Fight for Me (8 page)

“Heavens, no.” Amelia shook her head emphatically. “Anna met him at a bar she’d started going to with her fake ID. She was only nineteen and she must have stood out . . . well, like a north-sider in a south-side bar. She’d asked me to go with her, but I was dating Peter at the time. God rest his soul. So I don’t know a whole lot about the beginning of their relationship. By the time she brought him around to meet me, he’d already ensnared her. Anna
adored
that man, and nothing I said could change her mind. Her parents weren’t wild about him initially, simply because he was from the wrong side of town, but he won them over eventually. They got engaged around the time my Peter died. I should have tried to stop her, but I was too consumed by my own grief.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Amelia waved her hand dismissively. “It was a long time ago. Cancer is a bitch, though, let me tell you. By the way, help yourself to whatever you can find in the pantry. I’m not much of a breakfast person, but there might be something. You know,” Amelia paused to take a sip of coffee, “I think I like you. You don’t have to return the favor, but I like you all the same. You’re a breath of fresh air.”

Knox blinked. He’d been called many things, but never that.

“I’m sick to death of society people. I stopped attending events years ago. My grandmother is probably rolling over in her grave now that there’s no longer a North woman on the board of the Gardening Society.”

Knox didn’t know what to say, so he did the sensible thing and stayed silent.

“And just so you know, I did my research. I know who you are, and I know all about you. This isn’t the first time your story’s been in the papers.” She tapped her finger on the local newspaper sitting in front of her, which indeed had pictures of him and Natalie on the front page.

He clenched his jaw, but still said nothing. So this woman knew about his past. Like she’d said, it was public information. And he wasn’t a victim anymore. Never would be again. He’d made sure he knew how to protect himself and what belonged to him.

Like Natalie.

“Don’t worry,” Amelia said. “I won’t tell her. But you had to believe I was going to do my due diligence on you. Now that that’s out in the open, tell me how I can help you.”

Knox didn’t understand this woman. One minute, she was telling him she’d dug into his past because she didn’t trust him, and the next minute she was asking how to help.

He didn’t understand her, but he appreciated her brutal honesty. She didn’t play games and meant what she said. Maybe he’d like more people if they were more like her.

“We need guns.”

“I have several, and you’re more than welcome to file off the serial numbers.” She frowned. “Except I’m not sure that I have a tool that can do that. You can see what’s in the shed.”

He shook his head. “We’re not taking yours.”

Filing off the serial numbers would probably be enough to keep Amelia’s association with them under wraps, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t want to cause her any trouble. Also, Natalie had just reconnected with her and Knox didn’t want to jeopardize that. She hadn’t said as much, but he knew it meant a lot to Natalie to connect with this small piece of her mother.

“Sadly, I don’t have any connections to the black market gun trade.” Her tone was facetious, but Knox suspected there was some truth to her words.

“It doesn’t hurt to ask,” Knox said with a thin smile.

Amelia’s lips stretched upward. “No, it doesn’t.” She clinked her mug against his. “Cheers.”

Natalie accepted her third cup of coffee of the morning from Knox with a grateful smile. “Thanks. You were still sleeping when I got up, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

Knox had earned the extra rest.

She should’ve slept better last night than the previous night, but her thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone. Last night, she’d more or less vowed to ruin her father.

He deserved it.

Still, he was her father, her flesh and blood. The only family she had left, unless she counted her estranged great-aunt in Florida whom she hadn’t seen in at least a decade.

She’d spent all of her adult life serving on the boards of various charitable organizations. Her sole purpose had been to help other people. Going for revenge wasn’t like her. Of course, maybe if she’d developed more of a devious streak earlier in life she wouldn’t have spent so many years—wasted years—under her father’s thumb.

And was it really revenge if it was justified?

“Getting any closer?” Knox asked.

She turned back to the laptop. “I think so. I know a little about hacking, but you know what they say—a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Of course, it helps that I already know all the passwords. I just want to make sure I can get in undetected in case he decides to check.”

Knox sipped his coffee. “Amelia has several handguns, but I don’t want anything getting traced back to her.”

“I agree,” Natalie said, grateful that Knox was taking Amelia’s safety as seriously as their own. “She’s already risking so much by letting us stay here.”

“Yes. We should move soon.”

Bambi—or was it Lula?—rubbed her muzzle against Knox’s thigh, and he absentmindedly scratched her behind the ears. Natalie just shook her head. Nothing surprised her anymore.

She turned back to the computer and scrolled down. After reading a few lines, she sat up straight. “This is it. It’s so easy. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this.”

“You can get the documents?”

She nodded. “All I have to do is delete the access file logs when I’m done. It’ll only be on record that I’ve accessed the files for the five minutes it takes for me to download them. The odds of someone happening to check the logs in those five minutes are slim to none.”

