Hot Property [Discretions 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  “Right, gents,” Dale said, tapping a spoon against the side of his brandy snifter to gain everyone’s attention. “Where are we at with our various projects? You kick off, Joey. What’s the latest with your loan shark?”

  “I’m pleased to report he won’t be shafting any vulnerable people in my area with his outrageous interest rates and thuggish collection methods for a long time.”

  “I take it we’ve saved the taxpayer the cost of a trial,” Dale remarked languidly.

  “Too right.”

  “Trying to put me out of business?” Seymour enquired with a lazy smile. As a barrister of some renown, he charged outrageous fees to defend those who could afford him, almost always winning.

  “No offence, Seymour, but the law is too heavily biased in favor of scumbag defendants nowadays.”

  “Thank fuck for that.”

  Everyone laughed, Seymour more loudly than anyone as he fiddled with his thin gold cufflinks. In spite of his working for the scumbags in question, Seymour wasn’t above short-circuiting the system when it came to helping one of his fellow club members to administer discretionary justice. He knew just about every legal dodge going and was always happy to offer advice.

  “Okay, anything new we should consider?”

  “I might have a problem,” Harry said. “I think some thieving bastard is nicking my designs.”

  “Online?” someone asked.

  “Yeah, looks that way, but I can’t be sure. My IT people say there’s no sign of anyone hacking in.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Dale, their self-appointed expert on all things cyber-related, said. He had founded a company that made internet games and employed the best brains in the business. He had people on his staff who prided themselves on being able to hack into anywhere without leaving a trace. Jared often thought the computer age was as much a curse as it was a blessing. Nothing was sacred anymore. In fact, he’d gone back to the old-fashioned way of keeping his most sensitive documents in paper form only, safely locked away where no one would think to look for them.

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  Harry’s voice recalled Jared’s attention to the discussion. He had built up a ladies’ shoe company, sensibly aimed not at kids but at middle-aged women who had more disposable income and would happily pay for quality and fashion. The female obsession with shoes didn’t stop when they got past twenty, Harry was fond of reminding anyone who’d listen. With five older sisters, he had recognized the shoe fetish when he still a teenager, resulting in enough success to earn him a seat at this table.

  “You want me to lend you one of my guys to take a look see?” Dale asked. “If anyone’s been stealing from you, he’ll find them.”

  “And let me know whose legs I need to break?”

  Jared winced, not sure if Harry was joking. He’d been raised in a tough neighborhood and, despite Saville Row tailoring, had never completely left it behind.

  “Okay, Jared, Kent,” Dale said when no one else had anything they wanted to talk about. “You don’t need me to tell you how upset we all are about Saul.”

  “Half the females in the world are in mourning, too, if the papers are to be believed,” Seymour added.

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Jared swallowed, surprised at just how hard he found it to talk about the death of the shy yet immensely talented young American tennis player with film star good looks he’d been mentoring since he’d signed with the agency two years previously. “It’s tragic.”

  “Such a waste,” Harry said. “He was a real hot property, tipped to break into the top fifty this year, wasn’t he?”

  “We had very high hopes. He missed the French Open because of a hamstring so came on over here early to practice on grass for Wimbledon. He likes the UK and our investment people encouraged him to purchase a penthouse in the heart of Wimbledon village. It was a good place for him to chillax and get his act back together, or so we thought.”

  “What happened?” Dale asked. “The papers are short on detail.”

  “I found him three nights ago dead in his apartment.” Jared shuddered. “We hadn’t been able to get hold of him. He missed an event he was supposed to attend and didn’t let me know, which wasn’t like him, so I sensed something was wrong.” He dragged in a ragged breath. “There was no sign of foul play, as they say, and no obvious reason for a fit young man to end up dead, either.”

  “A heart attack?” Joey suggested. “It happens sometimes, even to men in their prime, if they over train and put a strain on the old ticker.”

  “The press are speculating about drug usage,” Seymour said.

  “They have to fill column inches somehow,” Jared replied. “But he was no user. I’ll stake my life on that. He hated any sort of stimulant. Wouldn’t even drink a beer. Besides, he knew if he tested positive it would ruin the career he’d worked so hard to establish, to say nothing of his popularity and reputation. He would never take the chance.”

  “What are the police saying?” someone asked.

  “Not a lot, as yet.”

  Talking about it forced Jared to accept he would never see the best prospect, the nicest, most modest person he had ever signed for the agency ever again. It hurt like a bitch. “His sister’s flying in from Miami about now. They’ll tell her what they know, then we’ll decide where we go from there.”

  “Let me know if the police don’t play nice,” Seymour said casually. “I’ll apply the thumbscrews.”

  Jared nodded. “Thanks. I’ll call if I need you.”

  “Be sure you do.”

  “If they don’t treat it as murder but you think otherwise, you know we’ll help you ferret out the truth any way we can,” Dale said. Everyone around the table nodded in agreement.

  “Thanks, but if he’d been murdered there would have been evidence of it. But there were no signs of a disturbance. Saul just looked as though he fell asleep in a chair and didn’t wake up.”

