Their Seductress [The Hot Millionaires #1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (17 page)

Isaac suppressed a sigh. Either Mike had anticipated the question about who might have killed her and was covering his back, or he was telling the truth. His gut told him it was the latter.

“Why did you stop opposing Ellie’s changes?” Isaac asked. “You were dead set against them for months.”

“I got tired of fighting for something I didn’t really believe in,” he said, fiddling with the cuff of his shirt and avoiding Isaac’s gaze.

It was the first lie he’d told, but Isaac couldn’t begin to figure out why. He decided not to push him on it until he’d had a chance to think it through.

“Lana looked like she’d sucked on a lemon when she heard that you, Nick, and Paige were beneficiaries of Ellie’s will.”

“You know about that?”

“The family was informed by Lawson.”

“I suppose you would have been. It was a complete bombshell for all of us, but I’m surprised that Lana had expectations. Nothing Ellie owned was anything to do with her father. Not directly, anyway. Her possessions were the fruits of her own labors.”

He let out a long sigh and accepted another bottle of beer from Isaac. “Lana puts on a great show, but underneath it all she’s bitter as hell. Take it from one who knows,” he added with feeling.

“Tell me to mind my own business, Mike, but if it’s as bad as that, why do you stay?”

Mike elevated a brow. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about leaving many times, but if I did she’d make my life a living hell.” He paused. “Even more than it is now.”

“She’s the one with the trust fund. She can’t take that much from you.”

“Grow up, Isaac, and stop trying to be a concerned friend,” Mike said irascibly. “We both know it’s bullshit and you don’t give a damn about me. All you care about is the goddamned business.”

“Hey, ease up there.” Isaac warded off Mike’s tirade by pushing his hands toward him, palms outward. “We might not have been the best of buddies in the past but—”

“Life isn’t only about money. I have three kids whom I happen to love. Lana would make sure I never saw them again, and worse, she’d poison their minds against me.” Mike expelled a long, exasperated breath. “Then she’d systematically ruin my life by slurring my name.”

Isaac wanted to ask how she could do that but knew he wouldn’t get an honest answer. “Okay, I get it. A bitter woman scorned and all that.”

“Yeah, and then some.”

The men sat in contemplative silence for a moment, making inroads into their beers while Isaac tried to decide how much further to push Mike, convinced he hadn’t yet told him all he knew about Ellie’s demise.

“Why did Lana come to the office that fateful day?” he asked. “It wasn’t something she often did, was it?”

“To see how the director’s meeting had gone. I think she got wind of the fact that I was no longer opposing Ellie and wanted to confront me about it then and there. I guess she thought if I knew she was coming for lunch it would focus my mind and I’d be more inclined to do what she wanted.”

“But you didn’t,” Isaac reminded him, leaning back in his chair and crossing one foot over his opposite thigh, waiting out the ensuing silence.

“Nope,” he said eventually, standing up, ready to leave. “We argued about it over lunch, and she tried to get me to change my position.”

“And then Ellie died, so it became a moot point,” Isaac said, standing also and walking to the door with Mike. “Thanks for stopping by. Let’s keep things ticking over between us until after the funeral then have another chat about the future. Now that I know where you stand, I can think more coherently about my own position.”

“If you want the job,” Mike said, “you’ve got my vote. You’re the best man to carry the agency forward.”

“What about Lana?”

“Fuck Lana. I’ve danced to her tune all these years. Now I’m going to think about number one.”

“Good man.”

Isaac returned to the den frowning, deep in thought. It was obvious to him now who’d killed Ellie. Problem was, how could she have done it if she was in a crowded restaurant with her husband at the time the crime went down?

“Well!” Paige burst into the room on Nick’s heels and flung herself on the couch, still barely able to believe what she’d just heard. “That was quite a turn up for the books.”

“Yeah, it was,” Isaac agreed. “A jealous stepdaughter. Didn’t see that one coming?”

