Adored (Masters and Mercenaries #8.5)(58)

He grinned. Such a brat. “See that it continues to. I’m going to miss you while I’m gone. Why did I talk you into going back to school?”

He’d tried to convince her to come with him, but she was in the middle of saving some tenants from their evil landlord or something. That was his Laurel.

“I believe at the time you hoped I would find someone younger and less broody to turn my attentions to.”

He’d been an idiot. “I’m sure that wasn’t it at all. You stay safe and I’ll call you after we land.”

“Bye.”

He hung up as Sharon looked in from the doorway. “Mr. Bradford, you have a very insistent man in reception. He does not have an appointment.”

He hit send on his laptop. The contracts were in place and all negotiations were finalized. He’d just billed one very lucky company a couple of thousand hours. Damn, he was looking forward to that check. He might expand. Maybe it was time to think about taking on a couple of associates. He would keep the core clients for himself, but he could use some help around here, and Laurel was far too happy making the world a better place to ever come and help him sue people for cash. Lots of cash. Heaping wads of lovely cash that he was going to need because babies cost money.

Babies. He’d started to think about babies. Not just the singular. Laurel had a big family. She would want one for her kid. After the long talk with his brother and spending a few days with him while he got ready for the trip, he’d kind of turned around on the sibling thing. Flynn was cool and he seemed to truly care about Chase. He’d been on the phone with Chase, too. They’d talked about handling his problems. Mitch had told him about some of the things that happened to him in school. They’d agreed that Chase should come out to Dallas and spend some time getting to know Mitch during the summer.

After their father…

He wasn’t thinking about that now. He would have to later on today, but not now.

“Flynn is going to be here to pick me up any minute now. I’ve got to be at the airport very soon, so it’s going to have to wait.”

Sharon shook her head, that brown helmet of hair not wavering at all. It was solidly sprayed down. “I’ll tell him.” She turned. “Mr. Dixon, he cannot see you now and you’re going to have to leave. As soon as the boss goes, I’m heading out of here. My grandson has a baseball game and he forgot his favorite bat. I have to get it to him.”

Dixon? What was Patrick Dixon doing here?

He took a step back when he realized the man charging into his office wasn’t Patrick. This was a big man, much bigger than his slender, intellectual-looking brother. He was messy, his eyes red, as though he’d gone days without sleep.

Harvey Dixon.

“Sharon, call the police and then get out of here.”

Harvey Dixon shook his head. “No, you don’t have to do that. Or maybe you should. He’s not going to stop. He’s going to keep going until one of us is dead. Are you Mitchell Bradford?”

He wished he was someone else. Someone who carried a gun. That might come in handy right now. Hopefully someone from McKay-Taggart was currently watching his security feed and would be on hand soon.

“That depends. You still planning on murdering me?” He didn’t see a gun in the man’s hand. Both hands were empty, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pull one lickety-split. “You should know I sent off the contracts. They’ll be signed in a few minutes and filed with the court system. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Contracts? For what?”

Great. He was delusional, too. Maybe he should keep him talking until the cops got here. “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Dixon, and we can have a talk.”

Or the minute the f*cker sat down, he could clock him with his umbrella. Except it was sitting in the stand out in reception because Laurel had put it out there along with a pretty coat stand she’d found.

Laurel’s OCD problems were going to be the death of him. If she’d simply let him toss things wherever he liked, there would be an umbrella on the floor right now. If he lived he was so going to spank her pretty ass.

Harvey—who needed a shave—shook his head. “No. I think we should go somewhere else to talk. He could be behind me. By now he knows I got out.”

“Out?”

“Of the prison he locked me in while he was setting me up.”

“I thought you were in rehab.”

“I have never touched a drug in my life. Never. My brother made it look like I did and he somehow convinced Frances I was in danger. This is all about the company. Mr. Bradford, I never meant you harm.”

What the hell was going on? “I was told you were trying to kill me because I’m the lawyer pushing through the sale of a certain solar energy technology you feel like you pioneered.”

“I toyed with it in the past. I will admit that, but I haven’t touched solar in a few years. This isn’t about solar. This is about money. I’ve come up with a device to measure domestic power consumption. It’s an inexpensive device that measures energy pull.”

Mitch wasn’t following. “Energy pull?”

Harvey paced, his boots dragging the floor. “Homes waste incredible amounts of energy from appliances that bleed it. A refrigerator that doesn’t work properly, a laptop that pulls energy even though it’s fully charged and off but plugged in. My device could help people figure out what needs fixing and what to unplug completely when it’s not in use. People simply pay their energy bills without discovering where they’re wasting the most. And they could fix that problem with one machine that reads the electrical currents. They wouldn’t even have to walk through testing devices and plugs. I can do it all from one fuse box.”