Hot Read: The Originals (Seattle Steelheads Book 5)

by Jami Davenport

  Brett’s smile hurt his face, but he wouldn’t let his father know how much his words bludgeoned the hope right out of him. “Are you ever going to forgive me, Dad?”

  “You made your choices, even though you knew how I felt about it. You’ve never been anything but a disappointment, full of unfulfilled promises and ruined expectations. You couldn’t even be seen with us at Christmas dinner, then you show up today flashing around your tickets like some fucking king.”

  “I just thought you’d like them.”

  “Take your damn tickets and find some other sucker who might want them, but that sucker is not me.”

  Holding his head high and his spine straight, Brett left the house. His stepmother watched him go as she wrung her hands in the doorway.

  His dad wallowed in his bitterness and self-pity. Every damn thing that ever happened to Joe had been someone else’s fault. He wanted to drag his kids down with him, finding something bad in every good thing that ever happened to them.

  A fog of negativity hung over the entire house. Brett had escaped years ago, yet his father’s rejection and disapproval shaped who he was despite his attempts to separate himself and pretend not to care.

  He’d been stupid to come here, stupid to think his father would be proud of him. Hell, he’d never been proud of Brett, not one damn bit.

  Old doubts tried to crowd out the good things, and Brett refused to fall prey to them.

  Estie believed in him, his teammates believed in him, and he believed in himself.

  That would have to be enough.

  Estie scratched her head, which pounded from frustration. What the hell was going on? This could not be happening. Not to her. She always accounted for every penny, yet she’d found even more money missing, and she couldn’t find the discrepancy.

  She stood and stretched, glancing at the time displayed on her computer. Eight thirty p.m. No wonder she was stiff and tired. She’d been at it for hours.

  Richard had left late that afternoon to golf, and their administrative assistant was her usual punctual self, walking out the door at five o’clock exactly.

  She rested her forehead against the cool windowpane and sighed. About an hour ago, a horrible suspicion had started in the pit of Estie’s gut and worked its way up to her brain. She could no longer deny the obvious. Money was missing, not just from Tyler’s accounts but an alarming amount from Richard’s parents’ accounts too—accounts she usually left to Richard to manage. Only two people had the means to get their hands on that cash. She knew it wasn’t her. That left one other person.

  Estie’s mind raced back through all the red flags she’d refused to acknowledge: Richard’s recent spending sprees, including an expensive trip to a number of exclusive golf courses and his new sports car. His recent obsession with yacht shopping. Sure, they both made good money, but not that kind of money. Not yet. Not with just two main clients.

  Not to mention Richard had made some risky investments she hadn’t known about. She had to assume he’d hidden the fact because he’d known she’d veto them if she’d made her usual careful evaluation of the investments before he’d gone ahead.

  The effect on Tyler’s investments was minimal. Not so Richard’s parents. She hoped against hope he had a logical explanation for the missing money.

  An hour later, she’d unearthed the real truth. All doubt was wiped away as she went through Richard’s files and computer, finding records of private bank accounts and money transferred from his parents’ investments to those accounts.

  She couldn’t avoid the inevitable any longer,

  She punched in the number for Richard’s cell, catching him still at the club hanging out with his cronies. No surprise there. “We need to meet.”

  “Okay.” He sounded hesitant, as if he’d picked up on the steel in her voice. “First thing in the morning?”

  “No, now. Tonight. I’m at the office.”

  A long silence. “What are you doing there so late?”

  “Researching discrepancies in our books.” She shouldn’t have clued him in and kept her advantage with the element of surprise, but she was too angry. “How could you do this, Richard?”

  “I can explain.” He threw her off guard by not denying anything. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  She hoped to God he could explain, but she didn’t see how. She knew in her heart of hearts Richard was guilty. She looked around his office, everything carefully designed to exude wealth and success. Her stomach curled in a knot. It was all an illusion. All of it. And despite her attention to detail, she’d missed all the warning signs, blown them off, blindly believed everything was okay.