“Nor me.” Nick shook his head. “I’ve worked for Ellie and Greg for ten years, and I know the kids well. Lana’s a bit standoffish sometimes, but I never once thought she had issues with Ellie. In fact, she always went out of her way to be nice to her.” He shrugged. “Just goes to show that you never can tell.”

“I’ve met her a few times, and I didn’t realize there were problems either,” Paige said.

Nick frowned. “If Ellie knew she would have told me, which makes me wonder if we’ve got it right. Ellie was a pretty good judge of character.”

“No, it was definitely Lana,” Isaac said. “She must have killed Ellie. It makes perfect sense now we know how she felt about her.”

Nick nodded. “Agreed, but how the hell did she pull it off?”

“And what hold does she have over Mike that forced him into going for a job that he didn’t really want?” Isaac added.

“Whatever it was, it obviously died with Ellie,” Paige pointed out, “because he doesn’t seem to be afraid of his wife anymore.”

“It’s time to summon the cavalry.” Isaac reached for his phone.

“Who are you calling?” Paige asked.

“Lieutenant Weir. Now that we know who the killer is, he has the resources to concentrate on how to bring her to justice.”

Paige and Nick remained silent whilst Isaac got patched through to Weir. Paige struggled to come to terms with a woman committing such a brutal act. Poor Ellie’s skull had been caved in with enough force to drive bone splinters into her brain. That a woman possessed enough anger to do something so vile made her stomach churn.

“Weir will be here in half an hour.” Isaac flashed a humorless grin. “He didn’t sound that surprised to hear from me.”

Paige nodded absently, aware that her hands were shaking and that she’d probably looked pale and drawn. “He knew we’d start digging.”

“You all right, babe?” Isaac asked, concern in his tone.

“I’ve had better days.”

Isaac moved to crouch in front of her and took both of her hands in his. “It’ll be okay,” he said softly. “We’ll find a way to get her. She won’t get away with it.”

“Which won’t bring Ellie back.”

He dropped a gentle, chaste kiss on her lips. “Be strong, Paige. We need you to stay strong for us until this is over.”

She nodded, just about keeping the tears at bay. “I’m okay,” she said.

“Good girl.”

Isaac offered her a slow smile that roused every cell in her body to a state of heightened awareness, effectively taking her mind off Ellie’s murder. Damn the man, how did he do that? She smiled in spite of herself, unable to help reacting to his quite-disgusting, totally compelling charm.

“Go and sit down,” she said irascibly.

“Drink, anyone?” Nick asked.

“A man with a sensible suggestion,” Paige said, casting Isaac a caustic glance that bounced harmlessly off his amused expression.

Nick did the honors and they all sat again, mulling over Mike’s revelations.

“You said you’d been with Ellie and Greg for ten years,” Isaac said to Nick. “How did you come to work for them in the first place?”

Paige nodded. “Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. The three of us were obviously special cases, otherwise she wouldn’t have made such a generous will in our favor. I was a lame duck with hang-ups that stopped me from being myself. Ellie saw that without me really saying anything, mainly because I didn’t know it myself, and took it upon herself to get me sorted.” She turned and smiled at Nick, seated beside her, and ran a finger tenderly down his cheek. “What about you, handsome? Were you broken and in need of rescuing, too?”

“I guess you could say that.” Nick laughed. “Greg and Ellie put into a marina in Fort Lauderdale where I was doing whatever work I could pick up on a casual basis. I didn’t graduate high school, you see. No one in my family was big on education, but I was born with the sea in my blood and was tinkering with boat engines almost before I could walk.”

“Your father was into boats?” Paige asked.

Nick shrugged. “No idea. Never had the pleasure.”

“Shit,” Isaac muttered.

“Yeah well, what you’ve never had you don’t miss. I was brought up in a poor neighborhood in Georgia by a caring mom who did the best she could for us kids. She had a live-in guy for a while who worked the shrimp boats. A hard life but the best introduction to boating anyone could have.” He chuckled. “I certainly never grew up with any romantic notions about the sea.”

