Accessory: The Scarab Beetle Series: #4 (The Academy) (6 page)

I turned, shocked to find Blake Coaltar coming around, weaving his way around the couches and settees to join us. He wore designer jeans and a grey sweater with the sleeves pushed up his forearm. His clothes flattered his shoulders and chest, and his slim hips. His blond locks of hair were styled around his face. He was unshaven enough to make him look sexy, like when I’d first met him. He walked forward, the gold flecks in his eyes reflecting the lights around him.

My insides vibrated with something I hadn’t felt in a while. Excitement. Suspicion of danger. Regret. Despite my mixed feelings, there was no doubt about how absolutely beautiful he really was. He could have been an actor or model. The fact that he was smart and had helped me out of jams, even if we didn’t agree on everything, just increased all the feelings I had for him. Including the regret.

In that moment, I felt overwhelmed by disgust in my appearance. Had I gotten so comfortable around the other guys that I could lay about looking like a slob? I’d been sick and the clothes I’d stolen from the others had given me comfort. Now I just felt out of place. It embarrassed me that I looked this way in front of Blake.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, unable to stop the words from tumbling out. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.

“Ouch,” he said, a small smile picking up on the side of his mouth. He strolled forward and walked around until he was in front of the television. “Missed you, too, sweetheart.”

“Mr. Blake stayed behind,” Avery said. “After everything settled, he came back to help us clean up, and then when I discovered the secret accounts, he started working on how to get to the bottom of it.”

“It’s kind of my specialty,” Blake said and bowed his head toward me, winking.

“Blake’s been kind enough to help us assemble a team,” Ethan said. “He brought in Fancy and works well with Avery. Then he suggested we bring in you.”

My lips parted and I stared at Blake. Technically, I owed him favors, as much as I owed Avery and Fancy. So it was Blake that called in Fancy from Florida. Why her? Why drag her into the middle of this?

I put the glass of water down on the coffee table. I bit back the surge of anger I felt at learning about the boys keeping phone calls from me. “The guys might not be so willing to do this,” I said. “If they blocked calls, they probably want to be left alone.”

“Which is why we might need you to convince them,” Blake said.

I opened my eyes wide, surprised at his implication. “You really want them to help? I thought you didn’t like them.”

“This is more important than petty feelings,” he said. He pointed to the tablet. “If they were nosy enough to see what I was up to, they’d be idiots not to check this out.”

“I thought that you didn’t trust them.”

“Again,” he said, “petty feelings. I can’t argue with results. I don’t agree with their tactics. They bring in guns far more than I like.”

I bit my lip. My instinct was to disagree, but then, every instance of trouble we had been in, they
did
bring in guns. “So why ask them now?”

“I can’t do it alone,” Blake said. “We need all the help we can get. If there is that much money floating around in bad areas, that means trouble in Charleston. Our home. We need to fix it. That Corey, he really is brilliant with a computer, even better than Doyle. The others have their own talents. I’m willing to overlook the criminal records. I’ll even overlook this Academy they belong to.”

I made a face, surprised he’d said it out loud. I glanced at the others, who didn’t flinch. Blake had spilled the beans. That was pretty bad. The boys had told me they kept their Academy a secret for many reasons, and it was better not to tell anyone. Blake had found out on his own and now Avery and Ethan knew.

I was disappointed Blake had told the others so much. It also hurt that I was bitter about keeping secrets about the boys, when the boys kept secrets from me, like who had called me. “Maybe you shouldn’t bring up all that to them,” I said. “They don’t like other people knowing about the Academy. Not if you want them to work with you.”

Blake moved around the coffee table and then sat on it in front of me. “Listen,” he said. “I know you and I aren’t exactly the perfect match. We’re oil and lightning. You put us together, and there’s explosions and chaos. I’ve come to realize that.” He leaned in, his eyes wide, the gold subduing into something softer. “But you’d go through hell and back for the right cause. That makes you the most qualified person here.”

“Blake has agreed to lead the team,” Ethan said. “I hope you’ll join us.”

