Chapter Eleven

Hawk

Hawk woke the next morning and looked over his shoulder. He was still in Kathryn’s room, and she was sleeping soundly on the bed next to him, but she wasn’t touching him at all. He was relieved for that, as he was feeling upset with himself for what he had done with her the day before. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to have sex with her—he had been dreaming of that since the night they had gone out on the date—but he couldn’t believe that he had been so easily seduced by her.

He slipped out of the bed and turned to look at her. Lying on her side as she was, he could see her breasts rising and falling with the blanket open, and he had to fight the urge to bend forward and kiss them once more. But he knew he couldn’t. Not only was he angry with himself for being seduced, but the last thing he wanted to have was pillow talk.

They had gone hard the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, enjoying the dinner room service they’d ordered in, as well as the alcohol in the room. By the time Kathryn had passed out on the bed, he had made her climax so many times that he had even lost count. Hawk, too, had laid back on the bed with a contented sigh. He didn’t know the meaning of a dry spell, but there was something about the fact that he had just had sex with Kathryn again that he was having a difficult time accepting.

They had split over petty differences years ago when he hadn’t wanted to commit to anything serious or long term, and she’d been too busy going through a stage of rebellion against her father. Though they were still very much the same—him with his lack of interest in commitment and her with her ongoing daddy issues—they were also quite different than the people they had been before. She hadn’t been a game player before—she’d always been overt about her manipulations, at least— and Hawk didn’t like that change, however hypocritical it was. And he hadn’t had any kind of sense of responsibility to anything or anyone but himself and now … well, he was at least attempting some semblance. He really didn’t want to start up with her again. The sex was great, but there were too many complications. This had to be a one-time thing.

He gathered his things and slipped out of the room, promising himself not to get into this situation again. After all, both his brothers would be pissed if they found out what he had done—he was supposed to be down here on business, not banging a girl they all had wanted to sleep with for years. He couldn’t get them to see him differently if he didn’t act differently.

After freshening up in his own room, Hawk picked up his phone and dialed the office again, determined that he was going to get his hands on those reports today. He didn’t care how it was going to happen, he had to get that paperwork, and it was going to be today, one way or another. When the receptionist answered, he immediately told her to put him through to Gordon.

“I’m sorry, but he’s not in,” she replied.

“How can that be? You opened like ten minutes ago!” Hawk shot back, in no mood to be given the runaround again. He was going to get those files, and she was going to help him.

“He said that he called you back last night. I apologize for the inconvenience,” she answered. He was about to say something else but she hung up the phone. Hawk threw his phone on the bed. “Fuck!”

Suddenly, he had an idea. Gordon could run from him, but he couldn’t hide. He would simply wait at the office for him. He had nothing better to do with his day, so he would drive down there and stay planted in the waiting room. When Gordon got back, he would demand to see the reports, and that would be the end of that. With a smile on his face, he headed downstairs and hailed a taxi.

“What are you doing here? I told you that he wasn’t going to be in for a while,” the receptionist asked when she saw Hawk walk through the doors. This time, he was less taken with how pretty she was. Compared to Kathryn, no other woman held a candle, after all.

“I know what you said, but I’m going to wait here until he comes in. And if he doesn’t come in today, I’ll be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. He can run, but he’s going to have to come back eventually.” Hawk smiled as he leaned on the desk. “Or, you could make this a lot easier on both of us.”

He gave her his most seductive look, and he could see that she was both intimidated and taken with him at the same time. She fluttered her eyes but looked back down at the paper in front of her, clearly feeling torn on what to do. Hawk could see that he was making progress with the girl, and he smiled.

“Come on, sweetheart, you know you want to help me—I really could use it,” he prompted.

“All right, but if you say anything, he’ll have my neck,” she said nervously. He made a motion of sealing his lips, and she smiled.

“He’s been avoiding you,” she said flatly.

He looked at her curiously. “Why?”

She hesitated.

“Come on, I know you know more about this than you want to let me know. I promise, you are doing me a solid, and I’m not going to say a word about it.” He smiled seductively once more, and she blushed.

“Oh, you devil. He’s been choosing cheaper and cheaper labor and supplies, and nothing is going well. You can’t trust those people, and though everyone knows that, he is just trying to make more money off this himself.” She leaned in and spoke with a gossiping tone, and Hawk mimicked her, knowing she was eating up the attention.

“Can you show me?” he breathed. She glanced around the office, then quickly typed in a few things. When she turned her monitor to him, he could see the names of many of the companies his father had often complained about when he was still alive. He felt a mix of anger and triumph fill his heart, but he masked his feelings as he looked back at the receptionist with wide eyes. He knew that keeping the appearance of surprise on his face was the best way to get her to tell him anything that he wanted to know—and it was clearly working.

