Broken: Enemies to Lovers Romance (City Slickers Book 1) Read online

“No.” Her expression softened. Someone who baked cookies to raise money for animal shelters, and risked her life doing all that activist stuff I read about, had to have a big heart. “What happened?”

  “I almost killed myself, while drunk,” I said. “Spent a month in hospital.”

  “Wow.”

  “Pales in comparison to what you’ve been up to.”

  She shrugged, bashfully. She didn’t like talking about herself, which was refreshing. Chicks usually liked to talk a heap of crap about other chicks and clothes and shit. Yawn!

  “It stopped me from drinking,” I added, taking another bite of the omelet.

  “The accident?”

  “No, reading about you on the internet.”

  She met my eye again, her forehead was furrowed from worry lines. She looked so cute, I could’ve leant over and kissed her lips. I was only sitting a couple of feet away from her, so it was totally doable.

  “Why did that stop you from drinking?” she asked.

  “Distracted me.” That and the fact no damn storeowner would sell me anything.

  “You don’t like being alone?” she said.

  “You sound like Parker and Posie in the rehab. All that psychology abandonment shit.”

  “You were abandoned?” she asked.

  “No, not really. I just rarely saw my parents. I came too late in their lives.”

  “Sad. My mom died when I was ten,” she said.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said, feeling like a dick. How could I not know that? Was I told and forgot? I hadn’t joined the dots about her strained, yet odd relationship with her half-brother.

  “You would’ve been just a little boy when I came to live with Jackass,” she said. “Aged about two?”

  “I’m far from little now.” I had to say the obvious. “Where was your father?”

  “He didn’t want me. He’s dead now, which is good.”

  She was so beautiful; I failed to understand why her own father didn’t want her. I never found any of this information on the internet. I couldn’t explain why, but it made me want her even more. She was opening up to me and I only hoped more was to come.

  “Since I cooked, you have to do the dishes,” she said. When she chewed, a dimple appeared in her right cheek.

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t think I had ever hand washed and dried dishes ever in my entire life on Planet Earth. “Isn’t there a dish washer?” I also had never stacked a dishwasher and turned it on.

  ‘There’s not many dishes. It won’t take long to do.”

  “Is there dessert?” I asked mischievously.

  Ignoring my hint towards a dessert that didn’t involve food she said, “There were those sour plums I bought cheap from the organic store that I was going to sugar-up and stew. I might do them tonight. Besides that there’s apricot coconut yoghurt.”

  I suspected coconut yoghurt wasn’t my cup of tea. “So what was prison like?” I was dying to ask.

  She flinched at the left field question fired at her. “Crowded. What was rehab like?”

  “Boring.”

  “Didn’t work, did it?” she said. “You still have the urge to drink.”

  “I guess not. Why do you do it?”

  “What?”

  “Risk your life like that?”

  “Because it’s important.” She paused. “One day hopefully, you’ll discover something that’s more important than you. When or if you do, you’ll fight to the bloody death for it.”

  I stopped to reflect on what she just said. I couldn’t think of anyone or anything that I would risk my life and physically fight for. Not even my siblings and parents. Some people are lovers not fighters.

  “So you don’t regret it?” I asked.

  She raised her chin up high and proud. “Never in a million years.”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you before,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

  She dropped her head down shyly and stared at her plate.

  “I think you’re amazing,” I meant it with every cell in my body.

  She looked up to read my face, then dropped her head back down and continued to eat.

  Chapter Ten

  Jake

  Brydes went to bed early after stewing the plums, and I didn’t see her before work which I was gutted about. I wanted her to see me in my expensive suit. Brand: who the hell cares as long as I look good in it. She got up early and went for a swim, then disappeared, leaving the plunger of fresh coffee and a note on how to cook the muesli she made.

