Chaos

by Timberlyn Scott

  “Huh?” I asked, confused.

  “Your office. You haven’t shown it to me since you got it all set up.”

  I watched her, trying to figure out just what her angle was, but her expression was cool.

  “Yeah, okay,” I told her, pushing to my feet.

  I wasn’t sure if there was much to see in my office, but clearly Payton was trying to distract me, and I welcomed it. A chance to get out of my own head wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  Payton waited for me to stand and didn’t move until I did, falling into step behind me as we made it to the closed doors beneath the stairs. I’d had blinds installed on the French doors to give me privacy, in the event that I needed it. I hadn’t used the office but maybe once since everything was set up.

  After walking in, I stepped to the side, trying to see the room from her point of view. The desk was still clean, nothing on the top. The credenza against the wall held my laptop but little else. There was a pencil holder, lacking the pencils, and a framed picture of Payton. I wasn’t sure she knew about that one. I’d taken it with my cell phone while she was sleeping. It was a close-up of her face, peaceful as she slept in my bed. I had other pictures of her on my phone, mostly candid shots she hadn’t realized I’d taken, but there were a couple of selfies we’d taken together. I intended to add a few of those to the office when I got a chance, but things had been a little crazy lately.

  Payton closed the door when she stepped inside. It wasn’t until I heard the lock engage that I realized my sweet angel wasn’t just looking for a tour of my office, she was seriously creating a distraction.

  I held my breath, and when she took my hand, smiling up at me, I saw the gleam in her hazel eyes.

  She tugged my arm until I moved, leading me around the desk and then gently urging me to stop in front of my chair. I was tempted to drop into the chair and pull her into my lap, but she clearly had other plans.

  She unhooked the button on my jeans and lowered the zipper, still watching my face. When she pushed my jeans to my knees, taking my boxers with them, I nearly lost what little control I still had.

  “Sit,” she demanded softly, urging me into my chair.

  When she dropped to her knees in front of me, I let out an involuntary groan.

  There were more to follow when she wrapped her soft, cool fingers around my shaft, stroking me slowly until I was hard as steel in her palm.

  “Payton.” I said her name more as a warning, but she didn’t seem to care.

  Her eyes met mine, her smile still firmly in place. I quickly got lost in the smooth stroke of her hand up and down my dick. She was teasing me, and my body responded instantly, my cock pulsing in her hand.

  Payton didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and I was just getting used to the idea of a hand job when she leaned forward and pressed her lips to the head of my dick. I sucked in air and closed my eyes. My hands were on the arms of the chair, my fingernails digging into the leather as I hung on for dear life.

  “Oh, damn, baby,” I groaned, relishing the feel of her tongue as she laved my cock as slowly as she had been stroking it.

  I squeezed my eyes shut when she wrapped her lips around me and lowered her head, taking me all the way into the sweet heaven of her mouth. I wasn’t going to last, but I didn’t think it really mattered.

  “Payton, baby,” I whispered, “if you’re trying to distract me, you’re doin’ a damn good job.”

  She didn’t respond, but the gentle vibration of her lips as she moaned against me nearly sent me into oblivion. Payton worked me over for a couple of minutes, and I managed to refrain from exploding, but it became more and more difficult. When she cupped my balls in her hand, I knew I couldn’t take much more.

  Linking my fingers into her hair, I guided her head until she was bobbing faster and faster. It wasn’t long before my breath lodged in my throat and every muscle in my body tensed.

  “Payton, if you don’t stop, I’m gonna come in your mouth.” Another warning, one I expected her to heed, but she didn’t, and a second later, I exploded, my dick pulsing in her mouth as I came so hard I knew it was a damn good thing I was sitting down.

  As I came back down to earth, I realized something: my sweet angel had a naughty side.

  And I loved her even more, although I hadn’t thought it was possible.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Payton

  Sunday

  Sebastian insisted on coming with me to my father’s shop. We got up early, but not due to an alarm clock or any other annoying wake-up call. I’d had a hard time sleeping although both my brain and my body had been exhausted.

  After we crawled into bed the night before, Sebastian had paid me back for the little impromptu blow job I’d given him in his office. He gave back tenfold, making me scream his name on more than one occasion until my body was sated. Too bad my brain hadn’t shut down enough to sleep soundly. I woke before the sun was up but didn’t move, not wanting to disturb Sebastian. It wasn’t long before he was awake, though. And when he suggested a quick shower, I didn’t refuse him.

  Our breakfast consisted of coffee and a breakfast sandwich at the first drive-thru that we came to. We arrived at my father’s shop around eight. On a Sunday morning, that was unheard of. Luckily, no one would be there to question us because Fowler Body and Frame was closed on Sunday.

  I still carried a key to my father’s shop on my key ring because he told me I never knew when I might need it. I was grateful for his foresight, because it came in handy this morning and saved us at least an hour trip out to my parents’ house and back.

  When we arrived, I didn’t bother giving Sebastian a tour because I knew he didn’t care any more than I did. The goal was to check out the old files to see if we could find something to tie Lauren back to the accident that had killed Sebastian’s mother. My father had informed me the files that dated that far back were in a storage shed at the back of the property behind the paint booth, so that was where we went.

