So Tough to Tame Page 24

  “Wait!”

  Charlie winced and eased her thumb back from the end button.

  “You’re sure everything is okay? Are you doing well?”

  “I’m good.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve met a cute man, have you? You know how much I love to hear love stories.”

  Yes, she adored stories about men. So much so that she liked to start her own new story every few months.

  “You know, I met somebody at a singles’ night last week,” her mom continued with a happy sigh. “He’s trying to start his own business, but you know how tough that can be. I—”

  “I’ve got to go. But good luck with that.” Charlie hung up before her mom could go on. Her friends in Vegas had accused her of being mean to her mom when she would come visit. They’d thought her mom was sweet and funny. She was.

  She was also unwise and foolish and perpetually unable to see anything beyond the creations of her own mind. Every love was true love, no matter how many true loves she’d met that year. Every man was a soul mate. Every boyfriend a potential fiancé.

  Charlie’s childhood had been a revolving door of new daddies or special friends. Most of them had been mysteriously in transition between jobs and places to live.

  Yeah, her mom was sweet, all right. Sweet enough to never see the truth about anyone or anything. Christ, singles’ night was a big improvement. She’d had two “boyfriends” last year who’d just been con artists working the internet. But the pictures they’d sent had been so gorgeous.

  Charlie closed her eyes and shook her head. She’d been so determined to make a secure life for herself. So determined never to be stupid or clingy or taken advantage of. Maybe she’d gone too far the other way.

  She tried her brother one more time. It went to voice mail. If he was avoiding her, she had no way to track him down.

  “Shit!”

  Now what was she supposed to do? Go to work? Pretend everything was fine? She had no idea who was involved. It might be Keith. Or Dawn. Either of them. The only one Charlie could be sure of at this point was...

  “Nicole,” she muttered.

  That was a beast she didn’t particularly want to poke. The woman was married and having at least one affair, and Charlie had no idea what her husband knew. So instead of tracking down Nicole, she used her phone to look up the address of her brother’s development company. It was a P.O. box, of course. Damn.

  She didn’t see much choice. She’d have to at least drive out to Nicole’s ranch. She certainly couldn’t ask Walker for the woman’s number.

  Walker.

  Her throat went thick and her eyes burned. Walker thought she was disgusting now. Beneath him. And she probably was. It wasn’t as though she’d been totally innocent about what sleeping with her boss had meant. She’d eaten up the attention of getting such an important promotion at such a young age, even though she’d been suspicious it had been more about the sex part of performance than the job part. She’d known she hadn’t deserved that title.

  But God, it had been exciting, being the golden girl for a few months. And knowing that she was just getting started and nothing could stop her.

  And now even Walker looked at her with a sneer. He’d been happy enough to mess around with his boss’s wife, though. Maybe she should skip the ranch and just check Walker’s apartment.

  Her tears dried at the sudden rush of anger, and Charlie slammed the door of her car and took off for the Fletcher Ranch. Screw all these people. It wasn’t her job to protect Nicole’s marriage. Or Dawn’s marriage. Or Walker’s ego.

  Fucking men. Maybe she didn’t need to ask any more questions. What else could it be except that Fletcher and Brad and Keith were mixed up in some shit together and they were screwing every woman in their lives over, physically and metaphorically? The men were either working together or trying to ruin each other, and they didn’t care who got hurt.

  She tried her brother again, then snarled at the road when he didn’t answer.

  She’d been right. She should just open a cozy little shop somewhere. A store that only sold girl stuff so asshole men wouldn’t accidentally wander in. Pretty teapots. Or kitten posters. Or knitted dildo cozies. Yeah. The last was probably the best idea, because she was never going to have sex with a man again. Ever. Not even Walker, who could turn her on with one fucking look and make her come harder than she ever had before.

  “Shit,” she croaked, the tears coming again. She couldn’t even hate him, because he was a good guy. A sweet guy. And he touched her as if she meant something to him, even if she didn’t.

  I always knew you were better than me.

  Charlie pulled onto the county road that would lead her closer to Fletcher Ranch, but she didn’t keep driving. She eased the car to the shoulder and put it in Park, too blind from tears to see.

  Was that what he’d thought? Was that what she’d encouraged him to believe? That she was better than him?

  She wanted to call him. To apologize or yell at him that he was wrong or beg him not to think badly of her. Just to hear him. To know that he’d talk to her. But there was nothing to say yet. She couldn’t even deny what Nicole had told him.

  Charlie wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater and rummaged in her purse until she found a tissue. Screw Nicole’s marriage. Charlie needed to talk to her.

  She drove the last fifteen minutes to the dude ranch with no tears. No panicking. Just a determination to end this awful purgatory she’d found herself in. She’d either get clear of it or go straight to hell. At least it would be over.

  She looked around as she drove past the ranch gates, imagining Walker working here for years. He must have fit in perfectly here, the ideal handsome cowboy to go with the perfectly maintained corral and the pretty flowerpots in the windowsills of the lodge.

  She drove into the small parking area and was met by a blond man in scruffy jeans and a cowboy hat who was toting rope toward the corral. “Howdy, miss. Can I help you?”

