Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (44 page)

CHAPTER
FIFTY

Brooke

As
I rested my cheek against Dax's smooth chest and felt his strong arms wrapped
around me, I knew there was no turning back. There was something about him that
was unlike any other man I'd ever known and the way he'd made my body sing for
him was nothing short of a miracle.

However, the
doubts soon began creeping in as I recalled what my dad and Teddy had told me
about Dax's business. I knew that no matter how much I wanted him, I was still
responsible for defending him against the murder charges. I was supposed to be
a professional, not some swooning little teenager who could be bowled over by a
guy who was good in bed – or on a desk or on a bar table. What was wrong with
me?

"Dax?" I
said quietly.

"Mmm
hmm," he murmured into my hair as he continued to stroke my back.

"We need to
talk about your case," I said as I felt him shift and realized he was
still hard inside me. I lifted my head and looked up at him. His dark eyes,
normally wary and guarded, had a softer quality to them and as I looked into
them, I brought my hand down to stroke his rugged cheek. There was no doubt
about it, he moved me. "Seriously, we need to talk about it."

"I
know," he said, dropping his gaze to the desk and then slowly pushing away
from me. As I felt the cool air hit my body and fill the space where Dax had
just been, I wanted to call him back. I wanted to keep him warm and close.
Instead, I simply nodded and looked around for my clothing. Dax bent over and
retrieved my underthings before handing me my skirt and blouse. He stood naked
in front of me watching me dress before he grabbed his clothes and pulled them
on. I wanted nothing more than to take his hand and drag him back to my
apartment where we could hide out from the rest of the world forever, but since
I knew that game plan had a limited shelf life, I turned my attention to his
case.

"Brooke..."
he said once he was dressed.

"Yes?" I
replied as I looked up expectantly. I had pulled the paperwork out of my
briefcase and was trying to find the other papers in the mess on my office
floor. "What is it?

There was a
silence between us as we both worked to replace objects on the desk. And when I
looked over at him, he just shook his head and kept stacking piles on the
corner of my desk.

"Nothing.
Never mind," he said. "What do you need from me?"

"We need to
go over your whereabouts and talk about any motives that you might have for
killing Lydia," I said in a business-like tone. It was odd having just
been so intimate and now moving back to business, but I knew that we had to
talk about this, and now seemed like as good a time as any.

"I thought
you believed me when I told you I didn't do it," he said defensively.

"I do, that's
why we need to look at any possible motives," I said. "We need to
discount them immediately and have our arguments ready when the other side
accuses you of something you obviously didn't do."

"Brooke..."
he trailed off as if he wanted to say something.

"I
know," I said softly as I nodded. "I know."

Dax fixed his gaze
on me for a few very intense moments before shrugging and then sitting down in
the chair across from my desk. I pulled up my chair and grabbed a pen and a
legal pad.

"Let's figure
this out, shall we?" I said as I prepared to construct an airtight case
that would ensure Dax would never be locked up, away from me.

CHAPTER
FIFTY-ONE

Dax

When
Brooke shifted gears and moved straight into professional mode, it threw me for
a loop. I'd never seen a woman do that before. I was used to being the one in
control – the one who could get my physical needs met and then shift back to
business with no trouble whatsoever. As I watched her, I realized I was
watching the female version of myself, and it made me feel extremely exposed.

As we got down to
business, she started probing the recesses of my memory and trying to pull
together a timeline that would exonerate me. The problem I kept running up
against was that in order to give her all the information she needed, I would
have to expose the seedy side of my dealings. I resisted telling Brooke about
the drugs because I didn't want her to change her opinion of me. She believed
me to be an upstanding club owner and someone who had been wrongly accused of
murder. If I told her about the drugs and everything else that went with it,
she'd look at me through different eyes, and it would cast a shadow of doubt
over the defense she was constructing.

"Dax, you
need to come clean," she said as she scribbled on a legal pad.

"Huh?"

"You need to
come clean with me," she repeated. "You have attorney-client
privilege, so you don't have to worry about anything leaking out or being discovered.
We'll work through it together, but you have to tell me the truth."

"I am,"
I said as I ran a hand through my hair and stroked my chin.

"No, you're
not," she said as she looked at me. "You're not telling me the whole
truth, and I'm going to tell you right now that if you don't tell me the truth,
it will only hurt you in the end. I will launch a strong legal defense, but if
I'm blindsided by things that I don't know, then it will only make you look
guilty – and piss me off."

I sat silently
thinking about how to tell her everything. If I spilled it all, I might lose
her, but if I didn't, I might go to prison for a crime I didn't commit and I'd
lose her. It was a no-win situation that I couldn't see my way out of without
telling her the truth.

"Look, I’ll
believe you," she said softly. "No matter what you say, I believe
that you didn't kill Lydia Banks."

"You just
don't understand," I said shaking my head. It suddenly dawned on me that
if I told Brooke everything, I'd also be putting her at risk with the other
gangs. If they thought my lawyer knew it all, they might kill her to eliminate
the chance of a leak. Like Lydia. Damn. "It's complicated."

"It's not
that complicated," she said shaking her head. "Start somewhere and
tell me what's going on. I need to know this stuff so that I can figure out how
to approach it in court."

"Brooke, you
really don't get it," I said shaking my head. "If I tell you
everything, then I'm putting you at risk."

"And, if you
don't tell me everything, then you're putting yourself at risk!" she
shouted. I could tell that she was getting frustrated with me and while I
wanted to tell her what she was demanding to know, I wanted to protect her
more.

