by Dawn Brower
“I’ll take that under advisement.” She tilted her head. “I’m good with my choices.” Then she turned to her friend and smiled, perhaps a little too gleefully. Sullivan could stuff his suggestions someplace unpleasant. “Jessica, come sit in the seat Sullivan vacated.” Lana gestured toward her. “You can tell me the progress on Imogen’s case.”
Jessica appeared uncomfortable, but did as Lana requested and sat in the chair. She sat up rigidly so she didn’t hit the far edge of the seat. Sullivan, for his part, glared at Jessica’s back for several moments, and Lana feared what he might do. There was a lot of hatred in that gaze. Some of it might be directed at himself, but she couldn’t be certain.
“Imogen is going to rot in prison. I’ll make sure of it,” he said forcefully.
“She’s sick,” Jessica muttered, keeping her gaze toward Lana. “She needs help, not punishment.”
Lana didn’t like finding herself in the middle of what seemed like a familiar argument between the two of them. She rubbed her temples together. What had she done to deserve this? Oh yeah, that’s right, she’d pushed Sullivan as she always did. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut around him? He pushed her buttons in the worst possible ways and she’d escalated things. She had to find a way to bring a little peace into the room. Only one thing would work—Sully had to go.
“It’s for the court to decide.” Lana glanced between the two of them. “I’m not going to referee the two of you. I have more important things to do. Like, for instance, a boycott on white walls. I’m considering a petition or memo of some kind begging the hospital to redecorate.”
It wasn’t a bad idea really. She’d have to look at these walls when she returned to work. How she never noticed how bland they were before, she wasn’t sure.
“I trust the court to make the right decision,” Sullivan said arrogantly.
“Me too,” Jessica agreed. “My sister will not sit in prison for the rest of her life.”
“Enough,” Lana shouted. They both turned to stare at her. “Sullivan, leave now. Jessica’s staying for a nice short visit, and then I’m going to rest. I don’t have the patience for this crap.”
She was almost afraid at how smug Sullivan was about Imogen’s predicament. What strings were being pulled, and should she warn Jessica about the possibility? Why was he being so overprotective too? It couldn’t all be about her mother. This wasn’t like him—at least not regarding her. She had seen this side of him regarding his family, especially Dani. Maybe that was it. He had said, once upon a time, he thought of her as a sister. Perhaps the injury had brought out that side of him. If so, it was a rather bitter pill to swallow. He had kissed her, albeit a chaste one, so it must mean something. She’d think more about it later when her mind cleared from the chaos surrounding her.
“Fine,” Sullivan said with reluctant agreement. “Remember your promise.” With those words, he exited the room and left her with far more to think about then he realized. They’d fallen into their normal pattern and bickered, but it had lost some of its edge. Perhaps it was him, or maybe it was her. Most likely it was a little bit of both. Lana didn’t like change, and she suspected she was in for a lot of it in the future.
Sullivan wasn’t playing by the same rules, and she hadn’t learned what the new ones were yet. A mixture of excitement and dread filled her. It might mean nothing, and it could mean everything. She’d have to wait to see how it would unfold and learn to navigate this new reality. Otherwise, she’d be shocked on a regular basis, and as a rule, Lana didn’t particularly like surprises.
For now, it would take everything she had in her to stay awake to chat with Jessica. Hopefully her friend didn’t want to stay long. Sullivan’s visit had exhausted her in more ways than one.
CHAPTER THREE
Sullivan stormed into his office at Brady Blue and shoved his chair back against the wall. The urge to push everything off his desk was great, but he held it in. Giving in to a fit of rage wouldn’t help him where Lana was concerned. He’d have to find another way to convince her to recover at the mansion. There had to be something he could use to guilt her into it at the very least. He didn’t like the idea of her being alone and fragile. Lana had always been strong and independent. Seeing her so pale and weak devastated him in ways he didn’t particularly want to examine closely.
He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed. None of this was accomplishing anything, and he had a lot of work to do. He’d deal with the problem of Lana later. He’d been ignoring Brady Blue for too long, and the business had to be seen to before he could tackle the issue of where she’d go once she left the hospital.
A knock on the door echoed through the room. He glanced up as his assistant, Ali Davis, poked her head around the door. Her strawberry blond hair was pulled back into an elegant chignon. She wore a formfitting charcoal business suit with a skirt that stopped at her knees. Ali had a no-nonsense attitude Sullivan had appreciated from the start, and it was the main reason he’d hired her. “Sorry to disturb you,” she began, “but Wilson Stuart is here to see you. He says it’s important.”
What the hell did the manager of the accounting department want to see him about? He hoped it was good news, but he feared the worst. The way his luck had been going lately, nothing else made sense. There had been some good things—like the return of his long-lost sister, but other than that, it almost felt as if the world was crumbling down around him. He didn’t have a clue what was going on with him, but every day his whole being hummed with some sort of tumultuous energy on the verge of exploding. There was a time when he’d known exactly what he wanted out of life and the direction he had to take. Now, he had never been more clueless.
