Sweetened With a Kiss (27 page)

Within five minutes of meeting Judge Robicheaux, Jen was not the least bit sorry the Sellers had raised her, even if their motives had not been what she thought they were. Growing up with that old man would have been a nightmare. Now she knew where Madlyn got her crazy from.

He sat in his high-backed leather chair and watched her with eyes even colder than Madlyn’s. He was like some whacked-out James Bond villain. He even steepled his fingers while he talked. “The Sellers have done a pretty thorough job of conditioning you to believe they know what’s best for you. They’ve had a lot of years to do that, several of which you were quite ill and dependent on them. Now, Madlyn tells me that Stefan has already managed to marry you. That makes things a little more difficult.”

“What things?” she asked. She should never have let Madlyn bring her here. She should have paid more attention when they dropped Robbie off at Madlyn’s sister’s house. But the Robicheaux’s antebellum mansion was only three blocks from St. Charles so she hadn’t really caught on until it was too late that they were not headed to her house. Her house? Her stomach twisted. Not her house anymore. And that hurt so much more than she’d expected it to.

“My grandson’s inheritance,” he said gruffly, pulling her attention back. “Have you actually signed the stock over to them yet?”

Jen took a deep breath. She didn’t want to hear any more of this. “I will make sure Robbie gets his portion of the trust.”

“I wish it were that simple.” Yeah, all the old man needed was a fuzzy white cat in his lap and the picture would be complete.

“Then just tell me what you want?”

“Direct and to the point. I like that.”

He stood up and went to his desk, then brought a stack of papers with him. “First, you will retain me as your legal counsel. Then we’ll begin the divorce proceedings.”

Something cold seized her stomach. She’d told Stefan she wanted a divorce, but now that this man wanted her to divorce Stefan, she was no longer sure it was a good idea.

“You’ll be much safer here, Jen,” the judge was telling her. “Where we can look after you.”

Look after her? Great, someone else who thought she needed looking after. Then it hit her. It wasn’t her. It had never even been about her. It was the money, the stock and that damned company that she wanted nothing to do with. She swallowed, pushing fingers hard against her eyes. She should have stayed in Paris. She should never have come back here. Everyone here just saw dollar signs they wanted to control when they saw her.

She wanted out of here. She stood up. “I can look after myself.”

“How?” the judge asked. “You’re an extremely wealthy young woman, but if you walk out of here right now, where will you go? How will you get there? Do you own a car? And if you do have somewhere you can go, how will you pay for it? Do you even have the account numbers for your money? Can you access it?”

She froze, her hand gripping one of the arms of the chair, not liking the answers to any of his questions.

“You see, my dear, we are trying to help you. Now sit back down.”

Her heart rate elevated then and she took a deep breath to try and stop it. She simply could not have a panic attack right now. She dropped back into the chair to concentrate on breathing through the panic. She hadn’t had one in so long. She was out of practice.

And the judge just kept talking. The words sounded far away but they still sank into her like razor blades.

“Half of the Taylor Family Trust belongs to my grandson. Sellers only married you to solidify his hold over those assets. If you do not agree to sign the divorce papers, I will have your marriage annulled.”

“Annulled?” she coughed. “You can’t, we’ve already...”

His laughter was brutal and not at all amused. “On the grounds of incompetency. You sustained a very serious brain injury from the accident, Jen. You aren’t competent to make your own decisions. If you don’t cooperate, I will petition the judge for a conservatorship and you’ll find yourself in a wonderful place in South Carolina for young women with similar problems.”

The edges of her vision started to spark as the panic clawed up her throat again. That hadn’t been an idle threat. The judge could make one phone call and she’d disappear. She tried to stand up again and the room titled almost forty-five degrees. She sank back in the chair and lost control of her heart rate.