  “Hi. I’m looking for Nicole Fletcher?”

  “Sure. If she’s here, someone at the lodge will know.”

  She thanked him with a smile, telling herself he couldn’t be the guy who’d hit Walker, because his nose looked unmolested. She hoped she would run into that guy. She hoped his nose was still twice its normal size and painful as hell.

  The girl at the welcome desk smiled brightly at Charlie’s question. “Oh, sure! Nicole is helping set up for a wedding reception tomorrow night. We’re all super excited about it. Who doesn’t love a wedding?”

  Well, Charlie didn’t, but she always made sure to have a good time at them anyway.

  She followed the hallways of the lodge down to a far room. The place was beautiful, with Western touches like elk-antler chandeliers and dark red carpets patterned after Navajo blankets, but there were signs of luxury in the expensive wood doors and molding. Charlie noticed it all in passing. She headed straight for the farthest doors and the woman’s voice echoing into the hallway.

  Charlie wanted her to be a villain, but when she spotted Nicole in the banquet room, she was laughing with a group of employees as they laid out tablecloths. She wasn’t haughty and bossing them around. They seemed to like her. The conversation sounded like talk among friends.

  Nicole’s laughter died when she looked up and spotted Charlie. There was no mistaking the alarm that chased over the woman’s face. Charlie didn’t need surveillance training to identify that emotion.

  Nicole smothered it, but the woman was no poker player. Her eyes darted from employee to employee, as if she expected them to immediately figure out some secret she wanted to keep hidden.

  “Do you have a minute?” Charlie asked drily.

  “I...” Her eyes kept skipping around the room. They settled briefly on a door set into a far wall, as if she wanted to run. But then she pasted on a smile and chirped, “Of course!” before rushing toward Charlie and pulling her through the doorway.

  “Please just go,” she hissed
as soon as they were out of sight of the room.

  “I need to know why you said that to Walker.”

  “Shh! Just... I was mad. And I’d had a couple of glasses of wine before I went over. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  “So you made up something about me?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes!” Nicole smiled with relief as she led the way to an empty meeting room and pulled Charlie in. “Yes, I was lying. I was jealous that Walker was seeing someone else, and I lied about you.”

  “Yet you brought up my brother.”

  Charlie almost wanted to laugh at the fear that shaped Nicole’s mouth into a surprised O, but it was too damn unfunny. “Your brother? How could I know anything about your brother?”

  “Really? You’re going to pretend you don’t know anything now?”

  Nicole shook her head in a parody of innocent confusion. Her blond hair settled perfectly back into place.

  “You know. Brad Allington? He’s the guy who paid your husband millions of dollars for a piece of land three years ago.”

  “Oh, shit,” Nicole breathed. She hadn’t expected that. She started shaking her head and didn’t stop. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “So what do you know about?”

  Her head shook again. Charlie leaned closer. “Tell me what you know, or I’ll tell your husband you’re fucking Keith Taggert.”

  Her eyes went wide, fear flashing in their depths, but her mouth didn’t open.

  “Okay,” Charlie drawled. “I’ll tell Keith that you were also messing around with Walker.”

  She shook her head. “No. I didn’t have sex with him.”

  “Not quite. Do you think Keith will appreciate that small detail? You’re hoping to leave your husband and snag Keith, right? That’s cool. If he’s open-minded about these things, he won’t mind about Walker.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then another. When she opened her eyes, she tossed her hair back and her shoulders stiffened. “Fine,” she said, sneering, pretending it meant nothing to her. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. What does it matter? Your brother’s an asshole anyway.”

  Charlie smiled. “Finally a little bit of truth. Now...how about the rest of it?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT WAS SUPPOSED to be simple, Nicole had whined.

  Oh, sure. These things were always supposed to be simple. People forgot that life was one giant chaos machine that would insert itself into your plans whether you planned for it or not. So a simple moneymaking scheme hatched among a gang of thieves had turned into a bitter divorce and frozen assets and investment losses.

  “Idiots,” Charlie spat as she sped back toward town.

  She didn’t even give a damn about that. They could be criminal idiots together as often as they wanted to, but their backup plan had apparently been pulling Charlie into the mix for a little temporary ass-covering.

  Before she got close to Teton, she pulled off the road near a Wi-Fi hot spot and sent a few work documents and emails to her personal account. Not quite legal, maybe, but she wasn’t taking any chances with Keith. The laptop had important information on it, and it was company property. If she confronted him at the resort, he could confiscate the laptop before she had a chance to review her emails and documents.

  The question was...would she confront him?

  The rational part of her brain was telling her no. Don’t confront him. You haven’t done anything wrong. They can’t pin anything on you. Just keep your head down. Or better yet, give two weeks’ notice and get out. That rational voice in her head told her that confronting Keith wouldn’t do her any good.

  But the irrational part of her brain, which seemed to make up the vast portion of her mind at that moment, told her she didn’t have to put up with this. That she couldn’t put up with this. That she needed to take a stand.

  After all, keeping her head down hadn’t done her any good in Tahoe. More than that, this time she actually knew. She knew they were engaged in something illegal, and she couldn’t just walk away.

