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

  “I didn’t hear you,” she said, unintentionally making it sound like an accusation.

  “Sorry if I scared you.”

  “No, you—”

  “It’s easy to—”

  They spoke at once, and abruptly broke off at the same time. It was one of those awkward moments in which strangers got tongue-tied and Naomi had no idea how to handle.

  “Come and sit down,” Jared said, taking her arm and leading her back to her chair. “Could you do with something a little stronger than tea?” He canted his head and examined her face. “White wine? Am I right?”

  “How did you know?”

  His glamorous smile gave her an up-close view of perfectly white, perfectly even teeth. “Well now, let’s examine the evidence. You’re a model so you watch the calories and care about what you put into your body. You don’t eat much so can’t take strong liquor, ergo, white wine with relatively few calories fits the bill.”

  “Either that or Saul told you.”

  He held up his hands, laughing. “Okay, busted.”

  She smiled too, in spite of herself. “Yeah, wine would help.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  Kent came into the room, dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, his dirty blond hair falling appealingly across his face, partially covering his aquamarine eyes. He was toned, lean, and unquestionably all man. They both were. Jeez, it suddenly felt like all the air had been sucked from the room by an abundance of testosterone and hard, taut bodies. Naomi moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, refusing to allow herself to be distracted by the view. These guys could well be the reason why her beloved brother was dead. They’d pushed him too hard, introduced him to the wrong people…something. Saul had hero-worshipped them and they hadn’t taken proper care of him. Hold that thought.

  Naomi sat down, mainly because she didn’t trust her legs to support her, and Kent handed her a crystal glass half-filled with crisp white wine.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  He passed an open beer bottle to Jared and kept one for himself. He then placed a bowl full of nuts on the table and sat opposite her, next to Jared. Crystal glassware and open beer bottles? These guys were a contradiction, but under different circumstances she would have liked their style, or lack of it. This was their home and apparently they did things their way.

  She sipped her drink, which was delicious. Of course it was! They watched her, but said nothing, presumably waiting for her to broach the subject of Saul. She didn’t want to, it hurt too much. But at the same time, she needed to kick-start this conversation, ask the questions she had come here to get answers to.

  “Tell me what you know,” she said after several minutes of quiet contemplation during which she felt both of them frequently looking her way. Most people couldn’t handle silences and felt a compelling need to fill them with idle chatter. Not so these two. Either they had something to hide or they were way too self-assured to consider it necessary. Naomi preferred not to think there could be a third reason—that they were being considerate and giving her a moment to gather her thoughts.

  “Frustratingly little at the moment,” Jared replied. “The postmortem was yesterday but we don’t know the results. The police are coming here to talk to you tomorrow and they’ll probably tell you.”

  “I hear there’re rumors circulating that he died from an overdose, but my brother didn’t take drugs,” she said, sounding more assertive than was her intention.

  “We know that,” Kent said softly.

  “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page with that one.” Naomi felt a little of the tension drain out of her. At least they weren’t trying to bullshit her. “But I still find it hard to believe that he just…” She swallowed and forced herself to continue. “That he just died, so what could have happened? Did someone kill him?” she asked, sharing a wide-eyed look between them. “Why would they? Saul had no enemies. Everyone loved him.”

  “In professional sport, everyone has enemies,” Kent replied. “It goes with the territory.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I don’t…” She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘I won’t have to identify him, will I? I don’t think I could—”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Jared replied. “I already did.”

  “Thank you.” She expelled a deep sigh, fighting the urge to feel grateful and let down her guard, something she couldn’t afford to do because she still didn’t trust them. They clearly cared about Saul, but they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t put their own interests first. “I’m glad it was you and not our father.”

  “It was the least I could do.”

  “What happened to him?” She asked for a second time. “You know more than you’re saying, but stop trying to protect me. I can handle the truth. It has to be better than all the wild ideas running through my head. I have no idea what he’d gotten himself into but I won’t have his memory tainted by the mention of drugs because he didn’t do them.” She was almost shouting and forced herself to calm down. “I know he didn’t,” she said in a more moderate tone.

  “No,” Jared said, putting his beer aside and leaning toward her, elbows resting on hard thighs, dark eyes focused directly on her with unsettling intelligence. “He didn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s not what you expected us to say?” Kent asked. “You thought we’d pass it off as a moment’s madness he thought he could get away with because he wasn’t competing until he got over his injury?”

  “Well, I…” Naomi spread her hands. “That would make sense in a lot of cases. Most people break under the pressure of striving to be the best sooner or later. I’ve seen it in my line of work enough times to know what I’m talking about. But Saul would never have turned to drugs. He found his best, his only childhood friend, dead from an overdose when he was fifteen. He never got over that and actively spoke out against drugs at every opportunity once he started making a name for himself.”

  “We know,” Kent said.

  “But you’ve seen more of Saul than I have this past year and probably saw a different side to him.” She shook her head, aware that she was defeating her own argument by making it sound as though…well, as though she was making excuses for something she knew Saul would never have done. What she was actually trying to do was make sense of a nonsensical situation. “We spoke all the time but that’s not the same as being on the spot.”

