Hell, the kid lived in a dream world half the time.
Unless you did or said something that threatened his adored big sister, Shawn was entirely too affable.
Only two years Dylan’s junior, Shawn still had a mantle of youth that Dylan had never had, and a dreamy air, combined with that quicksilver temper and his ever present grin drew ladies like bees to honey. And Shawn drank the honey down, and moved on to the next, leaving them all sighing and smiling and wishing.
Clucking his tongue, he shot Shawn a narrow glance and said, “What’s the point of that? Can’t expect your help with a woman when all you have experience with is girls.”
Shawn grinned. “Ouch. That hurt. Can’t you do any better than that?”
Dylan grunted and plowed a hand through his hair, feeling the curls wind around his fingers. Needed another damn hair cut. “Can’t you go find somebody else to annoy? An old girlfriend? Maybe go pay some of the speeding tickets you collect?”
Shawn just smiled, folding his hands over his lean belly, looking like he could settle in and hang for a good month. “So what are you doing now? Another missing kid? They are calling ya a hero back home. Some kind of crusading angel.”
A guffaw spilled from Dylan’s mouth before he could stop it. Now that was a joke. “You are out of your mind. Where in the hell did you come up with that one? You take up smoking weed again? Nik will kick your ass,” Dylan snickered, leaning back in the chair, kicking one foot up on the edge of the desk and resting his elbow on his leg as he shifted slightly, taking some of the weight of his back and rolling it to his hip. The midday sunlight streamed in, spilling on his desk and Dylan squinted in the brightness. Kris always closed the damn drapes.
“Honest truth,” Shawn said, smiling widely, starting to rock as he studied Dylan’s face. “Rescuing the defenseless, the innocent, the poor. You almost sound like Robin Hood.”
“You sound like a comedian,” Dylan muttered, rolling his eyes. Moving his eyes back to files he had already read through, he said, “I’ve got to get to work. Go hassle Kris.”
The smile on his brother’s face almost worried him. “Oh, I’d loved to…”
If he didn’t trust Kris, it could worry him. If he didn’t trust her…
****
Kris made notes for everything.
Neat, precise notes. By the time she was done detailing her conversation with– whoever it was, she had filled more than fifteen pages of notes, with the actual conversation, with her own speculations, and with the facts she had unearthed on her own.
Turned out Slvrnghtgale had a blog. Kris had meant to hit the search button for the message boards on her internet service provider to see if the girl had ever hit those, and hadn’t been paying attention, hitting instead a world wide web search. But the search yielded anyway.
The blog had been dormant, with the occasional Hey Sil, where ya at… or spammers hitting it for more than four months. Before that, Slvrnghtgale had posted religiously. She had talked about her singing, her dancing, her family, guys, mostly about her singing. Lots of people loitered on her little piece of cyberspace.
But most importantly—that blog had to be registered. Which would yield a name, a phone number, address. In the right hands.
None of the people in the guestbook jumped out at her but Kris had merely glanced down, barely doing more than reading the dates before she signed off. Later. She’d look more closely there later, though she didn’t think it was anything there. Whoever had taken her had come looking for her.
More than four hours had passed, and she hadn’t gotten a damn bit of work done for Escapade, and she groaned as she glanced at the clock, finishing up the rest of her neat little concise notes in her notebook. As she crossed the last “t,” a loud, boisterous knock sounded on the door. Rising, she shut the computer down and closed her notebook, tucking the spiral bound pad out of sight before she left the room.
She already knew who that was.
Her luck wasn’t that good for him not to come calling. And the timing was just right, long enough for him to finish his bat out of hell drive up from Somerset, a detour by Dylan's office, long enough to have Dylan growling at him and snarling before he decided he had wreaked enough havoc.
Shawn’s devil may care attitude and the proverbial charm was endearing as hell.
He was also entirely too damn nosy.
Sauntering down the hall, she waited until the second knock rattled the door on its hinges before she opened it and smiled a slow, sassy smile at him. “Yes, handsome? Did you need something?”
