Twisted knight, p.26
Twisted Knight, page 26
Clank. Click. Clank.
“It’s—I’ve seen it before.” Was it Rhett in the car? Was he the passenger who got out?
Think, Holden. Fucking think.
“Where?” the detective asks.
I try to churn up the rage that roars through me, but I can’t. I’m numb. Empty.
“Son?”
“At the country club. Where I work.”
“Which one, son?”
“Westmore Country Club,” I say as he winces at the three words. A wince I’ll later remember. “It—Rhett Rothschild. It’s his.”
He nods very slowly, his pen poised, as if he’s afraid to take down the name. “It looks like his,” he says.
“Shouldn’t this be in a bag? My fingerprints.” I push it back toward him but he just meets my eyes.
“I’m sure there are plenty out there that look like this. It’s best you don’t jump to any conclusions. Let me investigate before we accuse anyone of anything.”
“It’s his,” I murmur, relieved when he finally takes it back and pockets it.
“I just told you not to say that. The last thing we want is someone getting themselves in trouble making false accusations when it’s clear your mom needs you here instead of in a jail cell for something silly like that.”
I stare at him, eyes blinking, heart pounding, every sensation just … dulled. His threat falls on deaf ears.
Dead.
Mason.
I choke back a sob.
“We’re chasing everything we have,” he says, patting my knee and clearly uncomfortable with my sudden show of emotion.
“My little brother is dead”—I struggle to use the word—“do something. Please.”
“It’s early in the investigation still. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
The tears come. No matter how hard I try to stop them, they come as I explain about Mase going outside. About getting distracted until I heard the screech of tires. About the person getting out, seeing Mase there, and getting back in the car. About them screeching away and leaving my little brother like a heap of clothes on the asphalt.
The detective keeps his head down, writing on his notepad. “So, you didn’t see anything leading up to the event? You weren’t outside watching him?”
If I’d been outside, I would have.
If I’d followed my mom’s rules, I would have.
“No.” That’s the hardest answer I’ve ever had to give. I know it has nothing on how hard it’s going to be when I have to explain it to my mom.
“Okay.” He simply nods and closes his notebook. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Sorry doesn’t fix anything. In fact, it makes it feel ten times worse.
“Yeah,” I say, looking for the lighter that he’s completely removed from sight, before giving him all our contact information when he asks.
I don’t look up when he stands. I don’t meet his eyes when he hands me his business card. I don’t give a response when he says, “We’ll be in touch.”
Instead, I keep picturing the thread-made bracelet on Mason’s wrist.
Clank. Click. Clank.
Instead, I keep repeating the promise I made to my little brother.
Whoever did this to you will pay.
THIRTY-NINE
Rowan
“Sweet tea and sunshine. What could be better than that?”
My mind immediately flashes to Holden, and I offer my mother a smile that has nothing to do with sweet tea or sunshine. “Nothing,” I lie as I glance around the outdoor patio of the Westmore Country Club. It’s packed as usual on a warm Saturday afternoon. The members mill about under teal umbrellas and sip drinks that are way too expensive on a tab that’s probably overrun.
“I’m sure the Vandeveres will be pleased that you decided to come today,” she says as she waves at Muffy Johnson, who is sitting at a table across from us.
“I promised Caroline that I’d be here, so I’m here,” I murmur. This whole trying-to-be-a-great-friend thing is harder than it looks. Mostly because I loathe shit like this but also because I’ve been busting my ass finding suppliers who will work with us. Ones that my brother and father haven’t burned bridges with in the past.
“That’s lovely, dear.” She smiles and then straightens some, prompting me to look over my shoulder. “Caroline is becoming quite the party planner. I bet you they’ll task her with organizing and planning the Christmas party this year. What a huge accomplishment that would be for them to put their baby in her hands.”
“It’s just a party, Mom.”
“Be happy for your friend. She’s doing well.”
“I am. More than,” I say as I raise my wineglass to Caroline where she stands over by the bar, immersed in a group of people. She raises hers as well and grins.
“Chadwick. What a pleasure to see you,” my mom says as Chad walks up and offers her a kiss on her cheek. “Rowan and I were just discussing how beautiful this setting would be for your reception.”
“We were not,” I exclaim. She’s lost her ever-loving mind.
Chad just laughs and gives me a look that’s laden with apology before taking the empty seat between my mother and me. “Emmaline, did you and my mother coordinate this ambush beforehand? I promise you I just got the exact same comment minutes ago from her.”
“Great minds think alike,” she says. Sensing her cue to leave us alone so that who knows … we might decide to get married tomorrow, she grabs her sweet tea and excuses herself.
“Will it ever end?” Chad chuckles.
“I don’t think so. Not ever,” I say as Chad casually drapes his arm across the back of my chair. I don’t think twice about his hand accidentally brushing over my bare shoulder. This is the boy I shared my first kiss with. A man who has known me my whole life. There is a comfort level between us that has come with years of knowing each other.
“Fuck it. Maybe we should just get married to shut them up and then when we get it annulled a few months later, they’ll stop all of this.”
