Back at the Ranch

by Em Ashcroft

  “When do you plan to pay her back?” Renaud asked her, keeping his tone quiet, as if he was asking her something inconsequential.

  “We’ve both suffered.” Changing tactics, she took a seat on the chaise-longue next to where he stood, letting her knees graze his legs as if by accident. “I asked her to come with me, but she said she wanted to go home. Besides, changing the names on the tickets would have been expensive.”

  “Did you ask her?” Blade’s voice hardened. “Or did you just hug her and tell her you’d see her later?”

  Ladonna shrugged. “What does it matter? One of us had to sort things out, and I’ve always been hopeless at that.” Her “poor little me” act didn’t fool Renaud for a second. Fluttering eyelashes didn’t help. “I can go back refreshed, and we can start again.”

  “You really plan to go back?” From what they’d discovered, Renaud doubted she ever intended to set foot in the USA again.

  “What else can I do?”

  Oh, this was too good. Even now she planned to brazen it out?

  “You don’t fool us,” Blade said, leaning over the back of her chair to breathe hotly on her neck. Anyone would think he was looking for prey. “You plan to move right on out once you get out of here.”

  She shrugged, her bare shoulders moving in what she probably assumed to be an enticing gesture. Until now Renaud hadn’t ventured into her mind. He didn’t have to. He had all the proof he needed, and the thought of entering her more intimately, even to the outskirts of her mind, creeped him out. But he did now, and found Blade there, waiting for him. He was right. He didn’t need this to prove to himself that she was lying.

  “So did you come here for a piece of the action?” A smile returned to her slick, lip-glossed mouth. She was rallying, working out a way out of this. “Or was it a piece of me you really wanted? Would that pay the debt?”

  That was when Chester walked in.

  Blade merely lifted his head and said, “Hi.”

  Chester froze.

  “Join us,” Renaud said and patted the other side of the sofa. “Let’s have some fun.”

  Blade grinned maliciously. “Yes, come on.”

  Chester really had no choice, and he had enough sense to know it. Crossing to the sofa, he gingerly sat on the other side, next to Ladonna.

  “Well, isn’t this cozy?” Blade said softly. “Your fiancée has just offered to entertain the two of us in return for us forgetting the debt you owe us. Isn’t that right, Ladonna?”

  She bit her lip but nodded. Renaud had to reluctantly admit that at least she was game. “You’ll be very sore when we’ve finished with you.” But not in a good way and definitely not in the way she probably imagined. “But let’s have a little chat first.”

  See how much they could get them to confess. That would make the upcoming trial easier.

  “You have all that money, don’t you? Chester didn’t plan this on his own.”

  Ladonna stared at Renaud and jerked a nod. “But I don’t see what business it is of yours.” Ladonna sounded petulant now. She didn’t like opposition. Her blithe assumption that everything would work out for her had put Thea in the hole she now occupied. Renaud had no sympathy for her. None at all.

  Blade removed his sunglasses and tucked them in his breast pocket, taking his time. “Don’t you?”

  Ladonna shrugged. “Well, you gave my sister a good time.”

  If that was meant to anger Renaud, it did so, but he pushed his temper down to a low simmer. “Kept her out of the way, you mean,” he said, his voice hard. “While you got on with defrauding her.”

  “Hey, hold up there.” Chester spread his hands, palms out. “Defrauding? We have documents to show we didn’t defraud anyone. We’re entitled to act on her behalf. So we did.”

  If they were as badly forged as the other documents Renaud had seen, they should have no problem refuting them in court.

  Ladonna’s mouth flattened. “Why do you care? If we pay you what we owe you, then we can all go about our own business, don’t you agree?” She moved closer to Renaud. “And there are different ways of paying debts, aren’t there?”

  Renaud wanted more. He wanted to hear what they’d done from their own mouths. His phone, currently in his pocket switched to record, was waiting eagerly. The signal would be transmitted directly to the cloud, so even if he lost his phone, the evidence would still be there. “The fifteen grand you owe us?” He shrugged. “What about the rest?”