She moved the laptop to the coffee table and leaned over it, pounding away at the keys. Now that the documents were within her grasp, she could hardly wait to get her virtual hands on them.

For as smart as she was, she felt really freaking stupid, because she
had
been stupid. Why had she never read these documents? Sure, the family lawyer had explained everything to her, but he was hired by her father. Could she really trust anything she had been told?

She felt like she was finally waking up from the fog she’d been living in. And she had
so many questions.

“There it is.” She clicked on the folder that held all of the Farrington trust and inheritance documents. There were hundreds of folders in the database—decades’ worth of titles and deeds and trusts and miscellanea. If she hadn’t known where to look, it would have taken her hours to find it.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, urging the file to download faster. Then it would only be a matter of deleting the access record.

Right before she set about to do that, another folder caught her attention.

SWEETPEA FILES.

Sweetpea. That was the name of her mother’s favorite cat, the cat that mysteriously went missing shortly after she died. Why would her mother include pet veterinary records in their database of important documents?

She clicked on the folder, and it prompted her for a password. She entered the usual one and was denied access.

“Huh.” She bit her lip.

“What?” Knox sat beside her.

“There’s a folder here that was my mother’s. It shouldn’t be here, and it’s password protected.”

She entered in a few different tries, like her birthday, her mother’s favorite song, everything she could think of.

She sat back on the couch, thinking and running her pendant along the silver chain on her neck. She gasped and typed quickly.

ACCESS GRANTED.

She laughed, wiping at the tears that filled her eyes and bringing her moon-shaped pendant to her lips. “I love you to the moon and back,” she whispered. “Thanks, Mom.”

The folder contained several files, but most importantly, a newer version of the Farrington trust papers. It was dated a week before her mother died.

Natalie’s blood chilled. What else was in this database?

She scrolled through the folders, looking for anything unusual or out of place. Of course, a smart person hides things in plain sight, like her mother did with the Sweetpea folder. Even if her father ventured into the database, he wasn’t imaginative enough to think the folder would contain anything other than pet records.

She did a search for hidden folders and came up empty. A nagging feeling in her gut told her she was missing something, but it was eluding her. With a sigh, she wiped the access log files and closed the Internet browser.

Her hand shook as she directed the mouse to the Sweetpea file folder. Whatever was in those files could change everything.

Knox put his arm around her and kissed her temple, and she leaned in to him for a moment, closing her eyes and soaking up the strength that his nearness brought her.

When she opened them, her hand no longer shook. She clicked on the first document.

Natalie scrolled through the document while Knox peered over her shoulder.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The terms of the trust. Most of it is legal jargon.” Natalie quickly scanned it, running her finger along the screen. “Here. This is the important part.”

She read over it, working through the confusing legal language. She blinked, then re-read, making sure she’d gotten that last part right.

Then she sat back and looked at Knox. “It looks like my trust is managed by a board of trustees.”

She’d never heard anything about a board before, not in all those boring meetings with the family lawyer that she’d attended with her father. Wouldn’t it have come up at some point?

Then again, she’d never been a valued member at those meetings, her father and the lawyer talking over her.

“What does that mean?” Knox asked.

Natalie shrugged. “I need to keep reading.”

As she continued to read, Amelia came in and sat in the armchair across from her. One of the dogs trailed behind her and lay at her feet.

“It doesn’t say who is on the board, though.” Natalie sighed. A list of board members right there in the document would be too easy. What good was it knowing about the board if they didn’t know
who
was on it?

“What board?” Amelia asked.

“The board that manages the Farrington trust. Why would my mother set this up? Why wouldn’t she just manage it herself?”

It made no sense. Her mother wasn’t a lazy woman, someone who would pass her responsibilities off to someone else. She’d always been very active in the family’s business affairs. In fact, it wasn’t until she died that her father started playing a large role.

And this document was signed a week before her death.

She couldn’t have known . . . or could she?

Natalie paled. “It’s like my mother knew she was going to die.”

“You said she died in a car accident, right?” Knox asked.

Natalie nodded and scrolled a little farther in the document. “The board only takes effect in the event of her death . . .” She trailed off as waves of nausea hit. “There’s no way she could have known. It was an
accident
.”

She rose and paced while Knox and Amelia looked on. “It was signed a week before she died. That has to be a coincidence, right?
Right?
”

She knew she was getting a little hysterical, but she looked at Knox and Amelia, silently pleading for them to agree with her. When neither did, she sank onto the couch beside Knox and put her head in her hands.

How could she have known?
Was it somehow suicide? No, her mother never would have abandoned her like that. Anna Farrington didn’t have a selfish bone in her body.

And she hadn’t been depressed. Looking back, Natalie realized she was unhappy, but surely she would have noticed if her mother was on the brink of suicide.

