A Simple Twist of Fate (6 page)

Guilt crashed over her. She remembered being in that restaurant and watching Tom sneak peeks at the pretty brunette at the hostess station. And now this. “Sorry.”

“I’m the one who should apologize. Looks to me like Beck was finally making a play and I came in and broke it up.”

Her heart did this ka-chunking thing. She had no idea how Tom missed it since the sound ricocheted inside of her. “It’s not like that.”

Tom shot her a get-real look. “Honey, I know when a man is moving in.”

Words rushed up her throat so quickly she verbally tripped over them. It took a long inhale and a pause before she could get the words out. “He’s. My. Boss.”

Tom shook his head. “You keep telling yourself that.”

Chapter Six

Beck heard the laughter as soon as he stepped onto the back porch of Shadow Hill. Even with the three stories and thick-walled construction, sound traveled and bounced. Plus Leah possessed a very distinctive laugh. Warm and infectious. Declan got downright stupid when he heard it. Then again, everything about Leah made Declan, former military and usually serious, act as if his brain were made of mush.

The dumb-ass.

Beck dropped his hand from the doorknob, thinking to circle around to the front and jog upstairs before anyone saw him. Leah blew his chance when she glanced over and waved to him through the window. The smile came next, followed by the sound of Callen’s chuckle. Clearly Declan wasn’t the only Hanover brother with a weakness for Leah, although Callen’s was the non-romantic type.

“Come sit with us,” she said.

Busted
. Beck opened the door and braced for a string of smart-ass comments.

Callen swiveled in his chair and then watched as Beck walked over to the sink. “Tough evening?”

Beck was so not in the mood for this. “Shut up.”

“I think that’s a yes,” Cal said.

Leah nodded. “I’m guessing it’s Sophie.”

Beck dropped the glass he was holding, letting it clank and jangle as it rolled around in the sink. With a deep inhale for patience, he turned around and faced Leah. “Not you, too.”

Her smile never broke. “Just throwing the possible explanation out there.”

The chair scraped against the floor as Callen sat back with his legs stretched out in front of him and his arms balanced behind his head. “Where have you been?”

Beck seriously considered tipping the chair over. “Nowhere.”

“Come on, Beck. There’s no way Leah is going to let you get away with that lame-ass crap. Spill it or we’ll be here for hours while she grills you.”

Beck thought about letting out a cleansing string of profanity, including some clever combination of
dammit
and
motherfucker
, but swallowed the comments when Leah kept staring at him as if daring him to get all fired up. Not that she was afraid of a bit of profane talk. She could let loose, which was one of the many reasons she fit in so well in the male household.

He settled for grumbling under his breath. “The lack of privacy around here is—”

“Not going away.” The front legs hit the tile floor with a crack as Cal’s arms went back to the table. “Talk.”

Clearly this conversation was happening. Beck couldn’t see a way to dodge or ignore it. The joint nosiness of Callen and Leah wouldn’t allow for one second of peace until he spit out at least a minimum of clues.

“Tom.” Beck wrapped his fingers around the counter behind him and tightened until the edge dug into his palms.

Callen’s eyes narrowed. He glanced over at Leah. “Do you know what that means?”

She was busy staring at Beck. “Possibly.”

Knowing he’d lost an argument he didn’t even want to engage in, Beck pushed away from the counter and came around to sit in the empty chair across from Leah. “Sophie is with some guy named Tom.”

There. He said it. Every lousy fucking word.

Leah patted Beck’s forearm while he tapped a spoon end over end against the wood table. “Do you mean Tom Erikson?”

For the second time in one evening Beck had to hear this dude’s name. Beck didn’t like it any better this time. “You know him?”

“Everyone does.”

Leah’s smile was so wide Beck wondered if it hurt to do that.

Cal’s blank stare mirrored the dull ache pulsing inside Beck.

“You need a tighter definition of everyone, since I don’t,” Beck pointed out.

“Tom is Sophie’s landlord.” Leah tapped her palm against Beck’s arm one last time then sat back again. Her expression could only be called smug.

Beck didn’t care if she got up and performed a song-and-dance number so long as she spilled whatever information she’d stored up in that head about this Tom guy. Maybe she had some intel in those files she liked to keep. “What do you know about their relationship?”

Leah took a long drink of tea. Even made a career out of ripping open a sugar packet and stirring it in.

