One Chance (Hogan Brothers 1)

Rebecca’s family wasn’t wealthy, so he didn’t see them paying it away. It had to be something else. He just couldn’t figure out what.

“Why isn’t she coming home?” the woman yelled again, this time throwing a crystal vase across the room.

“Rebecca, you need to calm down.” Anthony tried to reason with her.

When Brax got a really good look into her eyes, her pupils were dilated, nearly blacking out the whites of her eyes.

“Are you high?” he asked in disbelief. She was a drunk, sure, but he’d never seen evidence of drug abuse.

The rage-filled look she shot his way before launching another vase in his direction gave him the answer he’d suspected as he ducked.

“Anthony, you need to handle this,” he warned the man. The woman was clearly off her rocker now.

“What do you care if she’s here or not? You don’t even like the girl.” His boss confronted his wife.

If he thought she was mad before, she was damn near explosive now.

“She is my child. Whether I like her or not is of no consequence.”

“Right, so she should take your mental abuse and roll with it?” Brax asked her.

Soph was a sweet girl dealt some shitty fucking parents. He was glad she was taking a stand, though, he suspected it had more to do with Hogan running roughshod over her.

“She ruined my life!” Rebecca screamed.

“How’s that now?” Brax asked, knowing that unless he taunted her, he wasn’t going to get the answers they would all need. He was only about eighty percent sure she was the one behind the threats.

“She was born!” Rebecca snapped as if the answer was so obvious.

“Your delusional, Rebecca,” Anthony snarled at her. Showing the first signs of emotion he had seen since arriving on the scene.

“You couldn’t keep it in your pants,” she snarled at her husband. “We would have been fine without a child.”

“It was your idea!” Anthony yelled back at her.

Color him intrigued.

Dirty secrets were beginning to be revealed.

Sophia had been nervous at first when Lennox had

suggested she work in his shop. What did she know about cars? When he said she was going to answer the phones, she’d relaxed a little more, thinking, how hard could it possibly be?

Turned out people only cared that you worked in a shop and not that you had no knowledge of the industry. She’d had one man yell at her for working in a man’s world. Another laughed at her incompetence, and a woman told her she’d catch on.

By the time lunch came around, she was exhausted and would be too happy to never answer another phone again. She’d kept that to herself, though, and Lennox was helping her out. She needed something on her resume. She couldn’t quit after only two days.

As the clock struck twelve, Lennox walked through the shop door looking sexy as she’d ever seen him. A huge smile on his face as he laughed at something Lochlan said. That dimple she kept noticing made an appearance, and his beautiful blue eyes sparkled with a happiness she envied.

The fact he wore only a muscle shirt and had grease stains all over his body had nothing to do with the squirming she was doing behind the large front desk. Or so she kept telling herself.

“How’s it going, good lookin’?” he asked, leaning on the desktop in front of her.

“Oh, you know, kicking ass and taking names.” She smiled at her lame joke when he laughed. Straight from the belly and up his chest laughter. Full of life. “It wasn’t that funny.” Her mouth twisted to the side as she waited for him to calm down.

“Hearing you swear is funny as shit, Soph,” he said, tracing her hand with a finger on the desk.

“He’s right,” Lochlan chimed in.