Unyielding (Tortured Love Book 1) (12 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Merrick jolted awake when he heard his name called. He glanced toward the door to find Barry, one of his staff, standing there. “Mr. Dalton, sorry to disturb you, but your guests are here already.”

Guests?
Oh shit. Fuck
. Lynda’s uncles.

“All right. Show them in. And get them something to drink.”
Fuck.
He and Lynda had fallen asleep. What time was it? “Make some excuse why we aren’t downstairs yet.” He glanced at the clock. It was only quarter after five. Hadn’t he told them to stop by after seven? “On second thought, Barry, tell then they’re two hours early and we’ll be down when we get there.”

Barry inclined his head slightly. “Of course, sir.”

Once he’d left, Merrick woke Lynda and told her that her uncles were here early.

She sat straight up, her eyes alive with fear. “Do we have to do this?”

A nasty shiver ran down his spine. “Are you all right?”

She averted her gaze. “Yes … yes, I am. Just…” She glanced around the bed. “We fell asleep.”

“We did indeed, though I can’t imagine why.” He pulled her close and nuzzled her neck, but her response wasn’t the same as before. He could sense the change in her, and he didn’t believe it had anything to do with falling asleep after hot sex. She was afraid of her uncles. But why?

She practically jumped from the bed. “I’ll take a quick shower.”

Merrick stood and put his arms around her. “Don’t bother with that. Besides, your ass is really bruised. The water will burn it.” He released the embrace and crossed to his dresser, then opened a drawer and took out a tube. “This will help.”

Merrick turned her around and rubbed some of the ointment onto her lovely ass cheeks. They would be very bruised in a couple of days. He’d done this to her, and she had let him. Memories of holding her over his knee invaded his mind. It would be so easy to tell her uncles to come back another time, but he had to find out if they knew where her father was. Fucking reality was once again invading the time he’d rather spend with his wife.

“That feels nice. Thank you.” The words were sincere enough, but the tone of her voice told him something other than her bruised ass was on her mind.

“Clean up the best you can, but don’t wash that off. Let it soak in.” He kissed her lower back. “We need to work you up to this.”

She turned to face him, and fresh alarm shot through him. Her skin was as pale as it had been earlier, while she’d sat in his office and listened to him talking on the phone. “Merrick, I’m not sure I can go through with this.”

Why not?
“Don’t you want to find out where your father might be and why he did this?”

“Of course I do, but…”

But what?
What?
Now
what the fuck had he missed? There wasn’t time to ferret this out, so he placed a hand on each shoulder and held her gaze. “Lynda, go and clean up. Put on some clothes, and meet me in the hallway outside. I’ll stay with you when we talk to them, okay?”

She didn’t look convinced, but she finally nodded and left the room. Merrick washed up in record time, then put on a pair of dress slacks and a button down shirt. He didn’t bother with a tie. Her uncles were lucky he’d bothered to put on shoes and socks.

Something was going on here, and Merrick had dealt with too many unpleasant surprises for one day. He was likely to go ape-shit on the next person who handed him yet another one. She was waiting for him, dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and athletic shoes. His concern escalated at her choice of clothing, but this wasn’t the time to bombard her with questions. He’d have to watch her carefully and then deal with whatever revealed itself downstairs.

Her gaze drifted over him. “I’m dressed all wrong.”

She’d dressed to look as unappealing as possible, and he didn’t believe it was an accident. “No, you’re fine. Let’s go.” He took her hand, and wasn’t surprised at all to find it cold and clammy.

As they descended the stairs, he heard unfamiliar male voices and smelled dinner cooking.

“Are they staying for dinner?” she asked in a whisper.

“Do you want them to?”

“No.”

Her jaw was set, and she stared straight ahead as they walked into the great room, where Tom and Ted Shelton stood making small talk with Barry. Both men had a drink in their hands, and turned as Merrick walked in, holding Lynda’s hand.

They looked so much alike they could be twins, and both resembled Todd. He’d met all three brothers fourteen years ago, and now the memory of exactly when he’d met them came rushing back. It was the same party where he’d met Lynda, when she was only fifteen.

Ted was the youngest of the three, if memory served him. Both men had Lynda’s blonde hair, although theirs was interspersed with gray. They also had her blue eyes, but their gazes held no warmth like hers did.

Tom came forward first, his hand extended. Lynda squeezed his hand so hard Merrick was reluctant to pull it from her grip, but he had to in order to shake hands with her uncle.

“What a nice surprise,” said Tom, his voice dripping with insincerity. “Thank you for the invitation.”

Merrick gave him a dark look. Was the idiot drunk? “I invited you both over so we could try to figure out where your brother went, and why he did this to me and Lynda.”

That removed the stupid grin from Tom’s face quickly enough. Ted walked over and shook his hand as well, and then Merrick watched as both men eyed Lynda. She didn’t move or extend her hand. When she said “hello”, her voice came out low and defeated. That was the only way he could describe it.

Merrick’s skin crawled as her uncles looked her over. A nasty shiver ran down his spine as he struggled to remember anything else about that party. Like the presence of teenage boys.

Merrick forced a neutral expression to his face as he indicated the sofa across the room. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”

He placed his hand on the small of Lynda’s back, and led her to the opposite sofa. Chloe came in to tell him dinner would be ready in an hour, and Merrick asked Barry for a drink. He also asked him to bring one for Lynda, and then asked him to bring Tom and Ted a second round.

Then he faced Lynda’s uncles. “Didn’t see you two at the wedding.”

They glanced at each other quickly, and Merrick had the uncomfortable sensation they’d forgotten to rehearse this part of the story.

“We don’t exactly get along with Todd,” said Ted.

“He gave us the impression we weren’t invited,” said Tom.

