Fixing Justice (10 page)

This time it was Carmen who answered in near-perfect English. “He’s at the newlywed’s cabin, checking on the addition. He was here less than half an hour ago. We gave him a basket of snacks for the workers.”

The cabin? Where the hell was that? She knew there were homes further along the main drive where Draegyn and Cameron lived, but she’d never ventured that way on any of her walks. “Can you point me in the right direction?” She was starting to get frantic.

The two women both stood at the same time, waving her into the kitchen with them. “We can do better than that, honey,” Ria said. Picking up a cordless phone she punched in a series of digits and handed it to Tori saying, “I dialed his cell phone. He never goes anywhere without it. If it rings through, leave a message because when he’s working, his hands might not be free to answer. He’ll call you right back.” Reaching out, she squeezed Tori’s arm and smiled, “Don’t fret so! Alex can be a boob at times with that attitude of his!”

Tori nodded at the description with a weary smile as she lofted the phone next to her ear. “Thanks Ria. Carmen. I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.”

“What?” came a thundering bellow through the phone, shocking Tori back to the task at hand.
Oh great
, she thought. Two irritated men at the same time. Why the hell not?

Taking a deep breath for false courage she stiffened her spine and jumped in to the deep end. “Draegyn? This is Tor….uh, Victoria. Sorry to bother you, but…”

He cut off her off in mid-sentence with a brusque growl, “This better be good.”

Really? That was how this was going to go? Well, someone had another thing coming if he thought she was going to cringe at his tone. Two could play that game. “I beg your pardon?” she snapped into the phone. When he paused at her incensed tone, she ran right over the hesitation with aplomb. “You will have to take up with Alex whether the interruption is worth your attention. He wants you. Now! As in right this second.” She stopped long enough to take another deep breath.

“Oh, and Draegyn? This is a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ moment. I suggest you remember that the next time you try to bite my head off.” And with that she pushed the disconnect button, quickly replacing the handset on the cradle. When she looked up there were two shocked faces looking at her. Damn. She forgot she had an audience.

Before she could make excuses for the way she’d just spoken to one of her employers, Carmen and Ria started laughing in big whoops of giggling delight. Apparently hearing her give the high and mighty Draegyn St. John his comeuppance cracked them up.

Looking around with uncertainty, Tori didn’t know whether to go check if Alex had eased down off the ledge or to wait where she was for Draegyn to make an appearance. Neither option seemed all that appealing. The commonly held belief that women were the high maintenance sex was so off the mark as to be laughable! Between Alex the Bear and Draegyn the Cocky, she was pretty sure high maintenance was an understatement.

The housekeeper and cook must have sensed the way her thoughts were going, because they suggested she wander onto the patio and enjoy an ice-cold glass of lemonade while she waited.

Biding her time under the shade of the pergola as the mid-day heat gathered in intensity, she took a huge swallow of Carmen’s amazing homemade lemonade, enjoying the cool liquid with a bit of tart and a jolt of smooth sweetness, as it slid down her parched throat.
Mmmmm
. Twirling the tall glass causing the ice to clink against the sides, she heard the approach of an ATV and knew the short wait for Draegyn’s arrival was over.

She’d be dammed if she were going to jump up and stand at attention for the arrogant playboy just because he’d tried to intimidate her on the phone. He
seriously
had another thing coming if that was what he was assuming. She’d been browbeaten and harassed to within an inch of her sanity and come out the other end of that experience wiser and determined to never allow anyone to bully her ever again.

Projecting an air of cool civility wasn’t easy, especially since her heart was beating out of her chest and a swarm of butterflies had descended into her stomach. Just as the man himself started around the corner on the far side of the patio, she quickly pushed her glasses up her nose. Looking up at his approach while jamming her unruly hair into a tight bun, she was stunned as always by his presence. He was so visually masculine, from the way he stood and held himself, to how he strode through whatever space he occupied, as if he owned it.

One of her first thoughts on meeting him had been that he looked completely normal dressed in a tuxedo. The formal attire and the mystery it evoked seemed a natural fit. Dressed like the jet-setting socialite she knew him to be, he radiated power with a touch of ruthless authority that made everyone, men and women, sit up and take notice. But today, in well-worn denims, dusty work boots, and sporting a very sexy tool belt, he was nothing short of magnificent.
Oh dear God
, she thought as a jolt of awareness followed by panic flooded her system. Why had she imagined a tuxedo would be his best look? Nothing could hold a candle to the sight of his hard-muscled body in a sweaty t-shirt stretched tight across his broad chest, tucked into a pair of jeans that somehow managed to perfectly frame what he was packing under the zipper. The tool belt only made it worse.

He looked - well, he looked smokin’ hot. And she didn’t just mean his temperature. This was a new side to Draegyn. One that she hadn’t anticipated. He obviously was not adverse to hard, physical work and judging by the well-worn look to his boots, it was something he did a lot. He was stomping toward her, removing a pair of work gloves, with a rather stern look on a face streaked with sweat and grime.

She froze, swallowing hard, a hand tangled in her hair, while a flood of heat slammed into her. He looked a little dangerous and instead of taking his dour appearance as a warning, she felt a shocking desire to find out just how dangerous.

Draegyn was annoyed that one of Alex’s temper tantrums was taking him away from the theater room project. Working with his hands was something he loved and was good at. From the first time he’d made something out of scraps of wood in a high school shop class, he’d been hooked. Designing, building, crafting – if it involved woodworking, he was the master.

