The Complete Series Boxed Set (41 page)

Delay.

Whatever Frank hinted at wanting, assuming it was money, just buy time. The lawyer also recommended hiring a private investigator (off the record) to learn more about Frank’s past.
Dylan was already on that one, and Mike felt like they had this. Frank could be managed out of being any sort of a threat. Or even a bother.
 

Feeling like a nine-hundred-pound weight had been lifted from his shoulders, Mike found himself practically whistling as he w
a
lked into the resort’s offices, his pleasant mood cut short by the look on Shelly’s face when he walked in.

She looked a bit sick.

Her fingers dug into the wool of his suit jacket, slipping on the soft material, then tight again as she yanked hard to get him to walk into a small, unused office. Considering their size difference, her efforts were futile. It was like watc
h
ing an ant try to move a brick.

Nice of you to try, but good luck.

“
Sorry. Did that hurt?” she hissed as her fingers dug into his arm and she tried to make him move. He took pity on her and followed, giving her the impression her efforts had any effect.
 

“No. Not a bit. What’s going on?”

“You know some guy named Frank?”

He went cold. His entire body went
frozen
and numb, from scalp to toes,
and when you’re six and a half feet, that’s a lot of frozen tundra.
 

“Is he here?” The look on Shelly’s face told him just how deadly his voice sounded.

Which meant it reflected exactly how he felt.

“
Y
es. Been waiting for an hour. Says it’s important and he’s your uncle.”

“My
what
?”

Shelly gave him a sour look. “I knew you’d never mentioned an uncle, so…I stalled.”

“You’ve been wasting the past hour just hanging out here?”

She looked nervously toward the reception area. “I don’t trust him.”

“Hackles up that fast?”

She nodded, auburn hair spilling over intelligent eyes that nothing got past. “Right away. He’s too smooth. Too oily. Someone like that will talk you out of your pants while draining your bank account, and expect you to make
scrambled eggs and
coffee in the morning for them.”

Mike wanted to laugh. Really. It was funny, and he knew she made the joke to add some levity here, but it wasn’t funny.

And Shelly knew it, too. Because she was serious.

Dead serious.

He pulled out his phone and tried to call Dylan. No answer. Laura. No answer. Machines both times, damn it.

He sent a gr
o
up text, cringing at the thought of Laura’s reaction:

Frank’s here at my office.

And with that he squared his shoulders, tucked his phone in his breast pocket, and quietly thanked whatever deity watched over him that of all the days, today he’d dressed in his best Christian Grey imitation.

He would need all the power-tripping domination skills he possessed to get through this.

Bzzzz.

Before he could take ten steps, his phone jumped like a scared rabbit in his pocket. He took a long, deep breath and checked it.

WHAT?
Laura’s text only needed one word.

Then his phone rang. The second he answered it, the panicked stream of words just didn’t stop.

“What do you mean he’s there? At your office? At the ski resort? Why is he there and not here, visiting with me? What am I supposed to do now? I should answer his email, shouldn’t I? Stupid, stupid, stupid of me to ignore it! Maybe if I’d answered it he would have said whatever he needed to say and none of this
would be
happening. I don’t know why he’s doing this! Why is he at your office? Why did he visit Good Things Come in Threes and talk to Josie and not—”

Dylan’s voice suddenly cut through her rapid speech. “Hey,
Mike
. She’s freaking out.”

“You
think
?” Mike said with an arch in his voice.

“You need me there?”

“I think Laura needs you way more than I do. I don’t know the man. Have nothing against him ex
cep
t
for
the impact this is all having on Laura.”

“
P
lus you have Shelly. I’d want her to have my back in a brawl.”

Mike smiled and laughed, the sound loose and shaky. He’d summoned all his reserve
s
to deal with Frank and hadn’t expected he’d need to talk with
L
aura and Dylan, too. Not like this. Laura’s panic was a wee bit contagious, and he drew on his inner
self
to set himself back to center.
Whatever he was about to face in his office wasn’t going to control his entire family.
 