Shawn smiled. “Oh, yeah. Exactly how much are willing to give?”
Kris tsked. “Not enough. You need more than I have. Plus I like you too much. Dylan would kill you.”
Shawn grinned, shoving his hair out of his face with a wide palmed hand, his clever fingers catching her eyes. Damn, those Kline boys sure had grown up nice. “Lady, I can handle my brother. Don’t worry about that. I was kicking his ass back when Nikki was still daydreaming about being a writer.”
Kris hummed under her breath and stepped aside, letting him come in. Being a carpenter could sure as hell do fine things for the bod, she decided. He filled out the well worn t-shirt in a way she was pretty sure he hadn’t done even two years ago. And those lean hips, long legs, entirely too much like Dylan.
But he didn’t have the shadows in his eyes that Dylan had.
Did that say something about her taste in men that she preferred her brooder over this lighthearted man?
Rolling her eyes, she followed him on down the hall and into the living room, curling into a chair opposite him as he flopped onto couch. “I hear you are on vacation,” she said, cocking a brow, drawling out the last word the way Nikki would. “Letting somebody else run things for once.”
Shawn closed his eyes. “Don’t remind me. He fu-…” his words trailed off as one eye flew open and his lean cheeks flushed. “If he messes it up, I’m gonna kill him. But I wanted a couple of days off in between jobs. All he is gonna do is answer the phone, give estimates. He should be able to do that without me babysitting him.”
Kris grinned. “You sound so protective. You’re awful young to be running your own construction business.”
“I took it over and fixed it after Buddy Matthews nearly ran it into the ground. It’s mine, all right,” Shawn said, smiling a crooked, self-conscious smile. “Not exactly the exciting hell raising career I imagined ten years ago, but it does more than pay the bills, and I enjoy it. And it’s mine. I did it. Just me. I didn’t…”
“You didn’t need Nikki helping you out,” Kris finished. “I guess that would have bothered you. But she wanted to do it.”
Flatly, Shawn said, “Doesn’t matter. She kept me off the streets and out of trouble for the most part. Kept my sorry, stupid ass in school and made sure I passed, even though I barely have a lick of sense. I didn’t want to keep taking from her.”
“You’re not stupid.” Kris sat up straighter, scowling.
“Not far from it,” Shawn said, flatly. “I had to have her help me through elementary school. Couldn’t figure out how to write my name. Reading killed me. Damn it, I couldn’t even write a book report unless she helped me get through the damn book, and she had to help me right the report, too. I may not be stupid, but I wouldn't have passed school without her. I wasn’t going to keep on taking from her. Not any more.”
“It’s not taking if they freely want to give,” Kris said simply.
“Maybe not. But she had been giving all her life to us. And not taking a damn thing.” Shawn forced a tight smile. “I’m good with my hands. And I’ve got more common sense than Nik and Dylan combined. I’ll have to be happy with that.”
Kris leaned forward, propping her chin on her hands, waiting until he was looking at her. “Nikki and Dylan both have heads as hard as rocks. They could use a hell of a lot more sense they have. A man whose is good with his hands isn’t to be taken lightly.” Rising, she held out of her own and
said, “Come on. I’ll fix you some lunch.”
Shawn wasn’t stupid, not by any means. He just had a problem with words on paper. He and his secretary had an understanding. She could watch her soaps during the day, get great raises, a great Christmas bonus, provided she help him with this problem of words and paper.
And she also kept it to herself.
No. Words, paper, and Shawn, they all hated the other. Numbers weren’t really an issue. He had done great in math, geometry. Even chemistry hadn’t been such a problem because that had seemed like more math. But words…hell, he was embarrassed even to admit how bad it was. It took him nearly a month just to read each of Nikki’s books. He adored his sister, was so damned proud of her.
And just reading twenty pages from one of her books could take him two hours.
