Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “I find it a bit surprising that you would ask me such a question.” Zane leaned across the gap between Skye’s table and that of the retired guys.

  “Hey!” The man with the long faded red hair snarled at Zane and tried to grab for his paper as Zane swiped it.

  “Sorry, man, but apparently our friend Skye hasn’t read yesterday’s Dallas Star yet this morning.” Zane tsked apologetically at the older man.

  The guy—Zane remembered that his name was Lou—suddenly seemed to get a good look at Zane’s face. “Holy crap, you’re having a bad couple of days, aren’t you?”

  “Exactly.” Zane couldn’t fault Lou’s assessment. It was true. Then he shoved the paper under Skye’s nose. “Your old editor is back to her tricks.”

  “What?” Skye’s lips parted to very likely give Zane a nasty talking to and then suddenly she was silent and reading. “Oh, no way! Can you believe this shit?”

  “Yeah. No. Not really,” Zane quipped. He sighed and tried to remind himself that for most people this was going to seem like a bit of a stretch. “I was wondering if you knew anything about it and if you might have an idea of how I can make it stop?”

  “Wow.” Skye’s lips were now moving at light speed as she skimmed the article. “Is it true? Did you leave?”

  “She tossed me out,” Zane amended. “I have yet to see how she could have spun that into some kind of making herself a hero, but I’m sure my mother is really skilled at that sort of lie.”

  “So is Carolyn Phillips.” Skye exhaled a huge sigh and chuffed out a little snort of disbelief. “But I was pretty sure that Carolyn and your mother broke off ties after Carolyn started reporting stuff in the society page that wasn’t exactly flattering to Tisha Olivares-King. Apparently it was fine if Carolyn ripped on Tisha’s sons and her future daughter-in-laws, but you don’t mess with the queen bitch herself.”

  “So what does that mean?” Zane hated to admit it, but this had been his only real plan. He had thought that Skye would somehow magically be able to make it stop. In hindsight, that wasn’t a really great assumption to make. Not for him and not really for her either. “Do you know anyone up there? Is there a way to get my face off the front page? I’m getting mobbed no matter where I go. I couldn’t even go to the grocery store last night.”

  “I’ll admit that usually with your mother there’s some kind of angle. What does she want? What is she trying to get out of you? Do you have any idea? That’s probably the best way to head her off.”

  “I don’t know what she wants.”

  “She wants you married, kid!” Lou crowed. “Ha! I bet we could find a dozen volunteers here in the shop who would marry you.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Skye told Lou. Then she snorted at Zane. “I can promise you that this guy will absolutely have you in a coffee shop wedding in just a few hours.”

  “That would be the easiest way out.” Lou seemed to think that this was a grand idea. “You just have to find some woman and marry her. Make it really public and then boom! Bachelor no more. Right?”

  Zane was absolutely mortified by this notion. “How am I supposed to do this? Just take one of those women who are throwing themselves at me and go ahead and marry her? That’s despicable.”

  “I don’t know.” Skye was pressing her lips into a line and nodding her head. “He might have a bit of a point.”

  They had to be kidding. Zane didn’t want to get married! “Excuse me? Hello! I’m sitting right here and totally not interested in marriage!”

  “Is there anyone who might agree to marry you?” Skye’s clipped tone of voice was almost businesslike. “You know, a girlfriend or something? Jason never talks about his brother’s private lives. It’s really annoying.”

  “Really?” Zane snapped. “Because I really find it comforting to know that my brother doesn’t talk badly about me and make jokes about my lack of a love life while I’m not around.”

  “I guess.” Skye drummed her fingers on the tabletop. Finally she threw up her hands. “Think about it, Zane. This is your chance. You can choose anyone you want. They’d have to be crazy to turn you down.”

  “You must be joking.” He looked at Skye and wondered if she had been hiding under a rock. “I thought you were into the news.”

  “I am.”

  “So how is it that you don’t realize that the story is a total lie? I don’t inherit anything. I’m no better off than Jason is. We get the same portion. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Any woman who marries me is going to have to settle for my salary, which isn’t anything to sneeze at. But there’s no comparing the two. Not in the minds of the average gold digger.”

  “You didn’t inherit anything?” Skye leaned back in her seat and gaped at him. At the moment she was twirling locks of her pale, strawberry-colored hair around and around her index finger as though she were trying to keep herself occupied. “How is that possible?”

  “The will is a bit on the complex side.” Zane realized he didn’t have any interest in explaining it to Skye. “Jason is right to go after the land. I think he’ll have better luck with that than with the company. Since my mother now owns Tex Johnson’s share of King Security Services, Inc, she’s battling it out with the other two main shareholders for control.”

  “You mean Devon and Orion.” Skye spoke the words quietly. “You can’t seriously be intending to give up what little bit you might have been able to get.”

  “Why not? If Jason, Edward, and I fight for a share, then we dilute our brothers’ shares. That means there is no majority owner except my mother, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t think she’d be really interested in the best interest of the company in her rulings.”

  “I see your point.” Skye laid her hand flat on the newspaper. “But nobody knows the truth. Right?”

