Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “If you want privacy, you have to leave the shop,” Lou informed Skye. Then he winked at Diana. “You ladies enjoy your coffee.”

  Diana cast about for someplace to sit but Skye gestured to the seat right in front of her on the opposite side of the table. Diana settled herself with her coffee and her croissant and waited for a few moments. There was a strangely comfortable sort of silence. It was apparent that Skye was finishing something on her tablet. Finally a few moments later Skye seemed to finish up. She set the tablet flat on the table and closed the cover.

  “All right,” Skye said, sounding at least not hostile. “Let’s talk about what’s happening.”

  “Happening?”

  “With the King family. That’s why you’re here, right? You’re concerned about the King brothers and their rather odd behavior? I think that’s what has me the most concerned, I think.” Skye sat back in her seat. She twirled a lock of pale red hair around one fingertip. “You have to understand that Jason is beginning to distance himself from his brothers and it’s actually quite painful.”

  “What do you mean?” Diana figured that was what they all needed to do anyway. Distance themselves. “Isn’t it past time to grow up and leave the nest? It’s getting a bit ridiculous. What is Orion? Thirty? Still living at home. Right? That is pathetic.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Skye sighed the words as though she were heaving them. “You don’t realize what’s actually going on.”

  There was something really strange about the expression on Skye’s face. It was like she was absolutely bursting to tell Diana something significant. It was on the tip of her tongue and seemed to be burning there as though she was required to keep some kind of secret. What the hell? What was Diana missing now?

  “I already know the King family is about as strange as they come,” Diana said slowly. “I can’t imagine how much weirder it could actually get. The mother is overbearing. The father is dead and potentially under less than straightforward circumstances. And what else is there? Oh yeah, the recent very disturbing death of the guy who used to be at the top of the food chain at King Security Solutions, Inc.”

  “Yeah, that was disturbing,” Skye said drily. “Especially the part where he tripped over his old golf trophy and then smacked his head on the back of his desk and managed to kill himself. It was very disturbing.”

  Diana’s brain completely ground to a halt. She had totally forgotten that Skye had been the one in the office with Tisha Olivares-King when all of that happened. It was almost surreal to think that there had been an actual reporter in the room and yet the whole city of Dallas was not getting sordid reports on the gruesome details, which spoke to Skye’s senses of propriety and fair play actually. The woman had integrity. That was worth admiring.

  “What is your relationship to Edward King?” Skye’s sudden shift in topic and the probing nature of the question was rather sudden.

  Diana didn’t really know how to answer. She bit her lip and took a sip of her latte and tried to figure out what to say. Finally, she pulled off a bit of flaky croissant and popped it between her lips to buy a little more time to think. “It’s a bit difficult to say with a King, don’t you think?”

  “Because of what? Tisha?”

  “Exactly!” Diana felt like she should have buttoned her lips shut, but she just couldn’t. She had to get it all out before she busted wide open. “I really want Edward to come and work with me at the investment and international banking firm. It’s a really small company called Pallister and Associates. We have lots of local clients and we spend quality time with them so that we can accurately assess their needs and help them achieve their goals. It’s really a wonderful job and it pays well because there’s a good base salary with bonuses.”

  “Sounds like a really good gig,” Skye said casually. She was sitting back in her seat as though she were evaluating Diana for some reason. “And you think it would be a good match for Edward?”

  “He speaks four languages. A lot of our recent business has been helping people put together retirement investment packages so they can have a place somewhere beautiful like Mexico or Colombia or even in France. It’s a wonderful thing. Really. You get to see all of these people make their dreams come true. There’s tons of travel. I love it and I really believe that Edward would too.”

  “Travel,” Skye mused. “That’s not usually something that the Kings take to, but I’ll admit that Edward has always seemed a lot different from the rest. Maybe it would suit him.”

  “Why do you keep talking about him like he has some kind of disease?” Diana finally demanded. She was getting pretty sick and tired of the weird sense of secrecy.

  Skye cleared her throat. Then she leaned in really close to Diana. Diana leaned in as well. What were they doing? Confessing a murder plot to get rid of Tisha? Diana might actually be willing to get on board with that one.

  “The King brothers aren’t your average guys,” Skye whispered. “They’re actually shifters. That means they spend their time in two different—well—bodies.”

  “What?” It was official. Skye Kincaid was a really nice woman, but she was out of her ever-loving mind! “You must be joking.”

  So why didn’t Skye look as though she were kidding? Why didn’t the woman look like she was fibbing or fooling or exaggerating? Shouldn’t there have been some indicator? Something? Surely there would be a bobble in her manner as if she was trying to pull some kind of ridiculous joke, but there was absolutely nothing. Nothing that indicated that Skye was anything but dead serious about what she’d said.

  “Shifter.” Diana tasted the word. “Okay. So let’s pretend that I’m buying this line of bullshit.”

  “All right.” At least Skye wasn’t acting hostile about Diana’s reluctance to believe her. “Let’s pretend.”

  “What kind of second body are we talking about?”

  “A wolf.”

