Honor Bound (7 page)

“Yeah.”

“Why are you doing it?”

“It’s my job.”

“Yeah, but why are you doing it?”

“I just wanted to see if there’s anything I can…” I trailed off. My plan was silly enough. Saying it out loud made it somehow even sillier.

My dad let out a long sigh and leaned back in his chair. “It won’t do any good. Men like Gentry and Maxwell don’t change. Even if they think they’re being decent, they still live with the belief that anything they want is theirs by default. No one else matters in that equation. If you’re born with that belief, it doesn’t change—even if you want it to. Nothing you do is going to change them.”

I was hit by the words strangely—with an almost poignant realization. That was Sebastian. He didn’t seem like a bad guy. Not really. But he was a Maxwell. And he believed he could have anything he wanted. And that was never going to change.

At heart, he was just like his father.

I felt weird and reluctant and guilty, but I’d been right to push him away. I couldn’t let myself fall for a guy like Sebastian because he would never give me what I needed.

Dating a guy like him wasn’t going to miraculously rescue me from all the crap in my life. It would only bring more.

And my life already had more crap in it than I could deal with.

“You should quit,” my dad said out of the blue.

“What?”

“You should quit. Your job.”

I stared at him in shock. “What are you talking about? I need the job. I need to earn a living.” I didn’t add that, if I didn’t work, the whole family would starve. I was sure my dad already knew that. Drinking couldn’t drown knowledge like that.

“You always wanted to work in a museum, didn’t you?”

“I can’t get the kind of job I want. I haven’t been to college.”

“I thought you were going to try to take classes online.”

“I was. I am. It’s just slow. And it’s hard when you’re already working 50 hours a week, plus trying to help around the house.” Again, I made sure to keep any resentment out of my voice.

“That’s the kind of job you get stuck in. You don’t enjoy what you’re doing, and you’re never valued or appreciated for it. Believe me. Don’t waste your life in that kind of job. It will bite you in the ass eventually.”

That was exactly what had happened to him. It made my heart ache to think about it.

But I was going to do something to make it better. I was going to do whatever I had to do to bring things to right. At least, as right as I could make them.

“We do what we have to do,” I said at last.

“Yeah. I guess we do.”

He swallowed the rest of his beer and turned back to the TV. He’d be in this same position tomorrow morning when I woke up.

He was trapped now, just like he’d been trapped in his no-win job. I was more determined than ever to finally free him.

And the only way to do that was to focus on my mission and put Sebastian Maxwell from my mind completely.

So that was what I would do.

Sebastian

All my life, women had used the Maxwell name as a reason to get closer to me. This was the first time one was using it to get away.

And I didn’t like it.

This wasn’t just some random
“I don’t like rich guys”
kind of dislike. This was personal. Ali had said my name with a sneer one too many times for it to be anything else. The question was why.

I honored her request and stayed away for the rest of the day, but once I was off the clock—well, Gentry’s clock—it was time to put a little of this business sense to good use. I had connections. Tons of them. But I thought that this was something I wanted to try on my own first.

The business was too new for us to have an official office space, so I was stuck using the corner of my hotel room for work. A quick call to room service and a shower, and I could sit down at the computer and do a little checking on who exactly Ali was and what her gripe was with the Maxwells.

And me.

As if being a Maxwell wasn’t enough of a burden in my business life, it had to broach my personal one, too. What the hell? Sometimes I couldn’t catch a freaking break.

An hour later, I was sitting there, and I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. I felt sick, and I was actually breaking out in a sweat. I didn’t know how I should feel or what I should do. I’d invested in some top-of-the-line software that I knew several big security and P.I. firms used, so that I could do some of the work on my own on future cases that required background checks and the like. But, now that I was staring at the report in front of me, I wished I’d never started the search.

In a million years, I never would have expected this turn of events.

Alison Cooper—Ali,
my
Ali—was the daughter of Greg Cooper. A former employee of Maxwell Industries. He was part of the group that had been let go some years ago, and if I remembered correctly, the massive layoff was surrounded by controversy. It seemed as if dear old dad and Ken Gentry were trying to cut expenses and thought that by getting rid of long-time employees—ones near retirement—that they could save a boatload of money.

And they had.

The only problem? They had found some miniscule loophole—one that to this day still seemed suspicious even to me—to get away with not having to pay those employees their due vacation time, 401Ks, or severance packages. I had to hand it to them and their legal team. They certainly knew how to screw people to their own advantage. And apparently, poor Greg was included in that group.