“Is there anything else you can tell me? This is coming as quite the shock to me, and I really can’t believe I have been so gullible. I really owe you one, Stacy.” He glanced at her name plaque on the counter, and she blushed as she smiled, nervously brushing her hair behind her ear.

“Not really, but I can print these out for you,” she said at last, clearly wanting to be as helpful as possible.

Hawk mustered his most grateful look. “Oh, would you? Thank you so much! I didn’t know if I could dare ask for such a thing, I really appreciate it!” He glanced around the room as though he, too, were worried that they were going to be overheard. She smiled coyly as she hit a button, and within minutes Hawk had in his hand all the paperwork he needed to prove that they were dealing with a fraud. As soon as he was back in his hotel room, he grabbed his phone and called Blake.

“It’s about time you decided to get a hold of us. Do you have those reports?” The sound of his voice told Hawk that Blake thought his younger brother was merely wasting his time in Las Vegas, and likely not even doing anything to try and help out company. Hawk had a surge of pleasure run through him as he told his brother to shut up and listen.

“We’re being double-crossed,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Blake sounded incredulous.

“Gordon and Jack are cutting corners and skimping on the work, pocketing all the extra dough themselves.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Blake asked, the anger clearly shining through in his tone.

“Fuck, yes, I am, and I’ve got proof. I’ll send you copies of all the documents that show everything—I have it all,” Hawk said with a smile. He flipped through the papers in his hands, and grinned when Blake’s voice came through the phone a lot louder.

“Yes! Send it up here on the double. I need to see those things for myself as soon as possible!”

“I’ll have them to you right away,” Hawk said. He didn’t wait for Blake to answer. Instead, he hung up the phone as he stepped out of his hotel room. He knew where he could go to fax the papers up to New York, and his brother would be able to look over the paperwork for himself. It wasn’t too bad for a single day’s work, if he had to say so himself. Within the hour he was at one of the offices for the company, and he faxed the information up to New York.

It wasn’t long before his phone was ringing once more, and he answered it. “What do you think of that? I told you there was something fishy going on around here.”

He explained to his brother how both men had been avoiding him almost from the beginning, and how he had had to get the receptionist to give him the information. There was silence on the other end of the line for a few moments. He could hear by the way his brother was breathing that he was far from happy with the situation, but Blake clearly hadn’t decided how to handle it.

There were a number of things they could do, but the fact that it was going to be another scandal was more than any of the Parker brothers wanted to be a part of. It was hard enough dealing with the paparazzi and everything else that the news liked to throw their way. Finally, he sighed.

“You might as well come on home, Hawk. You’ve done what you can, but I really don’t see that there is much we can do here. I’m going to pull the plug on the investments, and we are going to just cut our losses here. Thank God you went down there and figured this all out before we had a shitty hotel permanently on our hands. We’ll lose a ton of money now, but it would have been millions more later.” Blake’s voice sounded disappointed, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, Hawk felt sorry for him.

But then, there was another thought that came to his mind. He suddenly remembered that Kathryn had told him that she was in Las Vegas to live it up for a while, and if he were to leave, he didn’t want to think of the things she could get herself into. He knew it wasn’t his job, but at the same time, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her down in Sin City unsupervised.

“You know what? I bet we can get something on them without this blowing up,” he said.

“What?” Blake asked.

“We don’t have to just run away with our tail between our legs. You know Dad wouldn’t do that if he were here, and I don’t think we should do that, either. We have a case here—they are the ones who were pulling fraud on us, not the other way around—so why are we going to just run away and let them have all the money and glory? Come on, you know that I’m not going to be much help when I get back to New York. Let me stay and look this over a bit longer. I bet you I can find enough dirt on them to get them arrested for fraud.” He wasn’t waiting for his brother to answer, his mind more on staying in Las Vegas than it was on the company.

“I don’t know, the last thing that I want is for you to make another headline yourself. We don’t need any more bad publicity, okay?” Blake sounded resolute, but Hawk was quick to try to change his mind.

“I’m not going to do anything stupid; I’m just going to see what else these guys are up to. Come on, Blake, you know we don’t have that kind of money to just walk away from it without another word. Let me do this.” He didn’t need his brother’s permission, but it was going to be a lot easier for him to justify staying in Las Vegas if he had a work reason to do so.

“Okay, fine. But I swear to God, if I hear of you on the news for any reason, it’s going to be hell to pay when you get back here,” Blake said.

“Gotcha,” Hawk replied nonchalantly. He hung up the phone and smiled to himself. He really was going to look into the situation that had happened with those men, but he had also practically just gotten permission to hang out with Kathryn in Las Vegas for a few more days.

And whatever happened in Vegas, stayed in Vegas.