The Hunter Brothers Complete Box Set

by Parker, M. S.

  I twisted to stretch the muscles in my back and reminded myself that there was a rogue raccoon in Mrs. Outhwaite’s attic. She needed Billy more than I did.

  As I glanced down at my phone, however, I wondered if I really did need him at all. Hell, half the time, I barely noticed he wasn’t there until he showed up.

  I picked up my cleaning supplies and then headed out to the bar. Whoever was closing with me usually did the clean-up stuff that couldn’t wait until the next morning – bathrooms, dishes, the usual bar dirty work – which meant I could do a wipe down and clean the floors on my own before we opened. I’d been doing it since I was a kid, so it was almost automatic anymore.

  Giving me plenty of time to think while I worked.

  Unfortunately, with Billy’s text on my mind, that was what I thought about. How it wasn’t actually too bad doing this myself, especially since Billy never seemed to help as much as I thought he would. He’d inevitably find something random – also known as easy – to do, like arranging shot glasses or double-checking the inventory I’d done twice already. Sometimes, he’d sit on the bar and tell me all about the ideas he had for the future.

  Ideas that rarely ever included me or my bar, now that I thought about it. Then again, Billy’s dreams were always unrealistic. Winning the lottery so he could buy the Celtics. Or some agent would spot him somewhere and offer him a movie role. After all, Tom Cruise was only an inch taller than he was. Or he could be an underwear model. A stuntman. A YouTube sensation. Those were some of his favorites, but sometimes he reached even further and talked about some idea he was sure could be sold on a show like Shark Tank for millions. Except his ideas were usually things like beer-scented cologne or dissolvable condoms.

  Maybe that was why he never talked about our relationship or the bar; he didn’t need to dream for any of that. But that didn’t explain why he never talked about what the two of us were doing in those far-fetched daydreams of his.

  Not that I’d ever call them that to his face.

  I glanced at my phone again and saw he still hadn’t responded. He was probably already at his mom’s place because if he was on the bus, he would’ve texted back. Unless he was in the middle of watching something on his phone. Apparently, he’d been binging Game of Thrones the last three times he’d gone hours without responding.

  More like watching all the sex scenes over and over.

  I shook my head and went back to cleaning off the last table. People didn’t understand why Billy and I didn’t live together or why I wasn’t pushing for an engagement, but the fact that I was more relieved than annoyed that he’d canceled yet again was proof that I was making the right decision to keep things the way they were.

  I went back into the breakroom and put the paychecks in their usual basket, Gilly’s on top since she was coming in first. She’d want to know why Billy and I weren’t going out, and I’d have to tell her about the raccoon. I could almost quote every comment she’d make.

  He’s playing you, Syll. When are you going to realize that the two of you should have split years ago? Or even better, not dated at all. You’re too good for him. Why are you staying with him? You can do so much better.

  Gilly hadn’t liked Billy from moment one, and things hadn’t improved over the years. If anything, she was more critical of him, talking about him jumping from job to job, the way he apparently took me for granted, how often he borrowed money from me, especially when business was bad.

  The knock at the door made me jump, but I welcomed the distraction. That was what I got for not turning on some music or something to keep all this shit out of my head.

  I grabbed a towel as I walked to the door. It was almost time to open anyway. It was probably just a regular with a fast watch or something. Maybe it was Billy, coming by after he’d saved his mother from her furry intruder.

  I hoped not. A burst of guilt followed my thought. I mentally cringed as I opened the door, unable to stop myself from still feeling like I preferred for him to not be there.

  It wasn’t Billy.

  It was a middle-aged, average-looking man in a decent suit. He was the sort of guy who blended into a crowd, someone I could have met a hundred times and still not recognized.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Reeve.” Even his voice was average. “My name is Mr. Jones, and I represent an anonymous client who wishes to purchase your bar.”

  A thousand questions and comments flew through my head, but there was only one thing for me to actually say.

  “No way in hell.”

  Five

  Jax

  I hadn’t understood why Grandfather wanted me to come straight from the airport to work until I walked into my office and saw him sitting at my desk, going over printed copies of the contracts I’d emailed him earlier that week. I’d managed to get the company to go green, but he still preferred to read the paper version of things rather than digital ones. He said recycling was green too.

  I supposed he deserved a couple quirks in his old age.

  I walked over to my desk but didn’t ask for my seat back. I could stand while we talked. I took a sip of coffee and then began giving him the rundown of how our New York office was doing. We’d been doing this for so long that it was almost second nature to rattle off the statistics I’d read through again on the flight home. He leaned back in my chair and held his hands in front of him, his fingers touching, mouth pursed in what I’d always thought of as his ‘thinking’ face. He wasn’t looking at me, but I knew he was hearing every word.

  He always did.

  When I finished, I fell silent and let him take everything in. I might’ve technically been running the company, but as long as Grandfather’s mind was sharp, and he was interested, he’d be involved in any important decision-making. He was still majority shareholder.

