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“Hey, Ry, I need you to—”
He whirled on an unsuspecting Beckett. “Fuck off.”
“If something’s crawled up your butt, you’d better clench. I’ve got—”
“I don’t give a shit what you’ve got. I said fuck off. I’m busy.”
Several members of the crew slid a safe distance away.
“So am I, so suck it up.” Beckett’s eyes narrowed, fired as hot as his brother’s. “If you swing at me, bro, I’m swinging back, but at least I won’t walk off the job.” He turned, pitched his voice to a shout. “Take lunch. Now. Everybody.”
“I run the crew. I say when they break.”
“You want to do this with an audience? Fine by me.”
Ryder ground his teeth. “Lunch. Now. Clear out. Whatever’s going on at MacT’s,” he told Beckett, “deal with it yourself. I’m up to my ass here.”
“I don’t give a single happy fuck what you’re up to. Knock off. Go the hell home. Go beat hell out of your speed bag or whatever.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“And I don’t take shit from you. If you’ve got a problem with the work, or you had some fight with Hope, just suck it, Ry. Yelling at me in front of the men makes you look like a dick.”
“I don’t have a problem. I didn’t have a fight with Hope, for fuck’s sake. Get off my back.”
Beckett walked over to the cooler, flipped up the lid. He took out a bottle of water, threw it at his brother. “Cool off,” he suggested when Ryder snagged it an inch from his face.
Ryder considered heaving it back, then stewed as he twisted the top, gulped water. “Stupid blond bitch comes shoving her way up here, piling on Hope. Slapped her.”
“Say what? Who? Hope slapped some blonde?”
“Other way.” Ryder rubbed the cold bottle over the back of his neck. He wondered that steam didn’t rise off his skin.
“What the hell’s going on?” Owen came in, still wearing his tool belt. “I had two of the crew come into MacT’s and tell me there was a catfight in the parking lot, and the two of you were going at it in here.”
“Does it look like we’re going at it?”
Owen studied his brothers. “It looks like you want to. What the hell’s going on?”
“Ry was just telling me. Some blonde slapped Hope.”
“Jesus Christ. A guest hit her?”
“Not a guest.” And, Ryder realized, he was making a mess out of this. “Wickham’s new wife, the blond bitch. I came out to talk with the rep for the exterior paint system, and I see Hope talking to this fancy blonde, over by Carolee’s car. It looks tense, full of drama. Sounds like it because the blonde’s yelling her goddamn head off. I’m not getting into that, and the next thing I know, the blonde’s hauling off and slapping Hope. You could hear the fucking crack across the lot.”
“For God’s sake,” Beckett muttered.
“By the time I got over there, it looked like the blonde might take another shot. She’s yelling all manner of shit about how Hope’s having sex with that asshole, how she slept with him to make manager, and other loads of bullshit.”
“Sounds like the asshole deserves the blond bitch,” was Owen’s opinion.
“That may be, but she kept going after Hope, threatened to go to her boss and say how she was banging Wickham to get back down to D.C. That’s when Mom got into it.”
“Mom was there.” For the first time Beckett smiled, showed his teeth. “I didn’t hear any ambulance.”
“She must’ve walked out during, I didn’t see her, but she told the blonde to get gone and make it fast. There was more in there. Threats to call the cops.”
“Mom said she’d call the cops?” Owen wanted to know.
“The blonde. And I said we could do just that. Anyway, she left. It was a fucking mess.” He drank again. “She left.”
“Okay.” Beckett took off his cap, dragged his hands through his hair. “Harsh, ugly, and done.”
“She made Hope cry.”
“Goddamn it.” Beckett leaned back against a wall. There was done, in his mind, and there was done. “It sounds like we need to take a little road trip, have a discussion with Wickham.”
“And after I bail the two of you out of jail, what then?” Owen demanded. “Beating the living shit out of Wickham doesn’t help Hope. It won’t make her feel better.”
