselle and I confronted him about killing my dad, he got scared we’d just get married to fulfill the proviso and that’d be that.”
“Would you?”
“No. I don’t give a fat rat’s ass about OKH and Sebastian’s welcome to it.”
“You found your place in life.”
“Sure did. You know Fen had me chasing my tail all those years, telling me to go here, get this degree. Go there, get that degree. ‘Prepare for the handoff, son. I’m just holding OKH for you to take over.’ And he meant it. He flat-out told me he wasn’t going to let me be a trust fund frat boy who couldn’t be trusted to drive a car, much less run a company, and he was going to make sure I knew how to do that job.”
“And got pissed off at you for wanting to be a prosecutor instead of learning how to take care of OKH,” Bryce muttered.
Knox nodded. “Or at least get a job making some real money. I had another offer in the Clay County prosecutor’s office, but Nocek found out, came courting. Fen blew his top when I told him, said Nocek was bad news and I’d get stuck in that cesspool. It was the last place Fen wanted me to go, so naturally, that’s where I went.”
> Bryce cast back in his memory, years before when they had just graduated from law school and settled into their new jobs, how tense Knox had grown, how closed-mouthed he had been about his boss and the rumors of corruption in the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office. Knox had walked out of Bryce’s life not long after that, so Bryce had never known what happened. “You were miserable.”
Knox nodded. “I was young and dumb. Flattered. See, Nocek thought I had a trust and unlimited access to OKH funds that he could squeeze out of me, but I didn’t, which pissed him off—and then I realized I couldn’t get out of that office any way but in a pine box.”
“You’re kidding.”
Knox shook his head. “Bad things happened to people who left or talked. Nocek used the sheriff’s department as his personal thug patrol. So I bided my time, cut my teeth on the hardest cases they could foist off on me, and found out I really liked the job.
“Nocek made his money fixing cases, which I didn’t know for a couple of months. Then he informed me he expected me to contribute to the widow’n’orphan fund like the rest of the crew. There were three attorneys in that office who didn’t, but they were so subtle, Nocek didn’t know they weren’t on the take. I latched on to them, but I wasn’t very successful at hiding my winning streak. Nocek rode my ass constantly because I wasn’t bringing any money into the office. Then after I ki—”
Knox stopped abruptly. Took a deep breath. Gulped down his water.
Bryce began to laugh and Knox glared at him. “Shut up. Anyway, after—well, after that was all over with, he left me alone for another couple of months, but it was too late. I’d had enough of his bullshit, so I forced him to resign and name me as his successor.”
“And the untouchable Knox Hilliard was born, all with the tacit approval of the federal prosecutor.”
“Well, you know. You turn vigilante—”
“Twice.”
“—and you get the undying loyalty of every cop in the state. So now I’m happy with what I do. I know as well as I know the penal code that I’m not cut out to be a CEO of anything. I’m not a manager. I don’t even manage my own staff; my executive AP does that and I don’t know how I got anything accomplished before he came to work for me. I’m just a redneck lawyer in a backwater of a county that’s still a cesspool. And I like it that way.”
“Doesn’t hurt that you have your pick of the brightest legal minds coming out of every law school in the Midwest, either, corruption be damned. How’d that happen?”
Knox grunted. “Lucked into it. About five years ago, a friend called me, said she needed a sub for her class for a week and then my name got passed around when somebody needed a fill-in. One semester, one of the emeritus professors died the day before class started and I got called. I guess a few of the students were impressed enough to drop their CVs at my office after they graduated. Kinda bloomed from there.”
“You’re faculty now, though?”
“Part time. One class a semester is the most I can squeeze in, if that. I don’t even bother to keep office hours. Obviously the county takes precedence and if someone needs a face-to-face conference, they have to come up to Chouteau City to do it.”
“So you and Taight are working together to take OKH?”
“I wouldn’t call it working together so much as trying to get the other one to do all the heavy lifting. The irony is neither one of us wants it. We just want Fen not to get it because he killed one person to have it and one person to keep it. And it all started when he tried to kill Giselle to keep her from marrying me.”
Bryce’s gut clenched. “He what?”
“Mmmm, that’s right,” Knox said around his bite. “The first time, he burned her bookstore. She lived in the apartment above it and she would’ve died in it except she couldn’t sleep that night and just knew something was wrong. Girl has the instincts of a she-wolf. The alarms had been disabled and she barely got out with her purse and her laptop and that was it. Fortunately, she was the only one who actually lived in the building.”
Bryce thought his heart had stopped at the word “burned.” Knox looked up then and breathed, “Oh, dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
He shook his head to clear it. “I—” He gulped. “It’s an excruciating way to die,” he whispered, hoarse.
Knox sighed, but didn’t speak again until Bryce had recovered himself, cleared his throat again, and said, “Go on.”
“Well, anyway, when that didn’t work, Fen sent a couple of hit men after her.” He stopped and ate some more.