Thus, his wonderful secretary, Christi Sue Markam, called Boo by everybody. Hell, even he had started calling her Boo. She went everywhere with him. All the OSHA crap he had to put up with, all the training, she would help him, do the reading, and then he was fine. His memory was phenomenal. He could hear it once and then it was saved, like on one of Nikki’s damned computers.
He just had the little problem of getting it inside his head.
Wandering the house, Shawn slapped his worked roughened palms against his thighs and glanced toward the kitchen. Whatever in the hell she was cooking sure smelled good.
Better than the golden arches or a cold sandwich for lunch that was for sure. With a wicked grin, he decided to enjoy it all and thank Kris profusively, later, since most likely Dylan would be skipping lunch or hitting fast food himself.
When his cell phone started to ring, Shawn saw the number and swore half-heartedly. The damned fool hadn’t even made it a day without needing some help. Swearing, he flipped the phone open and headed into the small office just off to the right, looking for some paper as Max started with, “Well, I’m not too sure how to figure out the estimate for this one. She’s wanting something kinda different…”
“And if they asked for a dog house, could you figure that out?” Shawn grumbled, grabbing a pen but not seeing any paper on hand. Reaching into the drawer, he cocked an eyebrow at the desk. Nice. Doesn’t squeak, doesn’t shift…nice…smoothing his hand down the wood, he admired it a minute before spying a notebook flipping it open to the back, scrawling down the measurements and the figures.
“Well, I dunno. Is it gonna be a round one with a balcony, a bathroom and a terrace?”
“Don’t matter. It’s still just a job,” Shawn snapped, tearing the sheet out. He started to flip the notebook closed but something on the notepad jumped out at him. Words didn’t do that very often. Frowning, he cocked his head. Sharp ears caught the sound of a female sigh and he closed the notepad, sliding it out of sight. Leaning back in the chair, he said, “I can’t ramble off an estimate without sitting down and writing down some numbers, having a calculator…but we’re prolly looking at…” he rambled off some fairly accurate numbers as he watched Kris’s shadow coming down the hall. Tucking the paper lower, he added, “I can give a better estimate when I actually have something in front of me to write on. But seeing as how I’m supposed to be on a vacation, I didn’t bring notepads and pencils and a calculator with me.”
Kris came to the door and stood there, an amused look on that pretty face and Shawn gave a frustrated look, rolling his eyes.
“Okay. Well, Luella is still just thinking, anyway, she says. She can wait until you’re here, she thinks.” Shawn listened to female chatter on the other end and wanted to groan. Luella Monroe. Shit. If he had known that, he would have added another thirty percent. Simply for the pain in the ass of having to put up with her. Overblown, overdone, pain in the ass.
Kris cocked a brow at the look on his face. Keeping the piece of paper hidden in the palm of his closed hand, he made a stabbing motion to his belly and mouthed, Kill me now… please…
She laughed.
“Okay, boss. Luella’s gone. Between you and me, I think she just wanted to see you,” Max said. The older man laughed as he hung up the phone and Shawn one handedly flipped the phone closed and returned it the loop on his hip before running his hand down his face. “I think I’d rather work for GaGa Gabore. Tammy Faye. Anybody else. Build pink palaces and cover them with gilt and flowers and lace.”
“Isn’t Luella only like nineteen?” Kris asked, her brow puckering.
“Good memory,” Shawn said with a wide smile. “Nineteen and a nympho from hell. She had a coming out, for crying out loud. Invited the entire county. The entire thing was done in pink lace and her dress looked like a wedding cake. And she tried to tell everybody there we were getting engaged.” A muscle started to tick in his jaw as he remembered. He hadn’t even planned on going to the damn thing until one of his buddies called him with that piece of information. The little twit was going around handing people cards to their engagement party. So then he had been forced to go and correct that misinformation. “I’m not doing anything for her. I don’t care if her daddy does own half the county.”
“You said she was a nympho—does that mean you have…?”