  But, her rational brain poked in to say, it’s only another case of rich-on-rich crime. Those people and their money are none of your business.

  “That’s true,” she whispered to herself as she pulled up to the resort. Rich people stealing from their rich investors. That had nothing to do with her.

  Except that they’d pulled her into it.

  She had no idea what she was going to do when she got out of her car. And no idea as she got off the elevator. And still no idea as she entered her office and closed the door.

  But she got a glimmer when her door flew open a few seconds later and a self-righteous executive manager stepped in. “Where exactly have you been?” Dawn snarled.

  “Out.”

  “Oh, is that right? And did you happen to see my husband while you were out?”

  God, they were back to this again? Charlie did not have the time or patience for this today. Or ever again. “No,” she managed to choke out.

  “I checked the video, you hussy. I saw him go into your apartment!”

  “What?” Charlie shot out of her chair. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Oh, please. If you think—”

  “Lady!” Charlie screeched. “I am not screwing your husband! Now show me the damn video!”

  That snapped Dawn out of her rage. Unfortunately, Charlie was just starting hers.

  “Unbelievable,” she muttered as she brushed past Dawn, who blinked several times and drew her hands close to her chest as if to make herself less of a target.

  Charlie headed straight to the surveillance room. “When?” she demanded over her shoulder.

  Dawn seemed to be regretting her outburst now. “Oh. I’m not sure. It was probably... I was probably mistaken. I’m sorry, Charlie. Just forget I said anything.”

  “That is not going to happen. So either tell me when you saw it or I’ll spend all day looking and I’ll announce to everyone what I’m doing.” She nodded at the man currently sitting frozen in front of the monitors. “Hi, Eli.”

  “Um...hello, Ms. Allington.”

  Dawn snapped, “You can go, Eli!” and he stood and slipped past them. “Listen,” she continued as soon as he’d left. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

  “Just tell me already.”

  Dawn looked over her shoulder as if she were afraid her husband were standing there. Or she was hoping he’d come save her from her idiotic outburst. But no one arrived to offer rescue, and Dawn slumped in defeat. “Around twelve-thirty.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie muttered, “We just can’t keep our hands off each other, I guess,” and pulled up the correct camera feed.

  There he was, giving a perfunctory knock on her apartment door, as if he already knew she wasn’t there. Then he used a key and slipped right inside. “When does he leave?”

  “I don’t know. Someone came into the office. I had to shut it down. I didn’t want...I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  Charlie rolled her eyes and started reviewing at the highest speed possible, but something skipped by in the frame and she had to cut back almost immediately. Keith had left her apartment only two minutes after entering. “Two minutes,” she said, playing it back again. She shot a glare at Dawn. “Even a little hussy like me isn’t that good. Unless there’s something disappointing about Keith you’d like to tell me.”

  “There’s no need to be crude!” she snapped.

  “Are you sure? I feel like yelling a whole lot of crude things right now. Your husband was in my apartment without my permission!”

  “He’s... I’m sure... If...” A hundred different things seemed to be spinning through the woman’s eyes. She closed them for a moment, then nodded. “He’s technically your landlord. I’m sure there was some problem he needed to address.”

  Charlie let her head drop into her hands. “Are there any ca
meras in my apartment?”

  “What? Of course not! What are you talking about?”

  “Just go,” Charlie whispered. “Leave me alone. Please.”

  For once in her life, Dawn seemed to decide that staying quiet was her best course. She stood there for one long moment and then she thankfully, mercifully, left Charlie alone.

  Charlie kept her eyes closed. This place was a madhouse. That bastard had gone into her rooms, violated her space. For what?

  She opened her eyes and looked at the monitor. Two minutes. What had he done? Put in a listening device? That seemed a little extreme even for her paranoia. Sure, she’d considered it, but was that really a possibility?

  Two minutes. Had he been looking for something? She looked at the time code again. It was after she’d called her brother. After she’d left a frantic message for him. He must have called Keith. And Keith had dropped by to look for damning evidence. For her computer.

  Movement caught her eye, and Charlie looked up at the monitor to see Keith’s car pulling into the employee parking lot. She jumped to her feet and raced to her office. The computer was still there. She locked her office door and started backing everything up to her personal online account.

  Screw these people. She was getting out of here.

  She watched the upload marker tick up too slowly. She didn’t even know if anything important was in those files; she only knew that Nicole had said they’d planned to blame her if anything went wrong. What could they pin on her?

  A knock interrupted her thoughts. She glanced at the computer. It was only 60 percent backed up. If Keith opened the door right now... But no. It had only been three minutes since he’d pulled up. Unless he’d raced up the stairs at superspeed, it was someone else. “Who is it?” she rasped.

  “Eli, ma’am.” She had a few minutes yet. She slumped and told Eli she’d find him later.

  Then her mind kicked into high gear.

  By the time Keith unlocked her office door five minutes later, she was ready.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHARLIE KNEW HER hands were shaking, but there was nothing she could do to stop them. Her only option was to hide them beneath her desk as Keith took a seat in one of her chairs.