  “Nope. And I’m sure you’ve noticed that the story doesn’t give any of that information,” Zane said bitterly. “And if it did I’m pretty sure that nobody would listen.”

  “Very unlikely.” Skye was muttering to herself. She started scribbling away on her tablet as though she’d just hit some kind of streak and did not want to lose it. Then she turned and pointed at him. “You have to get married.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s the only answer. Not that this is the way anyone wants to get married. I totally understand. But if you get married we can do a huge story about it and totally eclipse the Dallas Star. What will happen is that the Star will be worried about being behind the current events and they’ll quit bugging you. The harassment will just stop.”

  “That’s not fair!” Zane shot to his feet. “I can’t just get married! I can’t just wake up one day and inform some woman that we’re going to get hitched by five o’clock. It doesn’t work that way!”

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure that it does work that way most of the time. It’s only those crazy few people who know each other for years on end before they finally get married. That isn’t the regular way of it anymore.” Skye was grinning from ear to ear. “You know, like me and your brother.”

  “I’m not Jason,” Zane growled. “I don’t want to just sideswipe some random chick into marrying me.”

  Skye swung her tablet around to face him. There was a photograph on the screen. It had been taken of him and of Landry Fisher at the grocery store last night. “What about this random chick? Surely she’s not random if you were fleeing the store with her. Right?”

  “I don’t know her that well,” Zane protested. “Besides how do you just walk up to some woman and tell them that you need to get married because your mother is a psycho who wants to push you into something that she probably thinks will be helpful for the family notoriety level and nothing more?”

  “Yeah, I don’t really have an answer for you there.” Skye stuck her tongue out at him. “Your mother is a psycho and it’s pretty hard to get people to recognize what that means. I got over Jason’s—um...”—she glanced at Lou and his friends still in quiet conversation just a few f
eet away—“let’s call it his special condition. That was easier to deal with than your mother.”

  Zane snorted. He had no doubt that it was far less of a problem to be understanding about Jason’s status as a shifter than to contemplate a future spent dealing with Tisha Olivares-King. “Our mother is certainly a piece of work.”

  “Yeah? Well, did you ask her who it is she wants you to marry?” Skye began waving the paper around. “You know that’s what this is about. It has to be. She has someone in mind. She wants you to marry whoever this chick is and she wants you to do it now.”

  “I don’t think so.” Zane could not begin to imagine who the poor young lady might be. “My mother has had a permanent falling out with her best bosom buddy, Alaina Ariosa. That took Eleni out of the beauty queen line-up. There isn’t anyone else. Nobody like my mother.”

  “That’s no lie,” Skye muttered. She was still staring at her tablet screen. Then all at once she frowned and pointed at something on the display. “Hey, isn’t that the chick who was in the grocery store photo with you?”

  “Who?” Zane craned his neck around to look at the screen. “Who are you talking about?”

  There was a headline flashing across the bottom of the screen. Skye read it slowly as it sped from side to side. “Math teacher assaulted by angry parent at Washington Middle School.”

  “Holy shit!” Zane jumped up. “That’s the same school my friend Landry works at!”

  “Friend?” Skye asked drily. “Sure.”

  But Zane was already heading for his truck. He flipped the keys in his fingers trying to get the remote to unlock the doors. Someone had attacked her? Who the hell attacked a teacher? Some parent? Why would a parent attack a teacher? Didn’t that kind of send the wrong message? It seemed to send the wrong message.

  Skye suddenly appeared in the doorway of the coffee shop. “You should propose when you get there!”

  “What?” Zane nearly tripped over his own feet trying to turn and stare at her as his brain sluggishly processed what she was suggesting. “How can I propose to someone when they’ve just been attacked?”

  “You just do!” Skye insisted. She was waving her fingers in a circle as though she were trying to get him to think around the problem or something. “She’s single, right? You like her? And there will be tons of video coverage there! It will instantly squash that news story. You just watch!”

  Zane angrily waved his hand at Skye. He could not do something like that to Landry Fisher. She deserved so much better than to have a guy like Zane poking at her when she was so vulnerable. But Skye made a good point. Landry was an amazing woman. Zane had never really considered getting married. It wasn’t his thing. But right now he couldn’t even walk outside the stupid coffee shop without women pointing and staring.

  “Hey, Zane!” A woman in her twenties across the street was waving and jumping to get his attention even as he was trying to get into his truck. “Zane, I love you! Marry me! I’ll give you a home!”

  Shit. Was this really the way his life was going to be from now on? Zane slammed his driver’s door shut and exhaled a huge sigh of irritation as he considered it. Then he thought about Skye’s suggestion. Was it really all that bad of an idea?

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I’m fine!” Landry tried to push the EMTs’ hands away from her head, but it was like the woman, named Parker, and her male counterpart in their pristine white button-down shirts, navy slacks, and baseball caps were somehow tag-teaming Landry. They had sat her down on her own desktop and were flanking her as though she might escape. “I really don’t need to be examined. He barely knocked me over. I swear. And he didn’t punch me. Mr. Trujillo got there in time to prevent that.”

  “All the same, Miss,” Parker told Landry. “We need to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

  “A concussion? Please!” Landry was so frustrated by now that she was ready to start spitting like a wet cat.