"This is
absolutely ridiculous!" she shouted as she threw her pen down on the pad of
paper and stood up. "I'm so sick of everyone thinking I'm some kind of
fragile flower who can't handle things! You are all pissing me off!"

"Brooke?"
I said unsure where this tirade was coming from. "Listen to me, this isn't
about you not being strong enough. This is about real danger. This is about me
telling you things that will put you at risk."

"And you
don't think I already am at risk simply by taking your case?" she
challenged angrily. "I'm a lawyer, dammit! This is what I do for a living!
You need to let me do my job!"

"I'm
trying," I said as I hid a smile. She was trying to go big dog on me, and
while I appreciated the attempt, I also knew that I couldn't just dump the
information on her and then leave her to deal with it. I needed to find a way
to ensure that once I told her about my business, she'd be safe as she went
about investigating my story and constructing a solid defense.

"Why are you
smiling?"

"You're kind
of cute when you're mad," I told her. She stopped pacing the space behind
her desk and turned her laser-like stare in my direction.

"That's
it," she said narrowing her eyes. "If you can't treat me like the
professional I am, then you need to find yourself another lawyer, buster."

"Oh, Brooke,
don't work yourself up into a frenzy," I chuckled.

"Do not treat
me like a child, Mr. Malone," she warned. "I won't stand for it. I'm
your lawyer and you need to treat me like you would any other lawyer you'd hire
to represent you. I'm sorry our sex got in the way of our professional relationship."

"Brooke,
don't be mad," I said as I looked up at her wondering where this stubborn
streak had come from. "C'mon, we're good together. You know it, and so do
I."

"I'm a
lawyer, Mr. Malone," she repeated and I could see that any further
attempts to try and get her to lighten up would be met with extreme resistance
and maybe even worse. "Treat me like a damn lawyer."

"Fine, you
want to be treated like my lawyer, I'll treat you like my damn lawyer!" I
yelled as my cell phone began frantically buzzing in my pocket. I reached down
and pulled it out and glanced at the screen. On it was a message from Kesha
that simply said:
911. 911. Club. 911.
911.
I knew I couldn't ignore it. "Brooke, I have to go. There's a
problem at the club and it's an emergency."

"Sure, sure,"
she said waving me off. "Go take care of it. We'll talk about your case in
our meeting at noon."

"Brooke,
please just wait to hear what I have to say," I said as I turned toward
the door.

"That's all I
ever asked," she said as she looked up at me from behind her desk.
"Just tell me what's going on."

I nodded and then
turned and quickly walked down the hall and out the door of Lewis, Lee, and
Raines, LLC. I hoped that I'd be able to be back on time for the meeting.

CHAPTER
FIFTY-TWO

Brooke

After
Dax left my office, I sat staring at my desk, trying hard to push the memory of
what we'd done on it out of my mind. The way that Dax had made my body come
alive was unlike anything any man had ever done before, and while I felt my
body aching for his touch, my brain told me that if I followed that path, it
would lead to ruin. I needed to be a professional and ensure that Dax wasn't
wrongly convicted of Lydia's murder.

Without a doubt, I
believed he was innocent. Now, I just had to gather the evidence to prove it,
but without his help, it was going to be a difficult task. I made a note on my
legal pad to get Roger to gather all the news stories on Apex, Dax's club.
Maybe if we followed the news, we'd find a pattern that would help explain some
of the oddities of this case. Or maybe Dax would just open up and tell me what
I wanted to know.

I was pissed at
him for keeping secrets, and even more pissed that he and the men in my family
seemed to believe that I was nothing more than a helpless little girl who
couldn't be trusted to keep herself safe in a big bad world. I rolled my eyes
as I felt my frustration growing.

I looked through
my notes as I began to formulate some questions that needed answering. The
first one was why was Dax the suspect? Hadn't Lydia had other clients? Why had
the police zeroed in on Dax over all the rest? I got up and went to the kitchen
area to make a pot of coffee, and as I passed the conference room, I noticed a
stack of papers lying on the conference table. I flipped on the lights, walked
around to the papers, and grabbed them, thinking they were the last bit of the
mess that Jordie and Roger had made when I'd caught them brainstorming a few
days ago.

As I walked back
to the kitchen, I glanced down at the top sheet and noticed it was a fax cover
sheet addressed to Banks and Associates, LLC. I quickly lifted it up and
scanned the paper beneath it. It looked like a standard legal contract for the
rights to a property on the edge of Skid Row. There didn't seem to be anything
particularly strange about it, other than the fact that it was here in our
offices. I didn't remember having any deals with this firm, but then, Jordie
and Roger often had things going on that I didn't know much about. We weren't
good about keeping each other up to date on the business if there was a lot of
it rolling in – but then, we hadn't had a lot of business rolling in.

The more I thought
about it, the weirder this seemed. The page was dated almost a year ago and as
I thought about the time period, I realized that that was around the time Jake
had left me and I wasn't in the office much. I cringed as I thought about how
much that break-up had affected my life and how I'd been reduced to a
blubbering puddle of sadness. A wave of shame washed over me as I remembered
the months it had taken for me to pull myself out of the tailspin and get back
to work. Roger and Jordie had covered for me and kept the business going, so
whatever they'd done had most likely been necessary. But this was weird.

Why did they do business
with Lydia's firm? I made a mental note to ask them once they arrived the next
day. With a fresh cup of coffee and a determined outlook, I walked back to my
office and began plowing through the files. I'd find something that would help
us or die trying.