Beck was two seconds away from lunging across the table. He leaned forward trying to gain eye contact instead. “Uh, Leah?”

“That’s quite a show you’re putting on there,” Callen said over a laugh.

Beck was happy someone found this funny. He careened toward head-banging frustration.

She clanked her spoon on the side of the mug. “I know where Sophie lives. Declan had her address around here somewhere.”

This time Callen cleared his throat before piping up, all while Leah sipped her drink as if a testosterone battle wasn’t waging around her. “I think what my temporarily addled brainy brother is trying to ask is
how
you know the details of Sophie’s rental agreement.”

That was one of many questions Beck had. “Yeah, start there.”

Leah’s nose wrinkled up as she made a face. “It’s not very flattering to me.”

“Now you have to tell us,” Callen said.

When she started a second round of spoon banging and sugar packet stacking, Beck reached out a hand and pinned hers to the table. “Really?”

“Fine.” Leah shrugged. “I did a little investigating on Sophie.”

Callen let out a groan as he shoved his chair back and headed for the cabinets to the right of the sink. He returned with a bag of pretzels and new bottle of water, as if he needed reinforcements to get through the discussion. “I’ll tell you what, Leah, you do love to check up on people.”

Beck knew exactly what Callen was talking about. A crowbar connected to an entire football team couldn’t wedge Declan and Leah apart now, but it hadn’t always been that way. Before the brothers landed in Sweetwater to handle their grandmother’s estate, Leah had marked them as obvious con artists. Never mind she hadn’t met any of them.

She’d spent a lifetime investigating them, obsessing about them, all thanks to a vendetta passed down from her father. Her biggest target was Callen, but none of them was spared from the information she collected and the battle she waged to regain ownership of Shadow Hill, the property her family lost after Charlie’s cons.

Her father lost his reputation, his money, his property and his wife when Charlie conned the town, or that was the theory. Declan and Leah discovered that her father had been Charlie’s original grifter partner and it nearly destroyed her. Even now, more than a month later, seeing her father, having him snub her in public and refuse to speak with her in private, had the power to reduce her to a pile of crushed and broken pieces.

Leah had come to Shadow Hill and apologized to all of them. They accepted it without question even before she professed her love for Declan. No one knew better than the sons of Charlie Hanover that the sins of the father shouldn’t pass to the children.

Still, at the mere suggestion of those dark days now, Leah nibbled on her bottom lip and squirmed in her chair. Just the latest sign of discomfort over her role in it all.

“I’ve been itching to look into Sophie’s past myself,” Cal said. “Only the fact of how much I hate that kind of underhanded shit stopped me. Well, that and Beck asking me not to.”

Beck could only shake his head. “Don’t start with your worries again. I got it handled.”

The clock on the wall counted off the seconds with a series of ticks. When the number hit double digits, Leah finally glanced up at Callen. “I’ve apologized for the search I ran on you back then, for all those years. For the private investigator I hired.”

He nodded. “I know. We’re good.”

Despite not wanting to hurt Leah, Beck wasn’t quite as ready to let the subject drop. Leah’s investigating tendencies should be over.

Anger welled inside him, ready to spill over, even as he remembered the internet search on Sophie sitting in his browser history. Ignoring the hypocrisy, he pushed on. “We’re not talking about Callen. We’re talking about Sophie. You investigated her even after I asked all of you to back off? One could argue you’re a bit rusty on the whole ‘learn my lesson’ concept.”

“Beck—”

Leah held up a hand as if to stop Callen’s defense. “This was weeks ago. Sophie was here all the time and her story about cleaning for your grandmother and feeling like she had to keep doing that,
without pay
, until the house was sold, sounded fishy.”

“Because it is,” Callen said.

Even Beck had to concede that point. “No argument here.”

“Then you understand. I didn’t really have a choice.” Color rushed into Leah’s cheeks as her hands flew around to mirror her animated comments. The ones that grew louder with each word she spoke. “And she mentioned Tom yesterday, so that took two seconds to ferret out. All I had to do was look at her address and double-check my memory of who lived there.”

Beck didn’t like that at all. “Sophie talked about this guy Tom in what context?”

“As her landlord.” Leah lifted her chin. “But understand this because I am very serious: I like Sophie and want to get to know her better. And I really like her with you.”

