Enemies With Benefits (Loveless Brothers 1)

“All right,” I say to Zane, already power walking toward the kitchen, albeit carrying an extra seventy pounds. “How fast can you shuck oysters?”* * *We finish at 5:05. I’ve never shucked oysters faster in my entire life, and somehow, I manage to do it without stabbing myself even once.

I guess miracles really do happen, even minor ones.

We get the oysters out the door, along with the rest of the happy hour appetizers. It’s all a few minutes late, but the bar was open on time so hopefully no one noticed.

As soon as the food is out, I tell Naomi I’ll be right back and book it out of the kitchen. Forty-five minutes of angrily shucking oysters hasn’t done much to make me less pissed about what I overheard.

Sure, Violet’s annoying, and she’s a know-it-all, and she’d probably eat her grandmother’s ashes if it gave her a competitive advantage in something. I don’t want her to win the twenty grand at the end of the summer, because I want to win it.

But Violet at least worked her ass off. If she did win, which she won’t, at least I’d know she didn’t cheat.

I walked into her office just as she stands from her desk, slinging her purse over her shoulder.

“Hey,” she says, then sniffs. “Seafood?”

Right, I probably reek.

“Oysters,” I say. “We need to talk.”

Both her eyebrows go up, and I take a step forward, lowering my voice.

“What do you know about Martin?” I ask.

Her eyes dart to the open door behind me, and she shifts her purse on her shoulder.

“He’s fine,” she says, her voice perfectly neutral, and nods at the door. “Why?”

I step back and close it. My heart thuds in my chest.

“He’s a brown nosing shitweasel,” she hisses, dropping her purse on her desk. “Last year, the weekend before Labor Day, we were short almost fifty chairs for a wedding, and an hour before the ceremony started we finally found them in this old shed in the woods. Fifty chairs! In a shed, half a mile from the ceremony site.”

“He stole the chairs?”

“I couldn’t prove it, but I think he was trying to make me look bad, like I’d screwed up this wedding by not having enough of these fancy, special-order chairs that the bride wanted,” she says, her cheeks flushing slightly pink.

I watch her, something slowly unfurling inside me. Violet is always beautiful when she’s angry, but now she’s angry at someone else even though I’m in the room. It might be a first.

The door’s closed. I could kiss her again right now, right here. Forget Martin. Forget everything.

“How do you know it was him?” I ask, folding my arms over myself. In the past week, I’ve only had brief interactions with the man, but I don’t particularly like him.

She shakes her head.

“It was just little stuff,” she says, eyes still blazing. “When the chairs first showed up, he had all these questions about them, wanted to know where we were keeping them. For a few days before the wedding, he’d get here really early in the morning, and sometimes I’d see him using the golf cart to drive across the lawn when I was getting in, and he’d always say that he was checking in on something in the Lodge, but it never quite added up. And when we couldn’t find the chairs, he seemed like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t happy about it.”

She slides back into her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, eyes still sparking. I force myself to look her in the eye instead of checking out the way her her blouse fits her really well.

“And he’s pulled other shit too,” she says, shark-colored eyes still boring into mine. “I know he’s switched orders before, hidden stuff, taken credit for other people’s hard work. But no one’s ever proven it, and Montgomery likes him for some reason, so he stays.”

She narrows her eyes, the diatribe over.

“Why do you ask?”

“I think he’s been telling people he saved the cake on Saturday,” I say.

Violet goes red, her mouth a thin line. Her eyes glint dangerously.

“That lying bastard,” she whispers.

I sit in the chair opposite her and tell her the whole story about the oysters: the trip to the loading docks, what I overheard, how the burly, bearded guy narrowly averted a seafood disaster.

“It’s the money,” she says when I’m finished.

“Really?” I ask dryly.

She shoots me a look.

“Twenty thousand dollars is crazy,” she says. During my story, she’d grabbed a pen and now she’s furiously tapping it on the top of her desk, scowling at the wall. “Martin was a pain in the butt last year over two grand. What is Montgomery thinking offering that kind of money? Someone’s gonna get stabbed.”

“As long as it’s Martin, fine with me,” I drawl.

“Don’t joke like that,” she says, but a smile ghosts across her face.