“You can growl my name as sexy as you want, but we’re still going to discuss this. There’s no reason for you to sign up to be my friend with benefits and my bodyguard.”
If she thought the two were mutually exclusive, he had a lot of educating to do tonight. But he had to walk that line with care. Too much pressure, too many rules, and she’d spook.
“Looking forward to it,” he said as Carlos Turk strolled over and leaned against his desk.
“Oooh. Cop voice,” she purred. “Are you trying not to say anything personal? Like how hard you had to work to get every inch of that huge—”
His dick was engorged and throbbing. “I’ll see you soon.” It was a threat, and she knew it.
“Looking forward to it, big guy. Gotta go. Spence just took a header into a trash can. Bye!”
He hung up. “What can I do for you, Turk?”
“Heard about you and Remi Ford.”
Brick looked up, ready to meet the challenge. “Oh, yeah?”
Carlos broke out into a grin. “Good for you, man. She’s just what you need.” He rapped his knuckles on Brick’s desk. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks?”
With a frown, he watched the corporal walk away.
Congratulations? She was just what he needed?
Why was everyone so happy for him? For them?
He’d been prepared to fight the island over her. Prepared for their derision, not blessings. Whispered truths that he wasn’t good enough for her. Hints that maybe this attraction got its start before it should have. Hell, at the very least, he’d been sure there’d be barbs about fucking the chief’s daughter.
These congratulations baffled him. But he had bigger problems on his hands.
Namely Remi’s immediate safety.
He took his reports and tucked the printouts into a folder. He’d done a standard run on both Mr. and Mrs. Vorhees. Both had come up clean. But where Camille Vorhees had a few typical brushes with traffic citations in her younger years, Warren was spotless.
Spotless didn’t mean clean. It just meant they were better at hiding the dirt.
A man didn’t go from zero to abusive asshole to attempted murder overnight. There would be a pattern. Other incidents. Other victims. He’d find them and build his case. Whatever it took to get him out of Remi’s life permanently.
But money and power brought with it special privileges. The kind his own father thought could be stolen, rather than earned or born into.
While he dug into the man’s past, Brick needed eyes on the man in the present. It wouldn’t be too difficult to keep tabs on him in Washington with such public work. But Chicago wasn’t that far from Mackinac.
He couldn’t afford to let him anywhere near Remi.
He debated for a solid hour before picking up the phone.
There weren’t exactly a lot of options for a part-time island cop when it came to unofficially investigating a bad guy a few hundred miles away.
But he had one.
“Dad,” Brick said.
“Will! Is it really you?” William Eugene Callan II sounded delighted.
“Yeah,” Brick said gruffly, chafing at the name. “Are you still doing the investigative thing?”
“I sure am. Got my license and everything,” William announced proudly.
A few years back, his father had decided to make good use of all his underworld connections and hung up a shingle as an investigator. Brick hadn’t paid much attention to his father’s latest vocation, but Spencer insisted on keeping him up to date. And while Brick had expected it to turn into yet another scam, his father had stuck with it.
“Then I need a favor.”
“Anything, son. You name it.”
The excitement in his father’s tone irked him. “I need eyes on a suspect.”
“Oh. A job. Okay.” William cleared his throat. “Sure.”
“Is there something wrong?” Brick asked.
“No. No. I just thought maybe you wanted... Never mind. Tell me who I’m looking into.”
“First this needs to stay between you and me. I can’t have anyone on your end getting a whiff of this.”
“Of course not,” his father scoffed. “What do you think I am, an amateur?”
“I’m serious,” Brick said. “Lives are on the line, and if this guy has any cause to believe he’s being followed, he could retaliate.”
“If it helps you out, I’m willing to do whatever. I have a lot to make up for.” William let out an awkward laugh. “I know I wasn’t much of a father but—”
“This is what I need you to do,” Brick interrupted. He filled William in on the basics of the situation, leaving Remi’s name out of it.
It left a bitter taste in his mouth, asking for help from the man who had only ever let him down. But he didn’t have any other options. If he flew to Chicago himself to do the legwork, he’d have to drag Remi with him to make sure she didn’t get into trouble on her own. And he wasn’t putting her in the same state, let alone the same city, as a monster like Vorhees.
No. He didn’t trust anyone else to watch Remi, certainly not his own father. But he could trust the man to watch the monster.
36
Brick’s kitchen was militantly clean, Remi noted as she snooped. Spencer was busy on sales calls in the dining room, which left her unsupervised. Just because she was humoring Brick’s attempt at holding her prisoner didn’t mean she was going to behave herself.
There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No forgotten produce rotting on the counter. No old takeout containers in the fridge.
The bulletin board his grandmother kept inside the door that led to the porch still hung in the same spot. But now, instead of church programs and coupons, it had a grocery list, Brick’s work schedule, and a few personal items tacked up in evenly spaced increments.
The man had always been three steps past tidy, a fascination to someone like her who embraced chaos. One night in bed being deliciously dominated by the man proved to her that the need for control extended far beyond home organization.
Without a hint of shame, Remi flipped over the New Orleans postcard.
Happy Belated Birthday, Will. New Orleans is great! Call me if you’re ever in the neighborhood. Love, Mom.
She’d never met his mother, the woman who had gifted a teenage Brick the beloved cowboy hat he still wore. In all her sons’ years on the island, she’d never once paid them a visit. Busy with a singing career, Spencer had told Remi. Brick didn’t say much about her, but what he did share was painted with a lighter, more forgiving brush than the one he applied to his father.
Remi frowned at the post date. It was several weeks after his birthday, and his mother had only gotten around to dropping him a postcard? Her own parents called her every year at the exact time she’d been born. 5:58 a.m.
She peeked at the Christmas card next to it.
To my favorite ex-husband. Try not to be too bah-humbuggy.
Love, Audrey