Chapter 17
17
MARI
Once again, I found myself listening at doors.
Robe’s voice cracked through a tense room, his mood penetrating beyond the thick oak door I hid behind. Last time, Miller had caught me doing exactly the same thing. Perhaps I should have learned from that mistake. The quote about the insanity of doing the same thing over again and expecting different results came to mind.
Yet here I stood, hunched over, hands pressed to the cool wooden panel, eyes glued to the thin gap that let me see into the room’s interior while five men stood in an irregular crescent, talking about things they thought I shouldn’t know.
Their lives. My future.
Not knowing what they did bloody well pissed me off more than anything else. Yes, I brought my natural Brit right to the forefront of this steep hill I would inevitably die on.
No, I’d learned nothing from last time.
After I’d been caught eavesdropping before, I made it as far as Robe’s bed, where I’d lain on my back for a precise ten seconds before I dashed to the en suite and puked up the horrendous mix of alcohol and coffee Alan had stuffed into my all-too-willing body. I doubted the oak door had prevented any sound from traveling through, though my whiskey-soaked pride couldn’t be bothered to be offended at the time. I couldn’t hold my drink like in my early twenties anymore.
A situation I needed to remedy in order to keep up with these boys and their testosterone battles.
Keeping the longevity of my kidneys in mind, or maybe not so much, I pressed closer to the door, the heavy barrier muffling their conversation and obstructing my view while I attempted to not-so-subtly eavesdrop. Robe had caught me listening at doors once already and threatened my safety with him. I couldn’t imagine how he would react to a second offense.
I peered through the slit illuminated by the windows on either side of the open doorway. The always open doorway. I swore that door never closed. Why leave it open when Robe and Miller seemed so concerned about insurgents, or whatever nasties that went hump and bump in the night that scared this family of giant, tough guys?
And I knew they were scared. Their straight backs and tense jaws said as much when they looked outside that door and were all the more so when one of them was traveling.
When they thought I forgot to look for the person missing from our midst.
So why not get locks and close the damn things? And this one too. Which would put an abrupt end to my current habit.
I fixed my attention on each man in the room who I could see or sense. Jon with his deep voice and tempered passion appeared to be hiding near the window outside my range of view. Alan stood at the bar as per usual, fidgeting with everything and nothing in an attempt to keep his hands busy instead of fluttering over everything.
Will munched on toast at the small table. He alone appeared calm, though his eyes darted side to side in a continual dance between bodies, as if gauging their intentions. As far as I knew, Will was the least threatening of all Robe’s odd little patched-together family unit.
Opposite the entrance door, Miller folded his arms, mashing giant muscles against his barrel chest, and Robe surveyed the group, turning in circles and exuding authority while seeming like nothing more than a charismatic entertainer pitching his wares.
I stopped listening.
A few scant months ago, I’d stood in a similar position, watching the boys before me work and debate over life and deadly matters with little obstruction except for me, from whom they maintained a safe distance. Safe being a relative term relating to both physical and emotional fronts.
The difference was that now I could read them .
How far we have come.
Alan talked over Robe for a moment, but in the cacophony of voices, I missed what they were arguing over. The dissent in Robe’s volume and the way Alan leaned across the bar top, one hand extended, made their positions clear. Dark eyes were raised to meet clear ocean blue, a show of disobedience and a challenge to authority.
Their clash, laced with passion on both sides, flushed me with heat. I didn’t need to hear what they were saying to deduce what they weren’t.
Ever since that day in Robe’s bathroom with Alan, things had… changed. Robe’s sense of security remained, but he reined in any physical response whenever I pushed him or bratted out, especially when he called me out on it.
And apart from a few occasions in desperate need, Alan barely touched me. Even his flirting took a back seat. The status quo hadn’t been reset; it reversed .
I shook my head, pushing the thoughts aside as too complicated to untangle.
“Do you want to stay, Mari Merripen? Because if you do, I cannot allow you to leave.”
