Chapter Three
Lark finished getting the last computer plugged in and online, then stood up straight, surveying her work. Not bad. You know, except that she was working for Beelzebub himself and the cost would undoubtedly be her eternal soul—but other than that, it was good work.
She let out a breath and pulled her purse off the counter, digging around for her keys before heading outside. It was nearly dark. She’d been too absorbed in her work to notice how late it had gotten.
That meant avoiding that dinner invite might be stickier than she’d imagined. Oh, except no. She might be working for the devil, but she didn’t have to eat his food. There was some kind of epic biblical metaphor in there somewhere, she was sure of it.
She just needed to get home and get in front of her computer and try to decompress from this insane day.
She walked back up the bark-covered path and toward the main house, then paused in the open space where her car was parked. Did she have to clock out or . . . was she good since she was contracted for a specific amount? Oh, grrr. She didn’t know. Which meant tracking Quinn down again.
She didn’t want to track him down. Unless it was to punch him in the face.
She sighed and headed toward the building he’d mentioned was the kitchen, then stood by the front door for a minute before raising her hand to knock.
A woman answered the door, in her late thirties, dressed in a very plain t-shirt and jeans. Was she Quinn’s girlfriend? She didn’t look flashy enough to be Quinn’s girlfriend. Because if he was anything like Cade had been back in his rodeo days, he went for girls who went through a can of hair spray and a pallet of blush every week. Big hair, big lips, big boobs. Men like him took a Texas mentality to the women they went after. Everything bigger. Of course, they had those little waists that practically looked corseted, so not everything bigger.
This woman didn’t have that look at all, but she was answering the door.
And why should she care if the woman was Quinn’s girlfriend? It didn’t matter.
“Hi,” Lark said. “I just need to speak to Quinn for a moment?”
“He just sat down to eat.”
“Oh, well . . . it’s urgent. I was working on the computers, and . . .”
“Come in and eat.”
She looked past the woman at the door and saw Quinn, along with about twenty other people, sitting at a long table with big wooden bowls set in a line across it. Pasta, salad and bread seemed to be what was on the menu, and Lark’s stomach growled, a reminder she hadn’t stopped for lunch.
“I should go. Home. Which was . . . actually what I—”
“Fifteen minutes to eat; it’ll round out the hour. Now come on in,” Quinn said.
Lark stepped inside reluctantly, feeling like she was violating some kind of sacred blood covenant with Cade by breaking bread with his mortal enemy. But . . . the bread was already cut, so there would be no literal breaking of bread. Just chewing of it. And she was hungry.
“Fine. For a minute.”
She came in and smiled at everyone, realizing belatedly that she probably seemed like an ungrateful Bitchy McNasty since she was, in their eyes, turning down a free meal offered by their boss, who seemed to repel none of them.
“I mean”—she smiled wider—“thank you so much, Mr. Parker, I would love to.”
The quality of his smile changed, and she could tell he really enjoyed having her call him Mr. Parker. Having to be nice.
She could just announce what a horrible person he was to everyone in the room, but something stopped her.
I’m the only one who knows for sure . . .
She hated that. Hated that his words had managed to take root somewhere inside of her. Hated that it all made her pause.
So instead of saying anything, she sat down at the far end of the table from him and started to fill her plate up with food.
Quinn made introductions around the table. The woman who’d answered the door was Sandy, a woman hired on to teach the boys. Everyone there was a teacher of some kind, specially trained to handle difficult children.
“Coke?” he asked.
She arched her brow. “Coke, huh?”
“Not a drop of anything harder on the premises,” he said. “We have a lot of boys coming here who have a tendency to get in some serious trouble. I’m not bringing trouble to the grounds.” He picked up his glass and took a sip of what looked like water, then set it back on the table. “Plus, I’m an a*shole when I’m drunk, so it’s good to keep it away from me too.”
Her lips twitched. She was tempted to ask if he’d been drunk the day he’d screwed up her brother’s life, but again, she held back.
“Yes, I’ll have a Coke. Diet if you have it.”
“That we do have. Diet pairs nicely with pasta.”
She laughed reluctantly, and everyone at the table chuckled. After that she kept quiet and listened to everyone else talk. About the plans for the ranch, the boys who would be coming soon, how the teachers were going to handle particular situations.
She had to hand it to Quinn. He’d brought on a team of serious experts, and he himself was clearly pretty well-researched in ways to handle troubled youth. She hadn’t thought for a second about the implications of having beer on the premises, but everything Quinn was doing with the property was exceptionally cautious.
Damn him. She couldn’t fault him on this. Or the project at all. It was shockingly decent for a man who’d supposedly deliberately sabotaged a competitor’s ride.
Although, there had been no way of knowing the extent of the damage a spike under a saddle might do. The idea had been to shorten Cade’s ride, she was certain, not to shorten his career, and nearly his life along with it.