  “I’m assuming that you’re satisfied, then, with the executives and their vision for the new year?”

  I put my hands in my pockets and leaned on the chair. “I am. They were prepared, but not so much so that it made me think they were hiding something. No strange firings, or accusations from employees. They’re hard working and expect a lot of their employees, but they also reward them.”

  “Excellent.”

  I took a deep breath. Even while I’d been reviewing information on the plane, I had this idea in the back of my head. I was drunk when I first thought of it, but it wouldn’t go away. Not until I’d examined it, fleshed it out, considered it from all angles. If it wasn’t feasible, then I could put it aside, but until then, it’d be like one of those annoying songs that got stuck in your head.

  “Have you ever considered branching the company out to building businesses in addition to taking them apart?”

  He raised one eyebrow, an annoying ability that I’d inherited but didn’t like directed at me. “Was this a topic of discussion at the meeting yesterday?”

  I shook my head. “Just something I’ve been thinking about recently.”

  “Building a business is a much different animal than dismantling it.”

  I swallowed a curse and a sigh. Grandfather had his lecturing tone. There was no point in trying to counter anything he was going to say or even responding until he was done with whatever knowledge he wanted to impart.

  “The company we have is virtually recession proof, as long as we do our homework,” he continued. “We control how things are broken up and resold. If no one’s looking to buy something that’s mostly intact, then we cut it up into parts people are willing to purchase. Sell the equipment for a call center as a whole, or sell off each computer, each headset, piece by piece.”

  I nodded in agreement. I’d heard that speech so many times I could quote it, but Grandfather knew that. Something else had to be on his mind.

  “When you’re starting a business, you can do all the research you want, but little things can come into play before you can even think. A turn in popularity. A bad review. Why risk it if what we’re doing still works?”

  He
honestly wanted to know, but a part of me still felt like a little kid getting a lesson in Running the Family Business 101. “I saw a club in New York that was doing well and thought it might be an untapped market here.”

  “Boston doesn’t need another club.”

  He wasn’t being dismissive, but I knew that he considered the matter closed. He couldn’t see the point, and unless I brought him hard proof to contradict what he was thinking, he wasn’t going to waste his time with it.

  “Besides, we have another project we should be looking at.” He stood, picking up a set of rolled-up papers.

  He carried them over to the low coffee table that sat in front of the small loveseat in the corner. I watched as he unrolled them, and then walked over to see what he had in mind.

  “One of my contacts at the city planner’s office sent me a tip this morning.”

  And now I understood why he’d insisted on us meeting this morning at the office rather than me giving him a brief summary of the trip whenever I happened to see him at home. This wasn’t about our New York office at all. It was about whatever plan he’d hatched.

  “There’s going to be some changes made soon, and the prices of the property in this neighborhood are going to shoot up.” He glanced up at me, and then traced a space on the city map. “If we can obtain any of the businesses here, the property alone will make us a considerable profit.”

  The reasoning was sound, of course, and I didn’t doubt his information was good. He’d built this company by himself, not even having my father to help him back when he was alive. Dad’s interest had only ever been in journalism. I’d seen, even as a child, how much it hurt Grandfather to not be passing down his company from father to son. After Dad died, I’d known that Grandfather would be looking to me, so I’d gone along with it. I had a knack for it, at least.

  I studied the map carefully, taking in not only the area but the specific businesses that were already there. It wasn’t in the best part of the city, but it wasn’t in the worst either. With whatever the city had planned, I didn’t doubt things would improve there, so it would make sense to invest.

  I tried to get my focus on what Grandfather wanted, but as soon as I saw what sat on the corner, I knew it would be perfect for what I envisioned.

  A single story but with high ceilings. Zoned for business. It was large enough that I doubted the entire thing was a bar. The back was probably storage since there was no basement. It’d be easy enough, though, to make it all one open space.

  Perfect for my own BDSM club.

  Six

  Syll

  Today officially sucked.

  My bartender quit. Again. He was the third one in six months. At first, I thought it was because they kept finding places that paid more, but something about the way Stefan sounded when he called in to tell me he was leaving made me think that something else was going on. I asked if he could give me two weeks, but like the others, he said no. When I threatened the first two with withholding a reference letter, they hadn’t said anything other than goodbye. Stefan, however, had said something about it not being worth waiting.

  I didn’t like to think it, but a part of me wondered if it was possible that Mr. Jones from earlier had also paid visits to some of my employees, giving them an ‘incentive’ to leave. Gilly hadn’t mentioned that as a possibility, but I wasn’t sure that meant anything. Not that I worried about her quitting. If she hadn’t left yet, I doubted anything short of a natural disaster would make her go somewhere else. I didn’t know, however, if she would feel like she needed to protect me from the knowledge that someone was trying to buy my employees out from under me.

  Then again, maybe it was nothing. After all, if someone really was going after my waitresses, I supposed Ariene would have quit already, and she hadn’t done that.

  She’d just called in sick.