  Ps. I look forward to you cooking for me. (:

  Great. I guess I’m learning how to cook before this evening somehow. I wanted to ask her so many more questions about the prisons and the Bear, her overseas travels and the work she did for Ocean Warrior. I guess it’ll keep for tonight. We’ve got to have something to talk about over burnt pasta.

  It was while I was at work sitting behind my desk that I remembered Corey still hadn’t answered my text. Only the many secretaries and receptionists acknowledged me when I arrived for work. My siblings and father ignored me when I walked past their glass wall offices, which wasn’t anything unusual. To be honest I didn’t really care. I had bigger issues, such as figuring out what to cook tonight.

  Just a few minutes after sitting at my desk, Corey walked in without knocking and landed in the chair opposite. He slouched down like he owned the world, Steve McQueen in his retro suit.

  “Elmer, Elmer, Elmer,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Did you ever make a bid for that Mustang that was in the movie Bullitt?” I asked.

  “Caught drinking a day after leaving rehab. What a fucking loser.” A brunette secretary in a white blouse walked past my glass wall and caught his eye.

  “Going to ask her out?” I asked.

  He turned back to me. “How’s the spitting cobra?”

  “The what?”

  “O’Neal.”

  “Hot. You should’ve warned me.”

  “Here’s the problem, Elmer. We had a plan and you ruined it.”

  “What plan?”

  “To take the heat off your bumbling indiscretion with the parked car, we were going to release information about her discharge from the Costa Rican prison.”

  “What information?”

  “The Austins’ do-gooder work.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “As always.”

  “Explain to me why she gets punished when I stuff up?”

  “She’s a pawn.”

  “Have you seen her lately,” I asked.

  “Not in the flesh.”

  “She’s more queen than pawn. Scratch that, she’s more like a female knight. Is there such a thing as a female knight? What would female knights be called?”

  “Amazon, maybe,” Corey said.

  “Yeah, she’s an Amazon, not a pawn.”

  “Sorry to break it to you, but there’s no Amazons on the chess board. And she’s a pawn in the game we’re playing.”

  “It would improve the game to have large busted Amazons on the chess board,” I said. “I figure this is a sadistic game that Brydes and I are drowning in.”

  “Brydes? Three days in and you’ve already got a nickname for her. What’s her name for you? Love Bunny? Puppy Pooh?”

  I cringed. “Puppy Pooh? Where do you get this stuff from?”

  The brunette secretary walked back past my glass wall and he watched her again.

  “Tell me about this fucking game,” I said.

  “How much do you know about her arrest in Costa Rica?” he asked.

  “Only what I’ve read in articles. The Ocean Warrior vessel she was on crossed over into Costa Rican waters to deter fishermen who were using illegal fishing practices laying driftnets, etcetera. The crew got arrested for trespassing and various other things. That part I don’t understand because if the fishermen were using illegal fishing practices wouldn’t the Costa Rican authorities be happy for Ocean Warrior to be doing that?”

&
nbsp; “You’d think so. Unless the fishing company was paying the authorities to turn a blind eye.”

  “Ha! I never thought of that. Who owns the fishing boat?”

  “Neptune Fisheries.”

  “Neptune Fisheries?” I glanced at the filing cabinet sitting in the corner of my office. “Don’t we…”

  ‘Yep. We own sixteen percent of Neptune Fisheries. Or should I say, we did own sixteen percent of Neptune Fisheries. As soon as the shit went down with O’Neal, we sold our share.”

  “Does she know?” I asked.

  “She hasn’t killed you in your sleep yet, so I’d say she doesn’t know.” He smirked.

  I puffed my cheeks and blew hot air from my mouth. I was already walking a fine line with her. “Go on.”

  “Some of the crew were released after a few days, apart from those who pilot the vessel in the cockpit, those who drag the net up, and those who cut the net, which were the scuba divers. It was O’Neal’s job to dive down and cut the driftnets so the Ocean Warrior could drag them up. They count the dead fish, mammals and birds and release the live fish then take their findings to the governing body. Driftnets are great killing machines of everything.”