  For just a moment Diana could not even speak. She felt as though her tongue were tied in knots and her brain was spinning at about a thousand miles per second. She was thinking of so many things right now. But the one thing that seemed to dominate her thoughts was remembering that every single Friday night during their college years, Edward King had been busy with what he often called a lodge meeting. He would disappear for the entire night and nobody on campus would see or hear from him. It had been odd at the time. Yes. But what if it was more than that? What if this was the reason for those Friday night lodge meetings?

  “Diana?”

  Diana could only snort and shake her head. “Lodge meeting,” she murmured to herself. “Yeah. Right.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I was so very pleased last night with how much attention you paid to Eleni.” Tisha came sashaying into Edward’s office at the ungodly hour of ten o’clock in the morning. It was easily the earliest that Tisha had ever gotten out of bed that Edward could think of offhand. “The two of you make such a wonderful couple!”

  Edward sat back in his seat. He braced one foot against the side of the desk and began to swing himself back and forth as though it helped him to think more clearly. In reality, he was just trying to decide how much he could say without destroying the ruse that he and Eleni had planned to broadcast for the benefit of their mothers.

  Tisha walked to the windows. She glanced at the empty bookshelves and suddenly seemed rather melancholy. “I used to love coming in here and smelling all of the books. Tex so loved to collect them. He would search high and low for his first editions. I can actually remember him flying to Europe once because he wanted to bring a book home from a collector’s shop and he refused to have it shipped.”

  “Well, the books are in boxes right there,” Edward growled. “They belong to his estate, but nobody has really come to claim that.”

  “I know. I’m his heir. He had no family.” Tisha sounded so matter-of-fact about this situation. “I haven’t decided what to do with everything just yet.”

  Edward had trouble believing that hi
s mother could inherit the estate of someone who had actually attempted to strangle her to death. It seemed like absolute bullshit. Like the law should actually step in and take Tex’s stuff and his business interests and auction them off or something.

  “Wait a second,” Edward murmured. “You inherit his portion of the company?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you are technically the largest single shareholder.” They didn’t really have shareholders. There were simply percentages of equity. But the idea that Tisha Olivares-King was the dominant owner of King Security Solutions, Inc was more than a little bit frightening.

  “Yes. I am.” Tisha turned and cast a smug look at him over her shoulder. “And of course I hear that your brothers are squeezing you out. How does that feel?”

  This was an interesting moment to ask the question that kept circling back around in Edward’s mind. “They are. And I don’t actually mind. I don’t honestly think that I want any part of this sinking ship. I’m happy with things the way they are. Perhaps once things are more settled I will find a job somewhere else and have a career on my own terms.”

  “That sounds like a lovely idea, dear,” Tisha murmured absently. “Between your salary and Eleni’s teaching salary I’m sure the two of you will be quite comfortable.”

  “I’m not sure her mother would agree.” Edward had to tread carefully here. He had a golden opportunity to ask his mother a question in a way that would honestly make her think that he was far more interested in Eleni than he was.

  “Oh?” Tisha turned away from the empty bookshelves and frowned at Edward. “What do you mean? Alaina has always been so supportive of a match between her daughter and one of my sons.”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid that what Alaina wants is one of the sons with access to the King millions. Not just a regular Joe with a regular Joe job like me.” There. That was pretty accurately painted and yet total bullshit.

  “That bitch!” Tisha suddenly snarled.

  Edward was taken aback by his mother’s sudden outburst. “I’m sorry, Mother. What’s wrong?”

  “That bitch!” Tisha repeated. She started pacing back and forth right in front of the boxes of books. “If she thinks that my family and my money are going to support her idiotic shopping habits she had better think again.”

  Edward stared in amusement as his mother went into total tirade mode. At least it was not aimed in his direction. But he did get to pick up a few bits of useful information. Number one, Tisha did not know that Alaina was after the King fortune with her marriage plans for her daughter Eleni. And number two, Tisha had no idea that Edward and Eleni had no intention of actually going through with any of this bullshit.

  “What happened here?” Zane suddenly pushed his way into Edward’s office.

  Devon was right behind him. Devon pointed at Edward. “Did you piss her off or something? I thought the dinner went good. She was crowing about it all this morning.”

  “All this morning?” Edward frowned. “It’s only ten o’clock in the morning. How long has she been up? Doesn’t she usually come meandering into the office or even out of bed at something like noon?”

  Orion growled as he entered Edward’s office. “Great. You pissed her off. Nicely done. We were supposed to have a meeting to talk about the land.”

  “Where’s Jason?” Edward immediately asked.

  Orion only grunted. “He wasn’t invited.”

  “Why?” Edward was getting a bit tired of Orion trying to exclude Jason from everything. “You don’t get to pretend that there were only four King brothers, Orion. What you’re doing is wrong, and honestly I hope to hell that Jason takes you to probate court and you wind up getting your ass fried by some judge for being such a high-handed bastard.”

  Orion’s mulish look of stubborn inflexibility made Edward want to roll his eyes and walk out of his own office. It was such crap! Then Orion actually tossed his head like some arrogant rich kid still in high school. “I don’t have to listen to this crap from you. You’re not even a shareholder here at the company.”

