One
Larz
“You’re doing a shit job of laying low, Madsen.” My lawyer grumbled through the bluetooth speaker. “A royal pain in my ass is what you are. And here I thought going into business with the prince would have some perks. Turns out I’m just saving your dumb ass from yourself more than anything else.”
“I made you a pile of money on that energy deal, that’s why you keep coming back for me.” I grunted again, heaving all two-hundred and twenty pounds of me in a fluid chin-up.
“Right. The energy deal that almost cost me my practice and my license.”
“And then it made you a millionaire.”
“That was then, Larz. Before your father’s opposition tried to bring him down with a single thumb drive. We’re in a new world brother, we can’t do business like we’re still living in the old one. All that surveillance will have both of our asses in jail in no time. Just, do what I said, alright? Relax, find yourself, take up yoga. Whatever floats your boat, okay? Just no business meetings.”
“My entire life is a business meeting. I’ve been locked up in this northern hellhole for eighteen months. I’m doin’ the best I can.”
“Get a girlfriend. Get a dog. I don’t care, just don’t call me. Don’t call anyone. They probably have your phone wire-tapped right now. You know that prosecuting attorney would love to haul you out in front of the press for another show trial. She’s got it out for your family.”
“Who doesn’t?” I yanked myself up for another chin-up. “See ya.”
I cut the line when I dropped down into the damp grass.
My muscles were tense and bunched from the previous fifty.
Exercise was the only thing that took my mind off business, and business the only thing that took my mind off of what might’ve been.
I still held a helluva lot of guilt for how things had gone down that led to my father being locked up in a jail cell.
I'd played a role, one I didn’t care to admit. And only with a lot of wheeling and dealing on both my mother and my lawyer’s behalf, I’d flown under the radar and because the evidence against my father had piled so high—my minor crimes of accessory to his supposed white-collar financial crime were overlooked.
For now.
It was something the opposing forces that be had been dangling over my head since the day his trial started though. And I’d been hiding up here since dad was sentenced. Three hundred miles from the nearest anything and only a few cows and my bad fucking attitude for miles and miles.
We were a match made in Hell.
Just as I turned to head around the corner of the cottage, something cold and wet splashed across the front of my pants.
“What the hell?!”
A pair of white sneakers entered my vision. And then the tannest, curvy caramel legs I’d ever seen.
A woman.
Here?
I blinked once, not used to strangers trespassing on my private property.
Her small form was eclipsed in the shadow of mine. I was barbaric, a fucking Viking next to her.
She held a bucket of empty water in her hands and the curve of her waist was accentuated by the strings of a thin apron with tiny pink flowers in rows. She was the cutest woman I’d ever seen.
And then I corrected myself.
This was no woman.
This was somewhere between a young adult and a curvy bombshell. If she was a day over twenty I would be surprised, but then, what the hell was she doing here?
My eye crawled across the fullness of her breasts, over the delicate skin of her bare throat, and when I focused on her eyes. Her wide, chocolate brown pools blinked once. Soft and doe-like, she looked like a fawn caught in the headlights when she watched me like that.
“Who are you?” I finally growled. We were both dripping wet from her bucket of soapy water.
She visibly shook with the rumble in my words. Her eyes cast down and a tiny voice came from her throat. Softer than a squeak. Her voice was so small. So scared.
Scared of me.
“Pet?” I breathed, inching closer on instinct to hear her better.
She nodded, eyes finally darting up once to meet mine. Something invisible pulled me to her. She was so fragile, the timid look in her eyes drew me in even more. “Petra, but you can call me Pet.”
Holy Heaven and Hell. Why did she have this effect on me?
It hurt to look at her. Like a tsunami in my chest cavity, the world tipped and turned. I forgot the soaking wet pants and the phone call. I had tunnel vision. I darted a fingertip down the line of her neck to swipe at a stray soapy droplet. “You need taking care of, Pet.”
Her face fell, the impact of my words having the wrong effect.