“We’ll feel better,” Beckett said, and Owen was forced to nod.
“Yeah, we would. Hell. I’ll drive.”
“I’ll handle it,” Ryder told him. But knowing his brothers had his back defused the time bomb of temper.
“Somebody’s got to post your bail,” Owen reminded him.
“I’m not going to pound on anybody. Probably. I’ve got a better idea. I’ve gotta go. The two of you will just have to pick up the slack for the rest of the day. And keep my dog.”
“What are you going to do?” Beckett demanded.
“I’m not going to hit him in the face. I’m going to hit him in the wallet and the pride. I figure that’s something he’ll understand.”
“Call if you need backup,” Owen said as Ryder stripped off his tool belt.
“I won’t.”
THE DRIVE TO D.C. gave him time to think. He really couldn’t afford the time, but saw no choice. Somewhere during the rise of temper and the fall of it, he’d figured where all this could, and likely would, go. The blonde, all pissed off and worked up, goes after Wickham about Hope. Dragging her into it again. She’d probably have plenty to say, too, at the hair salon, the nail place, the freaking country club.
Tossing her personal brand of shit all over Hope’s name and rep.
That damn well wasn’t going to happen.
The whole load of bull could make Wickham decide Hope might be more willing to take his offer, since she was being accused of it anyway. He might get it into his head to make another trip to Boonsboro, or call her, freaking email her, and get her twisted up again.
That wasn’t going to happen either.
He could warn Wickham off, but that would give the fucker too much attention, too much punch. He and his crazy wife humiliated Hope, and did it on her home turf.
Let them feel a little of the same.
As he got into the city, he followed his GPS directions, and cursed the traffic, the stupid one-way streets, the circles, the incompetence of other drivers.
He hated coming down here, avoided it like the plague. Just buildings and roads and people and construction detours, all of them crowded together in a way that made no sense to him.
He couldn’t wait to drive out of it again.
But a job was a job, he told himself when he finally managed to park. Heat and humidity bounced off the sidewalk, slathered him as he walked toward the pristine entrance of the Wickham. Colonial elegance with rivers of summer flowers, windows that tossed sunlight, and a doorman liveried in dignified gray with red trim.
Dignified enough he didn’t blink at opening the door for some guy in work clothes.
The lobby spread, white marble floors veined with black, huge-ass urns of flowers—forests of them. Dark oak paneling, crystal chandeliers, velvet sofas all worked together to say, clearly: high-class. And a gleaming front desk manned by a woman in black who could’ve made a living on any catwalk.
“Welcome to the Wickham. How can I help you today?”
“I need to see the owner. Wickham. Senior.”
“I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Wickham is unavailable. If you’d like to speak with our manager?”
“Wickham. Tell him Ryder Montgomery needs to speak with him. Don’t bother to call the manager,” he said, anticipating her. “Or security. Just tell Wickham I’m here to discuss the charges against his daughter-in-law for assault.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You heard me. If he’s okay with that, I’ll go on home and make that happen. If he’s not, he’ll talk to me.” Ryder just shrugged as she lost her composure enough to goggle at him. “I’ll wait.?
?
He stepped back, glanced around. Looked like a hell of a nice bar off the lobby, he noted. He’d have liked to go in—not for a beer, he was driving in this goddamn traffic again shortly—but to see how it was put together.
He could see Hope here, easily. In her excellent suit and her fancy stilts. She’d fit right in with the marble and crystal, with the shine and elegance and flowers so damn big he suspected steroids.
“Mr. Montgomery.”
He turned, studied the man in the dark suit. “Security? No need to toss me out. I’ll just see Mr. Wickham in court.”
“I’ll escort you to Mr. Wickham’s office. And remain.”
“Works for me.”
They walked up a curving staircase, along a mezzanine, then through a set of oak doors into a small secondary lobby.
Security knocked on another set of doors.
