Finding Luna: A Lion Shifter Reverse Harem Romance (PRIDE Book 1)

by Becca Fanning

  “So, his wife was in on it? She actively helped cut the rest of her family out of the will?”

  “Let’s be frank here, Ryan. When we’re talking about cutting the family out of the will, we’re still talking about each member getting a couple of hundred million apiece. And there are a lot of them. They’re not exactly on the poverty line.”

  “No, I know that, but that doesn’t matter. When it boils down to those numbers, it’s about power rather than wealth.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. “How much is she worth?”

  Adam whistled. “Close to ten billion dollars.”

  Ryan’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I know. I about fell off my chair when I read the tax returns. She has so much money in so many pies in so many states and in so many freakin’ countries, just trying to catch a glimpse of it was like a spider’s web.”

  “So, if that’s the case, that’s why she’s the one being targeted. She’s the richest of the lot of them. But who would know that? It would make sense for people to believe her father was, surely? I don’t know a lot about the family, but I knew of her and I know her father is the eldest son in his generation.”

  “It’s not public news, but the court case did leak a little information before the family curbed it.”

  “Do we have any idea why her grandfather acted that way? Did what he did?”

  “As far as I can tell, El delayed going to college by two years.”

  “Those years coincided with her grandfather’s death?”

  “Yeah. There are pictures of him at the time. He was very frail, but they always prettied him up, you know? George Bush Sr style.”

  Ryan’s lips twitched. “I know what you mean.”

  “Every shot I saw, she was there. Along with her grandmother.”

  “You think she was helping to care for him?”

  “Well,” Adam started, wrinkling his nose again. “I highly doubt she was actively involved in caring for him, but being around him? Yeah. Definitely. They were close too, from all accounts. I managed to get in touch with a housekeeper who worked in the family residence during that time before she moved across the country for retirement.”

  “How the fuck did you get in touch with her?”

  Adam tapped his nose “I have my methods. But, Consuela said the family wasn’t close, but El was always with her grandparents. They were close knit.”

  “You’ve done good, Adam,” Ryan praised with ease. “But I think I’d best do my own investigating on the personal score. I don’t want to hurt her feelings by getting the wrong end of the stick because something was reported poorly, you know?”

  “Sure. I’ll keep on digging around though. Look into how far the news dispersed of her grandfather’s will.”

  Ryan nodded. “Out of curiosity, when does she gain full access to her trust fund?”

  “It’s an odd set of rules, actually. With every year, she gains another percent of access. So, she’s thirty-one now. She has thirty-one percent control over her funds.”

  “No other bylaws? Stipulations on her getting married?”

  Adam snorted. “Why? Thinking of marrying her for her wealth?”

  Ryan rolled his eyes. “Don’t even joke about it.”

  The other man’s grin was incorrigible. “When she has two children, she’ll get another twenty percent access. There’s no mention of a spouse being a requirement to that.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Those stipulations certainly are unusual. Not as old school as I’d have imagined either.” He cut Adam a look. “Shouldn’t ask how you managed to learn all that, huh?”

  “Nope. Best not.”

  He chuckled a little. “Again, good job, Adam. Now, toddle off and get to work on my to do list.”

  “Bastard,” Adam grumbled under his breath, making Ryan grin at him.

  He nudged him in the side. “I’ll tell Mom on you.”

  His brother grunted. “Just what I need. Her on my back.”

  “She’s worried about you. You don’t have a single Triad brother yet.”

  “I’m coping fine. I’m too busy watching after your sorry ass. Anyway, now you’re mated, you’ll take off some of the pressure from me. She’ll be hankering after grandkids and driving you insane about that.”

  Because he knew his kid brother spoke the truth, Ryan just grimaced. “I’ll see you later for the debriefing with Santiago and Erickson.”

  Adam nodded and quickly hustled off back the way he’d come.

