HellKat

by Roze, Robyn

  “Why? Why would you spend time and money researching my family?”

  The well-used leather chair squeaked in protest as Tucker’s bulk pushed up and out of it. He moved around the desk to stand in front of Kat. Then he angled back against the oak behemoth, stretched his legs, and crossed his booted feet. He appeared to be choosing his words.

  Understanding lit Kat’s eyes. “Oh, I get it. You wanted to know if I was like them, if I could do these things.” She tipped the folder toward him. Tucker’s stare dropped to the floor, then swung back to her. “If you’d thought I was involved, you never would’ve come back to New York, never would’ve ended up on my doorstep. Right?”

  His hands hooked on the edge of the desktop and gripped it tight, the muscles in his arms flexing. “Oh, make no mistake, Kathryn James. I was comin’ back to New York—come hell or high water. The night on those steps, the first night we ever spent together, it was all destiny. There was no stoppin’ any of it.”

  The palpable sentiment in his voice caused her skin to tingle as if his rough hands had skimmed across her bare flesh. Her eyes darted away from the raw need in his before those blue devils pulled her under.

  “So why then?”

  He pointed to the file she now guarded against her chest. “I always do my homework, Kat. I like to know what I’m up against. And I was pretty sure there’d be pushback from your family, given my situation and our differences.”

  “You wanted ammunition.”

  He nodded. “I’m a realist. I’d rather face things as they are, confront them head-on.” He rounded his hand over her shoulder. “I’ll get outta your hair, give you time to read through the file.”

  When he reached the doorway, he stopped and braced himself. Without turning around, he spoke words meant to one day unlock her heart. “You know, Kat, loving someone doesn’t mean you give up your control. It just means you love them enough to share it, that’s all.”

  Kat gasped at his ability to strip her shield and expose her. A declaration out of context—a surprise attack aimed at a direct hit. No matter how carefully she guarded herself, Tucker always found a way past her defenses. She couldn’t hide from him.

  How did he do that?

  Then the revelation struck her. She already knew the answer; it was the reason she found herself sitting in Montana. She’d wasted time pushing it away, not ready to admit it.

  Until now.

  When she glanced over her shoulder to confess the words she’d never spoken to another man, the wind left her sails. He was already gone.

  And so was the moment.

  ****

  Her stomach rolled with the unease of disillusionment. How could she be related to these people? How could they be so dissimilar, with ethics so divergent from hers?

  She closed the file and shoved it away. After reading through the reports and doing more research online, she had a good idea of the double-dealing being perpetrated. Her own knowledge and experience of the business world helped her connect dots others might miss. No solid proof, no smoking gun, just loose threads, and a gut feeling pushing her forward, telling her she couldn’t let this go. A lifetime of bucking the James clan had also honed Kat’s intuitions and had taught her not to ignore the prickly warning now skittering along her spine.

  She picked up her cell phone and scrolled through the contacts. Given the late hour on the East Coast, he would probably answer without even looking at the caller ID. She could catch him off guard.

  She listened, impatient, and almost ended the call before his thick, groggy voice answered. His annoyance at being pulled from his sleep traveled across the airwaves.

  Kat spoke with cool calm. “I know what you’re doing. The only question is does our father?” The sound of bedding ripping back and a door closing told her he wanted privacy.

  “You have your own little business to run. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stick to what you know instead of what you think you know.”

  His condescending tone irritated the hell out of her.

  “What I know, Parker, is you’re a snake in the grass. You’ve got everybody but me fooled. That’s why you’ve never liked me. I’ve always seen you for exactly what you are. You never would’ve gotten away with the shit you’ve pulled at JAMESCO if I’d been there to—”

  “Well, you’re not. So keep your nose out of it.”

  “Too late. I’m involved now.” He yawned in her ear. “You’ve got a shell game going, don’t you? You buy a company, run JAMESCO’s losses through it, then dismantle it, sell it for parts and move on—after you deposit money to fat bank accounts—offshore, no doubt. I’ll bet sometimes you don’t even bother buying a company. You just create one on paper, don’t you?” Parker didn’t respond. “In the meantime, you don’t give a shit about quality control, safety standards, or environmental protocols. Basically, you lack a fucking conscience, you bastard.” She swiveled the leather chair around and looked up at the starry night sky. “I’m sure it would only take some basic forensic accounting to prove everything I just said. Are you up for that, Parker?”

  “Fuck you!”

  His normally ripple-free façade had cracked. Parker James did not lose his cool. That alone told her everything she needed to know. She’d hit the mark. Her conclusions, intuitions, and suspicions were now confirmed.

  “It’s selfish on my part, I know, but the thing I’m having the most trouble with right now is how you could do this to our father, to our grandfather. They both worked so hard to build a respectable company. Why, Parker? You already had so much. Why would you feel the need to do any of this? Are you bored and this is just some sick game you’ve been playing to pass the time?”

  He didn’t answer right away. But when he did, the brother she’d known her entire life spoke. The man who’d always watched her, waited for those times when he could whisper his hate-filled words.

  “For a Phi Beta Kappa, you’re not very smart, so I will enlighten you.” He paused. “Think twice before you bite the hand that can, and will, smack you down where you belong. Where you have always belonged.” His contempt punched through the phone.

