by Vanessa Vale
* * *
“What happened between you and North Wainright?” I asked, adjusting my grip on my steering wheel. I had my cell in a stand on my dash, set to speaker as I drove out of town.
“North?” my brother asked. “God, that was a long time ago.”
I might have her panties tucked into my pocket, but I didn’t know much about the woman. And I’d looked. Online searches through the various FBI databases didn’t give me much. She had a driver’s license and had several cars registered to her name, but to get from the ranch to the main office in Billings in a reasonable time, she took a helicopter.
A fucking helicopter. Meaning no speeding or parking tickets.
We couldn’t access the corporate emails or files without a warrant, and I couldn’t serve her one without blowing my cover. She didn’t have any accounts on social media and her personal emails were limited to connecting with those who worked for the family. The Wainrights had a ranch manager who handled the land and the outbuildings. That was a huge job and had seven full-time on staff. Cutting grass in the summer, plowing snow the rest of the year, mending fences, running the stables. There was also a house manager, a woman who took care of everything inside the Wainright home. And guest house. That included cleaners, a cook, hiring caterers for a wake, tackling maintenance issues. Probably even putting up holiday lights.
North didn’t have the time to go to the store and pick up pretzels or toilet bowl cleaner. Someone fed her, made her bed, washed her clothes, serviced her car… hell, serviced her helicopter. From what she’d said, even serviced her.
It wasn’t because she was an entitled bitch, but because she worked. All the fucking time.
The only thing I discovered was that she had a shoe buying problem. And since every pair I’d seen on her had four-inch heels, it was all done online. Those shoes weren’t sold in Montana. I liked those heels. I liked her in them. I liked having them over my shoulders the other day.
I shifted in my seat.
“She broke up with you?” I asked Jock.
I could hear chattering in the background. It was either Tyler or Jamie, my nephews, and from the sound of water splashing, they were in the tub. For a family with small kids, it was bath time.
“She did,” he said.
“I thought you two had been hot and heavy.” The thought of her with Jock made me see red, even though it had been over a decade ago. At the wake, she’d said she’d been surprised I wanted my younger brother’s sloppy seconds. That meant they’d fucked.
I’d spent the day tracking down the escort service she used for her no strings scheduled appointment for sex. I didn’t think she’d lied when telling me that. What woman would share that and it be a lie?
I’d called the service, saying I was her assistant, Julian, and cancelled all her standing appointments. She wasn’t seeing Brad ever again, not with me around to give her whatever she needed.
When I’d told the woman Miss Wainright was now in a relationship, she’d been pleased for her. Unlike North, who when she found out what I’d done, would want to cut out my spleen with a butter knife.
“Hot and heavy for seventeen,” he replied. “I guess. We went on dates. The lake. Ice cream at Dot’s. Hell, even bowling. I wasn’t a high school Casanova. What is it you’re wanting to know?”
“She said her father had a deal going with Mom and Dad.”
“You saw her?”
“I went to the wake.” I wasn’t going to offer more than that. Unfortunately, to make my cover as legit as possible, Jock thought I’d been kicked out of the FBI and that I was working for John Marshall. He wasn’t thrilled about it. No one around here liked Marshall. But I was forty and he didn’t have much say in what I did.
We were pretty close, especially since our parents had been killed in a car accident and we were the only family we had, but I was ten years older. I’d left for college when he was still in elementary school so there was a lot we didn’t know about each other.
“I heard Macon Wainright died,” he said. “Man, he was an ass—special kind of guy.” One of the kids laughed followed by a huge splash.
“Ass! Ass!”
Jock groaned. “Tyler, don’t let your mother hear you say that. And leave the water in the tub.”
I turned off the main road and headed east.
“I went once, to Billionaire Ranch, to pick her up,” Jock continued. “Macon opened the door, offered me a beer.”
He offered a seventeen-year-old kid who was going to be driving his daughter a beer?
“I first thought it was a test and told him no. But he’d been serious. You’d think he wanted to know what time I’d be bringing his daughter home, not getting me drunk.”
“Yeah.” I had no idea what else to say.
“First, he told me how he was real friendly with Mom and Dad. Then… get this.” I could hear him laugh through the phone. “He gave me a strip of condoms. Told me that while fucking North was fine and all but making him a granddaddy wasn’t.”
“Daddy said a bad word! Ass! Fuck!”
“Holy shit,” I mumbled, and not about my nephew’s growing vocabulary.
“No kidding. I had no choice but to take the things, tuck them in my pocket. After that I’d been too scared to do more than kiss North.”
“You never slept with her?” I was surprised and I was sure it sounded in my voice.
“Laugh at me and I’ll kill you, but I couldn’t get it up. I mean, all I could think about was her dad practically giving me his blessing to fuck her.”
I could imagine. A teenager’s dick got hard all the time, and around a pretty, young North, it would be impossible to keep it down. Except for what Macon had done.
So North’s words at the wake had been tossed out in anger. In self-defense?
“Now that I’m older, I have to wonder if he was using reverse psychology or some shit like that.”