That just wasn’t possible.

Which left only one other option.

She felt the bile rise in her throat just thinking about it. It was too horrible to be true.

“Did you know about the board?” Amelia asked.

Natalie picked her head up and shook it. “The lawyer didn’t say anything about it, so either he didn’t know about it, or he lied to me. I don’t know which.”

“What are the terms of the original trust? The one the lawyer told you about.”

“I have it here,” Natalie said, “but from what I recall, the basics are that I get an allowance every month, which is managed by my father. When I turn thirty, I inherit the full trust.”

“Is that all?” Knox asked.

Natalie pulled the computer closer. She wondered what else she hadn’t been told. “I think I better read the original document.”

With the exception of the grandfather clock ticking away in the corner, the room was silent while she read.

“Okay, originally, my mother had sole control of the Farrington fortune. When I turned thirty, I would control half of it. In the event of her death, the fortune would be frozen, with the exception of the monthly allowance, until I turn thirty. Then I would get all of it.”

“Where would the money have gone in the event of your death?”

“My father.”

Knox looked at her grimly.

“According to the new document,” Natalie continued, “if I die before I turn thirty, then the money is distributed to several charitable organizations. Besides the board, that’s the major change.” Natalie took a shaky breath. “The money disappears if I’m dead. So my father needs me alive.”

It felt like a knife had stabbed her in the back and lodged itself in her heart. When that guard had said her father just needed her alive and didn’t care about her condition, she hadn’t taken it seriously.

But now she knew her father wouldn’t care if she were brain dead, as long as her heart was still beating and her lungs were still breathing. Her stomach churned as she realized he might even prefer it that way.

“What power does the board have?” Amelia asked.

“It says they can change the terms of the trust with a majority vote.”

Natalie’s mind was whirling. All this time, a nameless, faceless group of people had had the power to change her fate, and she hadn’t even known about it because she’d been too complacent.

Never again.
Never again would she be so naïve, so taken advantage of.

“What does that mean for us?” Knox asked.

Natalie pressed her lips into a thin line. “It means we’ll be staying on the north side for a while.”

Natalie sat on the bed in the guest room, her knees drawn to her chest. The last two days had been the best and the worst of her life.

Yesterday morning in the hotel room with Knox was . . . words just couldn’t describe it. Just thinking about the sensations he’d given her made her toes start to curl. She’d never felt so sensual, so desired, so
alive.

And to think—that was just the beginning.

Despite being twenty-six, she had almost no experience with men. Life with her father hadn’t exactly allowed for romantic interludes. So she knew she was more than a little sheltered and naïve. But this
thing
between her and Knox was real. She knew that as surely as she knew the exact shade of his eyes—umber, like dark chocolate.

As if her thoughts of him were a magnet, he opened the door slowly and entered the room, closing the door with a soft thud. He sat next to her, the bed shifting under his weight so that she naturally leaned into him. She went with it, resting her head on his shoulder.

Thank God she wasn’t in this alone.

They sat quietly for a moment before he broke the silence. “Are you okay?”

“I . . .” She was about to give the standard response,
I’m fine,
but she wasn’t. And she didn’t want to lie to him. “I don’t know.”

Knox shifted so that he was propped up on the headboard and pulled her against his chest. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the soft feel of his cotton T-shirt against her cheek and his scent—all male with a hint of the cucumber soap that had been in the shower. He was all hard lines and edges. She loved his body, ached to run her fingers over the ridges and valleys, to lose herself in him, if only for a little while.

He put his hand over her hair and gently stroked, kissing her forehead.

“I keep thinking about my mother’s death,” she said. “I was young, but I remember most of the details. It was late at night, and she was driving home from a charity committee meeting or something. She was in a midsize sedan, and a U-Haul truck ran a red light, slamming right into the driver’s side. She . . .” Her breath hitched. “She died on impact.”

God, she could only hope that last part was true.

She squeezed her eyes shut as painful images played through her mind. She hadn’t gone to the scene and hadn’t been allowed to see her mother’s body until the funeral, when she had looked exactly and nothing like herself. But she’d seen a picture of the wrecked, twisted pile of metal that was the car, and that was enough for her to imagine how mangled her mother’s body must have been.

Knox said nothing, just continued to stroke her hair until she was ready to speak again.

“They never found the driver. The truck was abandoned a mile away. It had been stolen from the lot. The police suspected teenagers had taken it for a joyride, then fled after the accident. I don’t know, though. If that were the case, wouldn’t there be fingerprints?”

“Probably,” Knox agreed. “I doubt a group of teenagers would know enough to wipe down the vehicle. And a U-Haul isn’t exactly a top choice for a joyride.”