Shawn jumped out of the chair, his brows drawn low over his eyes. “Hell no. She’s a kid. And the last one on earth I’d ever touch. I can’t stand that obnoxious, stuck up creature,” he said honestly, shoving his hands into his pockets and conveniently getting rid of the paper he hadn’t been able to find.
“Good,” Kris said, laughing. “I’d hoped you had better taste. But then how do you know she’s a nympho?”
“Because she seems to think she can jump on me at every chance she gets me alone? Or because she thinks stripping nekkid is going to turn me into a slobbering fool?” Shawn jibed, moving out from behind the desk. “I’ve seen her nekkid more times than I’ve seen…well…I don’t know. I usually don’t see a woman nekkid more than a handful of times. I’ve seen her at least five times. And she still can’t get it through her head I’m not interested.”
“That doesn’t make her a nympho. A nympho needs sex all the time,” Kris said, laughing. “Maybe she’s ahhh…umm. Maybe she’s a starving virgin. But she shouldn’t be trying to rape you.”
Shawn shot her a disgruntled look. “She’s getting annoying. But she stopped it after the last time, at least with the planting her nekkid ass around me. I warned her to stop it or she’d be sorry.”
Kris’s brows rose. “Uh-oh. What did you do with her?”
Shawn smiled slowly, moving closer. “She kept swearing how she would do anything, everything I wanted. Well, she hops into my truck with me even though I told her to get lost. And she strips herself nekkid again. This time I’d decided I’d had enough. I let her think I was actually going to let her have what she wanted. And she was cuddled up against me, nibbling at my neck, trying to kiss me. Didn’t let her though. She tastes like cigarettes and I hate it when a woman tastes like an ashtray. I reached around her and started playing with her hair while I was driving, her back, distracting her. She wasn’t paying attention at all. I was about to die laughing. Told her we were going some place special. Where she could get the attention she had been asking for.”
Shawn propped his shoulder against the doorjamb, watching as Kris’s eyes started to sparkle. “I’m almost afraid to hear the rest of this.”
He grinned. “I did have to kiss her while I was getting her out; didn’t want her opening her eyes. And I’d time it just right, too. Right as the bell was ringing to let out church. She opens her eyes and pushed me away and I started laughing, and hopped back in the truck, tossed her clothes at her. Told her that was it. She did it again, well, she didn’t want to know what kind of trick I’d pull. And there was her entire congregation there to see her in all of glory as I pulled away, laughing my ass off while she screamed bloody murder at me. It was even worth having that taste in my mouth.”
“You are bad.” Kris was giggling, one hand pressed to her belly as she leaned forward. “Oh, that’s priceless.”
Shawn cocked a grin at her and shrugged. “She asked for it, little twit. And she actually left me alone for over a month for that.” A sigh left his mouth and he shook his head mournfully, his dark blond hair spilling into his eyes. “I had hoped she had finally left me the hell alone. But I am not so lucky.”
“She’s convinced she’s your one true love.”
Shawn’s eyes darkened. “Not likely.” That selfish, self-centered immature thing? No. He’d know. When he saw his own true love, he’d felt it in his gut. He had always had that feeling.
And it was not Luella.
****
Human trafficking.
That’s what had leaped out at him.
Now while he couldn’t exactly go and surf the web the way Nikki could, he could do a few things.
Like call Renee. A state cop who had just transferred to Illinois. Now he had liked Renee. She definitely wasn’t going to be the love of his life. But she had been…special. Yeah, Renee was exactly what he needed. And wasn’t he just the lucky one, he had her number stored in his cell.
Strolling out the back door, he ambled out along a path that led down to the creek as he called, hoping she’d be home and not out. Renee was a night owl. Terminally. It was late enough for her to be up for the day, though, so she might be out running around—
“Hullo!” that cheerful husky called into the phone.
“Hey, sweet, remember me?”
****
Dylan saw his brother’s Blazer and wanted to bang his head on the steering wheel. So what if he had told his brother to come here? Shawn didn’t have to take him seriously, now did he?
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