And she wasn’t beholden to him. Wes asked nothing of her that she didn’t already want to give him.
Reaching out, Jordan undid Wes’ pants, sliding them down his strong, toned legs. She lifted herself off the counter just enough for him to slip her own pants down, and then he was between her legs and her back was pressed against the mirror as he filled her completely.
Jordan wrapped her legs around him and pressed her body back against his, muffling her moans of desire against his good shoulder, as he thrust into her again and again.
Pleasure swept over her, carrying her away as it always did whenever she and Wes made love. She couldn’t believe she had waited so long to find this, but then anyone she had found who wasn’t Wes just wouldn’t have been right.
“I love you,” Jordan whispered, reaching her peak even as she spoke the words. “I love you—oh, God. Wes. I love you.”
He spilled himself within her, unable to resist the pull of her own pleasure, and as he did, he moaned softly in her ear. “I love you, too, my superhero.”
And Jordan laughed, because it was cheesy, and because it was their inside joke, and because of what he would say if she told him the real truth—he was and always would be her very own superhero.
PART III
Prologue
“Look at that,” Lydia whispered, amazed at what she was seeing playing across her computer screen. She leaned closer, squinting to try to see the poor-quality image more clearly. “That has to be …” She shook her head. “God. It has to be! Do you see that?”
“I see that,” Jack said, pulling his chair closer, so that his head joined hers, just inches from the computer screen. “I really, really see that. Wow. Holy shit. Wow.”
Lydia laughed, unable to believe it. “I know!” She sat back and pushed Jack’s shoulder. They had both been waiting so long for something like this, and here it was—right in front of them. Indisputable evidence. Proof that what they had been researching and studying for so long was tangible, and real, and out there, ready to be discovered.
“I can’t believe it,” Jack said, hitting replay on the video for at least the tenth time since they had discovered it. “Why are people not talking about this? Why has it not blown up everywhere? We can’t be the only people who have seen this.”
“We’re not,” Lydia said, sweeping her long, strawberry-blonde ponytail off her shoulder so that it hung down her back. “We’re definitely not. But we’re people who know what we’re looking at, and what we’re looking for. Others may not see the significance. They may not notice it at all. It’s a video about something completely different. Something very distracting. And even if someone did see what we see, who knows if they would just dismiss it as their imagination. We both know how people are—they don’t like to challenge what they think they know, and they often don’t see things that don’t fit in with their worldview.”
Jack nodded, drumming his hands against his thighs as he stared at the video that had once again ended. “So, the question is, what do we do now?”
Lydia thought about it for a long moment before she offered her suggestion. She and Jack had worked together for a long time in what amounted to a small, two-person operation in Twin Falls, Idaho. They had limited money and resources, but they had a passion for the same thing, and they were both willing to put in long hours after getting done with their day jobs. Jack was a financial advisor with a sweet wife and three beautiful children. They worked out of his basement, because Lydia’s studio apartment was only big enough for her. She was single, and she didn’t bring in much money as a waitress, but the hours allowed her the maximum amount of time to work on her true passion.
She knew what she wanted to do in response to the video they had found. She wanted to go to its source and pursue it. It would take all of her financial reserves to do it, but this was the break that she had been waiting for, and she had always promised herself that if it happened, she wouldn’t let it pass by. But she couldn’t ask Jack to leave his job and his family to go with her, and she also couldn’t ask him to stay behind.
“I want to go,” she said, slowly. “I have to go, Jack. I think you know that. But I don’t want to tell you what to do. If I tell you to stay and take care of your family, it’ll seem like I don’t recognize that this is all your work as much as it is mine, and I don’t want you to think that. I don’t want to go have some major breakthrough without you. But if I tell you to come with me, then I’m telling you to leave your family and your job …and I can’t do that either. So, what do I do?”
There were footsteps on the stairs, and Lydia turned around to see Whitney, Jack’s wife, walking down with food for each of them. Whitney was a saint, who loved her husband so much that she wanted him to be able to spend time pursuing his interests even though it sometimes took his time away from her. Whitney set the plate of cheese, and crackers, and grapes down on the table and perched on Jack’s lap as his arm slipped around her, and he kissed her shoulder.
“Sorry,” she said, with a knowing smile. “I couldn’t help but hear the jubilation from upstairs, and I eavesdropped a bit, using the snacks as an excuse to come down. Honey, I think you should go if you want. Wherever it is you’re going. If you’ve had a breakthrough, go do it. The kids and I will be fine for a few days.”
Jack smiled and kissed Whitney. “Thank you, but I’m not going. Lydia can handle this one on her own. I’ll expect a lot of phone calls and videos.” He smiled at Lydia. “My place is here with my family—my very tolerant and wonderful family.”
“Are you sure?” Whitney asked. “I mean it, Jack. This is important to you.”
“Nothing is more important than you and the kids,” Jack said. “I like dabbling in the basement in the evenings sometimes, but I’m not going to go off on trips. That’s Lydia’s job. This is her baby anyway. I’m along for her ride.”