  Alone now, Ryan trailed along the pebbled path to the lodge and felt his heavy heart at what he’d just learned lighten when he saw El seated on the front porch.

  Her legs were splayed out in the sun, and she was leaning back on the marble step, her elbows propping her up.

  “You know we have sun loungers, right?” he asked, cocking a brow at her.

  Her head had been flung back as she basked in the early morning rays like a kitten seeking warmth, but at his words she peered up at him. “I didn’t feel like sitting on one of them.”

  He blinked at her, then his grin turned sheepish as he squatted down beside her and sat on the cold step.

  “It’s good to see you, sweetheart. I missed you.”

  She flushed, then argued. “I was here the whole time.”

  He shook his head. “Not at my side, where you should be.” When El bit her lip, he asked, “What made you come out today?”

  He’d know she’d come out eventually, just hadn’t known when.

  And as she was safe at the lodge, close to hand, and not running, he’d been okay with giving her the time she needed to come to terms with this strange new world she was living in.

  “I saw Trip leap into the pool this morning. H-He shifted midway but I didn’t realize that. I thought he was hurt so I ran out to see if he was okay.”

  It said a lot that she cared. Of course, human decency could have dictated her actions but he knew that wasn’t the case. Not here, anyway.

  She’d been scared for Trip’s sake.

  The bond was forming, strengthening, he realized with no small amount of satisfaction.

  “You know, the more I learn about you, the more I’m surprised.”

  Her brows lifted. “Yeah? What have you learned?”

  “On our date, you looked beautiful.”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “You told me. Thank you.”

  “But that dress, it wasn’t designer, was it?”

  She frowned. “No. One of my friends runs this little clothes’ store, and basically she’s giving a leg up to some of the fashion designers at a college near her. Why?”

  He ignored her question. “And here you sit, in Trip’s too big tee shirt, and what? A pair of his boxers?”

  She grinned. “The shirt swamps me, but the boxers?” Her nose crinkled at the bridge. “My butt’s too big. They stay up without a lot of help.”

  “Your butt’s perfect,” he immediately countered, meaning it. “I just… You’re not how I imagined the only daughter of the Forsythe-Drew family would be.”

  She pursed her lips a little, pondered that, then cutting him glance, teased, “You think about the only daughters of America’s One Percent a lot, huh?”

  He snorted, then draped his elbows on his knees and let his head hang. He had some tension gathering at the back of his neck, and the sun’s warmth would ease it. “Not often, but I’ve been thinking about them since I found out I was mated to one.”

  She giggled, then with a sigh, collapsed back into the marble so she was lying flat. He peered at her, surprised by the gesture.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “Nope. The marble’s nice and chilly, while my front’s hot. Perfect,” she said with a purr that would do a housecat proud.

  “You’re going to surprise me for the rest of our lives together, aren’t you?” he asked softly, watching as her eyes popped open and glued themselves to his face.

  “You mean that, don’t you?” she whispered.

 
“Which part?”

  “’The rest of our lives together’ part.”

  “We mate for life, El.”

  She gulped. “Will you want me for life, though? I… There’s always trouble where I’m concerned. I don’t even do all that much, but it just follows me. You’ll get tired of it. They always do. Only Shawn hasn’t, and he gets paid to stay interested.”

  He heard the hurt in her voice at that, and though it was counter-intuitive, he told her gently, “I think we both know that’s not true.”

  She frowned at nothing, then closed her eyes again. “I suppose the police want to question me… Is that why you’re here?”

  “Nope. I’m here to be with my mate for a few moments before the craziness of the day sets in.”

  “Really?” She peered at him through her lashes. “You mean that?”

  He blinked at her. “I’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean, El. You’ll learn that pretty quickly.” Ruefully, he rubbed his jaw. “In fact, I’m too blunt. Most people complain about that.”

  “I prefer the frank truth to bullshit,” she whispered softly. “I’ve heard too much of that in my life.”

  He could imagine, and there were ten billion reasons why.