  I sat in silence imagining the deluge of sea life, turtles, dolphins, sharks, Nemos, dragged up dead. This was the thing she’d fight to the bloody death for. I couldn’t help but admire her. My respect for Brydes grew with every word that dropped from Corey’s mouth.

  “The arrest hit the media, and due to the Ocean Warrior faculty having huge support worldwide including from some heavy hitting celebrities, the senator stepped in and started throwing his weight around to get her released.

  “She was looked upon as an environmental hero. What worked for her was being photogenic and very pleasant on the eye. What worked against her was she’d been arrested and imprisoned for this thing before. That time the vessel crossed into Russian waters. Putin released them after twelve days; he just wanted to give them a little warning scare. She was lucky that time.”

  He continued, “After much communication from our side to their side, the Costa Rican government were prepared to release O’Neal. Except, the stubborn mule wouldn’t go unless the other crew were released as well.

  “The problem with that was the crew were from five different countries, US, Canada, France, New Zealand and Scotland. This caused a logistics nightmare for everyone involved and pissed off the senator who wasn’t interested in helping the crew from the other countries. He felt it was up to their individual governing bodies to put pressure on the Costa Rican government.

  “So this went on over several weeks. In the meantime, the youngest Austin son made the headlines by getting smashed again, ending up in hospital and then into the best rehab facility that money can buy for the second time in eighteen months. There were a ton of scathing comments that surfaced about you being a spoilt, entitled rich kid etcetera, who got the best of everything and still wasn’t happy. The headlines actually hit nationally, not just locally. To make matters worse, some of Red’s business pals weren’t too happy about the tainted Austin name. You know how sensitive some of these men are about who they associate with and keeping their name clean, and shit. The media hounds American company owners who use dirty business tactics, especially if they’re getting rich off it.”

  “I can see where this is going,” I said.

  “I’m glad. Isaac and Red were following the O’Neal saga through the media. But it was me who came up with the idea to make a deal with the Costa Rican government to get the prisoners released, then we were going to ‘leak’ to the media what the Austins did. Make us look like great do-gooders to take the heat off the youngest son being a fucking imbecile.”

  “You haven’t leaked it yet,” I said.

  “No. We were going to do that yesterday until footage emerged of you drinking on Saturday night, the day after you were released from rehab.”

  “Right.” I felt bad, really bad. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You said that last time,” he said.

  “You said Brydie was a pawn,” I said, still dissatisfied with the reasoning behind her being punished for my actions.

  “She’s being sacrificed for the kings,” he said.

  “I’m still not with you.”

  “We knew you were going to stuff up, so Malone put into place a plan B. If you faltered, O’Neal got the squeeze. We figured that if you didn’t give a rat’s ass about our family name and your future in the firm, and you’ve made it clear that you couldn’t care less about your own health and well-being, then we’d sacrifice someone else’s. Maybe if you watched someone else squirm, then you might think twice before being a dick. And if that someone else happened to be a hot blonde, then that’s the chef-d’oeuvre.”

  “That’s fucked up!” I said.

  “Yeah, it is,’ he laughed. “Not even I could come up with something so…devious.”

  “So what is this debt Brydie owes Malone?” I asked.

  “Yeah, well,” he paused a moment, “between you and I, he sent over some heavies to deal to a Costa Rican minister.”

  “Jeez! So it wasn’t a trade deal. It was bribery and bullying that got them released.”

  He laughed again. “I don’t think the heavies actually touched him, just threatened to hurt him. Anyway, you know the one and only reason he did that was to get Farrah off his back. They’re pretty close, O’Neal and Farrah. If it wasn’t for Farrah, O’Neal would’ve been raised in the welfare system. And if it wasn’t for O’Neal, Farrah would be dead.”

  “Malone apparently didn’t want Brydie.” I just couldn’t fathom it.

