Page 71 of Colton
I put my hands up, hiding my grin at the way he turned psychology into a verb. “I’m not. I swear. I just wondered what brought it on, and why you did it. You’ve been making a lot of changes the last few months.” I squeeze his biceps, wiggling my eyebrows, and he cracks a smile.
His smile falls, and he bumps his shoulder into mine. “I just felt like it was time.”
“Time for…?”
“Time to stop being the computer nerd. Stop playing so much. Grow up, be a man.” I hate the way he says it. Like he was wrong to be that person.
“Fuck off. You’ve been a man since you were fifteen. So you play video games, so you like action figures, so you dress like a teenager. It doesn’t make you less of a man.”
He rolls his eyes at me. “You’re a dick. You just made my point. All that shit is childish. I just don’t want to be…”
“What? Don’t want to be what?”
“I don’t want people to look at me like I’m immature anymore.”
“But none of us think of you that way, you know that.”
“Yeah,” he mumbles, pushing through the stairway door, taking them down two at a time. His fucking cheeks are red, but I know for sure none of our brothers would have said that shit to him.
Declan has a place in this family and our business that’s uniquely his. He’s not broken and he’s not replaceable, so why the hell would —. “Holy fuck. It’s a woman. You’re doing it for a woman. Tell me, who is she? Where did you meet?”
He slaps through the door to Evie’s floor, knocking on her door and stepping back, avoiding my eyes. I know he’s been going to clubs, but the gossip is he always goes home alone. The only women I ever see him with are the girls here at home and—. “Holy fuck.” I breathe. “It’s Cara, isn’t it?” He stiffens but doesn’t answer.
“You gonna tell me where you got Reed’s name? He’s been in my IT department for years. Always shows up, does his job.” It takes me a minute to catch up to the abrupt topic change.
“No. I want you to run the fucker first. It might be nothing. I hope it’s nothing. I don’t want one of our employees to be stealing from us.”
Declan’s face hardens. “It’s not nothing. It took me less than an hour to track the money. He’s been getting payoffs for months. He’s been fucking with the security around the warehouses the whole time.”
Christ. I think having one of our employees betray us is more painful than the hundreds of thousands of dollars that’s been stolen.
There is a silver lining, though. Janey, the little enigma that clued me into what was going on. She’s going to require a little more research. But if she is what I think she is, she’s the fucking light at the end of this tunnel.
I don’t have time to spin the conversation back to Cara, as Evie swings the door open then, confusion on her face when she sees Declan.
“Hi…um, what’s going on?”
I mentally run through my story one more time before I open my mouth. “Dec and I agreed to look at the security at the hospital, so he’s coming, and we’ll be there tonight with you on shift.”
Her mouth tightens suspiciously. “With me, specifically?”
“Um….yeah?” She’s too fucking smart. She’s gonna see it on my face. I roll my eyes to the ceiling. There, now she’ll have no clue I’m full of shit.
Declan snorts and shakes his head. “We’ve already made upgrades for the daycare. Emergency is the next thing on our list.”
“Upgrades for the daycare?”
She’s looking at me, but Declan answers. “Yeah. Mia’s there, so we upgraded a few of the systems and procedures for that floor.”
“And they just let you do that?”
“Sort of,” Declan squeaks when she pins him with her Mom face. Fucker’s going to give us away.
She raises her eyebrow at him and he caves. “After I hacked their systems and showed them the weaknesses, then they let us come in and make some changes.”
A small smile curves across her lips as she shakes her head. Pulling the door closed, she moves to Declan, putting her hand on his cheek. “Thank you for making sure Mia’s safe,” she murmurs, pressing a small kiss to his cheek.
She turns to me, standing on her toes to reach me, pressing a small kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Thank you,” she whispers. Leaning back, she addresses both of us. “I appreciate you worrying about our safety,” she narrows her eyes, “but if you interfere with my job tonight, I’ll make sure you spend all day tomorrow on the toilet. Kay?”