  She’d always suspected Richard held secrets, had dark places she’d known nothing about, but his secrets didn’t fit in her plan, so she’d pushed them out of the way and ignored anything that messed with her carefully constructed illusion.

  Estie paced for close to an hour until Richard finally showed up with his father, Gary, in tow. Both men wore grim expressions. Estie followed them into the conference room, surprised Richard had come clean to his father, assuming they were going to do damage control.

  As far as she was concerned, the damage was done, not just financially, but to her ability to trust him ever again.

  Both men sat down across for her, and their expressions put her at high alert. The situation felt wrong. Two men against one woman. If Richard had confessed what he had done to his father, why did they look like united we stand, divided we fall?

  She studied each of them. The speech she’d been composing in her head for the past hour stuck in her throat. Her instincts warned her that something wasn’t the way it seemed. Before she could get the words out, Gary spoke.

  “Richard told me everything.” Gary sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Frankly, I’m beyond disappointed. I’m shocked.”

  “I understand.” Estie shot a glance at Richard, expecting him to shrivel up as he showed some guilt, remorse, even be a bit sheepish. Instead, he glared at her as if this mess were her fault.

  “Then you understand that this partnership is dissolved.”

  Estie nodded. No shit, Sherlock. “Absolutely. I’m taking my brother’s investments and leaving this firm.”

  “You’ll never work in finance again. I’ll see to it.” Gary’s accusing glare set her back in her seat.

  Estie frowned and narrowed her eyes. “Me? What are you talking about?” She turned to Richard, whose smug smile should’ve clued her in.

  “Consider yourself lucky that we don’t go after you for the embezzled funds. You can thank Richard for that. He convinced me to keep this out of the press and the courts, but if you try to take on even one client, we’ll nail your ass. If your brother decides to keep you on, that’s his problem, not ours.”

  Estie’s shock turned to red-hot anger. She stood, braced her hands on the table, and leaned over both men. “You are fucking crazy. I didn’t steal a damn thing. There were only two of us with the access to do this, and it wasn’t me.”

  Estie whipped out the proof, reams of paper with red highlighting all the issues. The paper had made it more permanent than looking at it on a screen, which was why she’d taken the time to print all of it. She pushed the papers across the table to his father. Gary gave it a cursory glance and shoved the paperwork off to the side. Estie stared from one to another, knowing she’d walked into a trap but ready to fight for what was right.

  Richard finally spoke, his voice so calm and condescending it annoyed her all the more. “You want to push it? Then we will play this thing out in the press and the courts. It’ll ruin all of our reputations. You can’t afford the type of lawyers my dad can afford.”

  “My brother can.”

  “So now you’re going to drag your brother into this?” Gary had a point, a point she didn’t want to concede.

  “Fine. Tyler’s investments will be moved. You can take this partnership and shove it up your ass.” She shook her finger in Richard’s face.
“The same holds for you. You drop every client we have. And if you pick up one more client other than your parents, I’ll ruin you just the way you claim you’ll ruin me.”

  “You have no proof.” Richard slapped his hand on the papers she’d printed out and raised an eyebrow. She knew she’d just been played. Her proof now happened to be in Richard’s control and his father’s.

  “Neither do you.” Unless he cooked the books some more, which he was perfectly capable of doing. Estie stalked to the door and paused in the doorway. She twisted the ring off her finger and threw it across the room.

  Just as Sylvia had warned her, all her carefully designed and executed plans hit the wall like that ring did.

  Chapter Nine

  Show No Mercy

  The desert sun beat down on Brett’s back, showing no mercy, scorching his skin even through the thick camo. Sweat ran down his back, soaking him as if he’d dived into a pot of boiling water. He could smell the heat as it rose in shimmering waves off hills covered in scrub brush, rocks, and sand.

  The ever-present sand permeated every nook and cranny, including those on his body. He ground the grit between his teeth and spit to try to clear his mouth.