No, she knew that. But it didn’t take away the fact that that was what had happened. That Cade’s career was over, and that he was in pain every day of his life.
Her spaghetti suddenly tasted like glue.
She put her fork down and stood. “Thanks for dinner,” she said. “It was really nice to meet all of you. Really nice. See you tomorrow.”
She stood and walked out of the building, knowing she seemed abrupt and weird and maybe even rude, but not caring so much right then.
She started fishing for her car keys, lost somewhere in the bottom of her purse, muttering curses as she did.
“Hey, what the hell?”
She whirled around and saw Quinn standing there. “Oh, what the hell? Sorry, I just realized I was eating with a man who nearly killed my older brother.”
Quinn’s head jerked to the side like she’d slapped him, the impression of her words as clear on his face as a red handprint. “Killed him?”
“He almost died. Did you not know? He lost almost half of his blood because that damned horse ripped through all that muscle and took out an artery in his leg. He broke four disks in his back and three vertebrae. He’s as stiff as seventy-year-old man on a cold morning—do you know what that does to his pride? He won’t say that, but it does. It kills him inside whenever he has to ask for help, or when he can’t finish a day of ranch chores. He hates it when Cole gives him easier stuff, but can’t say no because he knows he has to take it. That’s what you’ve done to him. That’s what you did. All for a win. Was it worth it? Did the top spot on the leaderboard feel good? I hope it did, because it was the last one for you. Fitting, since it was the last one for him too.”
“Hey, look, that’s shit. I’m sorry if that’s how bad off he is, but I didn’t do it. There’s no proof now, there was no proof then.”
“Then why are you barred for life?”
“Because, honey, I’m bad blood, or did you not get the memo?” He stepped out of the pale light coming from the porch and into the shadow. “I’m not one of them. I never was, I never will be. Cade Mitchell is, though. Golden boy. And it’s much easier to believe his word than mine.”
“What makes you bad blood?” she asked.
“Some people are just born with it. They can never be good enough. They can never belong. Born to screw up. Born to take the least honorable path, that’s me. It’s always been me. Ask my family about it sometime. I walked onto the rodeo circuit, a nobody from the East Coast who wasn’t a part of any family anyone had heard of. Dark skin and a bad attitude. Hell, baby, they didn’t want me around. They never did. This was all very convenient for them, and I am a popular scapegoat.”
“I don’t think any of that’s true.”
“What? You don’t think they made any prejudgments about me? You’re wrong there. Whether it is my skin, or my criminal record—and I do have one, I won’t lie—they did. And I was the most popular guy to hang out to dry.”
“That’s not why Cade never liked you. He said you were an arrogant, mean son of a bitch with an attitude problem that wouldn’t quit and . . . well, he said you probably have a . . . a”—her cheeks burned, but she forced the rest out anyway—“a small dick under that big belt buckle. So there.”
Quinn chuckled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, he’s actually right. Except on one score.” He leveled his gaze on her, and even in the dark, she could feel the intensity of it. “I’ll let you guess which one it is.”
Her face burned hotter and her eyes drifted to the point below his waistband, which was, thankfully, obscured by the darkness. She only hoped that lapse, that moment when she’d looked, without thinking of course, had gone unnoticed by him. “I can’t think of what it might be.”
“Do I seem nice to you?”
“No.”
“Humble?”
“Not in the least.”
“How’s my attitude?”
She swallowed. “Bad.”
“Then I think you know the answer.”
“Sick. Men are sick,” she said.
“You said it, honey, not me. I don’t have very much in the way of honor, but I’ll defend what I’ve got.”
“Well, congratulations on your penis.”
He laughed, and not that kind of superior chuckle, but a real laugh. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. I expect I ought to let you get back home now.”
“Yeah. I expect. Look, we’ll be able to do this as long as I don’t have to deal with you very much. I do like what you’re doing here, but I don’t like you. I can’t. I suppose you understand that.”
He nodded once. “Sure. See you tomorrow.”
“Right. Well.” She waved and turned away from him.
Quinn shoved his hands in his pockets and watched Lark walk back to her car. The conviction in her voice when she’d been talking about Cade had been a surprise. It made him wonder if everything about the injury was true. If it really had been that bad.
But he had to find out for himself. Cade had been so willing to chuck Quinn under the wagon that it made him suspicious. Blame like that was only useful when you were trying to cover your own ass.
Otherwise, why point the finger so vehemently? He would find out for sure and go from there. He knew one thing. He knew that no matter his physical state, he was going to make Cade clear his name.
And if he wouldn’t, Quinn wasn’t above making the other man’s life a little more hellish.
Sure, it was petty. Sure, Cade had already lost a lot. But he’d stripped everything from Quinn, for no reason at all. He’d left him with nothing. Because the rodeo had truly been his whole life.