  As I opened the door and saw the rows of boxes stacked to the ceiling, some of them dusty from the length of time they’d been stored there, I knew we had our work cut out for us. I set my coffee cup on the window ledge, and we left the door open to air the place out but immediately got to work. Some of the boxes were labeled, others weren’t. I went with the idea that the older boxes would be in the back, so we moved them around, placed those that we knew held more recent files on one side and others that were closer to the time frame we were looking for in another corner, unsure whether we would need to look in them but keeping them separate just in case.

  Six boxes a piece and nearly two hours later, Sebastian said my name softly. I looked up to see his eyes glued to a file in front of him. I lowered the box I’d had resting on my lap and stood, stretching my aching back muscles as I moved closer to him. Leaning over his shoulder, I read the name on the top of the file: Hodges, Lauren.

  “Is that her maiden name? Hodges?”

  “I guess,” Sebastian answered. “I was just looking at every Lauren I came to. The address on this one matches.”

  I lowered myself to a box beside Sebastian and placed my hand on his arm. “Did you see pictures of your mother’s car from the accident report?” I asked, wondering what type of damage we would be looking for.

  “Yeah. The notes mentioned there was white paint along the driver’s side front and rear doors.”

  That meant if the car in the pictures was white, more than likely it was the one used in the accident. My heart rate tripled as I waited for Sebastian to open the folder. His finger was lodged between the papers, as though he’d already been through them, so my guess was that he already knew the answer to the unspoken question.

  He opened the folder, and there in vivid color was a white SUV with significant front-end damage. That would match up to the fact that Sebastian had told me his mother had been T-boned in the accident.

  I gasped, my eyes filling with tears as I looked at the pictures, knowing w
ithout a doubt that we’d found the evidence we needed to identify Lauren as, at the minimum, an accomplice in Sebastian’s mother’s death. And as far as I was concerned, the “accident” had just been bumped to “murder.”

  I hadn’t realized I was crying until Sebastian put his arms around me, burying his face in my neck. He was sobbing, too. Desperately, I wrapped my arms around him, cradling the back of his head as I held him. I considered myself a fairly strong woman. I’ve been known to shed a tear, but never have I felt as lost and hopeless as I did right then with Sebastian’s body trembling in my arms. I could only imagine how much he’d held in since the day he’d learned his mother had been killed. It’d taken more than a decade for him to get some sort of answers. And what we’d found… It was enough to break down the hardest man.

  The proof was in my arms.

  I wasn’t even sure how much time had passed while I held Sebastian and cried for the boy who’d lost his mother, shed even more tears for the grown man who’d endured so much over the years, holding it all inside because he didn’t have anyone to lean on. I hated Conrad Trovato for that. Maybe he was innocent in all of this — God, I hoped like hell he was innocent in all of this — but he still held the honorary title of shitty father because he’d shunned his own son from the day he was born.

  I didn’t want to go back to Trovato, Inc. tomorrow and face the man. I wasn’t sure I could and still keep the secret that I now carried. I knew we had to talk to Derrick, to provide him with this evidence and see where he decided to go with this new lead. Considering he wasn’t officially on this case, I didn’t even know how this worked.

  When Sebastian pulled back, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands, I quietly wiped my own tears away.

  “We need to get this to Derrick,” he said, speaking my thoughts aloud.

  “I think we need to make copies, keep the originals here in a safe place. And then I should probably tell my father,” I told him.

  Sebastian nodded in agreement and then got to his feet, offering me his hand. I let him pull me up, and I brushed off my jeans while Sebastian placed the folder on a box near the door.

  We spent the next few minutes putting the boxes back in their rightful places, then locking the shed behind us before returning to the main building. Once inside, I took the file to the copy machine and made three sets of copies. Don’t ask me why I did that, but I’d seen enough movies to know that this was the point when something would happen to destroy the evidence. Sure, maybe I was being extra paranoid, but as far as I was concerned, one could never be too careful.

  I figured I had to keep my eyes open for anything, at this point. Lauren had resorted to threatening my job, which meant I wasn’t the only one who was paranoid. Trevor was lurking, or so it seemed to me, and it was enough that I was nervous to have him in the building, much less popping up every time I turned around.

  I finished making copies, placed the original file in a locked cabinet in my father’s office, and took the three sets of copies with me. One for Derrick, one for Sebastian, and a backup copy that I would leave at my apartment. Now that I was finished, I did think it might’ve been overkill to have quite so many copies, but again, never hurt to be careful.

  “You ready?” Sebastian asked when I met him near the front doors.

  “As I’ll ever be,” I told him. “Should we stop by my parents’ house? We can go over this with my father. I doubt he’ll remember from so long ago, but at least he’ll be apprised of the situation.”

  Sebastian nodded as he pushed open the front door. After locking the doors, we went to his truck, and for the first time that I could recall, Sebastian didn’t take my hand, and he didn’t open my door for me. Not that I expected it, but I knew then that he was off somewhere else in his head.