  As I climbed into the shower, I reminded myself that I told my employees to call off if they were sick because I didn’t want them spreading anything around. It was a good thing that Ariene had.

  I probably could’ve convinced myself of that if I hadn’t had Gilly’s voice buzzing in my ear most of the night. As I shampooed my hair, the worst of it came parading through my mind, no better the second time through.

  * * *

  “I’m just saying, Syll, it’s suspicious.”

  I glared at Gilly across the bar. “You think everything Billy does is suspicious. If he’d canceled his plans and Ariene had come in to work, you’d think he was fucking Stefan.”

  She tilted her head like she was considering the possibilities. “If I thought there was any chance that your boyfriend was gay, sure, I’d think that was a possibility, but he doesn’t have enough fashion sense to be gay.”

  “You do realize that’s offensive on about ten levels, right?”

  She grinned at me as she whirled off with a tray of glasses. Considering she was the only one waiting on customers tonight, she was in a damn good mood. It was one of the first times I’d ever been glad that we were half-empty. Then again, Gilly would get to keep all of tonight’s tips, so maybe she did have a reason to smile after all.

  As she came back for her next round, she picked up like she’d never left.

  “All I’m saying is that it seems strange that Billy’s mom has a raccoon in her attic in January. Don’t those things hibernate? I mean, okay, maybe it was hibernating in her attic, but then it should be sleeping, right?”

  I gave her a look. “Do I look like I know anything about the wintering habits of raccoons?”

  She shrugged and danced away again.

  If I hadn’t been the only person manning the bar and the cash register, I might’ve gotten on my phone to check, no matter how much I tried to tell myself that she was only riling me up to keep my mind off how shitty things were going tonight.

  “Come on, Gilly,” I spoke first this time. “You know as well as I do that Billy’s mom is fucking nuts. She could be hearing a mouse and think it’s a raccoon. Hell, she could be imagining the whole thing, or even flat-out lying about it. We both know she can’t stand me.”

  “True,” Gilly admitted. She’d been my sounding board more than once when Billy’s mom had pulled this sort of thing before. “But this isn’t the first time he’s canceled plans.”

  “Everyone cancels plans,” I countered. “Look, Billy and I have been together for a long time. I’m not going to mess up a good thing by accusing him of cheating on me just because he happened to cancel plans when one of my waitresses called in sick.”

  She leaned across the bar and put her hand on my arm, her expression sobering. “Syll, I love you, but you’re smarter than this. You know that this isn’t the only time you’ve had questions, and don’t tell me that you don’t have them now. I can see them on your face.”

  “Gilly.”

  “What about a few weeks ago, when he came over, and you smelled another woman’s perfume?”

  “He accidentally grabbed women’s shampoo at the store,” I said. “And before you tell me that’s lame, he brought me the bottle.”

  “Two days later.”

  I sighed. “We have work to do and only two of us to do it. Why don’t we table you tearing down my boyfriend for another time? We both know this won’t be the last time you’ll find something wrong with what Billy does.”

  * * *

  I muttered curses under my breath as I toweled off. I’d hoped that a hot shower would clear my head, but it hadn’t. I was exhausted, but I had a bad feeling I wasn’t going to be getting to sleep anytime soon.

  Two hours later, as I stared up at the ceiling, I cursed the fact that I was right and started thinking of ways to get back at Gilly for filling my head with so much shit. At some point, I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, that damn alarm clock was going off again.

  I had the strangest sense of déjà vu as I went through my usual morning routine, but that wasn’t really anything new. In fact, feeling déjà vu was part of what
made me feel like I was repeating things. The idea alone was enough to give me a headache, but after how badly I slept last night, I already had one.

  Since yesterday had been so sparse, and I’d already set out everyone’s paychecks – I had one less now, which was a sort of upside to being left in the lurch, I guessed – I didn’t really need to balance my books. Just the thought of looking at numbers made my head hurt worse, but I knew I needed to get the work done. I’d been doing this long enough that I knew where I could slack off and where I couldn’t. Bookkeeping was definitely a no slacking zone.

  It took me twice as long as usual to get through everything, but since there was less of it, I finished in about the same time. With less to clean up, I was able to take my time and still get done with minutes to spare. Not that I had anyone rushing to get inside. This wasn’t the sort of place where people lined up, eager to be first in line. Yesterday’s knock at the door had been a fluke.

  Except there was someone knocking at my door again.

  I grabbed my broom as I crossed the room. Mr. Jones was going to get something a hell of a lot less polite than a no to take back to his employer. One time, I wouldn’t shoot the messenger, but guys who didn’t take no for an answer were destined to get a broomstick up their–

  Everything I was going to say fell right out of my head as soon as I yanked the door open and saw who was standing there.

  Sandy brown hair that’d probably never seen anything less than a two-hundred-dollar haircut. Intelligent pale blue eyes. Long legs, a trim waist with a muscled enough torso to make him lean rather than skinny. A strong jaw and features rugged enough to completely eliminate any possibility of him being called a pretty boy.