“You haven’t checked the voice mail on this phone,” Riley said, setting the phone on her dresser and striding over to sit next to her. “That’s your old phone. I might not have turned it off when you asked me to.”
“Did you forget? I knew I should have asked your secretary. Wait. Does Bambi know how to call and get a phone turned off?” Her brother tended to hire his assistants based on their boob size.
He held his hands up. “Her name was Brooke and she turned out to be not what I was looking for in an assistant.”
Mia felt her lips curl up. The work relationship tended to get messy once Riley had slept with his assistants a couple of times. “Got clingy, huh?”
Riley’s eyes rolled. “I didn’t actually sleep with her. I think I’m getting old. I got tired of having to do my own work because she couldn’t figure out the word processor. She quit after Taggart yelled at her. Well, he didn’t actually yell. He did that super-cold voice thing and told her if she didn’t get her hands off him he would call his sister-in-law and let her take care of the situation, and that might include actually chopping off her hands. I think Brooke believed him. Not only did she not touch his abs anymore, she quit. Now I have a very nice legal secretary named Tom who’s totally in good with the rest of the staff, brings me all the helpful gossip, and makes an excellent latte.”
“Well, I’m glad you figured that out. You’re not getting any younger. It’s time to hang up your manwhore clothes and get serious about making me some nieces and nephews.” Serena would have had her baby by now. Had it been the girl she’d wanted so badly? She wondered how Erin was doing with baby TJ. He would be sitting up by now, probably babbling like mad.
A look of pure horror crossed her brother’s handsome face. “Don’t count on that. I’m not about to settle down, much less start pumping out kids. I’m not that old. I’ve got many years of manwhoring in my future, thank you. Once I get through flirting with Ellie Stratton, I’m going to come home and have some fun.”
“And if you fall madly in love with her?” She’d seen a picture of Ellie Stratton. She was a serious-looking young woman, but there was something about her eyes, a little light that let her know the CEO of StratCast had some sparkle inside her. Riley was going to ruin her life. It didn’t seem fair since she hadn’t been the one to kill their parents. That had been her father, but this was the only way to get to Castalano. Their first target. Revenge was her brothers’ main goal in life.
Was it Erin’s now that she had her baby? Or would she give it all up just to see Theo one more time?
Thinking about Erin brought her back to something Riley had said before. “Why would Big Tag let Erin defend his honor? I should think his wife would do it.”
“I didn’t say it was Big Tag. It was Case. He was a big hit with all the women here, but he let them all know he was taken,” Riley said with a smile. “I think he was going to sic the redhead on Brooke. He said she hadn’t killed anyone in over a year and it made her twitchy. Your man’s pretty funny for a dude who can kill another dude about five hundred different ways.”
“He’s not my man.” Of course every woman at 4L would want Case. It was a tech firm. Most of the men who worked there were like twenty nothing and spent more time in front of a keyboard than at the gym. Case Taggart had probably walked in and every woman in the room had fallen at his feet.
This was exactly why she’d stayed out in the field for so long. She’d known Case was working with Drew, and the last thing she’d needed was to see him flirting with another woman. A woman who would be his perfect submissive, always deferring to her man. His perfect sub would do everything right and never question him.
She kind of wanted to throat punch his perfect sub. Which again proved he wasn’t the man for her. He would likely look down at throat punching. Even though he’d said he liked his women a little crazy. That had obviously been one more lie to get her to sleep with him.
Riley frowned. “I like him. I didn’t think I would. I need you to understand that I went into the first meeting with him fully planning on hating his guts and maybe figuring out a way to screw him legally.”
“And then you met him and you fell for his blue eyes and perfect shoulders?” She was being heinously sarcastic. She knew what it was about Case that drew people in. There was a heroic quality to him. He was a man you could depend on to save you when the chips were down.
If only he’d been the type of man who could have loved her.
“I ended up admiring him,” Riley admitted. “He walked in and he offered to train me. I told him to fuck himself. I didn’t need training. I’ve taken self-defense and I’m not planning on getting in some kind of shootout, so I told him he could take his macho, douchebag, asshole self and find another idiot to dupe.”