The Bad Boy CEO Read online

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  Chapter 1

  “Sir?” The unsure voice of Colt King’s secretary came through the intercom on his desk.

  She had better sound unsure of herself. He’d told her he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. He was working. Doing what he did best, acquiring another shop to add to King’s Customs’ empire. He needed to focus. “I told you I do not wish to be bothered.”

  “I know, sir, and I’m sorry, but there is someone here to see you.”

  “Get rid of them.” He turned his attention back to his second in command, Cedric Lathan, and the report he had compiled about the custom motorcycle shop they were about to buy. The owner was proving to be difficult, holding up the sale. He said it wasn’t a money issue, but one of pride. He didn’t want his little mom-and-pop shop to be lumped in with the big boys, and so far he had turned down every offer they had presented him with. He would bend soon, though. In Colt’s ten years in the business he’d learned that everyone had a price. The owner could be bought. “Increase the offer by fifteen percent.”

  “Are you sure? We’ve already increased our offer three times. The shop is not worth what you are willing to pay.”

  Cedric was smart. Colt respected the Harvard grad’s opinion and sharp financial mind, but King’s Customs was his business. He’d taken it from a little car shop just outside the Las Vegas Strip to an empire with shops in thirty states. He knew what he was doing. “I don’t care. I want that shop. You go back to him—”

  Colt heard heavy footsteps pounding on the floor just before the door slammed open.

  “This is bullshit. I don’t need to make an appointment to see the son of a bitch.” Colt sat back in his chair watching calmly as the furious man stomped into the room. He was huge, covered in tattoos, wearing black motorcycle boots and an expression that would terrify a lesser man. “You pick up the phone when I call you. You can mess with everybody else, but don’t fuck with me. I’m not scared of you.”

  “Sir?” Colt’s harried assistant rushed through the door. “I called security. They are on their way. Should I call the police?”

  “No. You both can leave.” He looked at Cedric. “Security won’t be necessary.”

  Cedric blinked at him, looking back and forth between him and the man scowling in front of his desk. “Are you sure?”

  “Get out.” They both left, but not before giving his unexpected guest another cautious look. “Did you miss me, Duke? I’m touched. Really. I think I’m getting a little choked up.”

  “You’re going to be choking when I shove your ugly-ass tie down your throat,” his older brother said to him with the nasty scowl that was so characteristic of him. “You pick up the phone when I call. I don’t give a fuck what you’re doing. You may be sitting behind this desk, but this is still my damn company.”

  “This tie cost more than everything you own put together.” Colt studied his ex-convict, sometimes violent, always hostile older brother, wondering how hard he would have to hit him to knock him out. There was no doubt in his mind that Duke could kill him. But there was no way in hell he was going to let Duke barge in here and walk all over him. He may be the younger brother, but he sure as hell wasn’t a kid anymore and he didn’t have to do a damn thing Duke said. “You interrupted my meeting. We’re still trying to acquire that custom bike shop so we can start the new division of King’s Customs.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that shop. I should be more concerned why nobody in the building knows who the fuck I am. This is my damn company.”

  “The company I run. I make the big financial decisions while you play with your cars. I’m in the office every day. You haven’t been to corporate headquarters once. You’ve never interviewed or met the staff. You told me that you didn’t give a shit who I hired as long as they didn’t fuck up. Nobody’s fucking up here, Duke. Which is probably why you haven’t dragged your ass down here in two years.”

  “My playing with cars is the reason you get to drive your fancy, expensive, imported piece of crap. And just because I’m not down here trying to figure out how to take over the goddamn world doesn’t mean I don’t read the reports. I’m always checking up on your ass. Don’t think that I’m not. Don’t forget who’s in charge.”

  Me, he silently thought. If it weren’t for him, Duke’s name wouldn’t be on custom car paint and accessories. No one would have known that his brother had an amazing eye for design and detail. There would be no reality show that their younger brother, Levi, hosted, showing off Duke’s work and showcasing their brand. They wouldn’t each have millions of dollars in the bank. Yeah, King’s Customs might have been Duke’s baby, but it was Colt who made the business grow and expanded it to the empire it was becoming. But he wasn’t getting into that now with Duke. He didn’t have to. He knew what he was worth. “What do you want, Duke? I know you didn’t come here to brighten my day.”

  “Lolly is sick,” Duke said quietly, and for the first time that day the scowl melted from his face.

  “What do you mean she’s sick?”

  “I mean I wouldn’t be looking at your ugly face if she had a damn cold.”

  “Is she dying?” He swallowed the beat of concern that crept up in his throat. Lolly had taken them in after their father, too drunk to care for or about his sons, took off. Lolly never made it a secret that the last thing she wanted was three unruly boys darkening her doorstep. She worked them like dogs and sure as hell didn’t coddle them, but she kept them fed, clothed, and together when foster care was the only other option. He was grateful to her for that, but they weren’t close.