He turned his attention to Ali and said, “Send him in.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied and shut the door behind her as she exited.
He sat behind his desk and rested his elbows on his desk. His concentration was shot, and he had to pull himself together before Wilson came into his office. If he didn’t figure his crap out soon, Brady Blue would start to suffer because of it. His father, Malachi Brady, had entrusted the company to him, and Sullivan would not let him down.
The door to his office opened and Wilson Stuart walked in. “Thank you for making time for me,” he said as he sat in the chair in front of the desk. His dark brown hair was thinning on his head and gray streaked through the sides of it. He pushed his glasses up and then set a stack of folders on the desk.
“What are these?” Sullivan asked, gesturing toward the files.
“Expense reports mostly,” he replied. “But they also contain receipts of shipments received, along with other miscellaneous accounting documents.”
The back of Sullivan’s head was starting to pound relentlessly. Did he have to drag the information out of Wilson? Why didn’t the man tell him what the hell he wanted already? It had been a mistake to come to the office. His bad temper was about to explode all over one of his best managers. “I have a lot to do. Please don’t waste time.” His tone was perhaps more curt than usual, and Wilson jerked back from it. Sullivan couldn’t help himself though.
“I realize you’re busy, and I apologize for disrupting your day.” He pulled one of the files off the stack and opened it up. He slid a spreadsheet across the desk in front of Sullivan. “This is the expense report from the foundation. On the surface, it appears to be sound and everything is as it should be.”
That implied something was off... “But it is wrong?”
“I didn’t catch it at first. We get a lot of expense reports, and we do go over every one before we add it to our accounting. We’ve never had a reason to dig deeper and have accepted the amounts. But this last one was flagged because my assistant volunteered for this fundraiser. She had a hand in everything and noticed the amounts did not add up.”
Shit. “Is it a mistake?” Sullivan asked. Please let it be a typo or something. He didn’t want to deal with some internal bullshit at his company.
“I tho
ught it might be at first and approached the person who is in charge of the foundation. She brushed it off as an error her assistant made when she filed the report.” Wilson sat up straight and his tone took on a bit of irritation and indignation. “Her attitude was too blasé for me to let it go. There is a lot of money that mistake is taking away from the hospital and the other charities the foundation donates to. I don’t like it when things don’t add up the way they are supposed to.”
“Let me guess, it made you dig deeper,” Sullivan said. God help him. If someone was stealing from the foundation, there would be hell to pay.
“I would like your permission to do a full audit,” he replied. “This is a tiny amount of what I’ve discovered with my digging, but if I’m correct, millions have been funneled out of the foundation over the past several years. I need to follow the money trail and figure out not only who is doing it, but where it went.”
That was what he was afraid Wilson would say. “Do you want me to meet with the head of the foundation and ask her what the hell is going on in the meantime?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to tip anyone off so they have time to cover their tracks. Let them think they are still managing to pull something over us. I can’t be certain who the culprit is yet.”
Sullivan nodded. If he’d been thinking clearly that would have already occurred to him. He had to leave the office and settle his issues with Lana and fast. “Keep me informed,” he said. “As soon as you know something, I want you to contact me. I don’t care what time or day it is.”
“Of course,” Wilson agreed. “I’ll make sure you have regular reports on everything I discover in the investigation. Now, I have a lot of files to go through. Have a good day.” With those final words, Wilson left the office, his files in tow.
After the door clicked shut, Sullivan prowled around the room as if he were a caged tiger. Maybe if he went to the gym he could spend some of the pent-up energy flowing through him. Though he doubted it would be enough to tone it all down, it might be what he needed to at least take the edge off. He stared out the window at the center of Envill. The city they lived in wasn’t large, but it wasn’t especially small either. They had all the basics: hospital, police force, and a few major corporations. If a person wanted to, they could still get lost in it, and at the same time, it had the small town feel where he still ran into people he was acquainted with from time to time.
“What has you looking so pensive?” The sound of his sister’s voice brought him out of his own mind. He turned around and faced her, pasting a smile on his face first.
“Nothing for you to worry over. It’s business.” And the world falling down around him—not that he’d ever admit it aloud.
“Somehow, I have doubts,” Dani said. “You do realize you don’t have to take on the world by yourself, right?”
He would never lay any problems at her feet. She’d had a rough life growing up and she should have been coddled. Dani might believe herself tough and capable, but to Sullivan, she’d always be the little sister he’d lost once. Her disappearance had shaped him into the man he was, and he couldn’t change if he wanted to. Most of the time he liked who he was, and the rest of the world be damned.
“But I do it so much better than everyone else,” he replied, his tone a bit cocky. “Why ever would I give someone else the opportunity to do an inferior job?”
Dani pushed her dark hair behind her ear and glared at him. “Your charm doesn’t work on me, so stuff it.”
He lifted his hand to his chest and rested it above his heart. “You wound me.”