  A chill darted up her back and ran her blood cold. She stared at her laptop screen and the news blurbs still open on it: two high-level JAMESCO executives dead in less than two years. Accident? Suicide? Foul play? Questions seemed to hang in the air, but the follow up on the stories seemed unusually scant. The timing of the deaths and the activities she suspected Parker involved in had raised red flags, and the hair on the back of her neck. Had the execs threatened Parker’s charade? Or had they wanted a cut? Was her brother even capable of the scenario playing out in her head ...?

  “Are you threatening me, Parker? Certainly you wouldn’t threaten your own sister, would you?” His deafening silence cooled her blood even further. “Is our father still the majority shareholder?”

  No response.

  “You’re living in a glass house, Parker. And I’m more than happy to throw the first rock.”

  She ended the call and tossed her phone on the desk, considered her options. Charlie and Parker would no doubt make this a messy, protracted fight. And the lack of communication from Kyle left her uncertain as to his loyalties on this. She’d dig her heels in as soon as she got back home. In the meantime, she’d have to force her outrage aside and deal with this matter rationally, treat it like a business. But she’d need help too. Fortunately, she knew just the person to contact in New York.

  Kat could already imagine the smug look on Dan Walsh’s face.

  Two weeks raced by. Time spent playing instead of working, something Kat hadn’t done in more years than she cared to admit. She’d enjoyed Tucker’s tours of the ranch and sprawling range on Zodiac, a gorgeous Appaloosa. And the silver-tongued cowboy had even convinced her to rough it a few nights out on the open range. Those nights had been spent with their bodies entangled, next to warm, crackling fires, their passion on display under a glorious canopy of stars. It was on those nig
hts, lying on their backs catching their breath, when Tucker would point to and draw the constellations for her. Nights when she felt anything was possible—even them.

  And then there were all the home-cooked meals and storytelling with Tucker’s adopted family. After all the time they’d spent with Hank and Claire, Kat understood why Tucker thought of the Fields as family. They behaved as she imagined a family should. The profound bond they shared with Tucker was unmistakable and tangible. This couple remained his only trusted link in a world where he’d been stripped of two families long ago. If she were orphaned, she’d consider adopting them herself. The Fields had made her feel more welcome and more comfortable than her own family ever had—Kyle excluded. Unfortunately, with the fight awaiting her back home, she didn’t see her circumstances changing anytime soon.

  Kat was anxious to get back to New York and deal with the mess Tucker had opened her eyes to, but she also had conflicted feelings about leaving Montana. Her ambivalence had arisen from how easily she’d settled into Tucker’s world, how quickly she’d been able to unplug from her hectic, time-crunched life in New York. Oh, she still loved her city life and missed it. She just hadn’t expected to like her time here so much.

  Whenever she thought about going back home, without Tucker, unease gripped her. For the first time, she had a sense of what real loneliness might feel like. She couldn’t picture being in her apartment without him or imagine sleeping alone in her bed. Yet, their lives were so different. She’d had relationships fail simply because there hadn’t been enough hours in the day, let alone the span of thousands of miles to complicate things even further.

  However, they hadn’t discussed the future. Instead, they’d focused on getting to know each other better, to figure out the lay of the land before they decided what to do with it, as Tucker had described it. He’d told her not to overthink things at this point, to relax, unwind, and enjoy their time together. She agreed with him. Really. But Kat also knew the discussion he kept putting off, those decisions they would have to make, would rise on the horizon, like it or not.

  An errant image of Cassie’s shocked, puckered face popped into Kat’s head from their Skype session yesterday. Oh, how she missed her best friend. Kat grinned at the recent scene she’d described to Cassie of Tucker and Hank helping a distressed mare in labor. The whole tense episode had ended with a beautiful, wobbly foal and had been fascinating to witness, from Kat’s perspective anyway. But Cassie had reacted as if she’d walked past an open sewer. Kat snorted, then giggled out loud. She quickly covered her mouth and looked around the Diamond Industries lobby. The receptionist gave her a sideways glance before turning away to pick up an incoming call.

  Maybe she should’ve waited upstairs in Tucker’s office like he’d suggested while he attended a quarterly meeting with the company department heads. However, once she’d spotted the giant lithographs of the Diamond mineral mines, she couldn’t resist the desire to turn the pages of the history book resting beneath them on a wide burnished shelf.

  She set her bag on a nearby chair and lifted the cover of the oversized, leather-bound compendium. She gasped when the five-by-seven picture of John Diamond glared up at her. She didn’t remember seeing John’s picture on the Internet when she’d Googled Tucker last year, and there had been no images of the man in Tucker’s home or the Fieldses’. His was a face she would not have easily forgotten.

  Her chest constricted in empathy for the young boy yanked from his world and harshly dropped into this nowhere land three decades ago. Now she understood to an even greater degree why Tucker had been scared shitless all those years ago. John Diamond looked like one mean son of a bitch. The wiry hair, deep-set eyes, furrowed brow, tight-set jaw, and a face marked by the sun and a hard life did the man no favors in the approachable department. He fit to a tee the image of the bully Hank had described.