  And that worried me more than anything else at the moment.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sebastian

  Monday morning

  By the time I crawled out of bed, I had slept maybe a solid hour all night. Without Payton in my bed, I was learning I couldn’t sleep for shit. Between the absence of her soft, warm body and the millions of thoughts running through my head, I’d tossed and turned and now felt completely worthless.

  My thoughts drifted back to the conversation Payton and I had had with her parents last night. Rehashing all of the details that Derrick had shared, along with the proof that we’d found, hadn’t been an easy discussion. And when Hal had reacted similar to the way Payton had, blanching at the news that he’d repaired a vehicle that had been used to kill my mother, I’d had a hard time sitting there. Fortunately, Susan had made dinner, distracting us with food. It wasn’t until we were leaving that Hal had taken me aside, apologizing as though it had actually been his fault. I assured him that there was no way he could’ve known, but I had seen in the man’s eyes that he was going to shoulder the blame much the way Payton had.

  That was just another reason I hadn’t been able to sleep last night.

  When I made it to the kitchen, I realized that Leif had already left for work, and that left me home alone. I took advantage and went to the workout room. After a solid hour of pounding away at the heavy bag, I dove into the pool and did laps to try to escape the chaos that had amped up in my head. The noise was so loud I wasn’t sure if I would ever escape it. Realizing I wasn’t going to get away from it, I gave up when my muscles could no longer carry me across the pool.

  After a quick shower, I went to my office and pulled up my email. I was tempted to shoot off a note to my father, but I refrained. We had faxed Derrick the information we had retrieved from Payton’s father’s files last night, and I knew I couldn’t say anything until we heard from him. I prayed it would be soon.

  Although I’d waited eleven long, painful years to solve this, I felt like every minute that passed now was an eternity. And on top of that, I had to figure out when I was going to give Payton her Christmas present.

  Pulling open the top drawer of my desk, I reached to the very back and found the small velvet box that I’d hidden there. With it in my hand, I leaned back in my chair and flipped it open, staring at the diamonds — four karats total — set in a platinum band. I was going to ask Payton to marry me. If it wasn’t for the fact that the ring was the only Christmas present I had for her, I would’ve probably sprung the question on her by now. I was that eager.

  Even with all the shit raining down around me, Payton still managed to put a smile on my face just by being in the same room. She was the only thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

  As though she knew I was thinking about her, my cell phone rang, and I hit the talk button as soon as her name came up on the screen.

  “Hey,” I greeted, a smile on my face.

  “Hey,” she replied, sounding not nearly as happy to hear my voice as I was to hear hers.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, instantly worried.

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly. “Well, nothing more than usual. I’m just finding it really difficult to be here right now.”

  “No one’s giving you a hard time, are they?” I immediately thought of Lauren’s threats. I was pretty sure my stepmother knew that something was up. That or she was just nervous. It made sense to me, considering what she’d done — or what I’d suspected she had done, anyway — but I wasn’t sure how she would’ve been tipped off to what we were doing.

  I think it was more due to Trevor’s presence. If he had been the one driving the SUV that had hit my mother, I was pretty certain he was now using that as leverage against Lauren. For what, I didn’t know.

  “No, everything’s fine. Conrad’s not here this week.”

  “What about Trevor?” I asked, my concern growing.

  As much as I hated my father for the lack of love he’d shown me throughout my life, right then he seemed like the only possible protection for Payton. No matter how hard I tried to tie him back to my mother’s death, I couldn’t. Not anymore. Based on the new information, I was begi
nning to think my father was completely clueless when it came to the actions of his wife, which, in my opinion, made him just as guilty.

  “Why don’t you come home? If he’s not there, maybe take the next few days off. Christmas is on Thursday, so the office will be pretty empty this week.”

  “It is. The only person I’ve seen is Maude, but she said she was leaving early and would be out for the rest of the week. Ron’s not even here.”

  “Ron’s not there?” I asked, sitting up straight. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I thought about Payton at the Trovato, Inc. office without a security guard on hand. Especially if… “Have you seen Trevor?”

  There was a long pause, and I knew that Payton wasn’t telling me something.

  “Payton? Talk to me.”

  “Yeah, he’s here. He met me when I got here this morning. He was sitting at my desk.”

  I got to my feet. I had a bad feeling that I couldn’t seem to shake. “Payton, you need to leave.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to be here to answer the phones.”

  “Screw the phones, Payton. I’m serious, you need to come home.”

  Shit. I wasn’t as close to my father’s office as I would’ve been had I still lived there. Which meant I wouldn’t be able to get to her for at least half an hour. And I really had a bad feeling about her being there alone with Trevor.

  “Payton, listen to me,” I told her, my voice firm. “I want you to shut everything down and walk to your car. If you don’t, then I’m heading that way and I’m taking you home.”

  “No,” she told me firmly. “It’s fine. I really just wanted to call to hear your voice.”

  “Payton, I’m serious.” As much as I wanted to acknowledge the fact that she missed me, I couldn’t. I was getting antsy at this point, and it had everything to do with the fact that Payton was probably there alone with Trevor, and she didn’t even realize it.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll probably head out early, anyway.”