  “What do you know about your brother’s lifestyle?” Jared asked.

  “I know he was conflicted about his sexuality, if that’s what you mean. He had been all through his adolescence. I’m a year and a half older than him—”

  “You have the same mother?” Kent asked.

  “Yes, Mom was our father’s second wife. She died of cancer when we were both still in our early teens and left us with him. He has two sons from his first marriage. Both red-blooded heterosexual males to make a man proud.” Naomi spoke scathingly. “When Saul showed more interest in tennis than football, more interest in men than women, our father went ballistic.”

  “We’ve met,” Jared said scathingly. “You don’t need to explain.”

  “I blame myself,” she said, conscious of yet more tears springing to her eyes. “I knew Saul was vulnerable, but I couldn’t wait to leave that hellhole that went by the name of home. I entered a contest to become a photographic model, won it and my career took off. Saul encouraged me to go for it, and so I did, leaving him on his own to face all that abuse.”

  “Until he started making money from his tennis,” Kent said.

  Hell, they’re making it hard for me to dislike them!

  “Yes,” she replied. “Until then. At which point our father was all over Saul like a rash, telling anyone who’d listen that Saul had only gotten where he was thanks to his encouragement.” Naomi shook her head, disgust washing through her in nauseous waves. “It makes me sick to the stomach to think about it.”

  “He’s been all over the news, yo
ur father that is,” Kent said. “Playing the grieving parent, but all he really wants to do is get into Saul’s apartment and get his hands on his bank account.”

  Naomi rolled her eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know. He tried to do the same thing to me when I became successful. I told him to take a hike and encouraged Saul to do the same. I hope he listened.”

  “Let’s hope so, but we’ll get to that,” Jared said, standing to fetch the wine bottle and top up her glass. Naomi looked at it rather stupidly, wondering how it came to be empty. “I can tell you’re suspicious of us, wondering if we were after a piece of Saul, too.”

  “You can’t blame me for that,” she replied defiantly. “Most people were.”

  “Honey, we look after dozens of top sportsmen and women,” Kent told her. “We’re businessmen, not conmen.”

  “But you don’t invite most of your clients to come and stay with you here,” she said, fixing them both with a challenging glare.

  “Like you said, Saul was special. Because of his looks and his rapid climb up the tennis rankings, his every move was scrutinized by the press and he was mobbed everywhere he went. You must know how that feels.”

  “Yes.” Naomi dropped her gaze to her lap. “That’s why I’ve decided to get out of the modelling game. I’ve had it living my life in a goldfish bowl. I just wish I’d done it when Saul was still alive.” She wiped away an errant tear. “I never even got to say good-bye.”

  “We invited Saul to stay here so he could be himself.” Naomi was grateful to Jared for his businesslike tone. It was about the only thing that was saving her from falling apart. “He recovered from his injury here and practiced on our grass court for Wimbledon.”

  “When you say he could be himself, presumably he had a boyfriend who stayed here with him.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Kent said. “Did he ever talk to you about Frank?”

  “He mentioned him a lot in our emails. He said he was his hitting partner and physiotherapist.”

  “Frank’s British, a decade older than Saul. He was a handy player in his day but never would have made the big time and was sensible enough to know it. So he retrained as a physio.”

  “I’m glad he had someone,” Naomi said. “But where is he now? I’d really like to talk to him.”

  “That’s the problem,” Jared said, scowling. “We don’t know. He and Saul left here a week or so before Saul died. Saul attended a party at Hurlingham Club, but Frank couldn’t go with him. He’s openly gay and the press would have jumped all over that.”

  “It seems unfair that Saul had to hide his sexuality,” Naomi said, shaking her head. “Everyone knows lesbianism is rife within the women’s game and no one seems to care about that. But the men have to maintain their macho image.”

  “Saul insisted he wanted it that way,” Kent said.

  “He would. He won’t have forgotten all the names our father and step-brothers called him when they figured out his preferences. They scarred him for life.”

  “When Saul didn’t turn up for a press interview and wasn’t answering his phone we went round to his flat and found him there dead.” Jared reached across and touched her hand when she gasped. “I’m sorry, darling. So very sorry.”

  “And Frank wasn’t there,” Kent added. “We haven’t been able to find him and he’s not answering his phone.”

  Naomi sat a little straighter. “Do you think he was involved in some way? Could it have been a lovers’ tiff that went wrong?”

  Both men shook their heads vigorously. “I doubt it very much,” Kent said. “There was no sign of a struggle, or anything like that.”

  “Frank lived there. He could have killed Saul by accident, then tidied up and staged the scene.”

  “Anything’s possible,” Kent replied. “But we know Frank and just can’t see it.”

  “We wanted to speak to you about Frank before you talk to the police,” Jared said. “We obviously have a key to Saul’s penthouse. We left Frank’s stuff there, his clothes and what have you, but nothing that would identify him. The police didn’t ask who the things belonged to and we didn’t tell them. We wanted to protect Saul’s image.”

