Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Nice.” Edward cleared his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “So how about telling me why you’re in here again. Yesterday. Coffee shop? Odd interaction. Remember?”

  “Oh right!” Skye burst out excitedly. She took her tennis shoe feet off his desk and plopped them back onto the carpet. Then she leaned forward and started talking animatedly with her hands. “So I was at the shop yesterday like usual. And I was writing a bit for my blog and then finishing up this article I’m writing for the new paper. Right?”

  Edward nodded because this was what she seemed to need in order to continue. His mind drifted toward thoughts of Diana Appleton. She was so much more—reserved came to mind—than Skye. It was a much more restful and maybe even intellectually stimulating relationship for Edward. But he shouldn’t be thinking about Diana right now. He needed to be thinking about whatever it was Skye was talking about at a million words per second.

  “So there I am,” Skye said dramatically. “When I see some woman across the shop reading the Dallas Star! She’s got the page open to the latest story from my old editor, Carolyn Phillips, where she’s talking about the dumpster baby and the billionaire bachelor and all that crap.”

  “Great.” Edward always felt somewhere between ashamed and utterly annoyed at the way the Dallas Star was allowing their society editor to write outlandish columns filled with speculation and lies about the local residents. “So let me guess. You felt compelled to inform this woman that she was reading a line of bullshit.”

  “Exactly!” Skye said excitedly. “But then, the woman noticed that I was the person in the photograph on the page. So she goes off on me!”

  “And you’re telling me this why? Did Jason opt out of the tale or something?”

  “No.” Skye rolled her eyes. “I’m telling you this because the woman said that she knows the King family and that she went to school with Edward King. She was reading me the riot act about how I was ruining all of your lives because you were going to have to pay some awful price for breaking your mother’s rules or some shit like that. I don’t know.” Skye gave a dismissive wave. “The point is that she was really passionate about this and named you directly.”

  “Is that right.” Edward’s brain was spinning. There was only one person he knew of that fit that description. “Did you get her name?”

  “Shawn said the name on her coffee order is always Diana.” Skye’s green eyes were bright with eager interest. “Is this the infamous Diana Appleton that I keep hearing whispered about?”

  “Skye, mind your business. Please?” Edward wished he could somehow put a gag order on the woman. It was like her brain moved at such an incredible rate of speed that she was already miles and miles ahead of you by the time you figured out what direction she was even headed in. “I don’t know how Jason keeps up with you. Seriously. I would have had to hogtie you weeks ago.”

  “Jason isn’t so different from me, you know,” Skye pointed out. “Sometimes I think you guys just don’t know him at all because he’s the youngest and you’ve all got your ideas about what he’s like or what you think he should be like, but you don’t actually know him.”

  Edward could not fault her on that. There was a log of pigeon holing going on in the King household. It was pretty much the way they had been raised from birth. And since the death of their father, Mac King, several months ago, it had only gotten worse. Tisha Olivares-King was the matriarch of the King family now and she was making it known that she figured that was pretty much a position of royal and absolute authority.

  Skye was being quiet. This was frightening. Edward thought again about how his brother seemed to mesh so seamlessly with this woman. Edward had listened to the two of them banter back and forth for hours being almost ridiculous in their animated exchanges and yet seeming to enjoy themselves so thoroughly each and every moment.

  “I know that things have been tense around here,” Skye told Edward in an uncharacteristically subdued voice. “But I also know that you don’t really belong in this company. Not only have you been squeezed out by the inheritance intentions of your older brothers, but you don’t even really want to be here.”

  “But I am,” Edward reminded her. He gestured to the ledger on his desk. “We have nearly five hundred employees here in Dallas and scattered across the US on job sites who are depending on me to locate the money that went missing from our payroll accounts. We’ve set it up so that they are getting paid now, but we owe them back pay and I want to make it right.”

  “That’s admirable,” Skye agreed. She paused for a moment and he saw her tapping her fingertips on her belly as her hands lay across her midsection. “But ask yourself if that’s really fair to you. You’re spending all of this time and this worry on an admirable task. But at the end of it you’ve got nothing but a salary. In stark contrast, Orion, Devon, and Zane have their percentages of the company. They get a lasting benefit. You don’t. You’re working for your brothers. Are they going to support you when the time comes?”

  What was she referring to? Edward frowned. How much digging around in his past had Skye been doing? Had Jason been telling her tales about Edward’s younger years? If that was the case, then Edward was going to be seeking out his youngest brother with the sole purpose of throttling him. None of this was Skye’s concern. And Edward was just about to remind her of this when his office door went flying open and Tisha Olivares-King came storming inside.

  “Edward King, if you no-show on me for a dinner party one more time this week I will end you,” Tisha snarled in a voice that actually resembled that of a demon from the pit of hell.

  Suddenly Tisha seemed to realize that Edward was not alone in his office. She drew back in surprise and cleared her throat. Skye only wiggled her fingers in greeting. When Tisha’s future daughter-in-law made no move to vacate the office, Tisha’s expression soured.

