Chapter Fourteen
What a fucking day. Not bad so much as chock-full of unexpected curveballs and challenges—starting with the shock of how much he’d liked waking up next to Natalie. That alone had been enough to rattle Trevor’s cage and keep him off balance for days, but learning that Wyatt was using non-FDA-approved drugs? That had shaken parts of his reality he hadn’t cared for, enough so he’d perked right the hell up and decided it was time to take action.
Trevor turned into Haven’s long driveway and killed his headlights as soon as he got close to the house. At one o’clock in the morning, the guys might be up and waiting on him, but Sylvie and Ninette rarely stayed up past the ten o’clock news. If either of them had an inkling their boys were gathered for a late-night rally, they’d pry their butts out of bed no matter how tired they were and make sure there was an endless supply of coffee and food.
Aside from the porch light and the pendulum fixtures above the massive kitchen island, the house was dark, but a sweet, buttery scent lingered in the air that said Sylvie had concocted one of her wicked desserts before she’d turned in for the night.
He kept his footsteps as light as his boots would allow on the dark wood floors and stalked through the kitchen to the basement door. The second he opened it, light and his brothers’ voices rumbled up in greeting. He closed the door behind him and jogged down the steps. “Sorry I’m late.”
Jace and Beckett jerked their chins up in silent greeting.
“Yo.”
“Hey, brother, what’s up?”
“You want a beer?”
This from the rest of the crew already in their seats and waiting.
From his place at one end of the table, Axel rounded out the chorus with a grin. “‘Bout time you got here.” Unlike the rest of the guys who favored jeans and T-shirts, he was gussied up in his fancy slacks and a cashmere sweater that probably cost as much as Trevor’s Luccheses. While he normally kept his wild russet hair knotted up and out of the way, tonight it was loose, blending with his full beard to make him look like a Scottish warlord who’d battled and conquered the entire GQ staff.
“Sorry. The Den was packed when I left. Never seen a Tuesday night like this one.” Trevor snagged a bottle of Bud from the full-size stainless steel fridge in the corner and popped the top. Thank God, Natalie was on the closing crew or he’d have felt like shit for planning the late-night rendezvous at his place later. “I knew shit would get busy before the holidays, but I didn’t factor it would ramp up a full week early.”
“Weather’s been good and people are ready to blow off steam,” Jace said from the opposite end of the table. “Crossroads has been up a good fifteen percent over last year. I say take it and run while you can. Come January, everyone’ll be moaning over their holiday credit card statements.”
“Can’t remember you ever calling rally,” Knox said to Trevor. It was rare to see his brother without some kind of electronic device within reaching distance, but around this table Knox gave his brothers his undivided attention. “Something wrong with Frank?”
Trevor pulled his chair out from its place to the left of Axel’s. Rather than trick the basement out in high décor the way Jace had with the rest of the house, the basement was raw and filled with memories of where they’d each come from. Every man picked their own chair, something that stood for a piece of their past or a hope for their future. Compared to the rest of the guys, his was simple, a ladder-back chair in green enamel paint that had come from Bonnie’s kitchen when she’d bought a new dining room set, but it grounded him. Reminded him of the sacrifice his biological mother had made and the good life she’d given him, even if it had taken her death to do it.
“You didn’t tell ‘em?” Trevor said to Axel.
Axel shook his head and sipped his Scotch. Outside of Frank, the wily brother had been Trevor’s biggest champion and go-to confidant, including this morning when he’d strolled out of Natalie’s apartment with an uneasy edge he couldn’t shake. “Your instincts. Your story. I just told the guys you’d run across a complication.”
Meaning he suspected there was more to Trevor’s concern than just protecting his business interests, but Trevor wasn’t going there. This thing he’d started with Natalie wasn’t safe for either of them long-term. They’d scratch their itch, have fun and move on.
Trevor swiveled toward Jace and Zeke. “You two remember the waitress with the cell phone problem about three weeks ago? Natalie Jordan?”
Both nodded.
“Well, turns out the reason she was running the thing ragged was she was fielding panicked calls from her mom. Her ex is a piece of work. Keeps badgering Nat and using her kid to get her back. Nat doesn’t want to go because he hit her and her kid. She bailed without anything more than a car and their clothes. I had a hunch and followed her home that night. Ended up jumping into the middle of an altercation that was brewing its way up to ugly.”