  “Or protect the man who could have killed my brother?”

  “If that’s what you think, they by all means tell Inspector Regan about it when he sees you tomorrow.” Jared’s eyes were like flint and she knew she’d offended him. “Your brother’s sexuality didn’t matter to us, but it did to him, and we were trying to keep his proclivities under wraps.”

  “I’m sorry.” Naomi sighed as the fight drained out of her. “You’re right. He wouldn’t have wanted people to know. Damn, I should have been here!”

  “If you think you could have stopped this, then you’re wrong.” Jared’s expression softened. “All he wanted to do was to be the best tennis player he could, but you don’t need me to tell you it’s not that easy. All the press attention, being under the spotlight twenty-four-seven, especially when you’re as talented and good-looking as Saul was, having your every activity scrutinized, can be tough to cope with. Image is everything. That’s why we nurtured him the way we did. Some people can handle it, others can’t. Saul couldn’t, so we had people help him with investments, the press, legal stuff…every damned thing we could, leaving him free to do what he did best.”

  “And he appreciated it,” Naomi said softly. “He never stopped talking about you guys and all you’d done for him.”

  “So, what we needed to ask you was whether you think it best to be upfront with the police about Saul’s relationship with Frank, and his sexuality as a whole?” Kent explained.

  “If we do that, then it will get out,” Jared told her. “These things always do, and the image he went to such lengths to protect will be tarnished.”

  “Are you absolutely sure Frank had nothing to do with his death?” Naomi asked. “It seems odd that he’s disappeared.”

  “We know they were deeply attached to one another,” Kent replied. “There’s no faking that sort of commitment.”

  “But careful as they were, someone else might have got wind of their relationship,” Jared said. “An ex-lover who was jealous of Saul’s success or someone connected with the game who wanted to stop his rise up the rankings.”

  Naomi widened her eyes. “Surely they wouldn’t go that far?”

  “Sport is a misnomer. There’s nothing sporting about it at all nowadays. It’s a cutthroat business. Sorry,” Jared added when Naomi winced. “That was insensitive of me, but it’s true for all that. I guess it must be pretty similar in the modelling world.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Jared flashed a sexy smile that went straight to Naomi’s pussy. Hell, she was a terrible sister, reacting that way at such a time! “Oh, I think I can take a wild guess,” he said.

  “We think we should tell the police that Frank was staying with Saul but not about their relationship,” Kent said.

  “I agree, but if we also say Frank’s gone missing, they’ll get suspicious, won’t they? And you said yourself that Frank’s openly gay.”

  “But if we don’t, it could be construed as withholding information from the police,” Jared pointed out. “And I don’t really want to go down that route. Still, if the postmortem finds he died of natural causes, the question won’t arise.”

  “I’ll never believe he died of natural causes!”

  “Nor will we,” Kent said. “But there’s nothing to stop us from conducting our own investigation.”

  “How can we?” Naomi looked bewildered. “We don’t have the power, or the authority.”

  Jared and Kent shared a glance.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Jared replied, indulging in a slow, expansive stretch. “Our powers are what you might call discretionary.”

  Chapter Four

  “I might say that if I knew what you were talking about.”

  Jared chuckled at Naomi’s confused expression. “We’ll explain later,” he said when Alice put h
er head round the door to say dinner was ready. “But right now, let’s eat.”

  “I’m not sure that I could.”

  “You’ll change your mind once you’ve tried Alice’s cooking,” Kent assured her, placing a hand on the small of her back and guiding her toward the dining room. “Not many people can resist it. In fact, I’m surprised Jared and I aren’t piling on the pounds, the way she feeds us up.”

  “Yeah,” Alice said, rolling her eyes. “Like that’s gonna happen, the way you two live your lives in the fast lane. Come on, honey, sit yourself down and try some of my fish stew.”

  “Not fish stew, Alice? The one with the wild salmon and scallops?” Kent placed a hand over his heart and sighed. “You’re killing me.”

  “How come you make Kent’s favorites more often than you make mine?” Jared demanded to know, pulling a disgruntled face.

  “She likes me better than she likes you. That’s why.”

  “Behave yourselves, boys, and remember you have a guest.”

  Jared watched the guest in question as she tasted Alice’s stew, tentatively at first, and then with more enthusiasm.

  “You’re right,” she said. “This is really good.”

  “Glad you like it,” Alice said, smiling as she left the room.

  Naomi wasn’t comfortable being made to feel…well, comfortable. That much was obvious to Jared. She was struggling to come to terms with the loss of her brother, seemed to share Jared’s views that his death was neither an accident nor suicide, and was unsure whether he and Kent were friend or foe. Beneath the kick-ass façade she was trying so hard to project lurked a fragile woman doing her level best not to fall apart. Jared and Kent were no strangers to beautiful women, but there was something about Naomi Redford that transcended the exceptional. Having met her, he and Kent would go that extra mile to solve the riddle of her brother’s death, for their own peace of mind as well as for hers.