Sweet Southern Betrayal (18 page)

“No, that was all for me.”

He leaned in close, his voice harsh and cold in her ear. “Well, I hope you got your money’s worth, sweetheart.”

…

Risa didn’t think you could hurt this bad and still be breathing. But the body was a machine and a simple thing like your heart shattering into a million pieces of glass that sliced you open from the inside couldn’t stop it from chugging on.

She sobbed, a deep, anguished sound that wrenched out of her gut and echoed through the silence of the room. It embarrassed her to show weakness like this, to give in to the pain she’d kept at bay for so long.

“Where are the pictures?” The sound of Jack’s voice was the only thing that pulled her back from further embarrassing herself by sinking to the floor.

“What?” She brushed the tears off her face and peered around the room, noting all the different expressions on everyone’s faces. Lucky was stoic and blank, Taylor emotional with tears on her cheeks. Michaela pale and concerned, and Teague dark with fury. But Jack was calm, hard, and firm, but edged with a sympathy that was unexpected and threatened to make her lose it entirely.

“Where are the photos you got for Big Tony?” Jack pulled himself out of the chair and walked over to her, his large form blocking out anything but him.

“I…” Her throat squeezed with the fear that gripped her every time she remembered what she’d done. “I gave him the thumb drive, but I felt too bad about what I’d done. The way it would hurt Teague…”

Jack leaned in close, his voice quiet but firm. “Risa. What did you do?”

“I took the thumb drive from Big Tony,” she whispered, reaching into her purse and pulling out the thin stick of computer data and placing it in Jack’s hand.

“Goddamn it.” Teague wheeled around and stalked over to her, warning Jack off with a glare when he tried to insert himself between them. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

She stumbled backward, only stopping when her back hit the wall. Risa was confused. He’d been inches away from murdering her just minutes before and now his face was a big mash-up of anger and worry—at her, for her.

“You were so good to me. A good guy.” She didn’t know how else to put it than the straight truth. “You were so
nice
. A gentleman. I couldn’t do it. I’d never done anything for him before. I was desperate.”

“Fuck.” Teague dragged his hands through his hair, his knuckles white from the strain he was under. He lashed out, his fist hitting the wall just next to her head. “You can’t steal from Big Tony. He’ll kill you.”

“I know.”

He stared at her, understanding blooming in his eyes. “So you ran. You came here.”

“It seemed like the best thing to do. I needed to tell you about the marriage anyway.” She shrugged, knowing her plans seemed tenuous at best. “I’ll go back to Vegas, get Pepper, and disappear.”

“Well, you’re not going anywhere now. You’re staying here until I can figure out what to do about Big Tony.”

“You can’t
make
me stay here.”

“Oh yes I fucking can.” Teague got into her personal space, doing everything he could to physically intimidate her, and the flutter of fear in her chest testified that it was effective. She’d bet that Big Tony had no idea who he was up against. “If you even think about leaving until I say so, I’ll lock your ass in this apartment. I’ll handcuff you to a bed. I swear to God.”

Now she was mad. She knew she’d screwed up, but he couldn’t hold her captive as long as he felt like it.

“Just who do you think you are?” she said, getting up in his face.

“I’m the guy you fucked and
fucked over
, and I’m not letting you get a second shot when your conscience decides that fifteen grand is worth becoming an even bigger whore for Big Tony.”

She slapped him.

Risa didn’t even think about it. On instinct she’d extended her arm and hit him across the cheek as hard as she could. And she didn’t regret it.

“Well, you’d know all about that. What’s the going rate to whore for Big Tony? Eight hundred dollars an hour?”

She pushed her way past Teague and made her way down the hall to the guest room, where she slammed and locked the door behind her. Risa fell across the bed, letting the tears fall in silent sobs.

…

“Jack. Go away.”

Teague sat on the back deck of the apartment, looking at everything and nothing in the dark of the woods. He lifted the bottle to his lips and swallowed down another gulp of the whiskey, drunk enough not to wince when it burned like hell as it went down. But he was sober enough to know Jack wasn’t going away.

“What the fuck, Jack?” Teague asked.

“I want to talk to you,” Jack said, pulling out the deck chair next to him and lowering his large frame into it.

“I don’t feel much like talking.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

Teague shut his eyes and leaned back in the chair. He knew that voice; it was Jack’s Marine voice and it meant he wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted. “Fine, but hurry up because you’re interrupting my time to get absolutely shit-faced.”

“Glad to see you’ve got plans.”

“I just found out that I got married after being drugged by a woman sent by a mob boss who also happens to be a huge client for my firm.” He decided that needed another drink. “I’ve got all kinds of plans, but I think they’re illegal just about everywhere.”

“She didn’t give them the thumb drive.”

Teague bit back what he wanted to say and merely laughed in his old friend’s face. “Don’t try to make her out to be a saint. That dog won’t hunt.”

“She’s no saint. She borrowed money to put her best friend in rehab from the absolutely wrong guy and didn’t think through how she was going to pay it back. That’s foolish, not mean-spirited.” Jack’s voice was low as he recited his points. “She’s a woman who went to great risk to help you and essentially gave up her whole life to help a stranger.”

Teague felt the weight of Jack’s stare on his face, but he refused to answer. He was still angry and no amount of painting Risa as a do-gooder was going to help.

“She has no way of ever going back to her home, her job, or her friends.” Jack paused, his voice taking on a hint of humor. “And she wound up really married to you in some ugly-ass wedding chapel by Elvis. Poor girl got the worst end of that deal.”