  “She wants us to come home.”

  “You spoke to her?”

  “This morning. We’re leaving right now. Levi is downstairs. Get your ass in the car.”

  He stared at Duke for a long moment, wishing his brother had never walked through the door that afternoon, wishing he had told him anything but this.

  He had done everything humanly possible to ensure he never had to return to the hometown he hated. He had done everything right. He had made something of himself. He had made himself into a man respected by the world.

  But there was one thing he could never control. And that was Lolly. If the old woman called them back, she meant for them to come running.

  “Shit,” he cursed under his breath.

  It seemed he didn’t have a choice. He had to go home.

  *

  “Are we there yet?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Almost.” Duke and Colt spoke at the same moment.

  Colt turned to look at his younger brother, Levi, who was sprawled in the backseat of Duke’s 1958 laser-blue Chevy Bel Air. “If you ask that one more time, old Duke here is probably going to break your fingers.”

  “As long as he stays away from my face.” Levi smoothed his hands over his chiseled jaw. “We all know that’s the moneymaker.” Levi was an arrogant son of a bitch, but he was the best-look
ing of the King boys and they all knew it.

  “You’ve never been punched in your moneymaker, boy?” Duke asked, looking at him through the rearview mirror. “You’re not a man until you have. Maybe I should make a man out of you.”

  “You’re always so damn cranky,” Levi complained. “When’s the last time you got laid? Trust me, it’ll make you feel better.”

  “When’s the last time you stopped running your mouth?”

  “It’s not my fault that I’m the only one who has any social skills in this family. People like me, and after spending nearly ten hours cooped up in this death trap with you two sons of bitches, I know why they don’t like you.”

  “This Chevy is not a death trap. It’s a classic.”

  “It doesn’t have seat belts. Or air bags. I’m pretty sure you stopped short a few times just to see me smash into the back of your seat.”

  Duke shrugged. “I might have. Can’t have you too comfortable back there. You shouldn’t get to sleep while I’m driving nearly ten hours.”

  “I would have driven some of the way!”

  “Nobody drives me around.”

  “I was a goddamn race-car driver. You don’t trust me with your car? You’re the one who taught me how to drive. I learned everything I know about cars from you.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if that was a mistake. Could never seem to get you out of my hair after that.”

  They were close, Duke and Levi. Much closer than Colt was to either of them, and it made him realize that this interminably long car ride was the most time he had spent with his brothers in years. They were always outsiders in their little border-town community, but Colt was even more of an outsider in his family. Sometimes he wondered how it was possible that he was related to them at all.

  “We should have flown here,” Colt said, breaking up their back-and-forth. “We would have been there by now. I could have chartered a flight within an hour.”

  “It’s a waste of money.” Duke shook his head. “Nothing wrong with driving, Your Highness.”

  “Then you should have taken my SUV.”

  “I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than show up driving that.”

  “I’m going to agree with Colt on this one,” Levi interjected. “His SUV is sick. He’s got TVs in the back and wireless Internet and climate-control seats. Plus it’s a smooth ride with all that German engineering. A man could get some quality sleep in a car like that.”

  “You slept enough.”

  It was then they saw the familiar green sign that told them they were finally home.

  WELCOME TO DESTINY.

  They all fell quiet. He didn’t know how his brothers felt about coming home, but he knew it was a place he never wanted to see again. No happy memories were flooding him; there was no getting nostalgic for old times. He thought about his mother dying and his father leaving him. He thought about the night Duke had gotten into the fight that sent him to prison. He thought about the need to prove to everyone that they weren’t the trash Destiny thought they were.

  It was a few minutes’ ride from the town’s border to Lolly’s house, and as they drove through it, Colt could see that things really hadn’t changed since they left town fifteen years ago. Destiny was a ghost town. Literally. A dusty abandoned mining town turned tourist destination that kept most of the local people employed. The economy here had been drying up when he’d gone off to college. People were losing their jobs and leaving the town in droves. The place had been pretty much dead until a casino had opened up not far from town, which brought some life back into the community.

  Colt was disappointed. He had hoped the town would have disappeared from the face of the earth.

  “We’re here.” Duke pulled the car to a stop in front of a ranch home that had seen better days. Two faded plastic flamingos stood in the front yard, their wings still on this windless night. The porch steps looked as if they were rotting. The white paint was flaking off the house, giving it a molting look.

  “We’re staying here?” Colt turned to Duke, who was looking straight ahead and not at the house. “There’s a fine hotel at the casino. Hell, there’s a motel in town near the mine.”

  “I lost my virginity in the parking lot there,” Levi said from the backseat. “Good times.”

  “You think you’re too good to stay here?” Duke was trying to bait him. He always was, calling him a snob, trying to ruffle his feathers. But Duke couldn’t get to him. “You always thought you were better than this place.”