  “The company was done anyway. We weren’t going to get anything back from that.” Ladonna glanced at Chester. “Chester’s been trying for months to get more clients from his contacts, but Thea didn’t help. We’ve worked our asses off, but Thea’s pricing was bad, her costs were too high, so they backed off. Chester and I have decided to go it alone. We’re setting up something for ourselves. I’m sure Thea has the letter we sent her by now.” She raised a carefully plucked and penciled brow, and her voice lowered to a suggestive drawl. “Unless you kept her too busy to check her email.”

  “No.” Renaud cut off what he was going to say. Why should he volunteer any information? They didn’t deserve any. “She has a better sense of responsibility than you. And trust counts for a lot. When your clients discover how you stiffed her, they won’t be very happy.” Cocking a hip, he took a seat on the edge of the low-riding seat, looming over the pair.

  Ladonna’s eyes narrowed. “Was that a threat?”

  “More of a promise, I’d say,” Renaud drawled. He leaned back, crossing his legs.

  Blade remained where he was. “We can’t help how people gossip.”

  Renaud’s mind went back to the VIP wedding Thea had attended with them. If Ladonna had come with her, the gossip rags would be full of the news by now. Probably with associated pictures. “When you deal with functions at that level of society, you’re expected to be trustworthy. Confidences are kept, contracts remain private, and nobody gossips.” He’d trust Thea with every secret he had. But he wouldn’t give these two the time of day. “That’s why your business was failing. Together with your lack of taste and your inability to listen.”

  Leisurely, Blade strolled over to stare out the window down onto the seething mass of fun-loving humanity below. “Did you ever think that your wedding videos would put people off? We bought the footage your guy took by the way. All of it. He captured more than you thought.” He turned his attention back to the couple sitting on the sofa. “When you speak, Ladonna, your voice carries. Telling Chester you would see him in Nassau wasn’t very clever, was it? Just the night before he left, so you could blame him for everything and send him off here.”

  Chester grimaced. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. What else did you say?”

  “We’ve picked out a few other things,” Renaud said easily. In fact, that was the only part of the video they’d studied properly. He suspected the guy shot more than he was supposed to as insurance. Maybe he’d had the same doubts he and Blade had been under. They’d taken the booking reluctantly, but the relatively low price and the possibility of future contacts had persuaded them to give the company a shot. For them, it had been worth it ten times over, but only because they’d found Thea. “Gloating in public isn’t a good plan.”

  Inept, he’d call it. That and the other proofs were enough for them to get Nathan Goldclaw, chief of police in the town, out of bed in the early hours of the morning. He’d glanced through the evidence and sworn Blade and Renaud in as deputies, going grumbling back to bed.

  Renaud almost smiled when he recalled Nathan’s reluctance to be dragged out of bed so early, but he got with the program soon enough. Perhaps if Renaud had a sexy woman like Renata in his bed he’d have the same reluctance. If today went well, he could still have that, but his woman had black hair and flashing dark eyes. Thea was the only woman he wanted in that position. “We’d like you to come back to Goldclaw.”

  “You can’t make us,” Ladonna pointed out. “This is British territory. You’ll have to apply
to the embassy to get us out of here.” And by then, they’d be gone, probably to a place with no extradition treaty with the USA. They were right. That would take too long.

  “You could come back of your own accord. Just to sort things out.”

  Ladonna’s derisive laugh rang off the walls. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “You want to stay fugitives all your lives?” Blade didn’t wait for an answer. They probably hadn’t thought that far ahead. “And you don’t care about leaving your sister destitute?”

  “You’ll look after Thea.” Chester sounded confident. “Only she’d better be a better fuck for you than she was for me or you won’t get your money’s worth.” He curved an arm around Ladonna’s waist. “I couldn’t put up with that kind of chill for long. I prefer a bit of heat in my bed.” He didn’t seem at all put off by Ladonna’s offer to Renaud and Blade.