  Brett was the lead man in the patrol. He signaled to Rex, his canine partner of two years. The German shepherd cross took off, head to the ground, sniffing for IEDs, knowing finding one would produce a toy and a few minutes of play. Rex loved his rubber Kong with puppy-like enthusiasm. He’d do anything for it.

  Brett kept him on a long leash as they wound through the deadly quiet village streets and deserted marketplace. Once a thriving town, the residents now cowered in their homes, the only place they’d be safe from the IEDs planted with alarming frequency along the roads.

  Brett shifted his weapon on his shoulder, ignoring the leaden weight of the pack full of his own supplies and Rex’s food and water.

  Rex stopped, his tail wagging with excitement. Then he lay down near the doorway of a two-story mud house. He pricked his ears and stared intently at his target. Brett motioned to the others for backup as he tagged the spot.

  His buddy Carl, a glib Southern boy, nudged his shoulder. “Something doesn’t seem right about this.” Carl turned in a semicircle, his weapon ready to take out any threat.

  Just then, all hell broke loose.

  Brett shot up in bed, gasping and gripping the sweat-soaked sheets. Frantically, he reached for his gun in the darkness. Panic hit when it wasn’t next to his side where he always kept it when he slept. He smelled the fear in his perspiration, while his heart rammed into his rib cage, his brain went on hyper-alert, and adrenaline shot through his veins.

  Blinking several times, Brett’s eyes finally focused on the darkened room, delivering him a piece at a time from the hell of the past to the comparative safety of the present. Not in the Middle East, but his bedroom in the good ol’ US of A. One of the lucky ones. Or so they’d told him after the incident, as they called it, a benign designation for a disastrous event.

  Sometimes he didn’t feel so lucky. Not one damn fucking bit.

  Brett rubbed his eyes and felt the slurp of a warm tongue on his face. Risky had climbed up on the bed and onto his pillow, trying to comfort him. Brett pulled the dog close to him and buried his face in the mutt’s fur.

  “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you,” Bongo called out from the other room. Brett must’ve shouted in his sleep and woken the parrot. Blackjack crawled onto his chest, purring for all he was worth and burying his huge, six-clawed paws into Brett’s chest. Brett didn’t care. He welcomed the pain because it meant he could still feel something.

  He flipped on the nightstand light, not wanting to be in the dark, not wanting the shadows to take over again. The doctors had given him sleeping pills, but they made him groggy in the morning and he didn’t want to become dependent.

  But, fuck, he needed to sleep.

  Why did the night terrors pick now to return? He’d been relatively free of them for a few years, and it’d taken hours of intensive therapy and treatment to get to that point.

  The pressure of starting in his first playoff game obviously weighed heavily on him, compounded with worries of moving into the same space as the woman he crushed on in an epic way. He hoped like hell she wouldn’t hear him shouting in the middle of the night. He’d scare the crap out of her.

  Tomorrow the guys would swoop in and move his stuff to her place with Harris leading the charge. Estie had no idea what she was getting into, and he swore he’d find a way to hide his most damaged part from her, the part only the VA docs and shrinks knew about, the part his animals comforted like no one else in his life could.

  Not even Bruiser, his roommate at away games, had witnessed Brett’s nightmares. Brett had been fortunate on that count so far, but how long would his luck hold out? In college, he’d scared the hell out of the one girlfriend he’d gotten close enough to spend the night. Big mistake. He’d pinned her to the bed, and God only knew what he would’ve done next if he hadn’t woken up. She’d been freaked out, called the campus police, and they’d arrested him. Later, the coach explained the situation, and they’d swept everything under the rug.

  The girlfriend never had another thing to do with him.

  That’d been a long time ago, and he’d come a long way after the situation shocked him into therapy. Brett had never laid a hand upon another creature since, but it still worried him. He didn’t know if he was still dangerous because he’d never again stayed overnight with a woman. He got the job done and got the hell out of there, avoiding even superficial relationships.

