Sweet Child O' Mine (Masters and Mercenaries #8.1)
Lexi Blake
Chapter One
Ian Taggart frowned as he looked at his childhood friend. Sullivan Roarke had grown up with Ian, Alex, and Sean. He’d worked the same shitty jobs Ian and Alex had worked for the same shitty pay. He’d given Ian some of that pay when Ian had a hard time keeping a roof over his and Sean’s head. Sully had never asked for payback.
Until today.
“So what you’re telling me is this douchebag lets you film his life and people watch it? Like actual living people who breathe and shit.”
Alex, who was sitting beside Sully, groaned. “Ian hasn’t developed tact in the decade or so since you last saw him.”
Sully sat back with a wry smile on his face. “I wouldn’t expect him to. And we don’t call Hoover the douchebag. We like to call him the talent.”
“Which only proves you have no understanding of the word.” Tact was useless in Ian’s mind.
“Perhaps, but I’ve made a lot of money off Kendalmire’s Way. The network recently reupped us for three years. Do you have any idea how unusual that is? I’ve been in this business for a while now and this show is my goldmine. If I can get six or seven years out of this show, I’ll be set for life and I won’t have to do reality shows anymore. I’ll be able to move into scripted TV, which is where I want to be.”
Thank god. He’d worried that Sully had lost his damn mind. “So you don’t particularly want to film douchebag rich kids who think they’re DJs and their blonde model girlfriends, who shop and prove the American education system has completely failed?”
Sully chuckled. “Not particularly, but then I suspect you’ve taken on some jobs that weren’t agreeable for the sake of money.”
Oh, he’d saved a few people who he would rather have strangled. “True.”
“So from what I understand you have to run this by the rest of the team before you take a case?” Sully asked. “I didn’t know that or I wouldn’t have brought Hoover in today.”
Normally, he would present the case to the team and they would decide to take or reject the assignment and who was the best operative to work the case, if they agreed to it. “You didn’t just bring Lord Douche. You brought all his douche minions, too.”
“The good news is apparently none of them eat because Charlotte offered them cookies and they looked at her like she was crazy,” Alex offered. “That’s in your favor, Sully. If any one of them had touched Ian’s cookies, he would have thrown them down an elevator shaft.”
They were his freaking cookies. Sean had recently brought in an assistant pastry chef at his restaurant, Top. Ian was a principle investor so he tended to treat Macon Miles like his own personal bakery. Adam’s baby bro didn’t seem to mind. He’d kept Ian supplied with sweets. Ian was caught in a never-ending cycle of pain. He got nervous about Charlie giving birth and he ate. He got worried that he was going to end up as big as Charlie and with no actual babies coming out of him, so he worked out. He then worried he was working out too much and neglecting Charlie and he reached for the cookies again.
He was going to be so freaking happy when the demons were all born and life could get back to…
Yeah, he wasn’t sure what normal was anymore.
He really wanted one of those cookies followed by a couple of rounds of punching the shit out of someone in the ring he’d set up at the new Sanctum facility. Or he could punch Hoover Kendalmire. That would be fun, too.
“We’re taking the case, Sully,” Alex assured him.
They were. Because he owed Sully for all those precious ten dollar bills he would slip to Sean for school lunches and for showing up with pizza right about the time Ian’s paycheck would run out. “How many times has he been assaulted?”
“Yesterday makes three. It was a really close call. Someone took a shot at him. We have it on camera,” Sully explained.
Ian had already looked over the footage. Hoover and his model girlfriend Brie had been filming their very high-end picnic when someone had taken a shot at Hoover with a high-powered rifle. Unfortunately, they’d only managed to hit the bottle of Cristal that had then splattered all over Brie’s overpriced shirt and she’d thrown a fit. She hadn’t been pissed someone had nearly taken off her boyfriend’s head, but damn she wanted to hurt whoever had ruined her designer wear.