And a man with nothing but time on his hands was a very dangerous thing.
Cade Mitchell would discover that soon enough.
Lark put her car in drive and pulled away from the property, skidding on the gravel, in a hurry to put him behind her.
She had a smart mouth on her. When Cade had talked about his little sister in the circuit, he hadn’t mentioned that. He’d made her sound like a girl. Sweet and vulnerable. But she was a woman who packed a punch. A woman with some pretty intense loyalty.
If it came to it, loyalty like that could always be turned. Twisted.
And at the moment, he wasn’t feeling like that was too far beneath him.
Hell, very few people seemed to think anything was beneath him. Might as well prove them all right.
***
“How was work?”
Lark jumped while closing the front door and ended up slamming it a lot harder than necessary. Cole was standing there looking fatherly. So annoying.
“Good,” she said. She would leave out the part about Quinn Parker being her boss. It was a big part, but it was the one that made her look stupid and a little like a turncoat, so she was keeping that on the down low. “I set up an entire computer lab. I’ll be working on getting all the right things installed on all the computers over the next week. It’s a ranch for troubled youth, so I need to get a lot of safeguards on the computers, and I’m just going to assume the little punks are computer hackers. It will make my life more interesting, and it will keep there from being any breaches in security once things get going.”
“No porn on the premises?”
“That’s the idea. And no unauthorized contact via computer. Which seems archaic, but these kids have been removed from bad influences by their parents, by and large, so contact through email, text, whatever, that’s not happening.”
“Smart. Are you sure you’re going to be safe over there with a bunch of hooligan-type kids?”
“Hooligans? Really?”
“Riffraff.”
She rolled her eyes. “If anyone offers me a cigarette, I’ll say no.”
“I am kind of serious, though. I want to make sure you’re safe.”
“I’ll be safe. Actually, I met most of the staff tonight. There are cowboys that are going to guide the kids through the ins and outs of ranch work—teachers. One is a survival guide, and he’ll be taking them on hikes.”
“Sounds . . . good.”
“Yes. It does. And legitimate. Nothing sketchy. I did a good job.” She wasn’t just lying by omission; she was lying like a rug. And she hadn’t really intended to do that, but it had kind of come out, and now it was too late to take it back. Anyway, she deserved a little respect from Cole. She was a grown-ass woman and all that.
“I’m sure you did.”
“You are not. That’s why you were waiting by the door to pounce and ask about my day.”
“You are late. You’re not getting worked too hard, are you?”
“Nope. I got fed. I ate with the teachers.”
“Sounds . . . good,” he said again.
“It is.”
“What’s good?” Cade was standing in the kitchen doorway, a bottle of beer in his hand.
“My job,” she said, her face heating. Because she felt like a jerk. Because what had seemed okay a moment ago didn’t seem so easily justified with her brother standing there. “It’s going well. Everything is legit. Cole was sure I’d done something really stupid.”
“I never said that.”
“You pretty much did. Because let’s be honest, Cole—you think I can’t make my own decisions.”
“I never said that either.”
“But you think it.”
He let out a heavy breath. “Lark, I’m sorry, but you’re my baby sister—”
“Who is twenty-damn-two, thank you very much.”
“And you live at home.”
She winced. “And you want that to change?”
“Hell. No. I’m just saying, you’re still under my protection, Lark, and I take that very seriously.”
“Cole.” Cade shook his head. “She’s not a kid. You have to ease up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Cole pushed his hat back on his head and scowled. “If you want to act like I’m a tyrant, then give me a chance to act like a tyrant. Fine, I don’t think you know a damn thing about the real world. I said it. So I worry about you now that you think you’re just going to go out into it.”
“I’m down the street,” Lark said. She was angry, angrier probably because she’d effed up and gotten tricked by Quinn. Because in some ways, Cole had been right, and she should have asked for his help, but because she hadn’t she was in an impossible situation. “And anyway, I deal with people online all the time for the business. I know how to conduct myself.”
“Virtually,” Cole said.
“Knock it off, a*shole,” Cade said, coming to stand beside Lark. She almost laughed. Because Cade had given her a hard time about the same thing not that long ago, but obviously he wouldn’t let Cole do it too. And because she didn’t deserve to have Cade defending her.
“It’s fine.” She looked at Cole. “It’s fine. Cade, Rockstar me.”
Cade rolled his eyes and went back into the kitchen, returning a moment later with her favorite energy drink in hand. She lifted it and smiled. “Thanks. Now I’m going upstairs to recede into my virtual world like the little socially challenged creature I am. Feel free to hang out down here and talk about how incapable I am. I’ll be resting up. For that job thing I have that I got on my own and that rocks. Oh, and did I mention that I’m making really good money? Because I am.”
She turned and started to head up the stairs.