Robe’s seductive words rolled around inside my head, bouncing off emotions I’d thought were long dead. But the temptation—the tease —remained. Since I’d lived in his household for my short version of eternity, then surely I’d earned the right to know what sort of man—what sort of men —I shared a living space with.
That’s how I chose to justify my actions, in any case. The Brit inside me roared her approval. For king and country —but of course, I had no homeland. Just me and Robe and his men—all of them.
His words whispered against my ears again. I swiped the fantasy away. He wasn’t even here , for heaven’s sake.
Forcing my focus forward instead of inward, I concentrated on what the boys talked about, glancing around to ensure they were all still in the same positions I’d noted before.
Jon’s easier tone interrupted my little stalker session.
“… packing, but nothing in any of the accounts has changed.”
“Which means he has a different channel I can’t fucking well see.” Frustration laced Alan’s voice, the deep sort that rarely entered our interactions when he spoke to me.
“He’s gotten wise to us, then.” Jon echoed Alan’s irritation.
“We counted on that.” Robe’s smooth voice coiled through me like good Italian coffee. He rubbed a hand over his beard, his thinking gesture. I’d previously suspected the action hid his expression; now I wondered if the damn thing just itched. “So we find another way into the accounts.”
Accounts? Who the hell were they stealing from? They weren’t talking about themselves. Robe didn’t look like he had more than two ancient coins to rub together, though his demeanor said otherwise. He talked of a business in New York City, but without any form of contact, how did he run it? Robe didn’t seem the sort to willingly hand over a large business, and I doubted he owned a failing one. My brain whizzed into action in the way Gideon had trained it to when he hired me as his PA two years ago.
“Maybe everything is in a safe somewhere. At the compound in New York.”
“Could be worth a look. Are you up to it?”
“I’ll handle it.” That gruff voice belonged to Miller, though I could no longer see him or Will. It couldn’t be anyone else. None of the others apart from Alan were supposed to leave the house. “I’ll drive into the city if need be.”
“No,” Robe snapped. “No one is going to Petersen’s filthy little playpen.”
“I might be able to—” Alan started.
“I said no ,” Robe roared.
Even if I hadn’t been eavesdropping, I would have heard that one.
A gasp flew from my lips as my disjointed mind tried to place all of them within the room by their voices. Robe to one side opposite Alan, in their usual clash of bartender wisdom and traumatized millionaire, or billionaire, or whatever the hell Robe was. He might have the bearing of a soldier, but his deportment, even in his chosen rustic setting, spoke of excessive wealth.
I froze, though no one seemed to pick up on my audible mistake at Robe’s outburst. Conversation resumed at a lower, placating level while Robe seethed. I took a step back, still waiting for Will’s dulcet tones to soothe Robe’s mini tantrum.
As soon as the thought occurred to me, I knew Will wasn’t in the room anymore.
A warm hand rested on the back of my neck, halting my unconscious retreat. A soft gust of breath brushed my cheek as I stood frozen for a different reason than before.
Run, run, run ? —
Or don’t run.
The sly little whisper slipped across my mind like a lover’s caress. Everest’s bollocks, did I want him to catch me?
My heartbeat increased, reassuring me that yes, in fact, I did want Robe to catch me.
The other, less confident part fainted away at the thought of facing him for the same thing a second time.
What if he evicts me from the house for good?
I could go home. Or… I’d lose my place in his home.
That same breath brushed the curve of my shoulder, drawing me back to the quandary I’d put myself in. Again. The silent man behind me stood still, his body heat emanating against my back. Other than his firm grip, he made no contact, didn’t shove me through the doorway and into Robe’s warpath or announce my presence where I had no right.
He should have ousted me on the spot, proving Miller right yet again.
“Easy, Mari,” the youngest member of Robe’s family breathed against my cheek. Tall he might be, but the others had height on Will. To a woman who stood at five feet and four inches with a ponytail, however, his six feet made him a mountain in his own right.
“Will,” I whispered, biting back a whimper of relief. “I didn’t mean to—” My shitty lie never made it any further.
“Keep listening, Mari,” Will murmured in my ear loud enough for me to hear his request alone while denying it to any of the men in the other room, including Miller with his elephant ears.