  Some people didn’t know the difference between real gold and fake until it turned their skin green. Ladonna was trash in every sense of the word. The way she’d treated her sister disgusted Renaud, and her blatant flirting showed a lack of class that had turned him off from the start.

  “You could stay here with us, let us pay off the debt that way. Is that what you want?” Ladonna leaned forward and put her hand on Renaud’s thigh. He had to fight hard to stop himself pushing her away. Her voice lowered to a soft purr. “We can both give you a good time if that’s what you want.”

  Renaud swallowed his distaste down. Temporarily at least. “So you two were always an item?”

  Ladonna laughed lightly. “What do you think? But we needed to get Thea with us. She had capital, and we just had ideas. And she had the organizational skills, too. But wining and dining the elite costs a lot of money, and so do the things we had to buy to keep up with them. If you run with the in crowd, you have to have the money to do it. And we didn’t. So Thea bailed us out.”

  “Did she know she was bailing you out?” Blade asked.

  Thea rolled her eyes. “I’m not completely insane.” Did this woman think of nothing but herself? “So how do you want me?”

  Chester got to his feet. “You don’t need me for this. I’ll be in the bedroom.”

  Did he take them for complete fools? Blade sensed his tension and the threat of violence that lurked at the back of his mind.

  Their plan was simple, but it wouldn’t work. Ladonna would try to keep them there until Chester could deal with them.

  They’d let Chester go into the bedroom to see if he would use violence or the phone. After all, he could call for hotel security and ask them to turn Renaud and Blade out. Giving Ladonna and himself time to make their getaway.

  “Why did you stay here?” Blade asked. “Why not head straight for another country?”

  Ladonna shrugged. “We’d paid for this. Besides, we thought Thea would keep you busy for a few days. You seemed into her.”

  Chester wasn’t in the bedroom for long. He came out with a gleaming black gun, pointed at Blade’s chest. “Do what you want to her and get out.”

  “So you’re not coming back with us?” Renaud asked mildly.

  “Not in a million years.” Full of bravado now, Chester walked to the center of the big room and stood there. “Don’t take too long. I’m only letting you do this because I like to watch. Then you can go. Shape-shifters or not, a bullet will take care of you.” He tucked the gun in his belt. Renaud suppressed a wince. Had the fucker switched off the safety? Served him right if it went off.

  Blade stepped out from behind the sofa and reefed his polo shirt over his head, tossing it on a nearby chair. “Fine by me,” he said and shrugged. A nice distraction. Renaud wasn’t fooled by his breed partner’s move, though it appeared Ladonna and her murderous husband were.

  Ladonna’s greedy gaze followed Blade’s actions.

  Chester pulled his phone out of his pocket and nudged it on, holding it up. He was even planning to make a sex tape, it appeared.

  They’d run to their tax haven and never leave. They might even concoct some crazy scheme to work out how Blade and Renaud would be in Nassau with them.

  Not crazy at all, said Blade deep in Renaud’s head. They’ll leave the documents here in our names. Prove that we were the perps, that we’d blackmailed them into giving them the money. They were only defending themselves.

  How can they expect to get away with that?

  These two were totally deluded. Or maybe they would have let Blade and Renaud go, giving them a chance to run. Renaud risked a swift incursion into Chester’s deluded mind and was staggered with what he found there. The pampered child of privileged parents who’d gambled their way to ruin, Chester assumed his privilege spread to this, as well. The courts were bound to believe him because he was who he was and because he had influential friends.

  Not as influential as Blade and Renaud, but he didn’t know that.

  What a fucking idiot.

  And he was actually watching Blade strip, thinking he was preparing for sex? Did the man know nothing? Casually, without letting anything show in his outward appearance, Renaud half shifted, letting his cat close to the surface.

  Blade threw his pants and underwear on the chair, half turning to give Ladonna a view of his butt. Fuck, but the man was hard, his cock stiff.

  How the fuck did you do that?