  He shook his head. “Didn’t want the stress of another kid in the house. But I think it had more to do with Leon, than anything else.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know the full story there. You might have to ask O’Neal.” He narrowed his eyes. “She’ll wreck your heart you know, like she did Trews’.”

  “I just met her,” I said.

  “Give it time.”

  “I’m not going to fall for that cold fish,” I exclaimed. “She already hates me.”

  “Sure you’re not.” He got up from the chair, adjusted his tie while gazing out at the sea of secretaries.

  “Have I still got a job here?” I asked.

  “For now,” he said, stepping towards the door.

  “Have I still got my inheritance?”

  “For now,” he said.

  “I don’t know how to cook.” It’d been playing on my mind since she suggested it.

  He frowned. “Get takeout.”

  “She’s expecting me to cook tonight,” I said glumly.

  He laughed. “Looks like the spitting cobra has got her fangs into Elmer already.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Just get takeout and hide the packaging,” he said, then left.

  Chapter Eleven

  Brydie

  “I found out what’s going on,” Jake said, leaning against my bedroom doorframe. He’d just got home from work and I was in my room unpacking my bags. I had to do a double take when he approached as he was wearing a two piece navy suit, with white shirt and mauve patterned tie. The kid had matured by five years and looked fine. I was even seeing signs of a 5’clock shadow emerging.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, still adjusting my eyes to the gorgeous sight before me.

  “Why you get punished when I stuff up,” he said. Then his dark eyes fell on my underwear in the opened bag on the bed. “Malone figured I’m more likely to stop drinking if someone else gets hurt.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yeah,” he said, undoing his jacket button. “Zegna Bespoke.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The brand of my suit.” He grinned.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve got Brioni and Tom Ford too. Like James Bond.”

  “Cool.” Those names meant nothing to me, he could be talking gibberish for all I knew.
“Have you got a pen that you can fire poisonous darts from?”

  “In my breast pocket.” He grinned again. “How was work?” He was not in a hurry to leave my doorframe.

  I screwed my face up. “I suspect they don’t want me there.”

  “Same.” He was stalling to backtrack. “I mean, I don’t think my family want me at work either. I didn’t mean I don’t want you here.”

  “I didn’t take it that way. So you’ve still got a job then?”

  “Yeah, for now. I have been warned that my inheritance is on the line too.”

  “That’s big.”

  “Yeah. So I can’t cook.”

  “I know. You weren’t stressing about it?”

  “No. Yes. So I bought takeout. Italian. Vegetarian for you.”

  “Okay. So why don’t we take turns cooking, starting from next week. You can cook Sunday to Tues and I’ll cook Wed to Fri. Then we’ll just have grilled cheese on Sat, if we’re around. Then it gives you time to learn to cook. You never know, you might like it.”

  “Fine.” He sounded a little uptight. I think he’d rather just get his meals delivered. “You’re very good at organizing people.”

  “Are you calling me bossy?”

  “Yes, I am,” he answered. “Hot and bossy.”

  He changed out of his suit into tee shirt and sweat pants and we ate Italian at the table like civilized people, mostly chatting about our jobs. Then he fired a question at me that came out of nowhere.

  “How long did you date the Bear for?”

  “Over three years.” A slight pain struck my chest after seeing him yesterday. Eighteen months later I still loved him. I think I always will. I just won’t date him again until he retires from professional sports. I was in love with the man, not the sports star. But in two years time who knows where we’ll be and what we’ll be doing.

  His eyebrows shot up. “That long?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you meet?”

  I had to pause to remember. “I came back to Chicago because Farrah was ill. Abbie had just started college and Leon is well,…Leon. And Isaac is useless with that sort of thing. While I was here, a journalist who writes human-interest pieces on women in roles that are traditionally male had heard about me.” I shrugged. “I still don’t know how. Anyway, she was keen to hear all about the dangerous work I did on Ocean Warrior. Aaron read the article and contacted me. And the rest is history.”