  “Can we get some privacy?” Tisha said stiffly. She drew herself up to her not-so-great height and did her best to glare down at Skye.

  Despite the fact that Skye was probably a hair shorter, she did not even budge from her seat in front of Edward’s desk. “Sure. Go ahead and close the door. That would be private enough I’d think.”

  “Ugh!” Tisha huffed. “Sometimes I wish I had told my son to give you the boot.”

  Skye snorted. “I believe you tried that. But I had also just saved your life and your reputation so you can continue to behave as a way to thank me.”

  It never ceased to amaze Edward at how effortless it was for Skye to stand up to their mother. Edward could not manage it on most days. Neither could his three older brothers. For some reason it was only Jason and now Skye that seemed to have so little fear of the matriarch. Edward was sometimes eaten up with envy by that fact.

  It was apparent that Tisha had decided the best way to deal with Skye was to ignore her. It was a lame attempt at control, but Edward knew no small amount of amusement when he realized that Tisha had absolutely no frame of reference for this independent behavior.

  “Ahem,” Tisha said with a pointed look at Edward. “You told me that you would be at the dinner party last night.”

  “So I did.” Edward had been putting his mother off for the last two weeks using this method. “But it turned out that I had to stay late to try and put the company back together after our former business partner attempted to make it collapse.”

  “That’s old news,” Tisha said dismissively. She put her hands on her hips and glared down at Edward. “Tex Johnson is dead now. End of story.”

  Edward sighed. His mother had almost no understanding of business or how to run one. She just knew how to spend the profits, a fact that was made glaringly obvious by her choice of clothing for the day. On this Monday morning in late October Tisha Olivares-King was wearing designer jeans probably meant for a much younger woman. Her calf-high stiletto heeled boots reeked of their high dollar origins. Her sweater was an off-the-shoulder number that showcased her fake ta
n and also the diamond necklace around her throat. Her blonde hair was teased and sprayed and huge. The diamonds dangling from her ears were huge as well. That was likely why she had to keep her hair up and out of the way. If it had been down around her shoulders nobody would have known how enormous her earrings really were.

  “Tex might be dead,” Edward agreed quietly. He cast about for a way to keep this excuse going for at least another week. “But I’m still unraveling how the money left our accounts and travelled through his to an offshore bank account.”

  “Just leave it,” Tisha suggested suddenly.

  Edward felt his brain stutter to a full stop. Even Skye raised her eyebrows in surprise. Edward could not imagine why his mother would be saying that. “You want me to just forget about nearly two hundred thousand dollars that went missing? And do what? We have a legal responsibility to pay our employees the money that we owe them for those weeks that Tex was siphoning off the payroll cash.”

  “So pay them.” Tisha shrugged and examined her nails as though this was the most obvious thing ever. “Just use money from somewhere else and pay them. Eventually the whole thing will come out in the wash. Right? The feds are doing an investigation and Tex’s assets now belong to the company. End of story.”

  “Not end of story!” Edward argued. He stood up because he could no longer remain seated. There was too much anger rushing through his veins. He grabbed the edge of the desk and felt his fingernails beginning to grow as they began to shift into the claws of a beast. “It’s not the end of the story because that money has to be accounted for! You just want me to what? Forget about it? Just say that Tex got away with it and wherever it went is his business, and since he took that information to the grave, the person that benefitted gets away scot-free?”

  “Would you calm down?” Tisha narrowed her gaze. She was glaring at him. “You’re going to get so mad that you’re going to do that nasty shifter trick where you turn into a wolf right here in the office and I don’t care to deal with that right now.”

  Nasty shifter trick. The words burned Edward like acid. Edward and all of his brothers were shifters. They were men who could turn into wolves at will. They did not require a full moon or some kind of magical potion. They had not been bitten and infected with some strange medieval disease. This was simply what they were. It was in their nature as it had been in the nature of their father before them.

  As the King brothers got older they began to realize that their mother was not exactly supportive of the preternatural abilities and supernatural qualities of her offspring. In fact, since the death of their father, Tisha had been doing her level best to stamp out the shifter nature of her sons. It was a painful process and every King brother was fighting it in his own way.

  Edward exhaled a ragged breath. If he opened his mouth right now he would say something that was really going to piss off his mother. Fortunately for him, Skye was sitting right there and was perfectly willing to be the scapegoat.

  “Tisha, you are such a bitch. You know that?” Skye actually chuckled. “The strangest thing about that is that you’re not even a shifter! At least if you could turn into a wolf you might be able to explain your bitch-like behavior. As it is, you’re just up for the least-supportive mother ever award.”

  Tisha pursed her lips and glared at Skye. Then she pointed at Edward. “You will be at my house tonight and you will dress nicely in order to make yourself presentable for my dinner guests. Do you understand me? No excuses this time or I will make sure that this company crumbles around your feet. Do I make myself clear?”

  Edward would have rather agreed to eat glass for supper, but what other choice did he have right now? “Fine, but if you think you’re going to marry me off to one of your friends, you had better think again.”