“Bite me,” Teague said, laughing in spite of the shitstorm his life was in. Jack wasn’t wrong, and he was trying to do what he thought was the right thing. “What’s your point? You want me just to forget what she did? Kiss and make it all better?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then what? Because I’m trying to salvage my life here and figure out how to beat Big Tony at his own game.” He wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, massaging away the stress collected there. “As far as I’m concerned, Risa is part of the problem and I’ve got to assume that she’s still working for Big Tony.”

Jack scooted forward, his movement taking his face out of the shadows.

“Do you remember when I met Kayla?”

“Yes, of course.” It hadn’t been a year since Jack had fallen hard for the beautiful doctor and decided to settle back here in Elliott.

“Do you remember how I met her?”

“You picked her up in a bar.”

“The second time I met her.” Jack reached out and smacked him upside the back of the head. “I was working for her father, a man she hates more than anything on this planet, and I lied to her. Not once but over and over.”

“And your point?”

“In spite of my words, my actions spoke louder. Kayla knew what kind of man I really was because of what I did. For her.”

Teague couldn’t deny the truth of her actions, but it was more than his head understanding the logic of the issue. She’d hurt him. Deeply. And a part of him he wasn’t used to consulting was trying to win this argument.

His heart.

Chapter Fifteen

“Have you guys talked at all? It’s been days,” Beck asked.

Risa tore her gaze away from where her husband sat on the patio and looked to her left, where Beck was settling into the empty chair next to her. The light from the fire pit and the low lamps scattered around the lake house at Promised Land farm cast him in a shadow and gave his mischievous features a wicked edge.

The Landons had invited everyone over for an impromptu barbecue party. She’d come with Teague, both of them going out of their way to play happy newlyweds for the benefit of everyone else. It was total fiction because everyone in the family circle knew what she’d done and how angry Teague was with her. They hadn’t taken sides, a credit to how gracious they all really were.

“No,” Risa answered. Things had been achingly strained between Teague and her since the blowup over her working for Big Tony. He hadn’t actually locked her in her room, but she hadn’t tried to make a run for it either. Teague had been a shadow in his own home, leaving early and coming back late. Beneath her own emotion of anger simmered something very close to her missing him, but she pushed it down with a firm hand and ignored what it might mean.

Beck sighed, putting down his beer bottle and turning to face her. He was serious, the usual cocky grin replaced with the lines of real concern tightening his lips.

“He didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, he did. The last comment was out of line and he knows it,” she said, her lingering anger giving her words a bitter bite. She wasn’t ready to make nice just yet. “He refuses to listen to any explanation I have. I know I was wrong, but he won’t even listen…”

“I know.” He held his hand up, stalling her next comment. “Look, Teague is a black-and-white kind of guy, especially when it comes to his career plans.”

“But he won’t even let me in on what the plan is.” She threw her hands up, knowing she looked and sounded childish.

“Teague’s a fixer. He sees a problem and he immediately does whatever he has to do to make it go away.”

“This is my life, too. I want a chance to fix what I did since I’m going to have to live with the result.”

“It’s what he does. He takes care of the people in his life,” Beck said. “And he thinks he has the answers.”

“He’s arrogant.”

“Self-confident.”

“Narrow-minded.”

“Focused,” Beck said.

“Damaged.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Risa locked eyes with Beck, wanting to refute what he said, but knowing it was the God’s honest truth. She had more baggage than the Louis Vuitton factory.

Beck reached out and touched her hand, the squeeze taking a little bit of the tension out of the air. “He grew up in Elliott House, where being number one was the only expectation.”

“Poor little rich boy.”

“Stop being a bitch and listen to what I’m telling you.” Beck’s fingers tightened on her wrist as he stared her down, waiting to see if she was going to do it or not. His expression said he wasn’t going to put up with petty Teague-bashing. When she nodded, he continued in a gentler tone. “I know how you grew up because I was in the same situation until the Landons let me come live with them when I was sixteen. My father was a drunk and a criminal, and so was yours. You were in the system, too. I bet we could give each other a run for the money with the game of who had it worse. But it wasn’t easy for him either.”

Risa looked back over at Teague, watching as he leaned into the intimate circle he made with Jack and Lucky across the patio. Dressed in jeans and a muscle-hugging T-shirt, he looked every inch the decisive attorney in spite of the casual wear. She understood what he had to do in DC, and she also knew what he had to do here in Elliott. The weight of that responsibility rested easily on his shoulders. At least he made it look easy. She kept her eyes glued on him as Beck kept talking.

“As long as I’ve known him he’s had this plan and everything was measured against that goal. School, sports, profession, women, they all had to be something that would get him one step closer to the achievement of his goal. I didn’t think he had a spontaneous bone in his body until he married you.”

“I drugged him,” she murmured.

“Maybe that’s how it started.” Beck nudged her with his shoulder, and when she turned to face him, the grin was back. “But since that night? Teague’s been stone-cold sober and completely engaged. If you broke through the wall of the stupid plan, then I’m convinced it was epic.”

“It was just a night. A mistake that will soon be over.” She forced her expression to remain neutral even though her heart ached a little at the thought. Beck talked about her getting under Teague’s skin, but the opposite was true—her husband had burrowed under and touched her deeply. Until she went back to Vegas, it was her job to make sure it didn’t go deep enough to touch her heart.

“I don’t think it should.”

“You don’t think it should what?” She turned to look at him, his words not making any sense in her mind.

“Be over.” Beck laughed, shaking his head as if to dislodge the crazy thought. “I like how he is with you. You’re good for him.”