A CHANCE AT REDEMPTION
Cannon
Piper—Age 19
Cannon—Age 25
“I can’t believe you’re bringing a kid on tour this year.”
Jagger grunted into the phone as I walked into my apartment building. “I’m not leaving my sexy-as-fuck wife home all summer with our wild child toddler. Besides, we went on tour with our parents when we were little.”
“I was like a newborn, and you weren’t much older,” I reminded him with a roll of my eyes. “And stop saying my sister is sexy. I just threw up in my mouth a little.”
“Sounds like a you problem,” my best friend said with another grunt.
I hit the elevator call button and stepped back to wait for it to arrive. “What the hell are you doing that is making you grunt so much?” I complained. I knew he wasn’t home, and my sister was at our parents’ house. Whenever Shaw was on the West Coast, she was at their house more often than her own because the new grandparents were crazy for my niece.
Not that I could blame them. One look into those icy-blue eyes and I’d been a goner too. I’d never really cared much for babies, but the moment my sister placed Grier in my arms, my heart had turned to mush and I knew I would do whatever it took to protect her and keep her happy.
“I’m lifting weights,” he said, another grunt filling my ear. “Have you seen my kid? She looks just like her mother, and I need to start preparing now so I can scare those little fuckers who try to come after her when she gets older.”
“Good idea,” I praised as I got on to the elevator alone and hit the button for my floor. “But you’re her daddy. She needs you around to see her graduate from college and get married and have a few little Griers of her own for you to chase around. Don’t do anything that will get you arrested. I’m just her uncle. I can do serious time if it comes down to it. Send those little fuckers my way, and I’ll deal with them.”
He laughed just as my phone pinged with an alert. Recognizing the sound as the one I’d programmed for any time Piper’s name was mentioned online, I pulled my phone from my ear to glance at the screen. Only a few lines of text showed, so I clicked the link.
It took me to a press announcement from Feed the Music, Piper’s favorite charity. Vaguely, I heard Jagger ask if I was still there, but I was too busy reading to give him a second thought.
“The fuck is this bullshit?” I snarled to myself. The elevator doors opened on to my floor, but I didn’t move, just stood there reading.
“Cannon?” Jagger yelled. “Hey, are you okay?”
Angrily, I lifted the phone back to my ear. “No, I’m not fucking okay. I have to go. Something just came up.”
“What—”
I ended the call before he could finish the question and hit connect on the second name on my call history list. It rang once, and I clenched my jaw, cursing him for keeping me waiting. I didn’t pay him to leave me in the dark about shit like this. He might have been Piper’s personal assistant, but I’d gotten him the job and I paid him to keep me informed of everything that happened in Piper’s day-to-day work and personal life.
Maybe I was a little obsessed, but I didn’t give a fuck. That girl had me tangled into so many knots, I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to unwind me or not. I kind of liked being twisted where she was concerned.
“Hello?” Flint picked up on the third ring.
It was never easy to tell what kind of mood he was in. His voice and facial expressions rarely shifted from neutral, and it irritated the hell out of me that I could never decipher what he was thinking. “Explain to me why the hell you didn’t tell me about this Feed the Music bullshit,” I bit out as I finally stepped off the elevator and stomped toward my apartment.
“I just found out about it myself,” he said in his never-changing tone. “She had a meeting with them yesterday but didn’t tell me anything. Mirriam Baskins forwarded the article to me moments before it went public.”
I shoved my key into the lock and practically kicked open the door in my frustration. “When is the auction?”
“The email I received from Mirriam stated that all twelve will be auctioned off individually this Friday.”
I scrubbed my hand through my hair before squeezing the back of my neck. “And there is no way of stopping it?”
“When it comes to this charity, they could ask her to pose nude so they could sell the pictures to raise money, and she wouldn’t even hesitate. A few hours of her time with twelve strangers is nothing. There is no way she’s going to back out.”
The thought of Piper agreeing to exposing herself like that made me see red, but I had to keep a clear head so I could figure out what the fuck I was going to do. I couldn’t just let her go on a date with some stranger, let alone twelve. What if she liked one of those idiots? What if she hooked up with one of them…or all of them?
My vision darkened around the edges, and I had to sit down before I lost control. Breathing slow and deep to get a grip on my anger, I took a moment to consider my options. When it hit me, all my muscles began to relax, and I propped my feet up on the coffee table in front of me, a smile lifting my lips.
“Flint, my man, you’re about to earn a bonus.”