Mastered(63)
“Just how big a lesson did you teach our good friend Eddie?” Drake asked Silas, in a swift shift in thought. “Because I’m thinking if he was out partying at Cavendar’s all night, he didn’t get half of what he deserved.”
His statement ended in a snarl that suddenly had Maddox materializing in the far corner of the room where the nearly hidden doorway stood. He watched the goings-on through narrowed eyes as if deciding whether he needed to intervene.
“I’m surprised he was walking,” Silas said in his characteristic detached, unemotional tone.
Drake scowled. “Are you saying he has magical healing powers, then?”
His sarcasm lay heavy over the now-quiet room.
Hatcher merely shrugged. “A man will do a lot when his pride is involved. After the first several doors were shut in his face, he probably got desperate. And we all know Cavendar is a greedy whore who’d sell his mother for the right price. How Eddie got in and whether he was ambulatory wouldn’t be of consequence to him. Only that he was seen and not shunned. And just as Cavendar can be bought, I doubt the women who Eddie usually keeps company with give a fuck that he looks like he was hit by a semitruck just as long as he keeps them happy. And gives them carte blanche with his parents’ money.”
“Which is precisely why I want you to go have a chat with Cavendar,” Drake said pointedly to Silas.
Silas nodded.
“Report back to me . . .” Fuck. He almost forgot himself and the fact that he would be with Evangeline for the rest of the day—and night. “I’ll touch base with you tomorrow,” he amended. “I expect the matter to be resolved by then.”#p#分页标题#e#
Again Silas only nodded.
“Should have just dumped the asshole in the Hudson,” Maddox said darkly, speaking up for the first time.
A gasp from the elevator made all four men swivel in that direction. Evangeline stood next to Jax, who was shaking his head as if to say they were all stupid fucks for forgetting themselves.
Hell. Just how much of their conversation had she heard? But Evangeline never once looked in Drake’s direction. She focused only on Maddox, clear indecision in her eyes, but to Maddox’s credit, he didn’t skip a beat. He strode toward her, took the things she was holding in her hands, and promptly dumped them into Silas’s bewildered arms—something Silas had no liking for because it drew attention to him when he would have silently slipped away, as he did around all newcomers—and then Maddox hugged Evangeline and smacked her noisily on the cheek.
“How’s my favorite kidnappee?” he teased.
Drake had to rein in his temper over Maddox’s spontaneous display of overdone affection. He knew well why he’d done it. If Drake hadn’t allowed himself to be distracted, something he found himself guilty of with increasing frequency ever since Evangeline had walked into his club that first night, then he would have damn well known she and Jax were on their way up in the elevator. Hell, he would have known the moment they hit the entrance to the club.
When Evangeline continued to regard Maddox warily, he sent her a look of indulgence and laughed.
“Don’t go getting all timid on me now, sweetheart. You’ve already shown me your claws. Don’t worry. I didn’t really dump anyone into the Hudson. It was merely wishful thinking on my part. One has that kind of reaction when their accountant informs them, after filing an extension and paying estimated taxes due because all my K-1s from my investments don’t come in until well after April fifteenth, that I owe substantially more than he first estimated.”
Even Silas blinked in reaction to how convincing Maddox sounded. Not lost on Drake was the fact that Maddox had purposely used terms Evangeline wouldn’t possibly be familiar with given her economic status, and well, rich or poor, no one loved the IRS.
Evangeline laughed, the melodious sound easing the tension in the room.
“You poor baby. I have something to make you feel all better,” she teased, just as he’d teased her.
Drake’s teeth were now baring themselves. Evangeline was here. Over an hour late, and he didn’t buy Jax’s trumped-up excuse about a fucking traffic jam, but she was here, which meant that everyone else should not be here. And yet here they all stood. He realized then just how much of a distracted idiot he was. His men knew Evangeline was coming in to the club today. Those who hadn’t met her were no doubt dying of curiosity, and those who had just wanted an excuse to see her again. Suddenly Maddox’s threat of dumping someone in the Hudson sounded very appealing, only in this case it was going to be a lot of someones.