  “What about the rest of his family?” Harry asked. “There’s a father from hell, I seem to recall. Got banned from tournaments for bad-mouthing Saul’s opponents and umpires last year, I seem to recall.”

  “Don’t remind us.” It was Kent who replied. “The poor kid was too nice for his own good. Came from the ultimate dysfunctional family, with the notable exception of his sister, apparently. Can’t tell you for sure until we meet her but I do know that the two of them were close and that Naomi actually supported him. The others didn’t want to know—”

  “Until he hit the big time.”

  Everyone in the room could relate to that.

  “And now they’ll pop out of the woodwork like fucking rats.” Joey growled.

  No one disagreed with him.

  The lunch broke up soon after that. Jared and Kent threw their jackets over their shoulders and headed for the car park. As soon as they were inside the car they both switched on their phones and reached for their discarded Armani sunglasses. Jared had two more calls from that reporter, two work messages that could wait, and an irate message from Saul’s father. He put it on speaker so Kent could hear.

  “Hey, Mr. Bigshot. How come you’ve not returned my calls? My boy’s dead and I need to sort out his things.” Jared and Kent exchanged a look, knowing what that meant. He wanted to get into Saul’s apartment and strip it of anything of value before Naomi Redford, his estranged daughter, hit town and prevented him. “My boy paid you to do a job, and now you have to do it for me. Call me.”

  “When hell freezes over,” Jared said, firing up the engine and pulling out of the lot.

  “He’s a real piece of work.” Kent curled his lip disdainfully. “But we already knew that.”

  Jared put a call through to the agency’s lawyer. “Hey, Jack,” he said when the call was answered. “Where are we at with Saul’s will?”

  “What do you need, Jared? You know I can’t tell you what’s in it.”

  “Yeah, of course I know that.” Jared advised all his clients to make a will. Most o
f them were too young to even consider such a move but Jared was well aware that shit happened, especially when young people stretched their bodies to the absolute extreme, as well as dealing with the pressure of overnight fame and fortune. “Just please tell me his waste-of-space father doesn’t have a right to ask for the keys to his place.”

  “I think it’s safe to assume he doesn’t.”

  “Thanks, Jack. Catch you later.”

  “Later, Jared.”

  Jared hung up and shared a satisfied smile with Kent. “Well, that’s something, I guess.”

  “Don’t get too excited. Saul’s old man will contest the will if he’s been cut out. You can count on it.”

  “Fucking parasite,” Jared grumbled as he reversed his car out of its spot and headed for home.

  Chapter Two

  Naomi Redford, emotionally drained and physically exhausted following an overnight flight during which she’d found it impossible to sleep, breathed a sigh of relief when her plane touched down at London Gatwick. The airport was teaming and it took Naomi forever to get through immigration. Eventually a bored-looking border control officer stamped her passport and welcomed her to England.

  She grabbed her bag from the carousel and wheeled it behind her into a terminal packed four deep with people waiting to greet arrivals. She scanned the crowd, wondering who would be there to meet her. She gulped, fresh tears sliding beneath her Chanel sunglasses when she remembered it wouldn’t be her brother. She would never see him again. Never hear his laughter, share his secrets, or encourage him to pursue his dream. Nor would she ever have to caution him again against all the people who wanted a part of him since he’d become famous.

  Naomi smiled through her tears, aware that he’d never taken her warnings seriously. Unlike her, her baby brother always saw the good in everyone and hadn’t learned just how grasping and self-serving the average human being could be, including relations.

  Especially relations.

  And now he was gone, cut down in his prime, lost to her forever. She removed her glasses to swipe impatiently at the tears, surprised she had any left. She had cried buckets since receiving the devastating news of Saul’s untimely demise. Now she just felt drained and existed in a Zen-like state, her heart frozen in a plastic bubble where it remained immune to emotional trauma. If she focused on what she had come here to do, nothing could affect her. She owed it to Saul to find answers and couldn’t do that if she allowed her emotions to get in the way.

  She would have the rest of her life to grieve for him.

  Replacing her glasses, she watched arriving passengers being hugged by their nearest and dearest. Refusing to let a scene that she had no part of affect her, Naomi took a deep breath and tried to prioritize. First and foremost she needed to know what had happened to Saul and who was responsible for his death, then she would ensure they paid dearly for what they had done. Her determination to exact revenge was just about the only thing keeping her sane.

  She couldn’t see Jared Maynard’s dark head, or Kenton Sinclair’s blond one, amongst the crowd. She had seen enough pictures of them with Saul to know what they looked like, even though she hadn’t met either of them in the flesh. But Saul had spoken about them so often she felt as if she already knew them. They were largely responsible for her brother’s rise from obscurity, helping him to deal with all the peripheral stuff, guiding his career, and keeping him away from their grasping father. Saul had worshipped them.

  Naomi had yet to decide whether that faith had been justified. True, they’d taken a chance on Saul, but anyone with eyes in their head could see what potential he had as a tennis player. That’s what successful agents did, wasn’t it? They picked up youngsters, took them in hand and pointed them in the right direction—in return for a substantial part of their earnings, naturally. If they had exploited Saul he was way too naïve to have known it.

  But Naomi was not.

