Chapter 4
TRENT
When I got off the plane, I went straight to the Chicago branch of Westwood and Sons, flannel and jeans against a sea of tailored suits. Many heads turned as I crossed the marble floors of the lobby. Questioning eyebrows raised when I climbed into the elevator.
I could practically feel them wondering if I was an actor in a Western who had gotten lost after stumbling off a movie set.
Personally, I thought their confusion was pretty funny.
It was nothing I wasn’t used to. Alex and Jameson, both Westwoods and execs in their respective cities, were my best friends.
This wasn’t my first rodeo, so to speak.
The entire building smelled faintly of coffee and the kind of ambition I’d never been fond of. Men in suits shuffled papers and tapped keyboards like they were holding back the apocalypse one spreadsheet at a time.
As I looked around the executive floor of Alex’s kingdom, I realized once again I would never, ever understand the impulse of some people to chain themselves to gray prisons in the clouds. It baffled me despite my age-old friendship with the Westwoods.
I leaned against the marble counter with my hands in my pockets, waiting for Alex to appear. A few months ago, he’d taken over from his father. Just like Sterling had taken over from Harlan in San Francisco.
Times certainly were a-changin’, but one thing that would always remain the same was how completely out of place I felt sixty stories in the air, surrounded by concrete and glass. It made me itchy in a way I couldn’t explain.
Alex finally came barreling around the corner with his phone pressed to his ear and his dark hair slightly disheveled. He spotted me immediately and waved me down a hallway without even saying hello, still talking rapidly into the phone.
I sighed, but Alex was one of my oldest friends. Jameson too, so even this, I was used to. Just not a fan of how they had to live their lives.
When we finally made it to his office, I dropped into the chair across from his desk, ready to dive into the proposal we’d been hashing out for months.
Alex wanted to get into shipping, and as it happened, I needed shipping services for my cattle, so we were getting into it together.
I was doing most of the setup and I assumed that was why he’d asked me here.
But when he hung up mid-sentence, I quickly realized it hadn’t been about that at all. He tossed the phone down on his desk and leaned back with that easy grin that made him look like he hadn’t just been multitasking a corporate takeover.
“We have plans tonight,” he said without any prelude. “Do you have a suit?”
“Of course, I do.” I was renting a nice apartment nearby for a few months while this venture of ours got off the ground. It overlooked the lake. Not exactly a ranch, but it was the best I could find in terms of at least feeling like I had some space.
Alex grinned, flashing pearly white teeth and a hint of the guy he used to be back before he’d become a CEO. “Good. We have a situation and I need your help.”
I arched an eyebrow at him, but before he could explain, his phone rang again and he sighed. “I’ll send a car at six. Do something with your hair and put on the suit.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he took the call and pressed the phone back to his ear. “This is Alex.”
For several seconds, I listened to him rant about share percentages and legal loopholes, the words a blur of corporate jargon I didn’t care to learn. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to stick around for the rest of the day while he yelled at someone about an acquisition.
Eventually, I stood up and walked out, wondering why he’d even needed me to show up in the first place. That entire conversation could’ve been a two-line text, but both he and Jameson were still adjusting to their new roles.
Few people in the world would guess just by looking at them, but I knew my boys. They were both trying to maintain a balance they had no idea how to strike.
Alex had probably thought we would have time to talk about this situation of his, underestimating just how busy he really was these days.
Jameson had been faring better since the twins had been born.
Thank God, or else I would have had to pull my sister back to the ranch so we could help her with the kids while Jamie became a weekend father.
None of us would’ve liked that. When I’d first found out about him and my little sister, I’d flipped out, sure.
He was the one guy I used to trust with her and it turned out he hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself after all, but now that I’d accepted their relationship, I still expected him to do right by her.
Which he was. He really was, even if his phone was also pretty much glued to his ear. All of them had issues putting those fucking devices away, though. They were chained to them, more attached to their phones than their dicks as far as I was concerned.
But hey, that wasn’t my problem. As I walked out of the building, I drew a few more curious stares and I inhaled a deep breath of air. Then I groaned when I realized it tasted like exhaust fumes and desperation.
This was my problem. Big cities were not my thing. They made me feel small, which was no easy feat. The endless bustle and the noise that never stopped got under my skin. I didn’t like it and I definitely didn’t belong here, but I had needed to expand my horizons.
Get out of Texas. Go where the business would work and not as many people knew who I was. Chicago was the answer to all that.
I had never planned to spend my whole life on the ranch, but getting used to life away from it was going to be challenging.
For the last couple years, I’d been spending more and more time away, first moving to a house in Pacific Heights while my place was being built, then visiting San Francisco more and more often once my sister had gotten pregnant.
At the end of the day though, I’d always gone back to the ranch. Now, the only thing I had to go back to for the next few months was my apartment. At least it was within walking distance of the Westwood offices.
I’d figured I would be spending a fair amount of time there since I was going to be working with Alex. This way, I could walk back and forth. Get out a little instead of being stuck in a car and traffic for hours on end.
On my way to my apartment, I took in the wide sidewalks of my new home. When I passed a coffee shop, I hooked an immediate, quick, sharp left into it. What I really needed was an IV of caffeine straight into my veins rather than a latte.
But whatever. I would have to survive on what this place sold.