No fucking way.

Not normally the type to exert that alpha-male bullshit when confronting another man, Mike had to take a moment to collect himself. Channeling Dylan, he thought about which part of himself to tap into. Frank hadn’t done a single threatening thing yet. His mere reappearance and presence unsettled Laura, but one fact
remained
:

Frank hadn’t
done
anything.

Mike clued in on that for a moment. If this meeting was a blank slate, and technically there was no history between the two of them, then this was a pure and simple case of sniffing asses.

He frowned.
I
n man-to-man terms, they were establishing dominance and submission in this first meeting. His lawyer had advised him to keep control over all conversations and to delay. Don’t act. Just wait.

That didn’t mean he had to roll over and beg to have his tummy scratched, either.

One of the advantages of being the size of a redwood tree was that other men tended to defer to him, even if Mike didn’t know what to do with that power.

Right now, though, he knew damn well what to do with it, and as he opened the door to find Frank sitting in the chair across from his massive desk, he braced himself.

Alpha male engaged.

A
s
Mike grasped the doorknob and entered the room with a confidence he found surprisingly easy to fake, he saw the back of the head of a man whom he presumed to be Frank. The man paused, not standing at first, second
s
ticking by.

Half of Mike’s mouth lifted up in a sardonic smile.

I was right
, he thought. Already, the non-verbal power play began. Mike could play this game, too. After all, he had more than a decade of watching Dylan master it in a different setting, with jocks and firefighters and models. If anyone could provide him with lessons, it was Dylan. Funny how it hadn’t occur
r
ed to Mike to do just that.

Get instruction from the master.

It was just as well, for Dylan had other issues he was working on. Hiring a private investigator to understand the inner workings of the man who was in front of Mike, now slowly standing and turning, giving Mike a friendly grin, was just as important.

“Michael Pine. It’s a pleasure finally to meet you.” Frank strode across the room with large steps, as if he owned the office. Mike stood still, knowing that being calm, centered, focused, and—most important—
unflappable
was key here.

His eyes bored into Frank’s as they gripped hands. What they engaged in was less a handshake than an arm wrestling, Mike’s younger, stronger clench finally winning out as he felt Frank’s bones crunch under his grip.

“Hello…” Mike gave Frank a puzzled look. “And you are…?”

Frank’s eyes gleamed with cunning.
Ah, so that’s how it is?
they seemed to say. Mike detached himself from any emotional reaction. One blink could throw him off. This guy needed to be treated like he was dangerous. For all Mike knew, he could be.

Laura’s reactions lately seemed to make it a possibility.

“Frank Stedman, of course.” He reached out and slapped Mike’s shoulder with enough force to rattle a smaller man’s teeth. “Surely Laura has mentioned me!” The look on Frank’s face said he’d be offended if the answer was “no,” and yet the man clearly knew he was on shaky ground.

“Laura has talked about a distant uncle, but said it’s been years since you’ve had any contact…”
Mike
let the sentence hang in the air, his face neutral but eyes lasered in on Frank’s.

No blinking.

“It isn’t as if I haven’t tried!” Frank protested, sweeping his arm out toward Mike’s desk. “
You know Laura,” he said with a conspirator’s chuckle that made Mike’s fists clench. His jaw followed, forcing him to inhale very, very slowly to keep his cool. How dare the man claim to know Laura intimately enough to be so blasé?
 

“Why don’t we sit and chat?”
Frank added, watching Mike carefully, clearly searching for ways to read him. Mike wasn’t giving any quarter.
 

“I prefer to stand.” Mike’s voice came out cold and hard. It grated against his own ears, and yet he let his eyes go dead. This was how he had to play if Frank was going to lead the charge with lies.

Lying about Laura right to Mike’s face put Frank in the dangerous category, al
l
right.

But Mike had plenty of danger in him, too.