  Kat shook her head in wonderment. How had Tucker turned out to be the incredible man she’d come to know? Then it dawned on her: Hank and Claire. They had saved him. Helped him navigate the hardest times of his life. Her appreciation for the kindhearted couple deepened.

  She shook off John’s image and scanned the pages that followed, reading the condensed version of John Diamond’s life and the empire he’d built from the ground up. He’d been orphaned as an infant and grew into a young man with incredible drive and an insatiable desire for success. Kat skimmed through the words and pictures, stopping when she came across an old family photo of John Diamond and his wife, Maggie, with their two children, not a smile to be found.

  Finally, the last few pages documented Tucker’s stewardship of Diamond Industries, including his focus on exceeding environmental protocols and regulations regarding the operation and reclamation of the mines and their byproducts. It further detailed his forward-thinking investments and ideas regarding new technologies, not only related to the mining industry but across the spectrum: new energy sources, green construction, and advancements in recapture and recycling processes to name a few. He’d clearly made it his mission to save the world.

  Kat’s cell phone jolted her from her musings. It was an apologetic text from Tucker about the meeting taking longer than he’d planned. She texted back and told him not to worry about it. She could occupy herself. She dropped her phone into her bag and took one last look at the photo of Tucker with his bio edged around it. He was younger, clean-shaven with shorter hair and the same easy, dimpled smile that made her knees weak. She brushed her fingers across his picture and closed the book.

  Kat glanced out the lobby doors at the sunny streetscape. No time like the present to walk around Helena. She strolled along the streets, browsed through a number of stores, including a new boutique where she’d purchased a negligée certain to bring Tucker to his knees. Then she relaxed outside the Fire Tower Coffee House enjoying her white chocolate mocha. She’d already skimmed the WSJ and The New Yorker on her tablet and now scrolled through and responded to work emails. She missed the routine and mental stimulation of work, but not as much as she’d expected. The downtime had been good, much needed.

  She hadn’t told Tucker about the belligerent call to her brother or about her suspicions regarding Parker’s illegal activities that most likely extended beyond just EPA violations. But Tucker was smart, and he probably had similar ideas himself. No doubt he’d decided to give her space, trusted she’d talk to him when she was ready. Kat had left a message for her father, though. Without going into specifics, she’d let him know in her voicemail she had concerns about the management of JAMESCO. No shock, she still hadn’t heard from him, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy. She would see to it that he made the time to see her when she got back. She wanted to hear from him why he’d allowed her brothers to derail his business and tarnish his name. And she’d also be paying a visit to Kyle. He’d been hiding behind text messages and shutting her down with quick phone calls the past couple of weeks. She’d have to work on him in person.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  The deep voice pulled her attention up to an attractive, well-built man wearing mirrored sunglasses, his hand on a chair ready to yank it back. Her guard went up, as it always did.

  “It’s a free country, but,” she scanned the outdoor seating, “there are unoccupied tables you could sit at.” Her expression was less than congenial.

  His cheeks dimpled in a familiar grin. “I’d much rather sit with a beautiful woman.”

  Right. Kat’s quick assessment, aided by her wealth of experience with men, told her this guy thought he was God’s gift to womankind. She sighed in apathy. With each birthday, she had less patience for this mind-numbing game.

  “I’m sure you can find women who’d welcome your company. I’m not one of them.”

  His good humor faded and he dropped down, uninvited, into the seat across from her. “Not from around here, are you?”

  “Would it make a difference if I were?”

  The man considered her while he remained hidd
en behind his Oakleys. “I’m betting it would.”

  “Then you’d lose.” This man’s vibe repelled her. The table sat in full shade but he still had on sunglasses. “Why the shades? Got something to hide, Mr. I’m-Too-Sexy-for-My-Shirt?”

  His jaw ticked a couple of times. “You’re not much in the manners department, are you?” He leaned forward, his hands on the tabletop, fisting and flexing in apparent agitation. “Maybe you need to learn some.”

  This asshole’s demeanor had gone from cocky and harmless to tense and threatening in no time flat. Did this joker really think he could intimidate her? Kat James did not back down from anyone. Never had.

  “So, you like to bully women. How’s that working for you?”

  “You really are a bitch.”

  The juvenile name-calling didn’t make her flinch. She’d been called worse. No, it was the tone in his voice, the inflection of his words that unsettled her, as if he were agreeing with someone else’s opinion of her.

  Oh, those damned sunglasses! What was it about him that scratched at her memories? Then her eyes widened with abrupt recognition at the same time as her phone skittered across the metal table. She accepted the call without taking her eyes off the man who now had a name.

  “Hello?” She flashed a honeyed smile at her adversary. It seemed to throw him off a bit. “Yeah, that sounds great. You can pick me up outside the Fire Tower Coffee House. Yeah, I had a nice time walking around and especially this last little bit,” she paused, “sitting here talking to Cameron.” Her eyes narrowed in a smirk. Cameron’s face tightened. Kat looked with mock surprise at the display on her smartphone. “Well, I guess your brother’s in a hurry to get here. He didn’t even say goodbye.”