  A lonely existence, but he’d managed with his animals and football in his life. Until Estie. Until he saw glimpses of what a real relationship with a hot, beautiful, loving woman could be like.

  Only it was forbidden. She was engaged, and he was too broken deep down inside where it couldn’t be patched. Despite all their similar interests, the obstacles between them were insurmountable.

  The largest of all existed inside his own screwed-up head and her equally confused brain.

  Brett sighed and lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling. Bongo, for once, was quiet, not one swear word from his beak. BJ crawled onto the pillow and pressed his furry body next to Brett’s shoulder, still purring, while Risky curled against his side. Brett ran a hand down BJ’s soft fur, only it didn’t come close to calming the unrest stirring inside him.

  As much as Brett loved his animals, they weren’t who he wanted next to him on a stormy Seattle night.

  Estie walked onto her deck after a sleepless night and watched as the big rental truck pulled up next to her house followed by various beastly vehicles driven by insanely large, muscular men. Last but definitely not least in her mind, Brett pulled up with his SUV full of animals.

  Her future was in ruins, her life in chaos, and nothing was clear anymore. Yet, despite all of it, seeing Brett lifted her spirits. The man in question got out of his car as his muscle men, led by a gimpy but obnoxious Tyler sans crutches, started unloading the truck. Brett glanced up at the deck and caught her eye. Taking the steps two at a time, he bounded up the stairs to stand next to her. His blue eyes lit up as he smiled at her. She smiled back.

  He studied her with those eyes of his that saw everything. “Are you okay?”

  So much for hiding her problems from him. “I’m fine, really. Just tired, couldn’t sleep last night,” she rushed to explain.

  “I hope I’m not the source of your problem.”

  If only he knew. She sighed. “Not at all.” Estie pointed at Tyler. “How’re you holding up with the field general there?”

  Tyler was now toe-to-toe with Zach, who must have taken exception to the quarterback’s bossiness.

  “Your brother is a prick.” Brett just tilted his head and shrugged.

  “Like I don’t know that.” She had to laugh, and it felt good, really good, relieving some of the tension from last night. For all his faults—which were numerous—she loved her br
other to pieces. “I have stories you can’t even begin to imagine.”

  “I’m sure you do. Arguing with him is not worth the effort.”

  “Everything is a competition to Tyler, even the most mundane argument. Zach should’ve figured that out by now.”

  “I think he has. Zach loves a good fight as much as Tyler, verbal or physical.”

  “Boys.” Estie rolled her eyes.

  Brett grinned, and Estie wished all these people would fade away and leave the two of them alone to do whatever damage they might do—which could very well be a lot.

  “Do you want to bring the kids into the house upstairs until the chaos subsides?”

  “Yeah, that’d be great.”

  “Hey, Gun, get your lazy ass down here and tell us where you want this fucking stuff.” Tyler stood at the bottom of the deck steps, hands on hips, and his scowl firmly in place.

  Brett shrugged and shot Estie a strained grin. “On my way. I need to get the animals settled first.” He bounded back down the steps.

  Estie followed and coaxed Risky out of the SUV. The poor thing slinked up the stairs, tail tucked between his legs, his entire body shaking. Brett followed with a cat crate in one hand and a cage full of pissed-off parrot in the other.

  “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you,” Bongo squawked as he hung off the side of the cage by his beak.

  “Fuck you too, buddy,” Tyler shouted, laughter in his voice.

  Brett shot him an annoyed glare over his shoulder, which was lost on Tyler. Estie knew he didn’t give a shit. In fact, if he thought he was getting under someone’s skin, it only made him worse.

  “Thanks for sitting with the kids while we get my stuff moved in.” Brett gently placed the cage on a table and covered it with a cloth, but not before Bongo caught sight of Estie and fired off a final round, “Hey, pretty lady, wanna fuck?”