“What would we cite as the reason?” I play along. Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s a good mood.
“You can say that I snore too loud, and I’ll divulge that you’re a horrible cook. I mean, there are worse things, right?”
I laugh and tap my wineglass against his. “It could work.”
“It could.” He sighs and shakes his head. “I mean, we should just stand on the table, tap our forks, and announce it right now.”
“Go right ahead,” I joke but when Chad stands up and puts one foot up to stand on the chair, my eyes bug out of my head. “No.” I grab his arm. “Oh my god, no.”
He looks at me and bursts out laughing as he puts his foot back down. “C’mon. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
I hit him playfully. “You gave me a heart attack.”
He leans in close and murmurs in my ear, “Don’t look now, but our moms are watching.”
Great. Perfect. More fuel for their fire.
“Then we should have a huge fight. A public display. Something to prove to them that we’re not right for each other.” I say the words but then notice his grimace.
“You know I think differently.” His voice is soft, sincere, the playfulness gone.
“I know,” I say, looking toward the crowd milling around us, not wanting to see the hurt in his eyes.
“But it would be funny,” he says, trying to recoup the lightheartedness we just had. “You could throw a glass. I could flip a table. We’d end up falling into the fountain.”
“We’d be the talk of Westmore.” I smile at him softly and nod. It feels like it’s been forever since we’ve talked like this. Since we’ve joked like this. I forgot how easy it was to be around Chad outside of the office setting. How well the two of us mesh together.
“We would, wouldn’t we?” he murmurs as he reaches over and pats my knee. “Also, not to talk shop, but…” He casually looks around us. “I’ve been talking to my cousin. The corporate lawyer.”
“Who’s not a lawyer in your family? And I know who Henry is.”
“I know.” He chuckles. “But he might have a few ways to help us out. Ideas on how we can stop the deal.”
“Really?” It’s the first sign of hope that I’ve had since this whole thing started, and my voice reflects it.
“Mm-hmm. Do you still have a bad feeling about it all?”
I study Chad and wonder how to play this with him. As it is, I’ve agreed to a deal with the devil. I’m working with Holden in return for a piece of the pie and a seat at the table.
But I’m still in a conundrum. Two votes and a small percentage of ownership don’t give me the leverage I need and the long-term return that I want. I need to own more of the company. And after spending hours reviewing Gran’s “dirt notes” and riffing with Sloane over it, I think I know where I can get it. Two members are on the decline health wise and might welcome an inflow of cash to buy their shares.
The problem?
How do I get the money to do that without the lump sum payment from Gran?
You do realize that you’re actually considering whoring yourself out—so to speak—to make dreams become more tangible realities, right, Row?
Do you still have a bad feeling about it all?
I contemplate how to answer Chad’s question as I lift my wine to my lips.
Do I play the damsel in distress, worried about my family’s legacy with the new owner who is the big, bad wolf? Or do I play “I have the right to own this company and I’m going to fight for it”?
As if this could get any more complicated. At this point, I don’t trust anyone, and as for tanking the deal … as the days tick by, the reality is setting in that this plan isn’t going to happen. My only option is to put myself in the best position I can within the company as the second largest shareholder of TinSpirits. That way my votes will hold more weight than theirs combined. At least that’s my plan.
Rhett will know that when they go to sign the sale papers and they’re revised. Little will they know Gran’s holdings will be mine soon too.
“Hello?” He waves his hands in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m sorry. Just thinking. What was the question again?”
He studies me for a beat but then replies, “Do you still have a bad feeling about this?”
I sigh to buy time. “It’s complicated.” My smile is half-assed as I toe the line between black and white. “I think keeping all options open at this time is the safest bet.”
“Agreed.” He nods.
“Says the man who has had more hush-hush closed-door meetings with my brother in the last month than ever before.” When he just looks at me doe-eyed, I continue. “Yes. I’ve noticed. Early in the morning. Late at night. Even thirty minutes ago here. You two looked like stress cases talking about whatever it is you were talking about.”
“We’re just under a lot of pressure.” His smile isn’t believable. “Holden has us doing some things and we want to get them right.”
“Oh.” I give a startled jostle to my head. “I didn’t…”
“You don’t think you’re the only one he gave special projects to, do you? You have property searches, and we have … other things.”
“Okay.” I draw the word out.
“Look. We’ll see what my cousin has to say. Maybe there’s something there. Maybe there isn’t. ’Kay?”
“Okay.”
It’s then, when Chad glances down to answer a text on his phone, that I look up and jolt, seeing Holden across the opposite side of the patio. He’s wearing a pair of sunglasses, but despite the dark tint of the lenses, I know he’s looking straight at me. I can feel it as clear as I can see the muscle pulsing in his jaw and the taut tendons of his neck.
I take him in. Him in his normal Holden-dark attire, while everyone else is dressed in white or bright spring colors—or boring khaki for the men. He’s surrounded by a group of men, all clearly vying for his attention while anyone who knows anything about him can tell he couldn’t care less.
And it’s clear that they don’t hold his interest.