“I never really thought about it before because I was too caught up in the fact that my mother was dead, but now . . . something just doesn’t seem right.” Natalie sat up and looked Knox in the eye. She wanted to see his reaction to her question. “Do you think my father could have arranged to have my mother killed?”

Knox’s gaze remained cool. His eyes didn’t widen, his pupils didn’t dilate. He wasn’t surprised by her question at all, and that was her answer.

She felt like the air had been sucked out of her lungs.

“Why? Why would he do that? She’d already changed the terms of the trust by then.”

“He clearly didn’t know about it.”

Natalie’s chin trembled, the thought that her mother was murdered for money too much to bear. Could it be true? The circumstantial evidence was all there, and she had no compelling reason to leap to her father’s defense, especially after recent events.

She hadn’t looked at the accident clearly at the time, but she’d only been eleven. Now, she could easily see how suspicious the circumstances were. Why didn’t the cops take notice and investigate?

Maybe Knox and Amelia were right. Maybe you couldn’t trust anyone in this town.

She hated to believe that. There were good, kind people out there. Her mother had been one of them. Amelia was one of them.

She wanted to think
she
was one of them.

But it seemed they were outnumbered. Or overpowered, at least.

The bed shifted as Knox moved to the foot and pulled her leg away from her body. She opened her eyes and watched as he began kneading her calf. Her muscles practically sighed with pleasure. She was in shape, but her body had taken a beating these past few days.

“It’ll feel better if you take your pants off.” Knox’s gaze was intense, and she cracked a small smile.

He let out a little laugh—a rare sound that was music to her ears. “That sounded like a lame pickup line.”

Her smile broadened. “It did.”

She shimmied out of her jeans and tossed them aside while Knox stepped into the adjoining bathroom for a minute. He emerged with a bottle of lotion, which he squeezed into his hands.

He rubbed the lotion into her calves and feet, her muscles gradually relaxing and giving up the tension they’d been holding. And although the massage couldn’t completely relieve the tension in her mind, it definitely helped.

Knox kneaded a particularly tight spot on her foot, and she closed her eyes.

“That . . . feels . . . so . . . good.” She practically purred the words. “How do you know how to do this?”

“After a fight, it was either live with the cramping muscles or learn to massage them.” He gave a wry smile. “So I’m only good for legs and feet. That’s all I could reach on myself.”

“Women would pay good money to get your hands on them.”

His eyes darkened, and he brought his lips to the inside of her ankle. He worked his way up her leg, the stubble on his cheeks prickling her skin. He spent a few extra torturous seconds at her inner thigh, leaving it quivering. He skipped over her clothed belly and went straight to her neck, trailing lazy kisses in the sensitive spot behind her ear.

“I don’t want my hands on other women,” he whispered. “I only want you.”

“Then take me.”

He pulled back and looked into her eyes. She could tell by the torn look in his eyes that he was at war with himself.

So she would just have to help decide the victory.

She reached down to his belt buckle and undid it and the button beneath. Slowly, keeping her eyes on his, she lowered the zipper and reached her hand inside. When her hand made contact with his hard flesh, his pupils dilated. He closed his eyes, then tried to shift away. She didn’t let go of him and grabbed his arm with her other hand.

“I know what you’re going to say,” she said. “I’m not going to regret this. I know what I’m getting into. I want you, Knox. I want all of you.”

She started to move her hand on him, swallowing the embarrassment of her inexperience. She’d never pleasured a man and had no clue if she was doing it right.

But she knew that she was enjoying exploring his body. A fire started to burn inside her, and she hoped he felt it, too.

When his breath hitched, she smiled.

With a growl, he pulled her hand out of his pants and quickly yanked her shirt over her head. He dragged down the fabric of her bra and put his warm mouth on her nipple. She gasped and arched her back, reaching down to put her hands on him again.

His mouth found hers, and his fingers found her clit. It was already throbbing and she moaned at his touch.

This was what she wanted—
no, needed.

Suddenly, she was no longer embarrassed by her inexperience. She was glad her firsts would be with Knox.

Abruptly, he pulled away, and her eyes sprang open in shock. She relaxed when he stripped his shirt and jeans off, leaving only his boxer briefs. For the brief moment before he returned to her, she admired his body—the tightness of his pecs, the bulge of his biceps, the sleek muscles that ran down into his briefs. His skin was marred with scars and the overbearing X tattoo, but they just made him even more beautiful.

This was a warrior’s body.

Tenderly, he brushed her hair back from her forehead and kissed her softly. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

She laid her hand on his cheek. “Knox, I’m sure.”

He pulled his wallet out of his abandoned jeans and retrieved a foil-wrapped condom. She eyed it with trepidation, nerves and butterflies forming in her stomach. When she returned her gaze to his, though, the butterflies flew away.