“The reality doesn’t live up to people’s expectations, I’m told,” Isaac said. “Same with most things.”

“Yeah well, I spent a lot of time on those old tubs when Mom was out working. I guess I kinda absorbed the life in the same way the boats attract osmosis.”

Isaac stretched his long legs in front of him and grinned across at Nick. “I take it you never took to fishing boats as an adult?”

“No, by the time Mom’s guy moved on I’d already figured out what a tough life it was. I drifted down to Florida when I quit school, knowing there was more money floating about the marinas down that way so more likelihood of making a decent living.”

“Sport fishers?”

“Yeah, they’re ten a penny. I picked up crewing jobs on a few but was still a drifter at heart. It was so fucking frustrating,” Nick added, thumping his thigh with his fist. “I was only in my early twenties when Greg and Ellie came on the scene, but I already knew a damned sight more about maintaining boats than some of the guys with fancy qualifications who were coining it in.”

Isaac nodded. “But because you had no track record, you couldn’t get a permanent job?”

“Right. The guys established there got to know me, realized I could turn my hand to just about anything, and was reliable. They used me when they were shorthanded or for the shitty jobs no one else wanted to take on.” He paused to take a swig of beer. “Ellie and Greg had problems with their generator. It was a specialist job, and a new part was needed. There was some sort of fuckup, and it didn’t arrive. They couldn’t afford to wait, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t necessary to delay them because a part wasn’t actually needed. I was polishing the hull for them while they waited and said I’d have a look, see if I could do a temporary repair. I thought they’d just laugh, but Ellie looked at me in that assessing way of hers and told me to knock myself out.”

“And let me guess,” Paige said, smiling. “You fixed the problem…er, no problem!”

“Yeah, I got lucky.”

“Aw, now don’t start getting all modest on me. It doesn’t suit you. And it sounds to me as though the specialists were trying to get one over on Ellie and Greg.”

“I think that, too. They saw a big boat with a professional skipper and owners with more money than sense.”

“Didn’t using your initiative like that drop you in it with the specialists at the marina?” Isaac asked.

“It would have done, but Ellie saved the day.”

“And offered you a job?”

“Not right then, but the following morning, just before they were due to leave, I went back to their boat. I’d left some of my tools in the engine room. The skipper was nowhere in sight, so I just slipped through the salon, thinking I could get to the engine room without disturbing anyone. But something made me peer round the door to the master cabin. It was open, and it sounded like someone was being tortured.”

“Ellie and Greg playing their games?” Isaac said, grinning.

“Yep. Gave me a hell of a shock. Ellie was dressed head to foot in PVC, had four-inch stilettos on her feet and a long-tailed whip in her hand. Greg had his hands tied to the headboard and his bare ass sticking in the air. His face was flushed, his dick rigid, and he was literally begging Ellie to whack him harder.”

“What did she do when she saw you?” Paige asked.

“She didn’t bat an eyelid. If memory serves, she said something like, ‘Ah, there you are, Nick. We’ve been expecting you. Come and play with us
.
’”

“Blimey!” Paige said.

“Turns out she’d sent the crew ashore for a couple of hours but didn’t seem to mind that I’d interrupted them. She told me afterward that she’d always sensed I’d be sympathetic to their persuasions.” Nick smiled at some private memory. “Anyway, they offered me a job as a deckhand after that. I made myself useful to them, was always discreet and totally loyal. Two years later their captain quit, and they offered me his job, which is why you find me here.”

“Did you join them, as a matter of interest?” Isaac asked.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I’m not into being whipped myself but—”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Paige said smugly.

“Oh, I do, darling. I believe in trying everything once, but that’s not for me.”

“Go on,” Isaac said. “Tell us what you did with Greg and Ellie that first time.”