I sat quiet for a moment, considering what they were asking me. Yes, the boys would be highly interested in getting to the bottom of those accounts. They might be interested in helping Ethan and the others. Blake though...that’d be a tough sell.

And did I want to get into the middle of this? That wasn’t the tough question. Could I go home after this, walk away while knowing that some rich fat cats were doing who knows what to my city? No. That’d bug me forever. Two billion dollars could create a lot of damage. And if it was hard for someone like me to find a job before, then it was going to be even worse if thousands of innocent people found themselves out of jobs if Ethan’s company got shut down because of stuff his father did.

“I can try,” I said. It was as close as I could get to agreeing to go along, but I still needed to make sure of some things. “I can’t make any promises about what the others will do. Plus, I need a few assurances.”

Ethan brightened, sitting up and smiling. He slapped his palm against his knee. “Anything,” he said.

“I need to know I can walk away at any time if I don’t like this.”

“Of course.”

“And I want all the details before we do anything at all. I don’t want the chaos like last time. No secrets. No holding back.”

“Obviously.”

“And I want to be in charge.”

Blake chuckled, leaning forward again with his elbows on his knees, looking up at me with big eyes. “Sugar dumpling, you’ve been here two minutes. You can’t just take over.”

“I’m not going to get into a situation where you’re trying to dump poison into a well just because you’re pissed off, Blake,” I said. I didn’t mean to be so brisk, but it was true.

“Oh like you’re any better?” he asked, his voice rising with each syllable. He sat back, leaning on one arm on the coffee table. “Do I even want to bring up when you shot me in the leg?”

Ugh, I couldn’t believe him. Yeah, it was true, but there were reasons. “You lied to me.”

“And you crashed my yacht,” he said. “Do you really want to compare notes?”

The electricity between us fired off. Oil and lightning. I should have stopped, but I couldn’t. “You had us robbed at gunpoint by one of your own employees.”

He stood up. I did, too, facing him off. He kept going, counting off on his fingers. “And you blew up my kitchen! And sunk my new car into the Florida swamp. And dragged me through the middle of a gunfire fight...”

“Hey, wait,” Avery said, standing and putting an arm between us. “There’s no need to yell.”

Blake backed off a step, knocking the coffee table aside. He kneed it out of the way so he could pace near the television. He waved a hand dismissively in my direction. “She was yelling at me.”

“Your point doesn’t change just because you say it louder.” Avery had such a calming tone.

I swallowed the retorts on my tongue, drowning out the burning sensation within me. I was jumping off the deep end again. Axel told me before I needed to learn to control it. I hadn’t experienced it in a few weeks and now, with Blake, he seemed to set things off again.

Ethan stood up and stepped around the settee. The action distracted me from the fire burning inside me that I felt toward Blake. He went to the bar, and stepped around it to the wall of liquors on display, and started making a drink from the selection of bottles. “How about if there’s a co-lead? No action gets made unless you both can agree on it.”

Blake stopped pacing and placed his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes. “Do you want anything to actually get done?”

“I’ll agree to almost anything,” I said, smirking, “as long as it doesn’t involve physically hurting innocent people, or--”

“Don’t bring that up again,” Blake said.

“You’re the one that suggested we bring in Kayli,” Ethan said. He finished making his drink, and swirled the brown liquid in the bar glass before he took a long sip. He walked around the bar again. I supposed there was no need to pay when you owned the ship. “Unless you two can get along, I don’t see how Corey and the others will get along with us.”

“Where are Marc and Raven, anyway?” I asked. “Why are they taking so long?”

Avery’s cheeks reddened. “Well, I told Fancy if we managed to separate you from them, that she give us a chance to talk to you first. She was to get them lost on the island, get held up by security and if they made it on the boat, she was going to give them the long tour.” He picked up his phone and checked the screen. “Seems like they just managed to get on the dock past security.”

“We have to change things if you want me to talk them into this,” I said. How bad was it that they had to work with tricks in order to ask me if I’d help? It didn’t seem like the boys to turn down anything that involved helping people. I faced Blake. “And if you expect me to be able to do anything, I need to be the one in charge.”