“We’re in this together,” Lydia said, loving the way that Jack and Whitney interacted together. They were always so loving and sweet. She hoped to find that someday, even though she was content to be on her own right now so that she could pursue her passion. “We always will be. But I’m glad you feel good about staying here. I never want to exclude you, but I can’t stand depriving Whitney of you either.”
Jack smiled and squeezed his pretty, sweet wife’s waist, her dark head a stark contrast to his blond hair. “So … You’re off then. You’re going to go do it. What you’ve always dreamed of.”
Lydia couldn’t help but smile, too, unable to believe that it was true. “I am.” The excitement was rising in her chest. “I really am.”
Chapter 1
Quentin
“It’s freezing in here,” Quentin said, getting up from his chair in the Rockwell Agency conference room and walking over to the air-conditioning panel to adjust the temperature. “What, just because it’s mid-January, we have to be cold all the time?”
“It’s literally seventy-four degrees in here,” Jordan said, pointing her pen at the panel. “How can you be freezing when it’s seventy-four degrees?”
Ryan kicked his feet up on the table, leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced behind his head. “Because Quentin is always freezing the whole winter.”
“It’s Louisiana,” Hannah said, not looking up from the designs she was doodling around the edge of the legal pad she had brought into the meeting. “We don’t even have real winters. We have really hot and sticky ones, kind of hot and sticky, but not that hot or sticky. It’s like forty-nine degrees out today.”
Quentin bumped the air down a few notches, so that the room would warm up a little. “Anyone who says forty-nine degrees isn’t cold is out of his mind.”
“Or her mind,” Jordan said, jabbing her pen again.
“Or her mind,” Quentin said, walking back over to his chair and sitting down. “I’m just saying that if it’s going to be hot, eighty percent of the year and then it’s going to get cold for all of eight weeks, then nobody can really expect me not to
notice.”
Ryan cocked his head. “I’m not sure your math adds up there, buddy. But I feel ya. I walked out of the house today, and it was downright nippy.”
Jordan smirked, slapping her hand across her knee. “Downright nippy, ya hear? Oh, come on, you two babies. It’s mid-January. Get with the program. Buy a jacket.”
“Speaking of the program,” Hannah said, glancing towards the door. “Barrett is twenty minutes late.”
Quentin took a quick glimpse of his watch, noting that Barrett was more like twenty-three minutes late. They were trying to have their weekly conference where they did an update on their cases and handled any other Rockwell Clan business that needed seeing to. But even though they had all hoped to ring in the new year with a new vibe for the agency, the old vibe was still very much there and seemingly getting worse. Quentin suspected that Barrett was late because his other meeting had run late—his meeting with key leaders of the clan, including, but not limited to, his father and grandfather. There had been many whispers about how the agency was being run under Barrett. It had started with missing money and missing files. Then it had progressed to leaked information, and now accusations that Barrett was not doing enough to protect the true nature of the Rockwell Clan. There were whispers around town—more whispers than usual—that there was something more to the agency than met the eye.
The Rockwell Agency had always been run like a well-oiled machine, and now, under Barrett, it was all starting to get a little bit messy, and more and more of Barrett’s days were occupied with trying to convince everyone around him that he was capable of running the agency. Quentin, Hannah, Jordan, and Ryan all knew that he was. They all knew the kind of leader Barrett was, and they had full faith in him.
They would help more, if he let them, but Barrett had started keeping new instances of missing documents or record discrepancies to himself. He hadn’t even told them about the newest accusation, which was that Barrett had been misusing agency funds for his own personal expenses and profit. They all knew, of course. Norman Rockwell had been loud in his defense of his grandson, and word had gotten around that the accusations had been made. But Barrett hadn’t brought it up with any of them, and it worried Quentin that perhaps his lifelong friend was starting to withdraw under the pressure of the scrutiny he was facing.
Quentin caught a glimpse in his mind of the conference room door opening, and three or four seconds later, Barrett opened the door and walked in, looking harassed. Quentin was a maroon-scaled dragon, which meant that in addition to heightened senses, strength, and speed in his human form, he also often got brief glimpses into the future. They were only blips. Little warnings of what was about to come. He didn’t always have control over them, and he couldn’t produce them on cue, but there had been many, many times in his life when that skill had given him an edge in a fight or conflict.
“Sorry I’m late,” Barrett said, taking his seat around the table and pulling out his notebook and laptop. “I was in another meeting. There seems to be a lot of those these days.”
Quentin glanced around the room at his friends, and he could see the same knowing look on all of their faces that he was trying to keep off his. They all knew what Barrett was facing, and they didn’t want to bring it up, but it was difficult to ignore.
“No problem,” Hannah said, always the first one to try to smooth over the tension in the room. “We’ve been killing time. “Ryan brought in some snacks. You want anything?”
Jordan pushed the chips and dip that were sitting in the middle of the table towards Barrett, but he shook his head.