When his phone rang he answered as he normally would, with an abrupt greeting that was actually a shout of annoyance. He hadn’t expected to hear Victoria’s voice on the other end. Barking at her came from the frustration of having to stop working at a moment when he was in the groove. He had just started to scold himself for his crappy behavior when her voice turned ice cold, and she tried handing him his rude ass on a platter. The lady had quite the mouth, and he definitely didn’t want to come up against her in a verbal confrontation. She was that good.

Victoria’s tone not only left him speechless it also allowed her to have the last word
and
the chance to hang up on him. He’d been churning on it the whole way here. A haughty manner was something he was familiar with and intensely disliked. Thinking she had sounded exactly like his cold-hearted mother had fueled his temper on the ride from the cabin. Typical. Just more proof that Victoria Bennett was like all the other women he’d known. Self-centered, manipulative, heartless.

When he rounded the corner from the driveway and saw her across the patio he detected a defiant bitchiness emanating from her that got his hackles up. She was pushing around that sloppy hair of hers while fearlessly staring him down. Everything about her attitude hit him like a challenge. His blood started to seethe as sparks of awareness fired off in his head. Narrowing his eyes as she turned her head to tuck the hair away, he caught a telltale flutter on her neck that let him know she wasn’t as cold or bitchy as she was letting on.

Jesus. Had he actually just stumbled a bit? Already out of sorts, he continued thumping across the patio, smacking his work gloves against his thigh and quickly stuffing them in a back pocket. In just a few more steps he was standing right in front of her. Between the physical work he’d been doing all morning, the mid-day heat, and the way his temper had been boiling since she hung up on him, Drae was hot and perspiring like crazy. Without a second thought he yanked his drenched t-shirt from the damp waistband of his jeans, pulling it up his chest and over his head. Using the garment as a towel he rubbed his face against the soft cotton before using it to scrub at his neck and chest. Tossing the grimy shirt aside, he plucked his sunglasses from where they hung on his tool belt and pushed them on, all while continuing to glare at the woman who was messing with more than his schedule. Shoving his hands to his hips, he stood his ground, demanding her attention with a single word. “Well?”

His attitude suggested he not be screwed with, but the lady was trying awfully hard to appear unmoved by his king-of-the-world performance. Aside from the evidence of an accelerated heartbeat, she was cool as a cucumber and if his eyes weren’t fooling him, she was also biting the inside of her mouth in what looked like an attempt not to laugh at him. He wanted to wipe that smile off her lips and kiss her into submission.

Just at that moment he felt a bead of sweat forming at the base of his throat and start to slowly move down the center of his chest. Before he could reach up and swipe it away, her eyes found the wet drop and all evidence of an impending giggle were wiped from her face. He watched her sinfully decadent brown eyes deepen in hue as they blinked a few times behind the hideous frames she wore while she studied that slow motion bead of sweat.

Two things happened simultaneously. First, he felt a slight shudder of super-focused awareness along the same path as the trickle of perspiration and second was the way his groin tightened at her gaze. It didn’t escape his attention that with her sitting in one of the patio chairs and positioned as they were, his bulge was at her eye level. It was his turn to focus like a laser on her sexy mouth as his mind flooded with thoughts of how easy it would be to slide his zipper down and release his throbbing dick so she could wrap her luscious lips around his heated flesh. He was thankful to be wearing sunglasses that shielded his expression from view.

“Victoria!” he barked. “What’s this all about? I really don’t have time for any nonsense.”

She jumped slightly at his severe tone and leapt out of her chair. Picking up a glass that looked to be full of nothing but melted ice, she quickly bit her lip and just like that, the tension between them eased off. She wasn’t as sure of herself as she tried to let on and neither was he. Seems they were even on that score.

“C’mon inside and have some lemonade. You need to cool off before you talk to Alex.”

“Victoria,” he growled in warning.

“Oh, give it a rest,” she snapped. “This is agency business and as I said before, don’t shoot the messenger!” With that she turned and made for the house, managing to bump into almost every object that stood between them and the door. Watching her hasty retreat, Drae couldn’t stop from noticing how her backside tightened when she was angry or the way her bland slacks didn’t disguise the lean legs he knew were hidden underneath.

Since there was nothing to do but follow her inside, he was quickly on her heels before the patio door shut him out. The cool air-conditioned temperature inside the hacienda had him walking past Victoria into the mudroom behind the kitchen where he was sure to find a shirt or two hanging on the coat hooks. Tossing the sunglasses aside, he pulled an old t-shirt over his head and began making his way to Alex’s tech-room.

She caught up with him and pushed an icy cold glass into his hand as she hurried along at his side. “There’s a problem with one of your systems in Las Vegas. I think Alex tried to troubleshoot over the phone but got nowhere. I took a call from the security chief and gathered from what he said that the issue is critical.”

Slugging back the entire glass of lemonade in one gulp and dropping the empty glass on a nearby table, he considered what she’d told him and knew right away this wasn’t an ordinary temper tantrum. The Vegas casinos and hotels were some of their most fervid clients. Alex’s techno-wizardry meant he could custom design systems to their exact specifications and could do so on an ever-evolving basis if necessary. The hackers trying to bypass casino security were legion. Keeping several steps ahead of them was a daunting challenge. If one of those systems was in crash and burn mode, some serious shit was probably going down.

“Um, there’s something else.”

He realized she’d stopped walking so he turned around. She looked all kinds of tentative as if she was unsure of herself. Normally, she was a spunky little thing so her sudden change in demeanor got his attention. It also irritated the hell out of him for no good reason. She got to him in more ways than he cared to admit.

“What? What else is there? Do me a damn favor and just tell me everything instead of…” He waved his hand at her and grimaced, searching for his next words. His annoyance couldn’t overwrite the arc of sexual lightening that streaked through his system. So much for keeping his shit together. Around her it was impossible.