The sound of his sister’s laughter floated through the room. He loved hearing her happy, and he hoped nothing hurt her ever again. She’d been shot by an evil man a couple months back and almost died. He hadn’t believed anything could terrify him until he saw her lying on the floor with her blood staining her shirt and her breathing labored. Then, in the matter of weeks, he had to experience that similar sickening terror staring at Lana in the hospital bed. It was enough to make a man rethink all of his life’s decisions and vow to change. Too bad he was already a leopard, and his spots were staying exactly where they’d stained themselves on his soul. He couldn’t change the person he’d become, but he could start to do things different with the people who were important to him.
“Your hide is thicker than that,” Dani said with a touch of humor in her tone. “I’m actually surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be at the hospital with Lana.”
He frowned. Most people didn’t notice how much time he’d been spending at the hospital. He stayed to the shadows and didn’t interact with anyone. Dani, however, had seen him the night Lana had been brought in. She alone had been witness to him unraveling and made sure to check on him daily afterward.
“Lana doesn’t need me,” he replied stiffly. “She’d made that perfectly clear since she opened her eyes the other day.”
“But you need her, don’t you?” Dani asked softly. “Why don’t you tell her how you feel?”
And have her tear him to shreds with that viper tongue of hers? He’d rather live a little bit longer and fight another day. “I tried to talk her into staying at the mansion,” he replied instead. “Her mother is worried about her, and it would ease her concerns to have Lana close. Of course, she said no.”
Dani sat in the chair in front of his desk and crossed her legs. She folded her hands in her lap and then glanced up at him. “Sit,” she demanded. “You might be able to deflect with everyone else, but as I mentioned earlier, I’m immune.”
He glared at her. Sullivan wasn’t used to anyone ordering him around like a child. He wasn’t about to start letting his baby sister do it either. “I have a lot to do. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, and then we can both move on with our day.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” she told him. “I’m not leaving until you open up to me.”
Sullivan sat in his chair as she’d asked, but that didn’t mean he was opening his chest and exposing all of his secrets to her. Some things were better left buried. “Don’t you have a wedding to plan?”
“Siobhan is handling all of it,” she said. “It’s made things much easier for me. All I had to do was pick out a dress, and...well, remember to show up when the day arrives.”
“That’s a different story then when you first agreed to let the parents help,” he responded with amusement. “What made you change your mind?” He had to make her talk about anything other than him. The wedding was a good place to start. The desire to talk about his feelings ranked up there with slitting his own wrists.
“I was being stubborn,” she said and sighed. “I realize that now. The wedding has given me the opportunity to become acquainted with Malachi and Siobhan. They’re good people.”
Their parents were more than good. They were wonderful, kind, and fantastic. Truthfully, there were not enough words to describe how amazing they were. Even through the tragedy of losing Dani when she was a toddler, they had never fallen into true despair. They’d still had Sullivan and had done their best to keep things as normal as possible. They’d become a little overprotective, but he handled that.
“You can call them Mom and Dad,” Sullivan said. “They’d like it if you did.”
“I might in time,” she responded. “I’m not ready yet.”
He supposed he understood that. In her place, he wasn’t sure he’d have been as accepting. By nature, he was skeptical of the world around him. “You mentioned you didn’t think I’d be here. What made you come to Brady Blue if not to see me?”
“I stopped into the foundation. I wanted to gather some ideas for my own and see how things were run here.” She crinkled her nose up in distaste. “I have to say I’m not fond of the woman running it. She was rather catty.”
Oh, hell... First the information Wilson had lain before him and now this. He was regretting hiring that she-devil. She was highly qualified though and good at her job. Maybe better than he even realized if
she was the one skimming the top and padding her bank account. Wilson would get to the bottom of it. “I might have to pull her in for a little conversation. What did she say to you?”
“I can deal with the likes of Colleen O’Callaghan,” she said and snorted. “I’ve dealt with her type all my life. Blonde, pretentious bitch who didn’t realize who I was. Don’t worry, before I left, she was properly put in her place. She won’t be making that mistake again.”
Sullivan’s lips tilted upward into the first true smile all day. “I’d have liked to have witnessed that scene.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you were there her claws never would have come out in my direction. She’d have rubbed herself all over you and hoped her pheromones attracted you to come crawl into her den and have a little private time.”
“Been there and not doing it again,” he replied nonchalantly. “Barely escaped those claws too.” He shuddered at the memory from his college days. Colleen had helped him forget the one he’d really wanted one night. That’s all they’d had, and he regretted it. She’d been nice enough when they’d met, but her true colors came out when she realized he didn’t want more from her.
Dani shook her head. “Only you would have one of your ex-girlfriends working in a position of authority. I hope that relationship was before she worked here or I shudder to think of the possible lawsuits.”
“It was a long time ago.” He grinned. “Besides, what good is it to have a lawyer in the family if I can’t call on you to help me out of a scrape or two?” He couldn’t resist the urge to goad her. Growing up, he’d missed out on the opportunity to do it, and he was making up for lost time.
She lifted her eyebrow and said, “Try it out and see how fast I don’t come to your rescue. I have more important things to do than play referee between you and one of your bimbos.”
“Former bimbo,” he said in feigned aghast. “She’s a professional now.”