“Stand. Hmmm.” Frank broke eye contact and turned toward the massive window, floor to ceiling, that looked out over the large mountain that made up the ski resort. “With a view like this,” Frank said with a conspirator’s c
h
uckle, “I’d stand, too.”

Ignoring the fact that his desk chair faced the same view, Mike clas
p
ed his hands together at his waist and said nothing, blinking evenly, forcing his throat muscles to relax. Silence could unnerve most people.

Mike was good at silence.

Frank was not.

Ten beats went by. Twenty. Frank began to cast nervous glances at Mike, which would have unnerved him on any other day, in any other setting, but instead—to Mike’s
pleasant surprise
—the looks only fortified him. Intensified his resolve to get this man out of Laura’s life and to bring her back to the equanimity she so desperately desired.

Frank was a threat to their happy little life, and that meant he needed to be managed.

O
ne quiet second at a time.

Finally, Frank broke. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m sure you are wondering why I am here.”

Mike decided to up the ante, moving swiftly toward Frank, only needing five powered steps to come within close range. Frank stiffened but did not move.

“I am.” Mike measured his words in centuries, not seconds.
The slower he spoke, moved, thought—
felt
—the more control he could maintain. An inner fury spun
in circles, building an energy within that threatened to burst out of him.
 

He did not like this man.

I
n fact,
hate
might be strong enough a word to apply, because Frank represented something that was rotten to the very core, as if a seed itself were defective.

Frank gave a practiced, tight smile, instantly alerting Mike to the fact that nothing that was about to be said was true. “I’ve lost touch with Laura these years, and I regret it. She hasn’t responded to my emails and I’ve started talking to her friends out of desperation.”

Desperation. Mike would use the word
manipulation
, but semantics weren’t important right now. Narrowing his eyes, Mike said nothing. Let the man stew in his own soup of insincerity.

Frank
was
a little too comfortable simmering there, for he went on, seeming to think Mike was buying this.

“And so whe
n
she didn’t answer my email, I went to her place of business.” Frank picked up a framed photo Mike had on his desk, a shot of the four of them at a huge outdoor festival last month, Jillian on Dylan’s shoulders, chubby fists buried in his hair, a four-tooth smile lighting up the photo. Laura’s hair was windblown and her face ruddy from the spring chill, but the picture was a pretty accurate summary of their messy, authentic life.

He wanted to peel it out of Frank’s hands and hide it. The man didn’t deserve to touch a representation of Laura and Jillie, much less sit here and claim to be the poor uncle nobody would talk to.

“You spoke with Josie,” Mike said in that same cold voice.

Frank’s eyes lowered, his head nodding slightly, the whole thing so choreographed Mike wanted to laugh, a bitter sound that clogged his throat now as he held back.

“I did. Lovely young woman.” He gave Mike a bit of a leer, the kind of look men shared quietly when they talked about women as if they were compilations of soft flesh and nothing more. “
I can see why she would be shared by two men.”
 

Snap.

The thin layer of restraint in Mike gave way.

“How much?” he spat out.

Frank pretended to be offended.
Frank pretend
s
a lot
, Mike thought.
Mike needed to pretend right now, too. Needed to pretend it was a bad idea to beat this man to death and hide his body in the office supply closet.
 

“Mike, I…this is about
family
, not money.”

Mike snorted, heat pouring through his skin in waves, as if someone were dipping him in hot wax.
The rage, the fury, the endless assault of everything out of control whipped up in him, rising to the top. If he didn’t end this now, didn’t run for so long he couldn’t think, didn’t get home to touch his woman and his daughter, he was going to explode.
 

And right now, that meant losing everything that was important to him.

So he offered up something that paled in comparison.

“How much ‘
family’ do you want
?”
Mike kept the finger quotes tight and restrained.
“We both know why you’re here.” Mike strode with purpose to his desk and yanked open a drawer, finding his personal checkbook quickly. Wishing he’d prepared for this, he pulled one check out of the book, the
tick-tick-tick
sound of the paper’s perforated edge like a heartbeat that ended the second he tore the page loose.