The Bourbon Kings

But Lane knew better.

His father clearly hadn’t been aware that Chantal was pregnant—and the man was very, very definitely in the running to be responsible.

Likely in first place.

Dear Lord.

Lane returned to Mack’s truck, and resumed his casual, I’m-not-waiting-for-anything waiting.

Under more normal circumstances, he would probably have been ranting about the fact that his wife and his father had consummated some kind of a relationship.

But he didn’t even care.

Focusing on that still-closed door of the business center, he just prayed his brother was okay. And wondered how long he needed to wait before he broke in.

For some reason, he heard Beatrix Mollie’s voice in his head, back from the day before when the woman had been loitering outside Rosalinda’s office.

It comes in threes. Death always comes in threes.

If that were true, he prayed his brother wasn’t the number two … but he sure as hell had some recommendations for the universe on who should be.

Edward’s body was screaming by the time he heard, off in the distance, the rear exit open and close.

In spite of the pain, he waited another ten minutes just to make sure the business center was empty.

When there were no further sounds, he gingerly shifted his feet out from under the desk and bit his lower lip as he tried to straighten his legs, move his arms, get himself unkinked. And he made it far enough to have to shove the office chair out of his way—thank God the thing was on rollers.

But that was it.

He tried to stand up. Over and over again: With all manner of grunting and swearing, he attempted every conceivable strategy of transitioning back to the vertical, whether it was gripping the top of the desk and pulling, sitting back on his hands and pushing, or even crawling like a child.

He made little to no progress.

It was like being stuck at the bottom of a thirty-foot well.

And to top it off, he had no cell phone in his pocket.

Further curse words ricocheted through his head, the f-bombs landing and making craters in his thought patterns. But following that period of air strikes, he was able to think more clearly. Stretching over as best he could, he grabbed hold of the phone wire that ran from the wall up through a hole in the bottom of the desk.

Good plan, except the trajectory was wrong. When he pulled it, he was only going to move the handset farther out of reach.

And he had to call Lane—not just because he wasn’t going to be able to make it to the exit. If he didn’t reach his brother soon, the man was liable to get impatient, break down the damn door and blow their cover.

Bracing himself, Edward rocked forward once … twice …

On three, he heaved his torso up, drawing on some reserve of strength he didn’t know he had.

It was ugly. His bones literally rattled together under his skin, hitting one another hard without any buffering of muscle, but he did manage to snag the receiver from its cradle—and drag the rest of the phone forward on the desk until it fell off the edge and landed in his lap.

His hands were shaking so badly that he had to dial a couple of times because he kept messing up the sequence, and he was near to blacking out when he finally put the handset up to his ear.

Lane answered on the first ring, bless his heart. “Hello?” the guy said.

“You need to come and get—”

“Edward! Are you okay? Where are—”

“Shut up, and listen to me.” He gave his brother the code and made Lane repeat it. “I’m behind the desk in Father’s assistant’s office.”

He hung up by slapping the receiver around its base until it found home, and then he closed eyes and sagged against the drawers. Funny, he’d been laboring under the misconception that sweeping out the barn aisles regularly meant his stamina and mobility had improved. Not the case. Then again, his pretzel-under-the-desk routine might have been a challenge for anyone.

As he heard the rear door open and shut for a second time, he had a sudden urge to re-try the whole get-to-his-feet thing, just so that he and Lane could be spared the embarrassment that was about to come. But the flesh was unwilling even as his ego got up on its high horse.

A moment later, he cut Lane off before the man spoke even a syllable. “I got it,” he said roughly. “I got what we need.”

He had to salvage his pride somehow.

Lane’s knees cracked as he crouched down. “Edward, what happened—”

“Spare me. Just get me up into that chair. I need to log out or we’ll be compromised. Where has Father gone? I know he left out the back.”

“He got in his car with the driver and I watched him leave. He’s off to the track.”

“Thank God. Now get me up.”

More ugliness, with Lane grabbing him under the armpits as if he were a corpse and dragging him off the imperial purple carpet. When he was finally seated, a sudden drop in blood pressure made him lightheaded, but he shook that off and turned on the monitor again.

“Go to his desk,” he ordered Lane. “Top drawer in the middle. There’s a sheaf of papers in there. Don’t bother reading them, run to the Xerox machine and get us a copy. He just signed them.” When Lane only stood there, as if he were wondering whether he had a medical emergency to deal with first, Edward slashed his hand through the air. “Go! And put them back exactly where they were. Go!”

When Lane finally got his ass in gear, Edward refocused on the computer screen. After transferring one final document, he began signing out of the network carefully, closing everything that he had opened.