Chapter Nine

Hawk

Hawk woke with a start and quickly looked around the room. The night before came rushing back to him, and he remembered what had happened right before he’d said goodnight to Kathryn. Part of him felt a rush of relief knowing that he had turned her invitation down, but another part was kicking himself for letting her get away so easily.

Though their fling in college had been rather short lived, he could still remember how beautiful she had been lying on his bed completely naked. Her breasts were full and round, her nipples firm but soft. She had a flat stomach, wide hips, and an ass that he had slapped to his heart’s content, for the sake of both their enjoyment.

And, from the looks of things, the years had only been good to her. There were times he’d seen her in passing, when she was hanging out with Dana and he was dropping something or other off for Cole, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she had some kind of surgery done to her breasts. It something she hadn’t needed, but how could any woman look better with every passing year, rather than the reverse. And her father had the money to do it, so she might have.

At the thought of Kathryn’s father, he almost immediately lost his arousal. The phone conversation he had had with the man came back to him, killing his mood even more. Of course, Wellington would do what he could to ensure he got his daughter matched to someone with money, but it still really didn’t make much sense given how much he and Hawk hadn’t seen eye to eye. Surely there was a better babysitter available, someone who was more in line with Wellington’s skewed view of things?

Shaking his head, he threw his legs over the side of the bed and went to take a shower. Walking past the desk, Hawk could see right away that there were several messages flashing on his phone, but he wasn’t going to concern himself with those. Growing up, his father had often told him and his siblings to sit down and shut up until after he had had his coffee. Hawk had absorbed that lesson better than most and now felt that the entire world could wait until at least after he had a shower.

As he stood with the water beating down on his head, Hawk once again thought about the previous night he had spent with Kathryn. He wanted to leave it at just having a good time with the woman, but there were buried emotions that were beginning to come up in his mind once again, and he wanted to get rid of them.

Or did he? He said that he did, but at the same time, he was enjoying the feeling that was rushing down his spine—and lingering in his manhood. He remembered what it had been like to take her for his own—to show her off to one all—and it was something even after all these years and dozens of women later, that he still had not forgotten.

He stepped out of the shower and wrapped the towel around his waist before wandering back to the bedroom, finally ready to see what the world wanted of him. As suspected, there were several messages from both of his brothers—two from Blake and one from Cole, both asking him the same thing. They wanted an update on how things were going with the hotel—and Cole, of course, wanted to know if there had been any developments with Kathryn.

Hawk was never one to invest emotionally in anyone, let alone his older brother, but he did want to tell him that he had taken her out the night before, and that it did seem like she was in to him— at least to an extent. He replied about the hotel, telling them both he was going to check up on the progress and have a better report later that day, then he included in his message to Cole that he had indeed seen Kathryn, but he couldn’t think of how he wanted to word the message beyond that.

After hitting send, he set his phone down, but was surprised when it went off again almost immediately. Thinking it was Cole teasing him about the night before, he picked it up—but it was Kathryn.

Just wondering if you want to grab lunch.

“What the fuck?” he muttered. His initial response was to go, but he changed his mind, telling her that he was going to head out to the construction site and see if there was any progress he could report to his brothers. She gave him a short reply, but he didn’t have the time to worry about that. She was just going to have to get over whatever game she was playing with him, and let him work.

Hawk tossed his phone on the bed and yanked the towel from around his waist, drying his hair and grabbing his clothes. He had to call Gordon Jones and Jack Perry—it seemed as though the two men had been avoiding discussing the actual construction, and he needed to hear how things were going—especially with the accounts.

It was difficult enough to be relaying the information to his brothers from his own point of view, but it was even more difficult when he had to do so without having any real knowledge of what was going on. Of course, once again neither of the men answered their phones, but instead of leaving a voicemail for them to ignore, Hawk called a taxi. They could run from him and avoid him all they wanted, but they couldn’t hide the hotel.

He would go right down to the site and see for himself how things were going, and if Jack Perry was around, he would ask him then and there for a report of the accounts. One way or another, he was going to get his hands on that paperwork, and he was going to prove to his brothers that he could handle the tasks they had given him.