Merrick glanced at Lynda. “Is that true?”

She gave him an imploring look that broke his heart. If he’d suspected things were this uncomfortable between Lynda and her uncles, he’d have met these two in his office instead. No wonder they hadn’t been at the wedding. “My father doesn’t get along with a lot of people.”

Merrick watched her face for a few seconds, then turned his attention back to her uncles. “Why did Todd do this? Take the money and flee the country?” Before they could speak, Merrick leaned forward and gave them each a look that would ensure he meant business.

“And before you answer, you should know that because this was your company, too, you’re not off the hook here. I will get to the bottom of this, and if you two are involved as well, you’re facing jail time.”

Lynda’s quiet, shaky breath next to him was the only noise in the room. Tom and Ted looked as though Merrick had just punched them in the gut. They might have had nothing to do with it, but he had to be sure of that first. Then he’d deal with why Lynda was afraid of them.

Tom slammed his drink on the table next to him, spilling some of it onto the wood. “Now wait just a minute…” His voice fell off as Barry came back into the room.

Barry placed Merrick’s and Lynda’s drinks on the coffee table, then like a flash was all over the drink Tom had spilled. Merrick told him not to worry about it, and asked him instead to return with a third round of drinks for Tom and Ted in a few minutes. Barry raised his brows so slightly only Merrick would catch the gesture, and then he left the room.

Merrick turned his attention back to Tom, who still looked angry enough to punch something.

“We had nothing to do with this,” said Tom. “Didn’t Lynda tell you about her father? He was as stupid in business as he was indiscreet about his sex life.”

“We only owned the business on paper,” said Ted, his expression and his tone of voice also filled with the need to justify his life. “As to running it, that was his from day one. We stayed out of it.”

“How long has he been embezzling from it?”

“We didn’t know he was!” Tom was the more volatile one here. That much was now obvious. “If we had, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“What would you have done to stop it?”

“What the hell do you think we
could
have done? We’re not his damn keepers.”

Merrick had to bite his tongue not to laugh. How the hell these three had run the company at all was a fucking mystery. “It’s been in your family for three generations. What the hell have you both been doing if not helping your brother run it?”

“We have our own companies to take care of,” said Ted.

“So, what you’re telling me is that you put this in Todd’s hands and stayed out of it.”

“Yes,” said Ted. “That’s exactly what we did.”

But they had no trouble sharing in the profits. “Where did your brother go? You must have some clue.”

“We don’t know,” said Tom, still angry. “This affects us, too, you know.”

“Why? The company transferred to Lynda on Saturday.”

“He’s our brother,” said Ted. “When this hits the media, it’ll be our reputations on the line as well.”

Ah, so that was it. Their fucking reputations. “How were the profits split if you two didn’t have a hand in running it?”

“None of your business,” said Ted.

“It
is
my business. I own this mess now. Did you know about the trust provisions? Did you know the company would transfer to Lynda on her thirtieth birthday?”

“Not until Todd told us you were marrying her.”

“Why didn’t Todd change the trust provisions after his wife died? Why leave the company to Lynda when she didn’t want it?”

“We didn’t know he hadn’t changed them,” said Ted. “He told us years ago he’d taken care of it. I told you we only found out he hadn’t done so when Todd told us about the wedding.”

“And you never checked before that to see if he had changed them?”

Tom drained what was left of his drink. “We told you that, too. We weren’t involved with any of the day-to-day running of it.”

And Merrick thought
his
family was dysfunctional. These two made his parents look like Mike and Carol from
The Brady Bunch
. “Where is he?”

Ted gave him a hard stare. “We have no fucking clue, Merrick. We want to find him as much as you do. Neither one of us got a dime off this transfer. It’s our money, too, that’s gone. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Merrick knew that. Jimmy Landers had laid it all out for him earlier. He knew how the profits had been split, even though these two claimed not to have had a hand in running the business, and he knew how much each of the three brothers was supposed to have received once the company transferred to Lynda.

Everything added up. Jimmy told him there was nothing in the books that raised suspicion Todd had been skimming off the top. Todd paid himself a hefty salary, according to the records Jimmy had, and both he and Merrick had simply assumed all that money went toward Todd’s extravagant lifestyle.

They didn’t have records of his personal spending because he wasn’t required to account for it. The records that had been turned over as part of the paperwork reflected the money coming in and going out of the business, which meant they were fake. But how far back had he been doing that? And what different would it make now even if they could get to his personal accounts? He likely had hidden this well.

Despite all that, Merrick still didn’t know the truth. He still wasn’t sure if these two had been part of what Todd and Dean had done, but he also realized he wouldn’t find that answer this evening.

He leaned back against the sofa again as Barry came in with the next round of drinks. Once Barry left again, Merrick addressed Tom and Ted. It was time to deal with the second matter. “Looks like I asked you over here for nothing.”

Tom’s fake smile graced his face. “Not at all. We haven’t seen our beautiful niece in years.”

Next to him, Merrick felt Lynda stiffen, and his skin crawled again.
Why
hadn’t they seen her in years?

“Marriage agrees with you,” said Ted, his gaze creeping over her slowly.
Too
slowly for an uncle. “You look happy.”

“I am happy.” Her voice was flat and her answer automatic. It reminded Merrick of the way she’d recited her wedding vows.

Ted narrowed his eyes slightly. “We didn’t realize you and Merrick had kept in touch all these years.”

Merrick swallowed hard as more memories from that evening fourteen years ago came back. He recalled meeting Lynda, and he recalled these two, drunk off their asses. But he didn’t recall seeing Lynda or her uncles after he was introduced to all three. He wouldn’t have had any reason back then to think twice about it, but he had one now.