Unleashed: Declan & Kara (Unleashed #1-4; Beg for It #1) Read Free

I
could conjure up the mental image of the one person who had made me
an offer on the place. Lymon Culpepper. What a name, and he had to be
the creepiest guy I’d ever seen. He’d missed his calling. He
really should have gone to Hollywood. He could star as the villain in
any James Bond film. With a bloated, round face and shiny, beady eyes
he looked exactly like a toad. Always mopping the sweat off his pale
forehead with a handkerchief, always with that 250-pound goon next to
him. Anyone who traveled around with a bodyguard in sleepy, rural
Montana had to be up to no good.
    His offer had been so
low I figured I’d find more in loose change under the couch
cushions. But worse than his low-ball offer was the way he looked at
me, slimy, beady-eyed like a toad. I got the feeling he wasn’t just
talking about buying the ranch. No, I wouldn’t sell to him, not if
I could help it.
    The elevator finally
arrived. Inside, the only thing not fancy and polished was me. My
boots had gone from defiant and proud to filthy and ancient.
    When the doors parted I
saw a bathroom and ducked straight into it. Breathing hard, hand to
my stomach, I looked at myself in the mirror. Strands of blonde hair
had escaped my ponytail and flew wispy around my flushed cheeks. My
white t-shirt suddenly looked thin and flimsy. Why hadn’t I worn a
power suit, black and angry with big buttons down the front? Maybe
because I didn’t own anything even remotely like that.
    Shit. I couldn’t
believe I was about to see him again. Even worse, I was going to ask
for him for money. I hadn’t seen or heard a word from him in six
years. A lot could change in six years. It should change. I should
have moved on, for one. At 24 you should be well and good over the
man you’d loved at 18.
    That was another thing,
I had to stop thinking of it as love. Infatuation or obsession, that
was more like it. Sure, it had felt like love back in the day, but
over the years I’d tried to talk myself out of that storyline. It
felt a hell of a lot easier to dismiss a summer of pure lust. Didn’t
that describe most summers for most teenagers? It felt a lot easier
to live with that than the idea that early on I’d met the love of
my life and he’d turned his back on me. Left one day without
warning, not so much as a backwards glance. He hadn’t even left a
note.
    I’d sworn off men
afterward. Around town, guys knew better than to try anything with
the ice princess. And when truckers passing through stopped at our
diner, I had no trouble saying no. It was easy to stay the virgin up
in the tower when you honestly weren’t motivated to climb down. No
one interested me like Declan, even though Declan hadn’t been
interested in me.
    I didn’t know what I
feared more, him refusing help or offering it. If he didn’t help
me, I’d have to go to the toad man and I couldn’t imagine doing
that. But if he did help me, what would he ask for in return?
    He’d be back in my
life. And he might drive a hard bargain. He’d shown me he could be
ruthless.
    But now wasn’t the
time for thinking about that. Now was the time for me to bring it,
tough, driven, all business. This was an investment opportunity for
him. I’d pay him back with interest. I needed nerves of steel. I
couldn’t let him get to me, even though he was the one man who’d
gotten to me like no other.
    Through giant glass
doors, I entered Declan’s gleaming, high-ceilinged office space. A
woman sat behind a huge desk, a picture window behind her overlooking
the city of Billings. Spotless and sparse, not a thing was out of
place. I guessed it was his waiting room, like a doctor’s or
dentist’s, only Declan’s had no old magazines, dog-eared issues
of Good Housekeeping with the best recipes torn out or American
Cattlemen with all the latest farming and ranching news.
Two leather armchairs and a coffee table sat beneath a large polished
gold plaque embossed with “Obsidian Investors.” It might as well
read: