He shouldn’t have been though.He was the calm one.The brother who was quick with a smile, the one who eased the tensions in the room, not the one who caused them.But he hated being here.
With every fiber of his being, he wished he was a landscape architect designing a garden for spring.Not in the middle of nowhere on a winter night, having been pulled from the warm bed of the woman he wanted to spend every second with.
“I don’t know if you’d call that a security breach.”
“I treat anything out of the ordinary as a security breach.”Erik’s tone was sharp.
“What happened before this?Could he have followed someone here?”
Erik stabbed the keys and brought up the feed to an hour earlier.“No.I’m the only one on this side tonight.The team that is on Ida came in at four-thirty and there’s no sign of the guy’s car.”
Ares watched the feed, knowing he was grasping at straws.But how did Drustan find himself up here?And it had to be Drustan.The car looked the same, the guy resembled his build.
“I have a team on that guy.There’s no car behind him?”
“No.”Erik glanced at him.
“I don’t get it.”
“Either someone lost the tail on this guy, or he’s not the guy you have being tailed or the security guys thought it was too risky driving on a country road that they would be spotted.So, they waited at the nearest gas station.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Yeah.”
“Review the footage from the last week.I want to know if he followed anyone from Axis Management to here and then circled back tonight.”
“Yes, boss.”
Ares strode out of the room.“And Erik?Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”Erik waved.
Ares nodded, left the room, as his phone buzzed.Pulling it out of the pocket, he frowned at the code from the sweeper team.
That was his job.To be the public part of the business, to maintain its public face.To be the one who showed up at charity events and wrote cheques and handed out presents to kids and on the side, he’d deal with cleaning up the mess.
He liked it that way.
And it had worked for all these years.
Now he wanted something different.His brother had found his happiness, and Ares wanted that for himself.
It was a selfish thought.Xander had given them a life beyond their wildest dreams.
Right now, he felt like he was being pulled in three different directions, that his orchestrated life was going to crash down, and he didn’t like the feeling.
But nothing made him feel more out of control than Josie.
The way she responded to their rope play made him feel…like a young man again.Like he was just discovering kink.It made him feel curious, as if he had something to learn and with this woman, that’s how he felt, like he was engaging in a connection that was so different from anything he had experienced before.
The call from the team he managed wasn’t urgent, so he sent it to carry over to tomorrow.Before getting in the car, he tried calling Xander again, only for it to go right to voicemail.
He fired off a text to his designer asking for an update on the property.As soon as he could he was going to bring Josie there.It had a gorgeous cork heated floor and no stairs.
Thinking about his plans eased the knot of tension between his shoulder blades until he drove through unexpected traffic on the bridge to their house and saw Logan’s SUV in the driveway.
So, the three of them were having fun while he was dealing with their business, instead of being in bed with Josie.