  The entire scene had turned into a virtual circus. There were people everywhere. Teachers, staff, administrators from the district office, and of course the parade of students trying to peek into her classroom. A school security guard was standing out in the hallway directing her students to another classroom where they would have class today with a sub, which was really irritating. And Landry was pretty sure she could see news vans out in the parking lot with their enormous broadcast dishes pointed at the sky. No doubt she was making the news. Not good.

  “Landry, would you please just cooperate?” Mr. Trujillo sounded incredibly tired and out-of-sorts. She had never seen the stocky ex-football player looking so flattened.

  Landry pulled her head away from Parker’s perusal of her pupil size and glared at him. “You get over here and cooperate! I never played football so I’m not the concussion-exam expert like you are.”

  “Nice. That was really professional.” Mr. Trujillo shook his head, but she could see him hiding a smile. “Just let them examine you so I can assure the school superintendent that we aren’t going to get sued later by the teacher’s union for not making sure you didn’t have a traumatic brain injury.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Landry stopped squirming and exhaled a huge sigh. They were poking and prodding and she just wanted to get back to work. “Where is Mr. Lambert?”

  “Dallas PD carted him off,” Mr. Trujillo said quickly. Then he seemed to realize his choice of words weren’t exactly politic and decided to rephrase. “I suppose I should say they took him into custody. I believe he’s sitting in the parking lot in the back of a squad car.”

  Landry was tired of going over and over the events of the conference in her head. “Did he say why he flipped out? I mean, why would he just lose it like that?”

  “You weren’t exactly non-inflammatory,” Mr. Trujillo muttered. “That bit about him not wanting to be wrong didn’t go over so well.”

  Landry agreed with her boss, but she wasn’t about to say that out loud. “I understand those things are hard to hear, but it seemed to be right on the money and I wanted it to be clear that I wasn’t going to give poor Joel Lambert extra credit, extra chances, or some kind of grade bump on his test just because his father decided to tell the kid that’s what was happening. I mean, what would happen if I did that? Every parent would come in and we would have to just hand out As. There would be no point in teaching!”

  Mrs. Hart cleared her throat. Up until this moment she had been sort of hovering in the background. Now she held out her hands as though she were some kind of supplicant. “I think there is actually an argument here for exactly that. Kids should not be ruled by grades. If letter grades didn’t matter, then we could just teach the material and engage in a fair and non-threatening learning environment.”

  “Is that right?” Landry snorted and glanced at Mr. Trujillo. He was struggling not to roll his eyes. She knew that he was. She could see it plain as day. Landry cocked her head and looked at Mrs. Hart with what she hoped was a wide-eyed look of faux innocence and naiveté. “Gee, Mrs. Hart, how would we measure what the kids have learned?”

  “What?”

  “If we didn’t give letter grades and everyone just learned at their own pace and absorbed the material like little sponges, how would we be able to discover if we were doing our jobs? Not everyone learns the same way or at the same rate. Right?” Landry prompted.

  “Well, no.”

  Ah, the zinger delivered in just the right way to this touchy-feely school counselor who had the best intentions and the worst execution ever. “So we would still have to give tests and grade them. The kids would be more stressed out because there would be no grades except the tests and no way to figure out if they were understanding the homework because it was just learn, learn, learn, and no feedback. We could use numbers instead of letter grades, but gee, the kids would have to do percentages to figure out what kind of score they got. It just sounds so complicated!”

  “Landry, stop.” Mr. Trujillo exhaled a sigh. Then he looked at Parker
the EMT. “Is she clear?”

  “I believe so.” Parker finally put away her horrible penlight and started to pack up the bright yellow box of medical goodies that had been wheeled in on a stretcher. “Just go to your regular doctor for a follow up in a few days. And you’ll probably want to take some over-the-counter pain reliever for any bruising or leftover soreness from hitting the floor.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.” Landry was feeling a lot friendlier and more cooperative now that the impromptu and totally unnecessary exam was over. “Can I go back to my class now?”

  “No. The police want to ask us a few questions,” Mr. Trujillo said flatly. “And then it would appear that we need to go make an official statement to the press. I’ll let the superintendent tell you what to say.”

  “I don’t need a scriptwriter,” Landry muttered.

  Mrs. Hart awkwardly patted her arm. “It will be all right.”

  “Yeah?” Landry turned and hopped down off her desktop. “You know what, Mrs. Hart? I think you’re in the wrong place.”

  “I am?”

  “Oh, for sure!” Landry gushed. She put her hand on Mrs. Hart’s shoulder and started steering her toward the door of the classroom. “You need to go and find Joel Lambert. You need to have a chat with him because he needs to hear from some compassionate adult about what his idiot father did and not from the other students. Which, in this day and age of texting, internet, and constant phone and tablet usage, is probably going to happen in the next five minutes.”

  “Oh my gosh, you’re right!” Mrs. Hart’s eyes got so big and round that they almost eclipsed her glasses.

  Finally! The school counselor rushed out of Landry’s classroom and pushed her way past the security guard. Within seconds she was marching off down the hallway like a woman on a mission. It was exactly as it should have been.