  Blade didn’t answer in words. Instead he sent Renaud a vision of the woman they both loved. Thea with her head thrown back, her mouth stuffed with Blade’s cock, and the wet sound of fucking from her cunt. Renaud responded instantly, and his cock came to full attention. Jesus he’d gotten it bad, and the thought of snuggling her afterward was as enticing as the sex.

  That was how he knew she was different and that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life letting her go. He should have rushed to the airport and grabbed her back, told her exactly what she meant to him. There was no way he was making the same mistake again.

  Ladonna ran her avid gaze over Blade, who was standing before her, erect and naked. Renaud flicked a glance at Chester. He needed to get that gun off him, fast. He didn’t trust that man an inch.

  After her insulting, direct perusal, Ladonna turned her attention to him. “Your turn.”

  Resigned to his fate, Renaud stood. Since there was little room to spare, he nudged Blade. “Move over, compadre.”

  Blade glanced at him and winked. Ready?

  Oh yeah. More than. This atmosphere is poisoning my soul.

  Strange how Blade could chuckle and show none of that on his face.

  Obligingly, Blade moved over, which brought him closer to his quarry.

  Don’t bother counting down, Renaud said. Go for it.

  As Renaud made a show of unfastening the first button on his shirt, Blade leaped into the air. He shifted into a tiger before he came down again. And he came down on top of Chester.

  Ladonna’s scream bounced off the walls.

  A shot rang out, jerking Renaud’s attention to his breed partner, and a movement from his left brought him back. Ladonna was making a run for it. Suited him fine. Renaud shape-shifted, not bothering to rip off the rest of his clothes. Even though jeans were tough to tear out of, he felt nothing. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as the woman shot through the door, slamming it behind her. Pausing only to do a partial shift and get the door open, Renaud went full tiger again and raced through the corridor. Ladonna’s scream must have roused people because two people in navy uniforms stood at the end of the hallway. Someone from the penthouse next to the one he’d just come out of stood in his way, the woman screaming as soon as she saw what was heading for her.

  Renaud knocked the security guys aside like skittles, heading for the bank of elevators, where yet more people stood. More discretion would have been nice, he thought disgustedly. Trust Ladonna to make a scene.

  Fuck, the doors were sliding closed as he reached them.

  Finding the stairwell took half a minute, but racing down fifteen flights took less time, due to his ability
to leap down a half-flight at a time. He still might be too late.

  No, there she was, heading at full speed through the doors of the hotel. Ignoring the startled cries and screams, Renaud centered all his attention on his quarry and burst through the doors, pounding down the stairs and racing toward her. He finished the chase by leaping over her, landing and turning around, shifting back to human at the same time. Unable to stop in time, she ran into his open arms.

  “You were saying?” he prompted.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After her breakdown at the house she no longer owned, Thea had gone to the office the next day to find it similarly repossessed for non-payment of rent. Lost, she’d gone to the coffee bar nearby and ran into Andie, the bridesmaid from the weekend. Andie had taken over from there. She’d driven Thea home, made her pack her most precious possessions, and brought her back here to her apartment, where she’d given up the guest room to Thea. “Stay there until you feel better. We’ll work it out.”

  Thea stared in horror at the picture that had just gone viral. It had pinged through to her phone, but she ignored it. When she sat down with a glass of wine to watch some mindless TV to lull her into sleep, she flicked past the news channel and saw it again. And caught the details she’d missed the first time.

  Shape-shifters were hot news right now, due to the new POTUS being the first open shape-shifter to win the office. Public awareness was at an all-time high. Protest groups, claiming shape-shifters were stealing their women, that they were really animals imitating humans, and they should be legally classified that way, were marching in the streets. These days the group known as The Grid was only one of them. Equally vociferous groups marched on the other side. So she was getting used to seeing shape-shifters on the news.

  But she hadn’t registered the details of this one. This being broadcast television, the more intimate parts of the picture were blacked out, but not the rest. A man in the process of shape-shifting, half man, half tiger, was in the air, bearing down on whoever was holding the camera. And to one side of the picture, Ladonna was screaming, her red-painted mouth wide with terror.