  “No. But I am the one standing between you and financial disaster,” Edward pointed out. He shook his head. “If you’d like me to turn around and walk out right now, I will. I have better offers on the table. I don’t have to be here. You do. You’re trapped here because this is all you have and all you know. Doesn’t that suck?”

  Edward could feel the wide open eyed stares of his other brothers, but that was nothing compared to the angry glare of his mother. From the corner of his eye Edward could see Tisha’s very irritated look of something approaching shock.

  She came over to Edward and slipped her arm around his waist. “Now, boys, let’s not fight. No fighting. All right? We’re all civilized human beings here, right?”

  “Actually, Mother,” Orion growled. “We’re not. We are shifters. We’re wolves, and deep down that means that we are beasts. So maybe you’d better stay back before Edward and I rip each other’s throats out.”

  “Don’t you dare talk back to me!” Tisha snarled at her eldest son. She let go of Edward and stomped toward Orion. “We need Edward. Do you understand me? He’s the one with the accounting brain! Have you forgotten what kind of mess we’re in financially? You can’t just expect things to unravel themselves. What? Do you think that you’re going to chase down the missing money?”

  “You don’t care about it!” Orion shouted. His swarthy complexion looked strangely pale beneath his tan. He seemed to be almost ill. He was pointing and shouting at their mother as though she were the source of all the evil in their lives. “You told me not long ago just to pay the employees their back pay and forget about the missing money! You don’t care about it. You keep saying it will just turn up somewhere!”

  “That’s not what I said at all.” Tisha sniffed and shook her head at her eldest child. “Seriously. You are such a drama queen. Do you know that? And I thought that we were meeting to talk about the land. So let’s talk about the stupid land since you boys won’t allow a developer to take it off our hands.” Tisha looked truly disgruntled. “Do you have any idea how much money that is costing us? It would be a hugely lucrative deal!”

  “I don’t want a deal,” Edward said roughly. He realized that his brothers would be very surprised at the notion that he even cared at all about the land. What they didn’t understand was that it wasn’t the land. It was the money. “That land should go to me and Jason. You guys want the company? Fine. But the idea that you’re going to take the company and leave Jason and I with nothing and then turn around and get the land too? That’s bullshit. Total. Bullshit.”

  Zane was scratching the back of his head. “That’s true, Orion. You can’t say that Edward doesn’t have a point. And you also cannot tell me that you’re not totally aware of the situation because you’re here and you didn’t invite Jason. You purposely excluded him. That’s wrong, Orion.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Jason came sauntering into the office. His gaze passed right over Edward but did not linger. Then it moved toward Orion and stopped. “You have been excluding me from family decisions for long enough. Either you stop it, or I’m going to file an injunction against you. The business will stop and all profits will stop too. Do you honestly think that this would be a good thing for the company or for the employees?”

  “No!” Orion stomped right over to the doorway where Jason was still standing. He glared at Jason and got right in his face. For just a moment the two brothers were toe to toe and Edward was afraid they were about to exchange blows. Orion narrowed his gaze. “I don’t think it would be a good thing. I think you would be a fool to even think about doing that. You would destroy this company. Why would you do that? Why would you do that to your family?”

  “Seriously, Orion?” Devon groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “You’re going to ask him that when you’re doing the same thing?”

  “I’m not!”

  “No,” Edward could not actually dis
agree with that. “But you’ve taken away his reasons for caring. You squeezed Jason out and then you’re openly planning to make sure that he gets nothing. How else would you have him act? Why would he care if the company shuts down? I would think at this point that he cares more about the employees than you or the rest of us.”

  “That’s true,” Jason said with a nod to Edward. “It’s the employees keeping me from making a choice like that at this point and not you assholes.”

  Edward had to smother a laugh. His other three brothers seemed taken aback by the name calling, but Edward found it amusing. They were assholes. And when Edward had texted Jason about this meeting to make sure he could come up here, he had known that it would probably get ugly.

  “Stop fighting!” Tisha finally shouted. “None of this matters! You’re all my sons and all of you will benefit equally by the company. Since it belongs to me, that’s how I say things will go.”

  “Whoa, wait a second, Mother!” Orion turned and gaped at Tisha. “You can’t be serious! After everything that Jason has done you’re going to defend him?”

  Tisha had that expression on her face reserved for mothers who were playing both sides of their children with minimal success at all of it because at the end of the day it was all about herself anyway. She cleared her throat and offered a smile at Orion. “Sweetie, I know you’d like to be the next Mac King. I get that. But I think you need to understand that you’re not your father.” Tisha’s expression was so condescending that Edward actually expected his oldest brother to explode with fury. “You’re just a poor copy of your father. And you weren’t even his favorite child. Remember?”

  Holy. Shit. Edward felt a jolt of true alarm run through his body. His wolf instincts rose and for a second he had the pack instinct to tear apart a common enemy—in this case their mother. What was she playing at? Right now Orion was so angry that there was an actual possibility that there would be bloodshed.