  “No, but the rest of the town sure as hell didn’t think we were good enough.”

  Duke nodded. Even he couldn’t deny how tough it was growing up with a depressed mother and drunk father in a broken-down trailer on the outskirts of town. “Proved ’em wrong, didn’t we? I’m going to the hospital. ICU has twenty-four-hour visiting.”

  “What? We’ll go with you.”

  “No. She’s wants to see each of us alone. I go first. You go tomorrow. Levi goes after you.”

  Intensive care was serious, and if she wanted to see them all separately, it probably meant … He didn’t want to think about it. For better or for worse Lolly had raised them. She was their only family. “I’ll go first thing in the morning.”

  “No, you won’t,” Duke said, and for the first time he saw a glint of humor in his brother’s eyes. “If you wake her before nine, she’ll crack you in the head with whatever is closest.”

  “My head is still sore from the time she got me with that damn ugly cowboy boot.” Levi rubbed his head. “I might have been as sharp as Colt if it weren’t for that.”

  “Go get some rest,” Duke ordered both of them in the way he always bossed everyone around. “I’ll be back later.”

  For the first time that night no one argued with him. Colt and Levi stepped out with their overnight bags and Duke drove off.

  “You think she still keeps that key in the fake rock?” Levi asked him.

  “I guess we’ll find out.” The fake rock was still there on the porch, just to the left of the door in the same place it had been since they moved there. Colt picked it up to find the key sitting inside.

  “You should tell her that it’s a bad idea for a single lady to keep a key on the porch. Anybody could just walk in.”

  “You tell her,” Colt said as he unlocked the door. “She likes you more.”

  “But she listens to you.” Levi dropped his bag just inside the door. “You’re the brains of this operation.” He looked into the house but didn’t step foot inside. “I’m not ready to go to bed. I’m going to see if Shelly is still up.”

  “She still lives here?”

  “Yeah, if you kept in touch with anybody in this town, you would know.” He walked away. Colt didn’t bother to respond to that. He talked to Lolly a few times a year out of obligation. Other than that there was nobody here he needed to keep up with.

  He shut the door behind him, flicking on the light switch next to it. He expected to be alone in the house and alone with his thoughts for the first time all day.

  What he didn’t expect was a woman wearing only a leopard-printed bra and black thong to be pointing a twelve-gauge shotgun at his face.

  “You’ve got five seconds to get out of my house or I’m going to blow a hole the size of a baseball into your brain.”

  He knew he should be scared, that his heart should be racing and his life flashing before his eyes. His heart was racing, but not because he was in fear for his life; he had just gone rock-hard looking at the woman who was threatening to kill him.

  She looked like Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC. Long dark hair, bronzed skin, a body curvier than the windiest of roads.

  “Move!” She raised the shotgun a bit, causing her breasts to bounce gently and his mouth to go dry.

  He had been around and slept with plenty of gorgeous Vegas showgirls, but he’d never had such a visceral reaction to them as he was having to her. He remembered watching One Million BC with his father as a boy.


  Now, that’s a woman, he would say. They don’t make them like that anymore.

  But apparently they did, and she was standing before him, nearly naked, with her long red fingernails wrapped around the barrel of a gun.

  He thought he was going to hate every minute of being here, but maybe coming home wasn’t going to be as bad as he thought.

  Welcome to Destiny.

  Chapter 2

  Zanna Jacobs was just getting ready to fall into bed when she heard the sound of men’s voices outside her bedroom window. Destiny, Nevada, might be a little deserted town on the Oregon border, but that was why she liked it. She didn’t have to worry about anyone, especially men, bothering her again. Well, until tonight.

  Which was why she was glad she’d been prepared. Luna, her granddaddy’s shotgun, had been her constant companion since she’d packed her in the trunk of her car and left home at sixteen. Some people slept with pit bulls; she preferred to dream with a twelve-gauge shotgun beneath her bed, hoping she never had to use it. But right now she had it pointed in the face of a man who looked dressed to kill in a dark suit and tie.

  “Move!” she barked at him since he ignored her first order. He did move, but not the way she wanted him to. He cautiously stepped closer, putting his hands in the air, regarding her as if she were an escaped mental patient instead of a badass with a gun pointed at his head.

  “I’m not here to hurt you. In fact I didn’t know you would be here. I would like you to put down the gun, please.”

  He spoke calmly to her, but firmly, like he was a guy who was used to having his commands obeyed, and for a moment she wondered if she was pointing her gun at a hostage negotiator or some kind of law enforcement. That would be just her luck—managing to avoid low-level criminals all year only to be taken out by a fed.

  He didn’t look like any of the thugs she knew. Expensive suit. Platinum watch. She wanted to say he reminded her of Superman with his black hair and blue eyes, but he had an edge to him more Lex Luthor than Clark Kent. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m going to kill you if you don’t get the hell out of my house.”