“That explains the bullet holes,” Bryce muttered.
Knox speared him with a glance. “Holes? Plural?”
“The ones in her shoulder?”
He snickered. “Hole. That was a through-and-through. They had to dig the other one out of her hip.”
It was just so . . . wrong . . . that Bryce found that arousing.
“So they’re still out looking for her?”
“Naw. She killed ’em, one gun in each hand. No hesitation. No remorse. It was a regular little shoot-out, but it put her in the hospital for a few days. Then he went after Leah instead. Giselle put a gun to his head, told him that if he did it again, she’d take him out. Of course, Giselle can get a little out of control now and again, and she never makes threats she won’t carry out. Fen knows she was serious and he won’t play chicken with her, but if he pushes her to it, I hope she has the good sense to do it in my county.”
Bryce’s eyes widened and he didn’t know what to do, what to think. What he did know was that he was very, very hard.
“Obviously, Fen doesn’t want me to fulfill the proviso. He hasn’t decided yet if he wants to test the limits of Giselle’s patience, but I wouldn’t put it past him to try if he manages to cozy up to her again.”
Bryce’s brow wrinkled.
“Fen and Giselle have a very strange relationship.”
“Strange how?”
“They amuse the hell out of each other. Always have. If it weren’t for the whole killing thing, they’d be best buds. Every so often, Fen gets comfortable with her again and forgets that she doesn’t play games. He’ll drop his guard, do something that pisses her off, and then he’ll spend the next little while kissing her ass until she cools down. She hasn’t cooled off since he had her shot and that’s the longest she’s ever been mad at him. I think she hurt his feelings.”
Bryce stopped chewing and stared at Knox. “Hurt his feelings?”
“Because she doesn’t find him amusing at the moment. Don’t feel bad; Sebastian and I don’t understand it, either. Anyway, after Leah was killed, I finally decided that I don’t need OKH so badly I’m willing to put another woman in front of him, especially the woman I want.”
Bryce looked at him carefully. “The woman you want,” he said slowly, “which is not Giselle?”
“Hell no.”
That tore it. “Oh, so she’s just a booty call for you.”
Knox’s jaw and fork dropped at the same time. “What the fuck?”
“I overheard you at Leah’s visitation. You took her home.”
Knox stared at him, the tic in his cheek working. “You know,” he said, “you’ve always been stupid about women. First of all, if you were eavesdropping, you deserve what you hear. Second of all, if you’re going to eavesdrop, you could have the courtesy to stick around for the whole conversation. Third, didn’t you learn your lesson about assuming the worst about my sexual habits the first time I was accused of banging a woman you thought belonged to you?”
Uh oh.
He threw his napkin on the table and started to rise. “You know what, Bryce? Fuck you. I’m tired of being the one getting the shaft when a woman’s got you in knots.”
“Siddown,” Bryce growled and wasn’t surprised when Knox looked at him expectantly, waiting. It was a familiar exchange. “I’m sorry,” he muttered when he looked down at his plate, thoroughly abashed. “Again.”
It took a moment before he heard Knox settle
back into his seat. “Yeah, I asked her to go home with me,” Knox said low, his voice unusually raspy. “Don’t tell me you’ve never needed to hold on to somebody when your life’s been ripped out from under your feet.”
Oh. Bryce swallowed.
“But wait. I forgot. You don’t have anybody you can beg comfort sex from who’ll still love you the day after whether she gives it to you or not.”
He flinched.
“She said no. Happy now? Again?”
Yes, but . . . He decided to keep his curiosity in check for the moment.
Knox drew in a deep breath before continuing a moment later. “So here I am, four serious girlfriends and a dead fiancée later, barely thirty-seven, still not married and with no child on the way, the clock ticking—and it’s because of all this that Leah’s dead. And make no mistake. Whatever you think about me or my relationship with Leah—oh, look, more assumptions—I loved her.”
Bryce’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t assume anything about Leah. She told me what you did to her.”
Knox rolled his eyes.
“You blackmailed her and manipulated everything around her so she’d have no choice. I can think of at least three felonies you committed to get her into bed.”
He speared Bryce with a glance. “Did she tell you she had no choice? In those words?”
Bryce pursed his lips.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. She had a choice. She was just more willing to bail her daughter out of a homicide charge than she was to keep her virtue intact. Not my problem. The deal was she had to sleep with me a week and—Surprise!—she loved it. Rachel found out, threw it back in her face, and disappeared. After that, Leah figured she had no reason to go back to Houston at all except to pack up her shit and put her house on the market. She was back in bed with me in two weeks flat and she was there for five years, saying no every time I broached the subject of marriage.”
“Well,” Bryce conceded, “she did tell me she didn’t want Rachel to have squatter’s rights to OKH.”
“I didn’t either, so I didn’t push very hard.”
“So that was why Leah wasn’t as threatening to Fen as Giselle.”