  “We’re going to talk to the police, but they’re mainly going to debrief us. You won’t have to say much. I already told them everything they need to hear, and what I couldn’t offer, Shawn did. They won’t be pestering you for that. Trip thought you’d like to be there, and though I’d prefer to shield you from that, I thought I’d ask you for your opinion.”

  She blew out a breath. “I swear, you boys just keep on being too good to be true.”

  “We do, huh? How come?”

  “I’m not going to have to fight with you over my independence?”

  He wriggled his shoulders. “Maybe. From time to time. Not with Trip though. He’s Dutch. They’ve always been avant-garde and liberal.”

  She snorted at his disgust. “Well, I, for one, am going to embrace the Dutch!”

  “Singular, I hope,” he teased, chuckling when she grinned.

  Curling upright, she wiggled her butt until she was sitting closer to him and their knees were nudging the other’s. “Thank you.”

  “For listening to the liberal and avant-garde Dutchman?”

  “Yeah.” She blew out a breath. “My dad always arranges these things around me. I hate it. But he knows best, I guess. He’s been dealing with this stuff for so long, whereas I just don’t want to be bothered with it.”

  It was going to spoil the mood between them, he knew that and was saddened by it, but he had to know. “Why, El?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why did your grandfather leave the bulk of the fortune to you?”

  Just as he’d known she would, El tensed up at his side. She draped herself over her knees, and when he thought she wouldn’t answer, she murmured, “I was sixteen when he fell sick the first time. Heart attack. Brought on by stress. He was seventy-four, but he was so strong that when he just got back up and dealt with it, they let him. Plus, he was a snarky old coot, so no one dared say boo to him. They just let him work himself to death.”

  “You and your grandmother included?” he asked softly.

  “Grandmother wasn’t too bad. But I wasn’t afraid of him. He knew it too. Liked me being around him. Said I was the only one in the family who wasn’t a yes-man, and he loved me for it.”

  “Why weren’t you afraid of him?”

  “He was my grandfather,” she said simply. “Not the Forsythe-Drew. I used to tell him he believed his own press too much, but the truth was, everybody held him up as the patriarch and it was… Well, for the money, of course. He held the purse strings, and he wasn’t afraid to cut people off if they weren’t doing what he wanted.”

  “I’m surprised you approved.”

  “I didn’t. Not really.”

  “And you told him?”

  “Yep.” She tilted her head to the side and rested it on her bony knees. She looked uncomfortable, but at the same time, at ease. The posture would probably have had a body language expert crying, but Ryan was just grateful she was talking. Explaining the impossible. “I didn’t approve because he had no right to exert his opinions on other people’s life choices. But, equally, they didn’t have to listen. They could have done whatever they wanted if they’d just gone their own way, not let him bankroll them.” She sighed. “I never let him bankroll me. I went to a fancy high school. All the right names, mine being one of the best, and when I was in junior year, I left and refused to go back.” Her grin was like quicksilver. “My father huffed and puffed, my mother cried and took to her bedroom with a bottle of Valium, wailing over why I could never do as she wished. Wondering what she’d done so wrong for God to give her a daughter totally uninterested in all things social.”

  “She really said all that?”

  His astonishment had her eyelids fluttering open. As they did, he realized how dense and long her eyelashes were. His lips tingled with the need to feel them flutter against them, but now wasn’t the time.

  “Yep. It’s nothing to what I hadn’t heard a million times before. She still does it. Father too. But they don’t hold any power over me now… Well, none that I don’t give them.” She frowned. “Grandfather talked to me, asked me why I refused to go back. I was being bullied, I told him. They said I was fat. Called me names, and though I’d been to the teacher, the kids were… we were all from too powerful families. The older we got, the more aware of our families’ power, the less respect we had for the staff. It’s hard to…” She bit her lip, paused a second. “It’s hard to explain really. What it feels like to have no authority. Of course, we did. We had our parents. But, when I was sixteen, I just decided that I didn’t care. And I didn’t. Their threats were all futile. All centered around taking things away from me, but no one thing mattered more to me than my freedom.”

