Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(8)

“She won’t lose her family if things get rough,” Charlotte promised. “She’ll still trust you. She won’t trust him, but that’s all right because they don’t have a relationship.”

He would be the bad guy if it came down to it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t played that role before. He nodded Charlotte’s way. “We’re not even friends. I’ve seen her at the club, but we’ve never played. We’ve said maybe twenty words to each other.”

Hello, Sir. I was hoping we could sit and talk and maybe discuss a scene between us.

So sweet and polite that his dick had hurt as he’d turned away. But he’d done it. And he would do it again. He would walk away from her at the end of this and he wouldn’t look back.

“All right,” Will said. “We understand this could be a long-term assignment. This is a twenty-four seven thing. I expect you to eat, breathe, and sleep this job for the next eight weeks. That’s how long we think they’ll take to make the decision whether or not they’re going to retry Vallon. If it goes past that, we’ll renegotiate. I’ll have Moneybags here write a check and Taggart can pay you upfront if he wants to.”

“And if she dies, I’ll kill you myself,” Bridget promised, her hand resting on her swollen belly as if the child she carried agreed with her.

“I’ll do my best and I’ll get started right away,” Remy promised. “If she asks, I’ll explain to her I’m putting my house up for sale and I need a place to stay.”

It wasn’t a lie. His house would be on the market, so it would be perfect to have a place to hang while the real estate ladies did their thing.

“So you’ll do it?” Laurel asked, her eyes wide and pleading. Pleading for him to save her sister. He remembered how kind she’d been to him when she’d been his client. She never complained, included him in meals when she could, was always the perfect lady. Lovely manners, well-educated.

Very much like her sister, though he doubted Laurel would ever put her family through what Lisa was. Laurel Daley Bradford would have locked herself away in a heartbeat if it saved her family a moment’s despair.

“Yeah, I’ll do it. I promise I’ll make sure no one gets close to her.” No one but him. He wouldn’t go into this planning to jump into her bed, but if it came up, well, he would be open and honest with her and if she still let him in, it wasn’t like the wolf to leave the henhouse untouched.

As Charlotte started talking about the basic contract, Remy sat back and hoped his new client had better sense than he did.





Chapter Two


Lisa stared at the bank statement as though the numbers would change. Maybe if she willed it so, the decimal would move to the right and add some zeroes while it was at it. A lot of zeroes. She needed them since she’d been out of a job for over six months now. Stupid Jimmy and his stupid criminal activities.

She was supposed to be self-sufficient. She was twenty-nine years old and borrowing money from her siblings to pay for her apartment. They didn’t know it, but she’d already turned in her car. The apartment was a deal breaker though. Moving wasn’t an option. The notion of downgrading had been met with the idea of moving her in with Lila. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her sister, but Lila had a boyfriend who creeped her out, a boyfriend who looked at her like he wouldn’t mind playing around on the side.

She’d mentioned it to her sister, who told her she was as paranoid as Bridget.

What the hell was she going to do?

You know there’s a job waiting two stops over just for you. You can take the train. There’s a nightly buffet so you don’t have to pay for dinner and you’ll get at least one meal every day you work. The solution is there. You’re too proud to take it.

You’re too ashamed to take it.

This was not where she thought she’d be after working her ass off to put herself through college. She was supposed to be the girl who picked herself up by her bootstraps, who got through everything with a smile on her face, who didn’t need any help.

She thought she’d be married by now, happy in her career, maybe a baby on the way. She was supposed to have found her dream Dom at Sanctum and settled into pure bliss.

Life hadn’t worked out the way she’d thought it would.

Sometimes she wondered if her mother had ever stood in this place and decided what the fuck. Life sucks. Let’s do some drugs.

Wondered? Hell, she knew that was what her mother had done. Her mother had made that choice on a daily basis.

Would she? Would she finally find that place where there was nowhere left to go?

Or she could stop feeling sorry for herself, tell the world to fuck off, and go take the job where she would make a bunch of cash.

It wasn’t like she would be stripping. She would simply be making drinks for men who were watching other women strip. That was all. Well, it would likely go hand in hand with fending the boss off on a nightly basis.

Jai, too cool to have a last name, had offered her the job two weeks ago. He lived in the building and they’d gotten to talking one day in the laundry room. Well, she’d been doing laundry. He’d been smoking outside.

Maybe he hadn’t even been serious. Maybe she would walk into the subtly-named Cherry Pies and Jai would laugh and say she obviously didn’t belong. He would tell her she was far too smart to end up in a strip club and hey, go find yourself another accounting job.