“Lark.”
She turned and looked down at Cole. “What?”
“Sorry. I’m overprotective. I can’t turn it off that easily.”
She flicked the tab on the soda can. “Right. I know. Thanks.”
“Seriously, don’t be mad at me, please. Or I will send in the baby to give you kisses.”
“Ohhhh . . . fine,” she said. “But I’ll take kisses from my niece any time.”
“I knew I would get you.” He smiled, a little sheepishly, and some of her annoyance disappeared.
“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’m going now.” She continued up the stairs and into her room, closing the door behind her and pressing her computer’s on button while sinking into her chair.
She knew Cole meant well, but honestly. She wasn’t a kid. She put her feet up on her desk and grimaced. Okay, maybe she still acted a little like a kid sometimes. She slowly lowered her feet back to the floor.
But then, there were a lot of people in her particular field who were like her. She was a computer geek, but she also made her money with computers, so it was acceptable. She clicked the icon for her favorite game and started loading up a campaign that was already in progress. Before she was able to transition from the waiting room to the map, there was a knock on her door. “Come in.”
The door opened and Cade was there, leaning against the frame. “Hey.”
“Hi.” She looked down. She didn’t really want to talk to Cade right now. It would only stab her conscience. But he was being nice, and she didn’t want to be a jerk during the rare moment when he wasn’t.
“Sorry about Cole. You know how he gets.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And while I tend to express it more by busting your chops, I understand how he feels.”
“You?”
“You’re our baby sister. I know it was scary as hell for you to lose mom like we did. And I know it was scarier to lose dad too. To have no one. You were so young, and . . . and I can’t imagine what it felt like being left with just . . . us. But from our point of view? We were all you had and we were just a couple of dumbass guys. Me, a skanky rodeo cowboy, and Cole, with the dysfunctional marriage and do-gooder complex. We weren’t fit for you, Lark. And we knew it. And you have no idea how terrifying that is. So we tried to compensate.”
“You were hardly ever here.”
“I was making good money, and you know it wasn’t just for me.”
She nodded mutely.
“And Cole . . . Cole stayed married to that witch way longer than he should have because he was trying to do the right thing. Because he was trying to be enough.”
“He should have asked me. Because I would have told him to ditch the bitch.”
Cade laughed. “Yeah. Thank God he finally did.”
“And thank God for Kelsey, who generally keeps Cole’s focus off of me.”
“The point is, I know Cole is a pain, but I know how he feels too. You were our responsibility starting at a young age, and sort of like obnoxious parents, it’s hard for us to let go.”
Lark bit her lip, guilt rolling through her. “Yeah, I know . . . I do know that it’s hard. You guys are all I have too. I know how suddenly you can lose family. I know how quickly life can get upended. Something happens and everything changes. That’s one reason I’ve been happy staying here. One reason I haven’t wanted to leave. Because I know family is precious, and you guys are all the family I have.” Her throat tightened.
She felt like a worm. A gross, slimy, sibling-betraying worm.
Except what choice did she have? If she didn’t follow through, she had no doubt that Quinn would show up here, smug and jackassy and demanding payment for the broken deal. She would look like an idiot, and he would get money from her family.
At least this way he wasn’t taking money from the Mitchells, and he wasn’t giving money to them either. He would have to pay a Mitchell for doing damn fine work. That was something, anyway.
“And we love you and stuff, which is where the attitude comes from sometimes.”
“Thanks, Cade.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, well. Don’t tell anyone about this little moment of sincerity. It’ll damage my rep.”
“I won’t let anyone know you were decent for five minutes, don’t worry.”
He winked. “Thanks.” Then he straightened and closed her door. She shut her eyes and listened to his footsteps, uneven and heavy thanks to his limp, as he went down the hall.
Yes, she was a worm. But a worm in a binding contract, so there was really nothing she could do about it.
Nothing but finish the job. And she would do it really, really well so he would have nothing to complain about. When she thought about it, he’d probably expected her to pitch a hissy fit when she found out who he was. Which she had. And he’d probably really like her to quit so he could do his broody, nasty bad-guy thing and come collect money from Cade.
Or at the very least, he’d probably love to find her in breach of contract due to her behavior.
Too bad. He wasn’t going to get the chance. Nope.
She might have made a mistake signing the contract, but he’d made a mistake thinking that she would be the easy way to get to Cade. There was a vague woman-in-the-refrigerator air about it all. Too bad for him, she wasn’t a passive, two-dimensional comic book woman. She was a real woman, and she was going to hold her ground.
She turned back to her computer and clicked into the map, adjusting the scope of her virtual gun and training the site onto a passing zombie.
Oh, yes. Quinn Parker had underestimated her. She squeezed the virtual trigger and leaned back in her chair.
She wasn’t weak. And she would prove it.