No wonder Ali had a gripe with us.

No, wait. Not us.
Them
. The company. The Maxwells. Not me.

Only, that group did include me.

Shit.

I swiped a hand over my face and tried to think about what I was supposed to do now. Could it really be just a coincidence that she was working this event at Gentry’s? If it was, it was the most outrageously, dropped-in-your-lap coincidence that I’d ever heard of.

“Okay, think,” I told myself as I stared at a picture of Ali that was probably a driver’s license photo. I couldn’t help but smile because, while most people’s pictures resembled mug shots, she somehow managed to give a smile that just made me think…sweet.

Crap, I had it bad.

Standing up, I began to pace, and I had to talk this out—out loud, since there was no one but myself to talk to at the moment. “So her father gets laid off. That sucks.” Walking back over to the computer, I pulled up another search on her father and saw what he’d been doing since the layoffs. After a few minutes, his report was generated, and I pretty much felt sick all over again.

No record of employment.

Great. So the poor guy gets laid off, loses his income and his retirement, and then, on top of it all, can’t find another job. Perfect. Just freaking perfect. I read through his company profile, and it didn’t make sense to me. Greg Cooper was a model employee with an impressive resume. He should have had no problem finding a job after being let go. I mean, sure, he probably needed some time to get over the shock of the whole thing, but from what I could see, he not only had Ali to think of but two other children as well. Why wasn’t he working?

Pacing. Back to pacing. It helped me think.

“So dad is unemployed with a family to feed.” I looked back at the report and did the math and realized that Ali was the oldest. That must have put a lot of responsibility on her.
Some of us really need to work.
Her earlier words came back to me, and the puzzle pieces were finally beginning to fall into place. If I had to guess, I would have said that Greg did not take his termination of employment well, and it was up to Ali to hold the family together.

Dammit. She was young—too young to have to shoulder that sort of responsibility.

And it was all because of my family business. No wonder she hated me.

I was mentally exhausted. Rather than continue to pace, I collapsed on the bed. Ali’s image came to mind, and I closed my eyes to let them linger. I could still feel her soft lips on mine and the way her body molded against me. No, she didn’t completely hate me. A woman as sweet as Ali wouldn’t kiss me like that if she honestly and truly hated me.

She may
want
to hate me.

But she wanted me, too.

Maybe all wasn’t completely lost. Maybe, if I could find the right balance, I could show her that I wasn’t like them. I was nothing like my father or Gentry or whoever else they did business with. The only problem was that I didn’t want to force my presence on her—especially after she so emphatically asked me to stay away.

Not going to happen.

Not only could I not stay away from her because I was attracted to her and she intrigued me, but this new plot twist about her identity was something that I couldn’t ignore. She might not have been a real threat to Ken, to the gala…to anyone but herself, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I just let her run loose all over the house.

An idea began to form in my mind.

I didn’t like being sneaky, and I was certainly not diabolical. And yet, right now, I seemed to have come to that.

***

I agonized all night as to whether or not to call the guys and let them in on this new turn of events, but eventually I decided against it.

For now.

Should things begin to get out of hand or if I found out that Ali was behind any kind of threat to Ken Gentry, then I wouldn’t have a choice.

Please don’t let her be a real threat.

Today, I was going to have to haul out all of my prep-school manners and training. I was going to have to spend the bulk of the day working alongside Ken and going over the schedule of events for the day of the gala, along with the bracketing days. It was not rocket science. Pretty much, if he had handed me a piece of paper with an estimated timeline, I would have been good to go. But apparently, good ol’ Ken wanted to get his money’s worth out of me and have me by his side as much as possible.

Yay me.

The weather was cooler today than it had been, and the breeze felt good as I walked across the courtyard to the house. It was always so damn hot overseas when we were deployed. I used to dream about what it would feel like to have a cool breeze blow just once. Now that I was home and I could finally feel it again, I couldn’t help but stop and enjoy the moment.

“You forget something out here, Sebby?” Ken asked from the doorway and officially killed my moment. I forced my eyes open and had to resist the urge to shove him up against the wall and remind him that my name was Sebastian.

Good manners and basic sense intervened. “No one’s called me that since I was eight, Ken,” I said lightly and joined him at the door. “Just enjoying a beautiful morning.” He shrugged and stepped aside to let me in. I did a quick scan of the activity going on in the house. “Who’s going to be on-site today?”