  He could see that in her. She wasn’t materialistic. How that was possible with her background, he wasn’t sure but he was fucking grateful for that fact. A society queen-cum-belle of the ball would have irritated the living fuck out of him as a mate.

  “My grandfather asked why I didn’t defend myself. I told him I did, but that I was being adult and taking myself out of a toxic situation. He told me he’d pay to send me to Paris over spring break—he knew how much I wanted to go—if I’d go back. I told him to shove his offer. That my freedom and sanity came at too high a price to be bought.”

  Ryan’s grin was slow. “You took away his power.”

  She nodded, grinned back. “I did. He loved it.” El laughed. “He tried again. Different things over the next few weeks while I was off on Christmas break, but I always refused, and when the next term started, and I expected a deluge of crap from my parents, I didn’t hear a peep. I moved from the house in the Hills to my grandparents’ place in Napa Valley. I had a tutor, who I respected, and we worked together rather than as student-teacher. My GPA was a 4.0. My mother couldn’t stand that, not when her beloved sons could only manage a 3.5.” Another quicksilver grin came and went. “I stayed there, at the house, until he died. I was supposed to go to Columbia, but I couldn’t leave him. Them. He liked me near him. Liked me to read to him as he got sicker, and I knew he was dying… We were terribly close, and I still miss him every single day.”

  He could hear the thickness of tears in her voice and, in apology, placed his hand in the center of her back and began to gently rub up and down.

  “Did you know what he was going to do with the will?”

  She grimaced. “The family accused me of knowing, but I didn’t. Not really. I had an idea he was going to pull a stunt. He was like that. Liked to keep them all dancing. Said they were puppets and he was the puppeteer; that they shouldn’t let him have their strings if they didn’t want to waltz.”

  “I think I’d have liked your granddad.”

  His simple statement had her chuckling. “I think he’d have liked y
ou too. All of you, actually.” She frowned a little. “Not that he’d approve of my shacking up with three different men, but hell, he’d probably be the only one of the family who’d accept you all. He said while the others waltzed when he told them to, that he could always believe in the fact I’d go off and tango instead.”

  “Tango, huh?” he teased.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m probably better at waltzing to be fair.”

  He grinned. “You and me both.”

  Her laughter warmed him, and it helped ease the tightness in her throat, he thought, as she carried on, “Grandmother knew what he’d planned, but I genuinely hadn’t. I thought he’d rattle some feathers, but that’s it. We all expected my father to get the majority share because my two uncles were freeloaders and not a part of the family corporations. When it didn’t go to him, but to me instead, the fall out was beyond anything I could imagine.” She pulled a face. “I sometimes think he did it so that I’d prove to myself how strong I was. Though Granddad had tied the money up in so many trusts I can’t even count them, and though there was no way my father could get his hands on anything Granddad didn’t want, he still tried. And tried. Battered me with arguments, trying to force me to help him. I could have done with Pops around to shore me up, but by the end, I could deal with them. They can’t hurt me now… well, unless they batter my self-esteem. I’m still a woman, and I’m well aware I don’t fit into any mold that pleases my parents. They use that against me. As well as the fact I’m single where my brothers, ever golden and glittering, are married with children.”

  “You’re not single anymore,” he told her gruffly, watching her eyes sparkle at his words.

  “No, you’re not wrong. I’m not, am I? In fact, I have more men than I know what to do with.”

  He snorted at the indelicate statement. “Words to make a man’s heart weep, El.”

  She grinned. “I didn’t realize you’d want me to handle you with kid gloves.”

  “Funny you should say that… That’s what Trip said about you.”

  Her chuckles warmed his soul. “I knew I liked him. But, well, I like all of you.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. I know I’m not as lighthearted as Trip or as gentle as Marc but I’m…”