Page 23 of Fury
And a bottle of wine to get home to. The thought of sitting and making small talk with the woman who hated me, and the half-brothers who didn’t want a woman to share in their inheritance, was not my idea of a nice relaxing family dinner. But I didn’t miss the disappointment in the old man’s eyes, and I couldn’t ignore the pang of guilt in my stomach.
“Thomas,” I said, looking towards the older man. “You can show me out.”
He opened his mouth a fraction, enough that I could tell he wanted to fire some sort of arsey retort, but then thought better of it in front of our father.
Tommy wandered at my side and when I heard the drawing room doors click into place, I stopped and turned to him.
“What do the Northern Kings have on you?”
His face paled, shock stunting his system suddenly, taking his ability to breathe away.
“I, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said after a long pause.
“Yes, you do. Why else do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost? Tell me. Because I need to know whether I’m going to find out it’s you fleecing the company. I’m sure Gordon would be happy that you’re stealing his inheritance, seeing as it’s all he fucking thinks about.” I shrugged, waiting a moment for him to respond.
“I got into some gambling debt. And owed this pimp some money. I couldn’t have gone to dad to ask him to bail me out. He’d have stripped me from the will. You know as well as I what that will has written in it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“So, what did you do?”
“I got someone to loan me the money to pay off the gambling debt and warn the pimp to wind his neck in.”
“And that someone was the Northern Kings bike club?”
“MC, Heidi. Northern Kings MC,” he corrected in a hiss as if the Kings could overhear us right now.
“Whatever. So what? You owe them favours?”
“Occasionally I make donations to their charities. They’ve never asked much in return yet. And I paid back every penny, and then some, from the money I borrowed from them.”
*****
“Fury’s here to see you, Miss Fischer,” the little brunette poked her head tentatively through the gap in the door.
“Thanks Polly, send him in.”
“Poppy,” she corrected.
“Poppy, sorry.” Shit.
It was a name that should stick in my head. But it didn’t, merging in amongst the confusion of grey matter infused with wine.
His footsteps seemed loud on the thin industrial carpet, heavy soled boots and determined steps. He wasn’t dressed in his jeans and leather jacket today. Today he was dressed to work; black and grey canvass trousers, adorned with pockets of every conceivable size, a utility belt wrapped round his waist, slung low like a cowboy ready to take a shot. He’d nudged the door open wider with a shoulder, a bag weighing each hand down, the tension of his arms clear through the grey hoodie he wore.
I’d only glanced upwards, a quick look away from the laptop that seemed dwarfed on the desk now the computer had vanished. But when I looked back at him, he seemed to tower over the top of me, the dark-hair piled on top of his head in a man-bun making him taller still.
“It’s gonna take a few hours to set this all up, doll.”
Now I glared up at him, at the familiarity in his tone, the use of terms of endearment as if I was something other than a client. And he grinned down at me, knowing full well that he’d pissed me off by calling me doll. I wanted to respond with something, but for the very first time, I was all out of retorts. And he knew that, too.
“If you can do it quicker, that’d be very much appreciated.”
“Not a request that I get often.”
The chuckle was there in his voice, amused by the innuendo. I rolled my eyes, trying to distract myself with the spreadsheet of accounts that I had been scrutinising all morning, the tedious job of entering all Dave’s written accounts into some sort of electronic order, not interesting enough evidently as now I was distracted by the man who’d just stripped his hoodie off.
Fury’s arms bulged out of the sleeves of a t-shirt two sizes too tight for him, tanned skin, and the throb of veins over his biceps as he pulled equipment out of the bags in front of him.