I do.
But the smile I offer him isn’t returned.
In fact, there isn’t any reaction I can get out of him at all.
“Okay?” Chad asks with raised brows. Clearly, I didn’t hear whatever he said.
“Sure. Okay.”
“I need to talk to Porter. He’s over there.” He chuckles when I look at him with a furrowed brow. “I just told you that. You didn’t hear me.”
My smile is quick, apologetic. “You’re right, I didn’t. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I know how you get when you’re thinking too much. Have another glass of wine. Relax. Stop thinking about work,” he says and leans in to press a kiss to my cheek as a goodbye.
The minute he moves out of my line of sight, I’m met with Holden’s implacable stare once again. He offers the men surrounding him a comment, but his focus is back on me.
“He is something to look at. I’ll give you that,” my mom says, following my gaze as she steps up beside me.
I pull my attention to her immediately and cough over a response. If she only knew how my insides were reacting to him right now. “Looking nice and being nice are two different things,” I murmur.
But isn’t that part of what I find attractive about him—besides the fact that he’s incredible at sex? That I can’t quite figure him out? That there is an edge beneath that pretty exterior? An edge that is so fine, I’m not always certain which side I’m on or if I want to be cut by it.
It’s thrilling.
It’s unpredictable.
It makes me feel alive and desired while at the same time challenged and on my toes.
“I think we need to invite that man to one of our family functions. Maybe our annual summer barbecue we have coming up. It’s important that he understands what we are about. How important this family is to this town. The jobs we provide. The money we infuse into this economy. The legacy we must continue. Maybe then he can fathom what we’re giving him the keys to and how he needs to protect and preserve the company as best as he can.”
“I’m not exactly sure he cares, Mom.” And when I look up this time, Holden is gone. The circle of men is still there, but he’s not.
How stupid is it that my shoulders sag at his sudden absence. With him here, at least there was something to look at. To look forward to.
“Let me at him.” She winks. “I’ll make sure he cares. No one can resist Emmaline Rothschild’s charms.”
FORTY
Rowan
It’s dark by the time I pull into my driveway.
I’m tired from the exhaustive conversations over nothing that apparently were deemed necessary at Caroline’s deck party. I’m drained from the nonstop prodding from my mother about Chad and my future. I decide that if I never go to another function again, I could die a happy woman.
Walking up my path to my house, my only thought is how I want to climb into bed with a good book and get lost in it. Anything to stop my head from thinking. About my conversation with Chad. About the pressure from our moms. About seeing Holden there and how it made me feel. About—
“I’d expect you to wear sapphire earrings to an event like that.”
I yelp at the sound of Holden’s voice and the sight of him as he steps out of the shadows on my front porch. “Jesus, you scared me,” I say.
But he doesn’t even react to my yelp with a smile. “They’d match your dress.”
And be complete overkill for a sundress.
“I told you, I can’t accept them.”
He chews the inside of his cheek as he tilts his head and narrows his eyes. That stare I felt from beneath his sunglasses earlier is back, but this time I can feel the singe of its heat.
“Is something wrong?” I ask as other questions I don’t put words to play rapid-fire through my mind.
Why are you here?
What’s going on?
Why do you seem so angry?
“Mmm,” is all he gives me as he reaches out and rubs my bare earlobe between his thumb and forefinger. It’s incredibly intimate in the weirdest of ways and causes chills to chase down my spine and stoke the ache lighting between the apex of my thighs.
“Mmm? That’s all you’re going to give me?”
He chuckles but it’s short and daunting. “He had his hands on you, Rowan.”
“Who?” And the second the word is out, I know exactly who he’s talking about—Chad. “Why, Holden Knight, are you jealous?”
“I don’t share.” Three words. Three syllables. Absolutely no mistaking the threat behind them.
My breath catches as he moves his hand down to rest on the curve of my shoulder. He rubs his thumb back and forth over my collarbone.
“I’m thinking I should be insulted by your insinuation.”
“I don’t care what you think.” The way his eyes flit down to my lips and then back up to my eyes has my nipples pebbling against the lace of my bra.
“That makes two of us.”
“Are you really going to marry him, Rowan?”
I run my tongue over my bottom lip this time when he looks at my mouth. His nostrils flare ever so slightly. “Maybe. Someday.”
It’s a total lie.
A complete taunt.
A challenge to get him to react.
And react he does.
He puts his hand on the small of my back and yanks my body against his. It’s impossible not to feel every hard, sculpted line of him as he slants his mouth over mine and takes.
It’s a commanding kiss. One that dominates and demands and possesses.
“He’s not allowed to touch you,” he says as he uses the fist he has in my hair to pull my head back so I’m forced to look at him. So there is no mistaking his words. “No one is.”
My only response is to grin. A jealous Holden Knight is a wickedly sexy thing to behold. The darkening of his eyes. The clenching of his jaw. The desperation in his touch.
“Open the front door, Rowan.”
“Why? So you can tell me what I can and can’t do?” It’s hard to be sarcastic when my body is begging for more of his touch. “I don’t think so.”