Unfortunately, it seemed this was a popular joint, a snaking line of suits and socialites waiting to order vanilla-bean-double-shot-caramel kind of bullshit. I couldn’t even string those words together in a way that made sense, especially not in the context of fucking coffee.
As I joined the line and shuffled forward one absurd order being called out at a time, I felt the weight of someone’s stare on the back of my neck. When I glanced over, I saw woman standing three people down the line, blinking maybe once a minute, but her gaze was glued to me.
Big eyes, red lipstick, and a messy bun like she’d run out of time or cared too little to fix it. She wasn’t even trying to hide that she was watching me.
I narrowed my eyes, but instead of averting her gaze, she pulled out her phone and—click.
What the fuck? Did she just take a picture of me?
“Can I help you?” I asked, because what the hell else was I supposed to do?
Her grin spread wide, weirdly reminding me of a cat who’d just cornered a mouse. She sidled up to me, unapologetically waving off the groans of the two guys she moved ahead of. “What’s your name, cowboy? Are you single?”
I blinked hard. “Do you start all your mornings like this?”
She laughed. “Oh, I’m not asking for me. It’s for my friend.”
“Your friend?”
“Yeah. You’re just her type. You have horses, don’t you?”
“Uh—”
“Do you do blind dates?”
I stared at her, completely thrown. Despite what the flannel might’ve led her to believe, I was no country bumpkin. I’d been in some pretty strange situations in my life. Shit, back in my partying glory days, Jameson and I had “borrowed” a pop-star’s yacht. But this was something else entirely.
I squinted at her, torn between being concerned and terrified. “Who are you?”
“Oh!” She smiled brightly and stuck out her hand like a nerd. Elbow locked. Hand just kind of sticking into the air between us. “I’m Stella Marquise.”
“Cool,” I said flatly. “Who’s that?”
She burst out laughing, loud enough to turn a few heads. “God, I like you already.”
Yeah. This was officially the most bizarre thing that had ever happened to me, and I’d once been licked on the ass by a steer during a branding season.
The line inched forward at the speed of a dying snail, which gave Stella plenty of time to wear me down. “I’m being serious, you know. You’re exactly what my friend needs right now and you’d love her. She’s stunning.”
Uh-huh. Sure, she is. That’s why she needs her crazy friend to badger unsuspecting men stuck in lines with her for a date.
“Just give me one chance,” she continued when I still hadn’t said anything. “All I need is your number. I promise, it’ll be worth it.”
This girl was persistent. I’d give her that. By the time we reached the counter, I’d said “no” six different ways, and somehow, I still found myself rattling off my number after we’d ordered. On the not-so-off chance this was some kind of murder scheme though, I didn’t give her my real name.
She squinted as she typed in what I’d told her. “Tony Samson?”
“Yup.”
“That your real name, cowboy?”
“Sure,” I said. “As far as you know.”
Her laugh was bright and unbothered, like this kind of nonsense was a daily thing for her. She slid her card to the barista before I could pull out mine.
“I’ll get this one, Tony,” she said with a wink. “Don’t ghost my friend. She’s adorable. You’ll thank me later.”
She picked up her iced whatever, twirled like she was on a runway, and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me standing there with a regular black coffee I hadn’t paid for and zero idea what the hell had just happened.
I literally scratched my head as I watched her go.
Maybe I’d just been scammed. Or recruited into a cult.
It was hard to tell in this city, but if all my profiles suddenly got hacked and the pictures changed to that of a hot, exotic-looking woman, I was taking my mother’s advice and moving the business to Oklahoma fucking City.
Alex could commute. All he really needed was his phone and a tailored suit, anyway.
Hours later, after a shower, a shave, and wrangling myself into a damn tailored suit of my own, I was still thrown out of whack by the encounter. I’d been to many cities all over the world and I’d never been through anything remotely as random as that.
Alex saved me from wondering if I was going to be stalked, slaughtered, and stuffed like a goddamn turkey when he called. “I’m outside. You can come on down.”
Shaking my head and deciding it was probably better to be extra careful, I made sure my place was locked up tight and then I rode the elevator down, still tugging at my collar and swatting at my hair. I hadn’t been made for this shit, I swear.
A black SUV idled at the curb and I knew without having to be told or called over that was the car. When I slid inside, Alex was there, scrolling through his phone like a man about to lose his mind.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “You said dinner, not espionage.”
“There’s been a change in our itinerary,” he said, not looking up from his screen. “I’m afraid there’s no way around it.”
“So we were going to do a little casual espionage until the plans changed?” I frowned.
After the day I’d had, I was just about done with weird and cryptic encounters.
I turned on my seat to face him and cocked my head, catching his deep green gaze and holding it when he finally glanced up.
“What the hell is going on, Alex? Just give it to me straight.”
He sighed, pressing the button on the side of his phone to lock his screen and then setting the device down between us. Fucking finally. “We’re going to my dad’s club.”
“You don’t mean a dance club, do you?”
He shook his head. “Cigar club.”
“The one with old men and taxidermy?”
“That’s the one.” His face was suddenly tight. “I need your help, Trent.”
I groaned. “Whatever this is—”
A strangely tortured expression clouded his eyes as he held up a hand to cut me off, and that, more than anything else, shut me right the hell up.
Alex didn’t do tortured. He didn’t ask for help.
But as he sighed and sent me a pleading look, it was immediately obvious that this meant something to him.
“Hear me out, Trent. Please. Just… hear me out.”