No. I doubted that. Macon had wanted Jock to have sex with North.
If he wasn’t dead, I’d want to beat the shit out of him, because I had a feeling the reason why was going to piss me off. The only one alive to know the answer was North.
“She break up with you because you couldn’t perform?” What little I knew of her, I doubted that was the case.
“I never took it that far. Like I said, all I could see was her dad. She was sweet. Her laugh was… infectious. Besides her being gorgeous, I just liked her. Then one day, she came over and broke up with me. This was after the condom thing, not that she knew about it. She was upset but wouldn’t tell me why. Said we were going away to college and that it wasn’t going to work out.”
“That’s it? She gave you the ‘It’s not you, it’s me?’” I stared blankly at the road out the window.
“I guess, but I remember clearly the next day the deal for the ranch fell through.”
I slowed for the metal cattle guard that went across the dirt road. “You remember that?”
“Oh yeah. We were headed to San Diego to celebrate, using some of the money. Mom canceled the trip.”
I remembered that. The phone call with my dad telling me they’d decided not to sell the ranch after all. I’d been busy with work, putting in tons of hours out of Quantico, and hadn’t asked too many questions. They hadn’t tried to sell it to anyone else after that. Then they’d died, leaving the property to me and Jock. He’d gotten married the next year I’d bought him out of his half. He’d gone and bought a place in Bozeman near his wife’s family.
I’d come home for vacations, only returning permanently as part of my cover. In my down time, I was fixing the place up.
I slowed when I came upon the huge wooden arch with Wainright Ranch carved into it. The place had been nicknamed Billionaire Ranch for as long as I could remember. No one called it by anything else.
The drive was paved and meandered across the rolling landscape. The house sat back almost a mile from the road.
“Thanks, Jock. Tell Ellen hi for me and kiss the kid
s.”
“Come down soon and do it yourself,” he countered.
“Will do.”
I ended the call and turned down the drive and stewed over what Jock had shared. He never slept with North. What had she said in her office earlier? That maybe I’d gotten together with her father as payback for what she did to Jock. That made no sense. Based on what my brother had just told me, she hadn’t done anything to him. She assumed I’d connected with her father before he died and had… offered her up as part of a deal? That I was at his wake to collect?
Did that mean he’d offered her up to Jock when they were kids to sweeten the deal with his parents?
I pulled into the circular drive, parked, ran a hand over my face.
What the fuck was wrong with me? Getting with North Wainright wasn’t a simple thing. Hell, she had to be the most complex woman I’d ever met. She had issues. A fuck ton of them, even though she had enough money to solve every single one of them. I looked up at the huge house that proved that.
I was a glutton for punishment because my dick wanted her. My head wanted her too. There was something about her. Something… complex and intriguing.
I was surprised, at my age, that I could spend all my time thinking about a woman, but I did. How she was the last fucking woman on the planet who I should get a hard on for.
She might be seriously guilty of federal crimes.
She was now the number one focus of my case.
And I wanted her to be… what? Mine?
I sighed, grabbed my hat off the seat. Yeah, I did.
Except when she found out I was undercover, it wasn’t going to end well. I even knew how well she could shoot, and I still wanted her.
It still didn’t matter. It was rare to find a woman that made life interesting. She was also damaged and from what I could tell, had no one on her side. Oh, she had a shit ton of people working for her, to do whatever she wanted. Even Brad.
But they weren’t watching out for her. They helped because she was paying them.
I walked up the broad stone steps to the front door. Rang the bell as I took in the grand entry.
She was a princess alone in her big fucking castle. Was I her prince? Far from it, but I was going to be there for her. To figure out what made her tick. What made her smile. And give that to her for the rest of her life. As I thought that, I should have panicked. Hopped back in my truck and drove off, dirt flying. But no, it sounded about perfect.
When I heard the gunshot, I wondered if I might be too late.
6
NORTH
* * *
Besides the funeral, where we all confirmed our father had definitely been put in the ground, my brothers and I hadn’t been together for dinner since Christmas. That was because Macon had been in Cabo with his mistress and the only time the guys came to the house was when he was gone.
The last time they had slept beneath the roof was the night before each of them went to college. They’d gone off and never come back.
Yeah, it had been that much of a shit show.
We talked on the phone, at least once a week, and I saw West and South about once a month, either at one of their places or in town. Never at the house.
“Who wants another?” East called out, holding up the whiskey bottle in one hand and had a shotgun hinged open and tucked under his other arm.
“Me,” South and West said at the same time.
West pulled the string on the trap and a glass ashtray went flying. South aimed and fired his own weapon and blew the ashtray to pieces over the field.
We were wearing hearing protection, so they shouted.
I’d been out here shooting the longest, somehow returning from the office before any of them arrived. The helicopter was sitting in its usual spot on the west lawn.
I’d gone inside to change my clothes as usual, passed a wall of all of Macon’s trophies and other memorabilia. I’d stopped, realized I hated every piece of it. The gloating, the self-adoration. I’d grabbed as much as I could carry off the wall and took it out back, only returning for the shotgun, some shells from his office and trading my heels for a pair of rain boots in the mud room.