“Why are you—” I started to turn toward him but halted when his lips brushed over my cheek, then rested against the corner of my mouth.
Those soft, arched lips moved in a light kiss as he spoke. “Don’t move.”
I couldn’t if I wanted to, and… I didn’t. Want to, that was. His stubbled cheek pressed to mine in a gentle caress, the contact lighting every nerve ending in my body with heat. The air shifted around us as his other hand settled over my stomach, holding me in place. He didn’t pull me away from my tenuous position, instead settling his warmth against my back.
“We share everything, Mari.”
Alan and Robe had said those words to me on more than one occasion. Though I’d listened at the time, I never took much notice of what they meant until this moment.
Alan’s sweet touches. The way Jon looked at me, and now Will. My connection with Robe, a sense of belonging when he didn’t seem averse to the other boys touching me—or him. Miller’s glares, and that hand in my hair…. I recalled Alan’s kiss on Robe’s lips in the bathroom that day. The jealousy in his eyes, I suspected, came from the fact that someone else had touched me first.
Or maybe that fantasy sated my crooked, desperate need for comfort. For some semblance of love.
He was scared; Alan had said that. Robe thought me too traumatized for any sort of sexual activity. In true fashion to himself, Alan blew that fallacy out of the proverbial water and terrified everybody, including me.
His little experiment made the memories trapped inside easier to deal with at night, locked in the dark with Robe’s fading presence to combat my fears. I closed one hand across the top of Will’s over my stomach, resting there in a sense of peace. Comfort.
Quiet without fear.
Will’s tongue flickered out against the corner of my mouth, tasting. I released a breath that shattered the moment I freed it. Arousal spiked through me as I stood stock-still, held in place by a warm hand that spoke of the quiet confidence of a man who rarely touched me.
The room spun with our resident bartender’s next words that removed the physical comfort of Will’s touch altogether.
“He’s more than doubled the bounty on you,” Alan said casually, as though he were talking about a Sunday picnic. “Four mil,” he added before anybody could ask.
Four? I thought they’d said it was one.
A few murmurs of appreciation filled my ears. Even Will laughed softly against my skin.
“Is that all?” Robe sounded insulted. “I could pay it off in triplicate from Knight Gideon shunted me around departments to see where he could improve the flow of his businesses while never letting me view the whole of anything. More than once, I’d wondered what he was hiding.
I guessed after my experience in his home that I had been right, though I would never have chosen to find out that way. My brain itched to see his accounts in full, to work out what he concealed—and somehow, in some small attempt at revenge, call him out on it.
But I needed my mind to be here right now. I hadn’t articulated my CV well. Jon’s lips pursed; even I recognized that the point I’d tried to make was a piss-poor argument. He opened his mouth, but Robe beat him to whatever comment he’d lined up.
“All right.”
I pivoted on my heel, eyeing Robe. He looked me over in that calm, studious way of his, one eyebrow cocked. A full smile enhanced the lines around his mouth that were hidden beneath his beard, showing white teeth. Even his eyes lit up at some humor he alone possessed.
This man is a sex bomb when he smiles.
It didn’t happen very often, and that made each smile that much more precious. I was so used to reading serious, grumpy Robe that cheeky, cocky Robe offered a fresh shock to the system.
“All right?” I echoed, trying to enunciate my thoughts. My brain stalled, and nothing else came forward. Was I the brunt of a joke he kept locked away?
Still grinning, Robe’s face lit with mischief. “You’re right. A pair of fresh eyes won’t hurt. Maybe she knows more about this than we give her credit for.”
Silence filled the cabin as I stared at Robe. Jon pushed his way past Will, pausing to block the air flowing through the open doorway. He gave me a hard look that didn’t quite veil his frustration, concern dipping his brow. Deep thumps radiated as he walked off the veranda, silence falling when he hit the forest floor and disappeared.
Despite the difference between Miller’s and Jon’s physical presences, in the absence of their two towering personalities, Alan’s glee was almost palpable.
“Miller’s going to fucking love this.”