Jace spun the toothpick perched at one side of his mouth with his finger and thumb. Being the one who’d helped Axel cover Trevor’s tracks after the bloody altercation that had put him on the road to being a brother, Jace knew the extent of Trevor’s penchant for fists firsthand. “Jumped in the middle how?”
“Not like you’re thinking,” Trevor answered. “The last thing I wanted was to cause problems for Natalie, so I stalked up and pretended like she and I were an item. Told her ex I didn’t like coming to check on my woman and findin’ her trading insults with him outside her front door.”
Beckett chuckled low and leaned into the table, crossing his huge forearms in front of him. “Now there’s a little detail you left out before.”
“No shit,” Knox said, grinning huge.
Danny planted his beer bottle on the table and scowled at Knox and Beckett. “You knew about this shit and didn’t fill me in?”
Zeke cocked an eyebrow. “Didn’t share with me either.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Trevor cut in before Jace and Axel could chime in too. “I went to Knox and asked him for more info on the ex. Just a precaution in case the guy decided he wanted to start a pissing contest at The Den. Natalie had on her work clothes, so there’s no way he’d have missed the logo.”
Axel zeroed in on Knox. “You find anything?”
“Not much beyond what I got the first go-round digging into Natalie. His practice makes bank, he dabbles in a shit-ton of side investments and he likes to gamble, but never more than he can afford to lose. Everything Trevor said about the divorce was spot-on. She got a Lexus SUV, their personal effects and nothing else. Bastard got joint custody even though Natalie’s lawyer claimed abuse.”
“How the bloody hell does that happen?” Axel said, the growl in his voice reminding Trevor of a nasty bulldog.
“Connections,” Knox answered before Trevor could. “The judge on the case is a member of Wyatt’s country club.”
Jace leaned to one side of his battered banker’s chair and anchored his elbow on the arm. “So that was three weeks ago. He make a move?”
“Not yet.” He hesitated a second and glanced at Axel.
Axel dipped his chin, a barely perceptible nod of encouragement. “Tell ’em, brother.”
Slouching a little in his chair, he splayed his knees wide and let out a heavy breath. Now was when the real razzing started. “Ever since the altercation, Wyatt’s been quiet. Not what you’d expect with the narcissistic type. I should have caught it earlier, but my gut says he’s spent that time up to something.”
“Up to something how?” Jace said.
“I don’t know. But Natalie’s been antsy since she dropped her kid off for his week at Wyatt’s. Said he was acting shifty in a way that usually spelled problems for her.”
“Probably another legal claim,” Knox said. “He’s used the system to keep her hopping for the last year.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Trevor said. “But then she said something this morning that tweaked me. It’s probably nothing, but if it is, I need to watch my back.”
Beckett smirked and rocked back on his chair’s hind legs. “Why do I get the impression this conversation went down while you were curled next to her in bed? Or has your spunky waitress left her insurance claims job for a full-time gig at The Den?”
Trevor scowled and kept going. With a little luck he could gloss over the timing and they’d let shit drop. “What’s got me tweaked is she was telling me about how things went down the first time Wyatt hit her. She mentioned something about him using non-approved drugs on patients.”
The room got quiet, two and two adding up just as quick for them as it had for him this morning.
“Same kind of product you’ve been hauling?” Danny asked.
“It sounded like it.”
Jace’s eyes narrowed in a way that didn’t bode well for Wyatt Jordan. “You think he might be one of your buyers?”
“Maybe. If his practice is doing as good as Knox says, it’s possible he’s luring them in with cutting-edge product.”
“Can your middleman give us buyer names?” Knox asked.
Zeke shook his head. “He won’t do it. I’ve never met the guy. At the time, I figured that was in our best interest and let it ride.”
Beckett shrugged his shoulders and scanned the rest of the guys. “Then we need to give him a reason to change his mind.”
“You’d have to find him first,” Trevor said. “All Zeke and I have is a contact number, and I’d bet good money it’s a burner with no GPS.”
Axel reclined back in his tattered club chair and anchored one Hugo Boss-clad foot on his knee. His usual laid-back tone came out grated and dangerous. “Then we ferret out the scunner another way.”