Sensing blood in the water, the judge continued, “Or you can sign this paperwork, retain me as your legal counsel, and give me your proxy vote. We already have a buyer for half of the shares. Then we’ll move to take STI public. That should be an easy enough choice for you to make. Sign the paperwork and you’ll be an even wealthier young woman.”

“I don’t want STI to go public.”

His smile was not nice as he dumped the heavy pile of paperwork in her lap. He pushed a pen into her loose fingers and tapped the signature line on the papers.

“I won’t sign anything that lets you take STI public,” she said, around the pain in her throat.

“Sign the paperwork,” he said, the false gentleness evaporating from his tone.

She looked at the page, the words danced on the page. She wasn’t sure any of it mattered but she still couldn’t quite make herself sign it all away. “I won’t sign this.” She pushed the papers off her lap and watched, fascinated as they scattered at her feet on the Aubusson rug.

“Well, then, I hope you like South Carolina,” the judge said.

“Any idea where Madlyn took her?” Rogan asked as he finished chilling the last of the Patron Silver in a cocktail shaker.

“No.” Stefan stared at his shot glass as Rogan filled it, then moved on to Jared’s glass. Jared was resting his forehead on the island mumbling about how nice and cool the marble felt.

If Stefan could have controlled his facial muscles, he would have grinned. The hippie just could not hang.

“Don’t pussy out now, Marshall,” Rogan laughed.

Jared reached for his shot glass, curled his fingers around it but didn’t lift his head or the glass. “Need a minute.”

Stefan was almost sorry he was too drunk to really rag the younger guy about not having the stones to drink with them, but he was actually hesitating about his own shot. Rogan was drinking a beer. He’d stopped the tequila a long while back, but Stefan and Jared had gotten into a pissing contest. They were both losing.

Stefan threw his back suddenly and slammed his shot glass upside down next to Jared’s. “Tattooed hippie freak.”

“You’re just pissed cause she still loves me,” Jared told him.

Stefan was on his feet, the bar stool hitting the tile floor, but someone grabbed his shirt and set him on another bar stool. Stefan stayed because the floor wasn’t actually solid anymore. Grant Marshall walked around him and picked up Jared’s shot glass.

“You two getting my little brother drunk?” Grant asked, lifting the Patron bottle and wincing. “Please tell me this wasn’t full when you started.”

“We thought it might shut him up,” Rogan said.

“Did it work?” Grant laughed. “Cause if it did, I need a case of this stuff. I’ve never found anything that would shut him up.”

“Fuck off,” Jared said, but his forehead did not leave the marble island.

“You should have come to LSU, joined the frat, we would have taught you how to shoot tequila properly,” Grant told his little brother, then drank his shot.

Stefan huffed and settled quite nicely into the eye of the hurricane brewing inside him.

“So,” Grant said, addressing Stefan as he pulled another bar stool up. “You want to take on the hanging judge?”

Stefan nodded slowly, very slowly. The tequila had numbed him to everything except the pain of all his internal organs bleeding out and dying.

“Can you make coffee?” Grant asked Rogan.

Rogan shook his head. “It won’t do any good at this point. You got about forty-five seconds before he passes out. Any more questions?”

Grant turned back to Stefan who was suddenly fascinated by the old-fashioned wall clock and how the hands were warping. “How hard do you want to play this?”

Stefan heard the question. One more shot of tequila might have made him come up with the right answer, but he hadn’t had enough to be brutally honest with himself. “I’m done playing,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.

Rogan was right—now he had about another forty seconds. It took him twenty to make it up to his bedroom and into the master bath, where he threw up as much of the alcohol as he could, then stood in the shower until the world stopped spinning.

Tequila? What had he been thinking?

He hadn’t been thinking.

He threw up again, brushed his teeth, then got back in the shower and turned it up as hot as he could stand. He was dragging on clean jeans when his cell phone buzzed. He opened the text message and the phone almost hit the floor. Rage swept through him so fast that he actually went blind for a moment. In its wake was a calm that was so sharp, so crystal clear, that he froze instantly. No more feeling. Just clear, detached thinking.