“No, I’m good. Thanks. Let’s just go ahead and run through our briefing here. Starting with Ryan—let’s get an update on the status of your cases.”
Quentin only half-listened as each of his colleagues went through a brief update of the cases that they had open at the moment. Nobody ever worked on more than two or three cases at a time, usually, and sometimes one case became so all-encompassing that other things had to get moved around. Personally, he was in a bit of a slow time. He had recently closed two different cases successfully, and the work hadn’t really picked up in the past week. Quentin had been spending his time tag-teaming Hannah’s cases with her, doing a lot of her behind-the-scenes work to free up her schedule.
When Barrett got to him, Quentin told him essentially that. “Nothing active right now,” Quentin said, “but I’ve been working with Hannah, since she has three cases open at the moment.”
“Okay,” Barrett said, nodding as he made notes. “So, the next case that comes in goes to Quentin unless there’s some reason for it not to. Brief update on agency business …uh, we’re having a review of the agency accounts done by an outside organization.”
“Wait, what?” Jordan asked, interrupting Barrett, who was about to skim right by that without a pause. “Why? What outside organization?”
“One that is going to try to help us with some of the confusion over record keeping,” Barrett said. “It’s been requested.”
Ryan shook his head. “That’s bullshit, though. We’re independent. We can’t have some other organization in here poking around. What we do is highly sensitive. I mean, can we guarantee that there’s nothing in the accounts that’s going to hint at what we’re really doing here?”
Barrett’s expression was somewhat wry. “We’re not in the habit of writing ‘dragon shifter’ on any of the expense accounts.”
“Still,” Quentin said, not liking the idea more than anyone else. “I agree. I don’t like the idea of other people poking around. Is this really necessary?”
“If I don’t comply with the request then it’s only going to go worse for us,” Barrett said, leaning back in his chair and looking around at each of them. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, I know that you all hear things. I don’t like to talk about it with you because I don’t want to detract from the time that should be devoted to doing your jobs, but I should still address it. We’ve had some pretty serious discrepancies with money and with record keeping. You all know that. There’s been a suggestion that perhaps I have been …fudging things a bit.”
“Bullshit,” Jordan said. “Who said that? It’s not Norman, I know that. And it had better not be Gideon, either.”
Barrett shook his head. “No, it’s not Grandpa or Dad. But they can only do so much to push back against what some of the older generation wants. Yeah, we’re the Rockwell’s, and we lead the Rockwell Clan, but we can’t just give out orders or tell people to look away from what does appear to be a problem, however much I know that it’s not on me.”
Of course, Quentin understood that the Rockwell’s couldn’t just give orders, despite their well-established position of leadership, but he also didn’t like that his friend and leader was being investigated by people who should have his back. He was one of their own. Their leader. Their family.
“I’m taking some of my own measures,” Barrett said. “I’m not just letting it happen without protecting my own—our own. Don’t worry about that. I’m going to be putting cameras up around here, for one.”
“You think someone is coming in here and messing with things?” Hannah asked, looking startled. “Really?”
“I don’t know,” Barrett said, “but when I thought about it, I realized that it’s something we should have done a long time ago for security. Security against others and security for ourselves. If there are any accusations made, we can help disprove them with security footage.”
Jordan was shaking her head. “Fine, install cameras. That’s all fine. But you’re the sole Rockwell heir, Barrett. This is your birthright. Your future. I can’t believe they’re treating it like it’s anything different.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Barrett said. “I really do. But the truth is …any good leader shouldn’t be afraid to be questioned. So, I’m going to just suck it up, and so are all of you. That’s all there is to it.”
It was an admirable stance, and Quentin admired his fr
iend all the more for it. He knew that Barrett was struggling, and he decided that he would do more to make sure that he checked in with Barrett on a regular basis and maybe even went with him to some of those meetings he was having. Maybe he could head up the investigation into the finances. Quentin was good at organization. He was good at rules and rule following. He loved it when everything was in its place. Out of all of his friends, Barrett was the leader; Jordan was the warrior; Hannah was the nurturer; and Ryan was the calm one in a crisis. And Quentin was the organizer. The fixer. The rule keeper.
They worked well together as a team, and Quentin knew, without a doubt, that whatever investigation the clan wanted conducted, they would pull through as a closer-knit group at the end of it.
Barrett was talking again, but Quentin got a glimpse of the future at the same time, seeing the agency front door open so a client could walk in. He didn’t catch who the client was, but he heard the receptionist greet the client. And then the vision was gone.
“Someone is about to come in,” Quentin told the group, not having to explain that he had gotten a glimpse of the future. They were all well used to that by now. “I think it’s a client. I’m next up in rotation anyway, so I’m going to go greet him. Or her.”
“Sure,” Barrett said, starting to close down his computer. “I think we’re about done here anyway. Right?”
There was a chorus of answers and general chatter behind him as Quentin headed out of the conference room and down the hall towards the main entrance area. He heard the front door open, and he heard the receptionist greet the client.
Rockwell Agency: Boxset Page 49