He was a Parker, after all.

***

“Mr. Perry, if you have a moment? I apologize for not calling in advance. Oh, wait, I did.” Hawk walked over to Jack on the site, and he could see all the color drain at once from the man’s face. He looked in complete shock at Hawk, then he grabbed his phone, pretending like it wasn’t working.

“I can’t believe I missed your call! I would have told you on the phone if I had gotten it. You really didn’t have to come all the way down here,” he said nervously. Hawk stared him down with a cold glare, then looked around the site.

“Looks like things are coming along down here, but what I really need to see is the reports for both the account and the progress. I was supposed to get those the other day and I never did.” He maintained his cold and distant approach, and once again Jack laughed nervously. It was clear he would much rather not be talking about this topic with Hawk, but he wasn’t going to let him off the hook.

“I don’t have the power to give those to you,” he said with a forced look of concern. Hawk had seen such a look more than once in his life, and he didn’t believe it for one second.

“Well, get a hold of the person who does, since Gordon’s phone is evidently also not working.” Hawk crossed his arms and gave Jack a defiant look. Jack squirmed and pulled out his phone.

“Here, let me give you the extension to the office. If he’s not answering his cell, you might have a better chance of getting a hold of him if you go straight to the top.” Jack gave him a dismissive look, and it was clear he didn’t want to discuss the situation any further. He turned to go, and Hawk sighed in frustration. He knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere further with the man, but that didn’t solve his problem with his brothers.

They expected him to have an update for them that day, but he was just being given the runaround time after time. Jack didn’t wait for him to say anything else and turned his attention to what was happening with a bulldozer. Hawk punched in the number Jack had given him and held his phone to his ear, irritated that he once again had to look elsewhere to get his job done.

“I’m sorry, but Gordon isn’t in his office right now. You can leave a message and I will give it to him as soon as he gets back in,” the receptionist said. Hawk kept his voice calm, though he couldn’t mask the condescension that shone through.

“Do you happen to know when that will be?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I do not. He doesn’t tell me his agenda when he goes out, but I can get him a message when he gets back.” Her tone was sweet, but Hawk could sense she was being just as condescending back to him as he was being to her.

“Never mind, I’ll get back to him when I can,” he growled. He hung up without waiting for her to answer and swore under his breath. “Fuck.”

Pulling out his phone, Hawk scanned through his texts. Now that his afternoon was free, he could grab lunch with Kathryn—but did he want to? He had agreed to keep an eye on her, and Cole seemed to think that the only way to know what the woman wanted was to spend time with her—but it was a dangerous game.

“What the hell.” He sent her a message asking if she still wanted to get together and slipped his phone into his pocket, heading out of the construction site to the taxi he had told to wait for him on the street. He checked the phone after he got inside and was slightly disappointed that there wasn’t any message from Kathryn. With her attitude, it was difficult to know what she was up to—for all he knew she could be going on a shopping spree downtown, or she might be passed out in her hotel room.

She had changed in many ways since the two of them had gotten out of college, but there were other ways in which she was exactly the same. She was just as likely to spend three hours in the gym as she was to drink three martinis next to the pool—it just depended on how she was feeling on that day.

If he was to be perfectly honest with himself, it was one of the things he liked about her. When there was still no reply, however, he told the cab driver to take him back to the hotel. He might as well waste some time himself while he decided how he was going to handle Jones and Perry. And wasting time was best done with a drink in hand.

Hawk paid the cab driver well when he got out at the hotel, and the man sped off, leaving him alone. He turned and walked quickly inside, but he couldn’t resist glancing over toward the pool. Just passing through the lobby of the hotel as often as he had, he had seen his fair share of hot women, and he hoped to see a few of them basking in their bikinis next to the water.

But what he saw this time caused him to stop dead in his tracks.

There was Kathryn, stripped down to a scorching hot red bikini, clearly flirting heavily with a man beside the pool. To make matters worse, the man in question was muscular and toned, his abs and muscular chest perfectly defined. At that moment, Hawk didn’t know what came over him.

He didn’t know what Kathryn thought she was doing, but it wasn’t going to be that guy. He would make sure of that.