  “Oh really?” Tisha thrust her chin out and narrowed her gaze on her second youngest son. “And if you want this company to come out of probate in one piece you’ll stop being such a selfish ass.”

  Now there was a threat that Edward had to take seriously. Dammit. He was apparently going to a dinner party this evening.

  Chapter Three

  Diana paced back and forth in front of the receptionist’s desk and tried not to feel quite so nervous. It wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong. She was here at the offices of King Security Solutions in order to deal with a business matter. There was nothing wrong with that. And maybe if she kept telling herself that over and over again she would start to believe it.

  The corporate offices of the internet security firm were posh. In fact, they were probably better appointed than the banking and investment firm that Diana worked for. But then, she did not work for Pallister and Associates because they were making money hand over fist. She liked them for their honesty, integrity, and truthfulness in their banking and investment transactions. The firm was small. It handled overseas banking investments and tax shelters for a variety of clients both big and small. But they did things by the book, and in Diana’s experience, that sort of thing was about as unusual as a unicorn wandering the streets of Dallas.

  “Ms. Appleton?” The receptionist had a cool smile on her face. “Mr. King is quite busy. Would you like to make an appointment and come back another day?”

  Diana tilted her head and gazed at the young woman in the ruffled white blouse and high-waisted black pencil skirt. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a bun and she was wearing glasses, but she had the look of a librarian-themed stripper.

  Shame immediately made Diana regret that thought. It wasn’t a fair one. Diana did not know this woman—Candace. She didn’t know her story or why she dressed that way or even if she was competent at her job. Maybe Candace was the best employee that King Security Solutions had ever hired. Diana didn’t know that. So what gave her the right to judge?

  “Are you certain that Edward King said he doesn’t have time to see me today?” Diana swallowed back the disappointment she felt almost immediately. “I really need to consult with him on a few matters.”

  “He’s busy,” Candace repeated. She did not look down at the computer screen, which presumably contained the schedule. It was just a blanket statement. “You’ll have to call and make an appointment.”

  “I can’t make one right here and now?”

  “I’m sorry, you’ll have to call in order to talk to his assistant directly.”

  Diana frowned. “Does he even have an office on this floor? When I went to the accounting floor on six they said that I would find Edward up here because of the work he was currently handling.”

  “Oh.” Candace shrugged. She obviously did not care either way. “Mr. King keeps his own appointments.”

  “I see.” And Diana did see. She could see that this was a circular argument that she would never win because Candace the receptionist did not care to be helpful. No doubt she had reasons for that. Most people did. Diana took a deep breath and pursed her lips. “I suppose I’ll call Mr. King directly then.”

  Candace actually snorted. “You do that, ma’am.”

  No doubt Candace was probably thinking that if Diana had possessed the ability to call Edward directly, she would have already done it. Diana had been attempting to do things the professional way. It always seemed to make things easier for Edward because of his—well, his family situation. But right now Diana was dying to put Candace in her place. So while standing right there in the corporate office lobby with its expensive leather seats and commissioned art hanging on the walls, Diana pulled out her cell phone and found Edward’s name in her contacts.

  Diana could actually feel Candace’s stare on her back while she waited for an answer. But that stare was nothing compared to the thud of a woman’s body colliding with Diana’s as someone came barreling out of the left hallway and slammed right into Diana.

  The collision nearly took both women to the ground. Diana stumbled and dropped her attaché case and cell phone. The other party actually grabbed hold of Diana and used her like a vaulting horse to push her
self back to a standing position. That was when Diana got a look at the face of the other party involved in the hallway wreck.

  Tisha Olivares-King, the matriarch of the King family and Edward’s overbearing, pushy, bitchy, horrible mother. Great. This was just what Diana needed.

  Tisha shoved Diana hard toward the floor before letting go of her blouse. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

  “I’m so sorry. I was simply standing in the lobby,” Diana said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t realize I was creating a traffic issue.”

  “Well…” It was as if this was the moment that Tisha Olivares-King suddenly realized whom she was talking to. The woman straightened her spine, tilted her head to one side, and gave Diana a long look of disdain. “What on earth are you doing here? You don’t belong here. I believe I told you years ago to stay away from my son and my family. I cannot imagine what would have changed in that time.”

  Diana forced herself to breathe. She could not react. She had to stay calm. A reaction would only give Tisha another reason to be even ruder to Diana. “I have a business issue to discuss with Mr. Edward King. It isn’t a personal visit at all.”

  “Oh, it isn’t?” Tisha said sarcastically. She curled her lip and turned to look at Candace. “You need to take a memo for me and send it to every single administrative assistant in this company. Do you understand?”

  Candace nodded. “Yes, ma’am. What would you like it to say?”

  “I would like it to inform the admins in this company that Diana Appleton is not to be given an appointment to see anyone in this company who wants to remain employed. That includes any one of my sons. And nobody is to receive her phone calls either.”

  “Yes, Ms. Olivares-King. Right away.” Candace bobbed her head.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!”