Beck didn’t like where this crazy train was headed. “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t say—”

“But I will not apologize for caring about you guys and for not wanting someone else to take advantage of you. I don’t think that’s who Sophie is. I think she needs a friend and wants to feel safe here, and we should give that to her.”

Callen shrugged. “God knows we have the room.”

“If it turns out I’m wrong and Sophie is not who I think she is, and that she’s really here to hurt you guys, I will take care of her. I won’t need to call in the menfolk because there will be nowhere for her to hide from me.”

A crackle and snap followed the beat of silence after Leah’s words. A few seconds passed before Callen broke through the quiet. He twisted off the lid to his water bottle and tipped it in her direction in a silent salute. “You’re growing on me.”

Her balled fists unclenched. “Right back atcha, big guy.”

And like that, the tension pounding through the walls seeped out of the room. Whatever had been building and twisting and sucking the air right out of the kitchen downshifted to nothing.

Yeah, enough drama
. “What did you find out on this search?” Beck asked.

“Oh, right. I’m the bad one for investigating.” Sophie glared at both of them before tugging on the end of the pretzel bag and dragging it toward her. “Funny how you all come running when you want the information I collect.”

Beck mentally grabbed for his last ties to his control. “Feel free to say ‘I told you so’ later but keep talking.”

She grabbed a handful of pretzels and twirled one around in her palm as she talked. “On the living stuff? Tom really is Sophie’s landlord. You didn’t notice he’s, like, twenty years older than she is?”

In his work, Beck had seen fifteen-year-old girls married to sixty-something perverts. Nothing shocked him, certainly not a few-decades age difference. “So?”

Callen’s narrowed gaze suggested the importance didn’t ring true for him either. “I’m guessing Leah thinks that means something.”

With a perfectly executed men-are-so-stupid eye roll, Leah munched on a pretzel. It took her forever to swallow, but when she did . . . “There’s no romance. Tom is a really good guy. I’ve known him for a long time. He moved out of Sweetwater for a few years, but now he’s back.”

Beck swore under his breath. “Convenient.”

“I’ve never heard a bad thing, not even from his ex-wife.”

Something about the addition of “ex” had a ball of anxiety colliding with Beck’s lungs. “Ex?”

Leah smiled. “I saw Tom and Sophie together a few weeks ago and watched them and—”

“Do I even want to know why?” Callen asked.

Leah pointed at both of them, moving her finger between Callen and Beck. “No, you don’t. But remember the time I’m describing, when I was following her, it came before I moved in here and around the time Declan and I agreed we were in a committed relationship.”

Callen’s water bottle stopped halfway to his mouth. “Does Declan call it that?”

“The committed thing?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “No, he prefers to use naughty words that would make Beck blush.”

“I doubt that.” Beck thought about shooting Leah a scowl of his own. For whatever reason, despite the degrees and job traveling around the country, his family still saw him as the baby. Sheltered and naïve. Forget that he was a grown man.

The treatment totally pissed him off.

“My point is Tom treats Sophie like a family member.” Leah closed one eye as if weighing the possibility. “Hell, they could be related. I really didn’t find out much about Sophie and stopped before I did any real in-depth digging, because Declan asked me to, and Beck was really clear about watching her from a distance but giving her space to come to us, or whatever he argued. Besides, as Declan pointed out, I have better things to occupy my time now.”

“Like him.” Callen threw a pretzel in the air and caught it in his mouth. After a few bites, he turned to Beck again. “Feel better now that you know all that?”

Beck shrugged, tried to play it off like he really didn’t care. Not that he knew all that much new anyway. “None of it matters to me. I just wondered.”

He cut off the conversation because it seemed safer. In his fantasies Sophie was available and hot and all over him. If this Tom guy meant something to her the fantasy would fizzle and after a month of refining it, Beck wasn’t ready to let it go.

“Sure.” Callen drew the word out to ten syllables. “Stick with that because it’s so believable.”

Leah jumped in before Beck could tell Callen what he should stick. “Sophie or not, I was actually going to introduce you guys to Tom.”

“You want more men around here?” Callen asked.

He and Leah took turns digging a hand in the pretzel bag. The rustling filled the kitchen and echoed in Beck’s head. It was like sitting in a movie theater while the people behind him crinkled a bag for two hours. Annoying.

“He’s in construction and could help with build out. Everyone in the county uses him. He’s probably the best builder around,” Leah said. “That’s his business, what he does.”