He looked down at the picture of Jen one more time. She was curled up in an oversized leather chair, asleep. There was also a message.

S
o sorry, but we seemed to have broken your toy after all.

He shoved the phone in his pocket. There was just enough tequila left in his system that he thought about opening the gun safe and taking out the Glock seventeen, but he stopped at the last minute and left it alone. His brain was so razor sharp that he imagined everything from the bullet hitting the center of Madlyn’s forehead right straight through to the lethal injection going into his arm and separating him from Jen forever. He dropped his hand from the safe handle.

No, he knew exactly what he was going to do. And he wasn’t going to need a gun to do it. Madlyn wanted a war. She had one.

No one had the slightest clue that the Stefan Sellers that joined them in the kitchen was not the same person that had gone upstairs two hours earlier. He found Elliot and Jackson had joined Rogan, Jared, and Grant in the kitchen. They were eating the rest of the brownies Jen had made yesterday and forcing coffee down Jared.

“You want milk with that?” he asked. They all stopped at once and looked at him. Good. He had their attention.

“Sellers,” Jackson Napier was the first one to speak. Jackson was one of the few people Stefan had to look up at to meet his eyes. He was also one of the few people who could keep pace with him in a long distance run. At six foot six inches he’d been a hell of a linebacker at LSU; now a hundred pounds lighter, Jackson worked for the NOPD.

“Judge send you to arrest me, Jackson?” he asked.

Jackson shrugged. “Have you done something I need to arrest you for?”

“Not yet.” Stefan’s smile was not nice. “Now if y’all are done snacking, I’d like to go get my wife.”

“Rogan says she went willingly,” Jackson said, pushing away from the counter.

Stefan turned on Rogan, who just shrugged.

“Madlyn took her to the judge’s. I’m going to get her back,” Stefan said. 

Grant stood up. “Robicheaux will be expecting that.”

“Well, then, let’s not disappoint the old man.”

“You need to be smart about this,” Rogan said, thumping Jared on the back of his head when he snorted.

“Let me ask you something. Robicheaux gets his claws in her, how many brownies, cookies, and carrot cakes do you assholes see in your future?”

That got their attention. There was a sudden commotion, a whole bunch of
fuck that shit
, and they all moved at once. “Why don’t we take a ride?” Jackson invited. “I’m off duty.”

The Robicheaux’s antebellum mansion was several blocks from the St. Charles house. They parked on the street out front.

“Stay here,” Rogan told him. “Jared and I will go first.”

Stefan didn’t answer. He got out of the car and leaned against the back bumper. He wanted them to go first, so he let Rogan continue to believe he was running this show. A housekeeper answered the door, then stepped aside as Madlyn appeared in the doorway. She was lucky that he hadn’t listened to the tequila and had left the gun at home. Now, he didn’t even notice he was stalking across the front yard until his shoe hit the front porch.

“Stefan. You’ve brought your whole pack, except for Matt of course, but I’m sure you aren’t interested in videoing any of this.”

“Where is Jen?” Jared asked, before Stefan could speak.

“She’s sleeping. She’s had a pretty rough day,” Madlyn said. “I doubt she wants to see you, but do come in. Grandfather has some papers for you.”

He showed her his teeth. “Madlyn, I’m giving you one chance…”

“Stefan Sellers,” a deep voice boomed from inside the house, pulling Stefan’s attention away from his prey. “We expected you to come storming in here hours ago, son.”

“Where is my wife?” he snarled, brushing past the others and going straight inside. He stopped, facing Judge Winston Robicheaux straight on, something most attorneys in Louisiana couldn’t do and a whole lot of men in Angola had lived to regret.

The old judge was too arrogant to sense danger. “You were very clever marrying her so quickly this time,” Robicheaux’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “It certainly complicates things, but this isn’t my first rodeo, boy. When are you going to learn?”