We began to walk toward his study. “More sound and lighting people are coming in this morning to take care of some of the outside areas,” he said as he walked and looked at his tablet. “The caterers are coming in to commandeer the kitchen and set up one outside in a tent.” He scrolled. “And Cheryl—the event planner—is supposed to be here today with her assistant to check on it all. Why?”

“It’s just good to know who is supposed to be here and why. You’re paying me to make sure that everything is secure and that nothing goes wrong. If I find a gardener in the house when they aren’t scheduled to be here or perhaps a plumber or an electrician, that’s going to raise a red flag. I’m going to need a printed schedule of who is supposed to be here and when.” It wasn’t a complete lie, but it was also going to help me to keep an eye on Ali. I’d know when she was going to be here, as well.

“I’ll print you out what I have, but Cheryl will have a more detailed list when she gets here.”

I nodded and took a seat opposite his desk, waiting to see what sort of frivolous bullshit he had in store for me today. It was times like this that I really wanted to put my foot down and tell everyone to go to hell, but for the sake of the business—and for spending some time checking on Ali—I’d grin and bear it.

He talked for over an hour about business, the company, my father, and how he saw this gala as a way of endearing himself to the masses. So self-righteous. So annoying. I smiled in the right places. Nodded when it was appropriate. And basically wished that I was anyplace but here.

Like with Ali.

That got me wondering whether she was here yet. And what she was doing. When Ken’s phone rang, I said a silent prayer of thanks and stood. “I’m going to do a round of the property.” I spoke in a low voice, as if I was being considerate of his call. “I’ll check back with you in a couple of hours.” He waved me off, and I all but sprinted from the office.

Out in the hall, I stopped to get my bearings. I wasn’t even sure where to begin. Doing the rounds wasn’t anything new, but I want to maximize my time and make sure that everything was on the up and up.

The first call of business, however, was to get a shot of caffeine. Listening to Ken yammer on for so long damn-near put me to sleep. I was going to need to wake myself up a bit before I did anything else. I found a fresh pot set up in the kitchen, and I waved to Gentry’s cook, Martha.

“We’ve got fresh pastries on the table if you’d like, Mr. Maxwell,” she said with a smile.

“Now, Martha,” I said with a grin, “haven’t we been over this before?”

She blushed. She was about sixty years old with a full head of gray hair, and she was big enough that I think she could take me, but her blush made her look much younger. “Oh, you know that it’s not right for me to call you by your first name. Mr. and Mrs. Gentry would be mortified.”

I walked over and poured some cream into my mug and put an arm around her. “You let me worry about the Gentrys. Mr. Maxwell is my father. Between you and me, I’m just Sebastian. Okay?”

She smiled and swatted me away. “Go and grab yourself something to eat…Sebastian,” she said almost shyly and looked around to make sure that no one heard her. “Make sure you grab one before some of those other people come in and take them all.”

Something in the way she said “
other people”
had me stopping in my tracks. “Is somebody giving you a problem?”

Shaking her head, she went back to washing the fresh vegetables that she’d pulled from the garden earlier. “Oh, no. Just some of the people coming and going right now don’t seem to do a darn thing around here except walk around looking for something to eat and drink. It’s not right. I don’t mind feeding anyone, but at least do an honest day’s work for it.”

She had a point there. “Anyone in particular?”

“That sound guy gets on my nerves,” she said and then placed a hand over her mouth.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. That guy annoyed me, too. “Want me to tell him that the kitchen is off limits?”

“No, no, no,” she said, drying her hands. “For the most part, I don’t mind. Like I said, it’s not a big deal. Some of these people look like they could use a good meal.” She wiped down the counter. “Like that event planner girl. The assistant. Ali. She looks like a strong wind could blow her over.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

“I normally try to get her in here at one point in the day or another and pretend that I want to hear all about how the plans for the event are going. Then I ply her with some cake or cookies and tell her that I need her opinion on them because I’m thinking of making them for the gala. She always eats what I give her, and she always says thank you. That girl’s got manners.”

“Yes, she does,” I said, noticing that she’d placed a donut on a plate for me. Great. A donut. There was no way that I was ever going to tell another living soul about it, but I was going to eat it.

And then go in search of the girl with good manners before a strong wind blows her away.

***

She wasn’t hard to find.

And it was only because I started in the last place I was supposed to find anyone.

The attic.

Because of the size of the house, it wasn’t one of those pull-down-ladder jobs. There was a door with a real staircase that let up to the attic. The door was ajar, and so it raised my suspicion. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be Ali. I thought I’d find the sound guy, the lighting guy, or someone like that, but there she was. Where she wasn’t supposed to be.