I’d kept the fact that I’d thought her gorgeous to myself. Hell, every man who’d ever laid eyes on her would agree with me. She’d been so fucking pretty in a white sundress, her blonde hair long down her back. I hadn’t talked to her. Not once, staying as far away from someone who was too tempting and too illegal. I’d had no intention of poaching my brother’s girl or robbing the cradle for a date. But she’d been… memorable and that made her dangerous.

I’d headed back to DC and she’d dumped Jock a few weeks later. She hadn’t crossed my mind since. Until now. My job was to connect Macon Wainright to corruption, which meant me being a lackey for John Marshall, because Marshall had been his lackey.

To everyone around here, I was now only a bored cowboy with dangerous tendencies.

Marshall had been more than eager to hire me. I wasn’t sure if his middle name was Corrupt or Unethical.

When Wainright died five days ago, he and Marshall had been in the middle of a deal. Marshall had millions to lose so now he had a hard-on to get North Wainright. To ensure the deal would go through. He figured the best way for an ice princess like her to talk was to thaw her out with a big dick and bigger orgasms.

My cell vibrated and I pulled it from my pocket as I stepped into the foyer. “Barnett,” I murmured.

People looked my way, but didn’t pay me any mind, returning to their muted conversations. One woman blotted her eyes with a tissue, the only obvious mourner I could see.

“Well?”

I knew the voice. Marshall was a persistent fuck.

“Macon Wainright’s definitely dead.” That was the only thing I knew for certain. He was lying in a casket ten feet away in a snap shirt and bolo tie, hands folded across his chest. His usually tan complexion was waxy. It seemed the only time I wouldn’t see a sneer on his face was when he’d been pumped full of embalming fluid.

I was sure I wasn’t the only one thinking that.

“That’s all you’ve got for me?”

I was too old to kowtow to the asshole. I wasn’t a yes man. Never had been. I might be doing his bidding. I might be doing it so I could see his ass in prison, but I wasn’t going to make his life easier beforehand.

My attention was snagged on a woman coming down the stairs, a yellow lab following right behind. The place was so fucking fancy it had two stairwells, left and right, that turned and met in the middle. In this case, Macon Wainright in all his dead glory was what was centered instead of perhaps a table with a vase of fresh flowers.