Trevor fought back a chuckle. It usually took a lot of Scotch or a particularly challenging woman to get Axel’s more colorful words to come out and play. “Are we talking about Wyatt or my middleman?”
“Your woman’s ex,” Axel fired back quickly. “You’ve got another haul you’re workin’ on now, right?”
Trevor dipped his chin, purposefully ignoring the part about Nat being his woman. The last thing anyone needed was more encouragement.
“Then see if he bites this time around.” Axel’s gaze shifted to Beck. “Your team can run a tail once word gets out and see if he’s a purchaser.”
Beckett frowned. “I’d like it better if we had someone on the inside.”
“No way we’d pull that off on this short of notice,” Knox said. “It’d take at least a month to get someone on his payroll.”
“Not as an employee,” Beckett said. “As a patient. You said he does big business, right? People talk. Word of mouth is everything, especially in that line of work. We’re better off getting someone to go in and say they’re after the latest and greatest.”
Danny snickered. “Not thinking anyone would buy one of us shoppin’ for some bootleg Botox.”
Jace huffed out a sharp chuckle and lifted his Scotch toward Axel. “I don’t know. Our dapper Don Juan might need to look into those wrinkles setting up shop on his forehead.”
“You’re just jealous you can’t carry my style.”
Before Jace could kick in with their usual back and forth banter, Beckett dropped his front chair legs to the floor. “Hold up. I didn’t mean one of us.”
All heads twisted to Beckett.
“There’s a bodyguard I met on a job in LA about a year back,” he said. “Gia Sinclair. She relocated here about six months ago. Total badass when shit gets real, but you’d never think it by looking surface deep. Comes off as a curvy Southern belle when she wants to. She’d work this Wyatt asshole no problem.”
Trevor leaned into the table. “You think she’d go for it?”
“To bring down a dude who’d slapped his wife and kid around?” Beck scoffed. “You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t wipe the floor with the dick before the job gets started.”
Man, he’d pay to see that. Wyatt getting his ass handed to him by a man would do serious damage to his ego, but having a woman dish it out? Yeah, someone might as well store his nuts in a Mason jar. “So let’s say Wyatt bites. Then what?”
Jace pulled his toothpick free and tossed it to the table in front of him. “That’s really up to you, brother.”
The room got quiet. An itchy uncomfortable quiet.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Trevor said.
“It means are we just protecting your business interests, or are we using this haul to set this fucker up so he doesn’t jack your woman around anymore?”
Fuck. He needed to shut this shit down once and for all. “She’s not my woman.”
Jace grinned, a quick and dirty one that said he wasn’t even close to buying it.
Across the table, Knox and Beckett suppressed a laugh, and Danny avoided eye contact. Trevor didn’t dare look at Axel.
Zeke, at least, managed to keep a straight face. “Give it a rest, guys. Trev knows his own mind.” His voiced lightened, a hint of laughter trickling through. “At least we can let him think he knows his own mind. For a few weeks at least.”
Beckett shook his head. “Sad, man. I thought you were gonna be the holdout with me and Knox.”
“I’m solid with you two,” Danny said. “Got no interest in a woman for a long damn time.”
Jace peered at Danny over the rim of his crystal tumbler. “Careful. You say that shit too loud and fate’ll trip you up faster than you can say I didn’t mean it.” He sipped his Scotch and shifted his focus to Trevor. “You sure there’s not more here that you wanna share?”
Trevor forced himself not to shift in his chair and kept his expression bland. “If you’re asking if she’s more than my employee, then yeah. She’s in my bed and I plan to have her there for a while. But am I claiming her? No.”
For the longest time, Jace just stared at him, the same intense gaze that made most people take at least three steps back on instinct.
“No shame in finding a good woman,” Axel said. “The way I hear it, she’s a pretty thing.”
“Spunky too,” Zeke added.
“Not ashamed of Nat,” he grumbled. Hell, if anything, Natalie was the kind of woman a smart man staked a claim on the first chance they got. At least any man who could be trusted in a long-term relationship. “Just don’t think we’re suited long-term.”
“Don’t think you’re suited, or don’t trust yourself?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Because one’s being wise to the future. The other’s livin’ in the past.” Axel kicked one foot up on the edge of the table then crossed the other over it. “You figure out which one’s driving you, and you’ll have your answer.”