Blake’s shoulders dropped. He crossed his arms over his chest, his face shifting from unhappy to calculating. “You think they’ll accept this easier if you’re the boss?”

“Much easier than if you were.”

He looked up at the ceiling, the blond hair falling back away from his face. “Fine. You can be a co-lead.” He righted himself, looking at me, the flash of smile on his face like the fox with a hen in its mouth. “So you and I will be working pretty closely.”

Ethan stepped closer, getting my attention before I could say anything. “I’ll pay for your time, of course,” he said. “I’ve put a bounty on the money. Each dollar that gets recovered, found, and put back, you keep ten percent.”

Ten percent. Of two billion. Seriously? I couldn’t even picture how much that was. “Split between us?” I asked in a soft voice.

Ethan shrugged, the ice cubes in his glass clinking together. “Doesn’t matter to me, as long as the money gets returned.”

It was a ridiculous amount, even split between all the boys if they decided to come along. Surreal. We wouldn’t have to live crammed into a tiny apartment. I wouldn’t have to depend on them at all for money. We’d be even. I blinked and tried to put it out of my head for now and focus. “I’ll have to see about how the others feel about that, but I guess I’m in.”

Ethan brightened, stepped forward and held out a hand. “Then I’d like to welcome you aboard
Lucienda
.”

A DEAL WITH A FOX

A
very checked his phone, and said the boys had come aboard. “I can go get them,” he said. “They’ll probably want to get away from Fancy by now.”

I nodded, looking around the lounge at the luxury surrounding us. “It’ll probably be better if I talk to them alone,” I said. “Just to get a feel. You said some people were going to be boarding?”

Ethan swirled the liquid around in his glass. “Tomorrow. I’m sorry for the short notice. After trying to get a hold of you, tonight was our last shot. At least before the ship went out to sea for a few days.”

“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Blake said. “I need to catch you up.”

That was probably true, but I also needed to clear this with the guys. It was generous of me, since they hadn’t given me the luxury of knowing what was going on until now. I was still pretty ticked about that.

Avery stepped toward the open hallway that lead to the rest of the third floor and the wide marble staircase. The silky shirt shifted on his shoulders, revealing a small glimpse of the tattoo across his chest. In the finer clothes, he looked good. Real good. I was surprised at how well being dressed up could change him. He looked all grown up. He motioned to Blake. “You should talk to her now. I’ll go meet up with the guys.” He looked at Ethan. “Could you go...anywhere else for right now? Maybe it’s best when I bring them up that she talks to them first.”

“I’ll hide out until you give me the okay,” Ethan said, heading toward the hallway and following Avery.

“Shouldn’t take long,” Avery said to us. He did a short wave and then walked with Ethan toward the wide staircase, heading down.

I blew out a slow breath. I stepped away from the settee and over to the bar, looking at all the glasses and dark liquids in bottles and the bowl of ice, dazzled by how it sparkled under the light. I wasn’t really sure how I would convince the boys to agree to this. The money? Would that be enough to bribe them? Corey had tried to tell me they didn’t get much money from the Academy for their jobs, and this...this was much better.

I turned slowly toward Blake. I needed more details if I was going to convince the guys to stay. “So what’s the plan?”

Blake flashed a smile. He walked slowly toward me, his bare feet padding along the carpet. How at home did he feel on the ship? And why was he always barefoot? He and Avery seemed to be at very comfortable here. “Maybe you and I can talk about it over a late dinner?”

“I don’t think we’ve got that much time,” I said.

“It’s a big ship,” he said. “Avery could drag them around for hours.”

“And tick them off before we even get started?”

Blake pressed his lips together. He turned toward the bar, and walked around it. He plucked two short glasses from the neat rows of barware and placed them in front of him. He dropped ice into both and then searched the bottles along the far wall. The display was backlit with white lights through frosted glass, giving everything a glow. “Are you a gin or a rum girl?” he asked.

“Neither,” I said.

“Whiskey?”

“Nope.”

He turned his attention back to me, the gold flecks sparkling with amusement. “Strawberry daiquiri?”

“I don’t really drink.”