“I never discuss business with outsiders,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s no longer the case, Godking.”
“Because we fucked?” Why am I pushing her away?
Fee snorted inelegantly. “Fuck the fucking. Though…” she considered, “it was passable enough, I suppose. But once Grandad’s farm got shot to pieces, we were no longer outsiders. We’re tied to this mess.” She waved her hand impatiently, “And don’t go on about how it would be my fault because I kidnapped you. I had no choice, you power-hungry dick-bag.”
The only thing I could focus on in this diatribe was,“Passable enough?We should revisit the screams you let out last night.”
The bristling between us disappeared, a new heat stoked by our close proximity, how quickly anger could morph into something much more complicated.
Leaning forward slowly, Fee put her elbows on my desk, giving me an excellent view down her “Fuck the Patriarchy” t-shirt. “Tell me what you’ve learned about Leevil and we’ll sweep all this nonsense off the desk - no doubt made from some rare wood felled by invaders hacking their way through the Amazon Rainforest - and I’ll remind you of the grunts and growls you made last night, more beast than man.”
We stared at each other, the air almost too thick to breathe.
“Fair enough, darling. You’ll enjoy the fact that I was nearly murdered because of that computer server farm construction…”
Chapter Seventeen
In which Fee helps Alec discover the joy of animals.
Fee…
As the old ones would say, I took a fiddle laugh over the business with the server farm. Of course it was the bloody American! No wonder there had been so much wild shooting on the farm.
It's a wonder they hadn’t brought a rocket launcher.Or a tank.
Hard as I laughed at that, it was even more so over the fact that Davies seemed ignorant of exactly how many crimes, old-fashioned murder being the least of them, could be laid at the door of ‘legitimate’ corporations and especially one run by a piece of shit like his buddy Leevil.
I liked the name.
“Why would you think that someone who was willing to destroy small communities, tribal lands, and wildlife around the world would hesitate to kill one billionaire? There is no such thing as protected status where money is involved,” I asked after he explained the contract shenanigans. “Also, you might be needing some new lawyers.”
“You think?” he said, “And I am fully aware of what allegedly legal companies get up to in the name of profit. In this case, I am a bit surprised because in the long run he would be better off doing business with me.”
“People like him don’t have a long run, they only want what they can get their filthy little hands on now. That’s why they don’t care about saving the planet. Not if it means more for themnow.I swear if I had your resources- no, if I had a fucking tiny, iota of your resources, your fucking money, your contacts, your everything, I’d make them regret every day they woke up.Every day they didn’t look at the earth with gratitude for it being their mother.”
The idea of Leevil doing all he had done - shooting up the farm, almost killing my family, almost killing Alec, all so he could rape the land in Lancashire by himself - blotted reason out of me for the moment. No matter how good the night before had been, far more than passable if I was being more honest than I wanted to be with myself, the stress of the last few days, and the constant state of fury I had lived with since I was a girl boiled over. “You wasting, ruining fuckers!”
Before I could stop myself I had picked up one of a pair of blue glass paperweights shaped like hippos and whipped it full force at the back of the currently cold fireplace.
Shards of marble and powdered glass flew everywhere.
In less than a blink Davies was up, had slid over his desk, sending important papers and expensive pens and the blotter flying, and had an arm around my waist from behind, taking the second paperweight from my hand.
“Woah, woah there. I know you don’t like me but those are Tiffany. Well, this one is, the other one is rubble.”
Two of his guards - Roger and Kyle - banged into the room with guns drawn, doing a quick, efficient scoping of the space. The day before I’d had a quiet word with both of them about how lazy they were at checking corners on the estate, and that whilst my family was there they needed to get their shit straight or we’d have more than words.
I wasn’t in the mood to admire their renewed work ethic, so when they looked at the two of us I hissed at them, sounding for all the world like one ofGrandad’s geese.
They were back out of the door that quick.
“As if they weren't scared enough of you already,” Alec murmured, one of his broad, warm palms rubbing circles on my back.
I pulled around so we were face to face and for want of anything sensible to say I kissed him.
Despite the mood I was in, and the destruction I had wrought on one of his antiques, the kiss wasn’t wild. Wasn’t angry. At least not after that first, hard contact.Working its way quickly backward from close to biting each other to slow and curious, taking the time that we hadn’t had in the basement or allowed ourselves the night before, it was soothing, a leisurely kindling rather than a burn everything down inferno.