I’d set the items on the top of the split rail fence at the back edge of the garden and took aim. That was where my brothers found me. They’d collected more of his things and an extra shotgun and decided to make it more fun by using the skeet trap, so we’d moved to the field. East had also grabbed a bottle of whiskey.
He passed the liquor and grabbed a silver plate, read the inscription. “Man Of The Year 2011. More like Asshole of the Year,” he added.
He glared as if it held all the shitty memories of that time, then walked over to the trap, set it in place, then loaded shells into the gun.
I moved to take his spot, waited for him to get in position and give me the nod. I pulled the rope and a split second later, he fired. The plate pinged in the air, then went flying like an out of control UFO in the direction of the stables.
“Fuck you, Macon!” he shouted.
Yeah, fuck you.
South grabbed another silver plate and flung it like a frisbee. It got good air and landed just shy of the pond.
When someone came running around the side of the house, his footsteps on the flagstone walk loud even through the hearing protection, we all spun around.
Jed.
When he saw what we were up to, he came to a skidding halt, then set his hands on his hips, gun in his right hand, taking a second to breathe.
“Jesus.” I could barely hear him but read his lips.
I tugged out the hearing protection, let it dangle around my neck like an open necklace.
He tucked the gun into the back of his pants and stalked over in the same clothes as this morning. I watched his long-legged gait, the shift of his narrow hips, the way his muscles flexed beneath his jeans. If there was a picture of a cowboy in the dictionary, he’d be it.
Eddie got up from the spot where he’d been sleeping in the sunshine and approached. The dog hadn’t even stirred from the shotgun blasts but wanted to greet Jed.
“Does everything you do involve shooting?” he asked, stepping close and stroking my hair back.
Lately. “I decided to get rid of some things,” I answered. Macon’s bedroom had been emptied as I’d asked.
He looked to the pile in the grass, then back at me. “I see that.”
“I did some data mining on you. I’d say your time in the FBI probably made you a good shot,” I said. He’d worked for them that summer I saw him at his parents’ barbecue. Yet he’d been recently fired, although I hadn’t gotten the details on that. He’d left the east coast behind and returned to the family ranch. And a job with John Marshall.
“I can hold my own,” he replied.
“You always walk around with a gun?” I said, glancing at the holstered weapon on his hip.
He gave me a questioning look. “Says the woman who shoots up a wake. This is Montana, everyone has a gun.”
Eddie nudged his thigh and Jed looked down, gave him a scratch behind his ear. The dog leaned into Jed’s leg, closing his eyes. Yeah, I knew the feeling. Those fingers were magic.
“We were just reminiscing,” East said as he came over, pointing to where he just shot the commemorative plate. “You knew Macon?”
Jed nodded.
“That asshole…” East cleared his throat and held up the plate so Jed could read the inscription. “Excuse me, man of the year, had me kicked off the varsity football team. That threatened my scholarship to State.” He shook his head. “Fuck, I thought I was going to be stuck here baling hay the rest of my life.”
Jed glanced around, taking in the house, the stables in the distance, probably trying to figure out why that would be such a hardship.
“I have no idea what made him change his mind,” East continued.
South and West grumbled, went over and slapped East on the back. They did so as he took a swig of whiskey, which had him spilling some on his
university t-shirt.
Macon’s mind change? That had been me. I’d been a sophomore at Harvard. Macon had learned from when South had gone to college the year before that I’d do anything to set them free. I’d made a deal with the devil for South. Then he’d threatened both East and West the following year—without their knowledge, although to them it was only dick moves on his part to fuck with them. Like getting East kicked off the football team.
Their freedom had been at stake and since I’d already bargained my life away, I did whatever it took.
Almost.
When I realized Jed was watching me, I looked away. Afraid he could read my mind.
“You’re the guy from the wake,” East said.
Jed turned to him, introduced himself. They shook hands and East glanced between Jed and me, his face filled with curiosity.
“My other brothers West and South,” I added.
“Don’t ask us to line up in order,” South said, taking a pull of whiskey. He was the shortest of the three, at six feet.
“I’m sure you get that all the time,” Jed commented.
“South’s got our mother’s maiden name,” I explained. “Southforth. East and West are short for Easton and Weston.”
They were twins, but fraternal. They didn’t look or act anything alike. One was a rancher, the other a university professor. Although they were two years younger, they were six inches taller.
“And North?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Just North.”
“Your father’s sense of humor gave you those names?”
South shook his head. “Macon? He didn’t have one. Our mother named us.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. We might be shooting up Macon’s things, but I didn’t want to talk about him.
The sun was moving lower in the sky, creating a soft haze over the prairie. There was barely any breeze.
My brothers turned back to the pile of Macon’s things. West grabbed some kind of golf trophy, went over to the trap. East stood beside South, clearly they were content drinking and shooting at things for the next while.
“I told you I’d see you later,” Jed said, turning my attention back to him. “Overheard you were having dinner with your brothers.”