  Jared and Kent were top of her shit list and she would know her skepticism wasn’t misplaced if they tried to tell her Saul’s death was from natural causes. The only problem was, it didn’t look as though they’d even bothered to come and meet her.

  Great, just great! What the hell was she supposed to do now?

  “Ms. Redford?”

  Naomi turned toward the voice and encountered a man who had to be 6’6”, with a bald head and a solid body that would give a linebacker pause. His size and physicality ought to have made him intimidating, but was tempered by dark, kind eyes and a soft smile. She noticed belatedly that he held a placard with her name on it.

  “Yes,” she replied cautiously.

  “I’m Connor,” he said, grabbing her bag before she could stop him. “Jared and Kent sent me to meet you. They’re sorry they couldn’t come themselves. There was somewhere they needed to be. Anyway, they figured you’d need some sleep and a chance to freshen up once you got in.”

  What she needed was answers, not sleep, but she refrained from saying so. It wasn’t Connor’s fault if his employers lacked manners.

  “Nice to meet you, Connor,” she said.

  “I wish it could be under different circumstances,” he said, effortlessly shouldering a path through the crowd. “Your brother was a good man. One of the best.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” She held it together, somehow, and accepted his condolences. “He was.”

  “The car’s just across in the short term park. It won’t take but a minute to reach it.”

  They emerged from the terminal into bright sunshine, but Naomi was still glad of her jacket. She hadn’t been able to get warm, even in Miami, since hearing about Saul. Shock, she figured.

  “We’re having a bit of a heat wave,” Connor said. “As you can see, that’s not necessarily a good thing.” He nodded toward a crowd of people in shorts and skimpy tops, revealing white flesh that really ought to have been kept out of sight. “It always happens in this country. Every time we see the sun, people lose all dress sense.”

  Naomi flashed a spontaneous smile—something she had never thought to do again. Connor probably sensed she found it hard to talk about Saul and was trying to distract her with irrelevancies. He was succeeding better than he could know.

  “Here we are,” he said, as they stepped from the elevator on the third floor of a parking garage—or car park, as it was called in this country.

  He led her to a Range Rover and opened the trunk—the boot—to stow her bags. She walked to the left front door and went to climb in.

  “You planning on driving?” Connor asked, grinning.

  “Oh hell. I’d forgotten you drive on the wrong side of the road on this side of the pond.”

  She walked around to the other side of the car and Connor opened the door for her.

  “Thanks,” she said, climbing in and buckling up. “Is it far to Jared’s place?”

  “No, about half an hour.” He climbed behind the wheel and fired up the engine. “He and Kent live in Brighton, which is a seaside town on the south coast, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I did know. Saul told me about it. He said it’s a real buzzing place, but I’m surprised Jared and Kent don’t live in London. Presumably that’s where all the action is.”

  “They have an office there but don’t spend much time in it. Nowadays business can be done from just about anywhere in the world. Besides, they spend a lot of time on the road, running around after their clients.”

  “I suppose that comes with the territory.”

  “It sure does.”

  Naomi stared out the window at cars that seemed really small buzzing along an overcrowded and confusing network of roads. This wasn’t her first visit to Europe—far from it—but she still found it so small and crowded compared to the vastness of America. The English countryside was quaint but she was in no mood to appreciate it. Connor tuned the radio to a jazz blues station and lowered the volume. The music was soothing, as much as anything could be in her present state of emotional upheaval. She closed her eyes in weary re
signation, knowing her father and wicked step-brothers were in England and would already be circling the spoils of Saul’s estate. The thought infuriated her. Even in death, Saul was still being exploited.

  She opened her eyes again and found Connor sending her concerned sideways glances as he drove. Fresh tears trickled from behind her glasses. She impatiently wiped them away, not wanting to show her vulnerability. Someone had to tough it out and get to the bottom of this mess, and she was the only one who cared enough to assume that mantle.

  “Have you worked for Jared and Kent for long?” she asked, just for something to say.

  “Since day one. Kent and I went to the same school.”

  “And what do you do for him and Jared, apart from meet people at airports?”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Whatever they need me to.”

  “Ah.” Naomi suspected Connor was a gentle giant but wouldn’t like to be around him if he got mad. She figured his size alone would be enough to intimidate most people. Why did Jared and Kent need to intimidate people? Her suspicions about them ratcheted up a notch. “Is Connor your first or last name?”

  He chuckled. “It’s my last name but, honey, if you knew what my first one was, you’d understand why I never use it.”

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Oh, trust me, it is.”

  “Oh, are they llamas?” she asked, glancing at a field to her right as they sped down the motorway.

  “Yep. Llama farms have become quite popular here in England. Hard to credit, isn’t it? People can visit the farm and pet them, and they do llama treks, too.”

  “I’d like to see them sometime. They must be gorgeous.”

  “You like animals?”

  “I love them, but I’ve never owned a pet.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  She shrugged. “Long story.”

  “Well, Jared has a dog. A mutt, to be precise. He likes rescuing waifs, and Trafford more than qualifies in that respect.” Connor chuckled. “His lack of breeding doesn’t stop him from ruling the roost at Farafield, though.”