Chapter 15

Connor

“Hey, Bonox, that timber order has come in!”

One of the blokes on our current worksite, a guy I employed, shouted that out, he and his little buddies cackling. That was because Australian blokes loved to give people nicknames, and mine was now Bonox.

Fuck my life.

“You know you didn’t have to tell everyone what happened this morning,” I growled at Van, who just grinned like the gormless twit he was.

“Yeah, I did.” That smile just got wider. “The look on your face, and then the one on hers… It was so good!”

“Kendall is getting revenge for what we did to her.”

Gage’s perfectly flat tone had us turning around.

“I know.” Van didn’t seem pissed at all by that fact. “I can’t wait to see what she does to me.”

“Do you have one of those BDSM kinks?” I asked, waving a finger around as my eyes narrowed.

“You mean a humiliation kink?” Van corrected, then shook his head. “Nup, but this gives me hope. If she can be bothered to go to all the trouble of pulling a prank on us—”

“Maybe she still gives a shit about us. Or maybe she’s just finally getting revenge for all the bullshit we pulled.”

We both stared at Gage, the tight flex of his jaw muscle the only giveaway to what he was feeling. The big guy was stressed, and I knew exactly how he felt. I was somewhere between Van’s optimism and Gage’s pessimism, and that wasn’t a comfortable place to be. I admit when I realised why my shower stank like beef soup, a vicious kind of pleasure ripped through me. The kind that always came from playing dumb tricks on each other, but also… Kendall was always the victim of our schemes, but her standing on her own two feet and striking back at us? Yeah, I liked that a whole lot.

“There’s a whole lot of maybes right now,” I told the two of them. “But right now, they don’t matter.” I saw Johnno come jogging over. I’d asked him and his brother to take a quick look at Kendall’s car and give me a ballpark figure to fix it, but right as he approached, Finn strolled onto the building site, still in his nice meeting clothes. “Fixing that death trap of a car needs to be our first priority.”

“Fellas,” Finn said as he came to stand beside us. “How’s things going this morning?”

But before any of us could get a word out, Johnno arrived.

“Look, boss, the car’s pretty fucked,” he said.

“Just like the owner’s likely to be, eh, Bonox!” one of the dickheads called out from the scaffolding. I narrowed my eyes to work out exactly who was mouthing off.

“Bonox?” Finn looked me up and down. “You been drinking that shit rather than coffee or something.”

“Nah, boss, he showers in it,” Johnno told him. Gage and Van stepped closer, glaring meaningfully at the guy, but Johnno didn’t know when to shut up. “He’s got this hot new house mate that’s just moved in, and she put a stock cube in his shower head.” He rubbed a hand across his chin as he started to smile. “We’ve got a pool going, betting on which one of them bones her first.” He winked at me. “I’m betting they all do.” His hands moved through the air as he tried to draw an approximation of Kendall’s curves and failed. “Woman like that, she’d be able to take the lot of you and come back for more.”

When Gage’s hands shot out and wrapped around Johnno’s wrists, it was as if my own did the same, like I could feel the other man’s bones grinding together as Gage snarled at Johnno.

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”

“OK, boss, calm the fuck down…” Johnno spluttered.

“Looks like this girl’s got at least two of you hot under the collar.” If Cheryl, Finn’s wife, saw the glimmer in her husband’s eye right now, she’d have thumped him hard, and I would’ve held Finn still, to make sure he took his punishment. “So what’s she like?”

“Redhead,” one of the guys called out. Our ‘workers’ were dropping from scaffolding and drawing closer like middle school girls ready to spill the tea. “Big tits…” He demonstrated how big a little too accurately, which had all three of us letting out a guttural sound. “And what’s her name?”

“Shut up, Smithy,” I said, advancing on the man like he was a rabid dog, not my employee.

“Settle down, Bono,” someone in the peanut gallery said. “Was it Kelly? Nah, that’s not it…”

“She’s none of your damn business is what she is,” I snapped. “And if you’ve got time to flap your gums—”

“Kendall! That’s it.”

He looked so damn proud of himself, missing the moment Finn’s lascivious smile turned to fury. One of my best mates turned to me with a look so familiar, it was seared into my brain from the last time.

“Kendall? Red hair, big…” Finn’s hands lifted right before he shoved them down by his side. “My sister, Kendall.”

“No fucking way! That’s your sister? She’s hot. Why didn’t you bring her around the site on a Friday night. She coulda got her tits out for the—”

“Finish that sentence and you are done here.”

I kept my tone perfectly calm, but each one of these idiots lost their goofy grins. I didn’t pull rank often, but when I did, I expected immediate compliance.

“So it is my sister…” Finn shook his head, slowly at first, the movement getting faster and faster as he struggled to process. “You, you, and you.” He stabbed his finger into each one of our faces. “In my fucking office, now.”

“You realiseyou’re not our fucking boss,” Van snapped the moment the site-office door was closed. “This is a partnership, split four ways.”

“And did I miss the clause in the business agreement where it granted you access to my sister’s pussy?” Finn said, slamming his butt down in his chair and then spinning around to look at the lot of us. “She’s your next victim?”

“Victim?” Gage growled. “If she was anyone’s victim, it was yours. You were the one always tormenting her—”

“And you’re gonna kiss all her hurts better, are ya?” Finn stared at us. “Just like we used to with her friends when they snuck down the hall and into my room?” His gaze hardened. “Just like we did all of those girls we took home before I met Cheryl. You’re not pulling that shit with my bloody sister.”

“They were all someone’s sister,” I said. “Someone’s daughter, niece, or cousin and you didn’t give a fucking shit. You even asked if we wanted…”

I watched Finn tense, knowing how he’d respond if I brought up the drunken conversation we had one night, a year or two into his marriage.

“Kendall’s twenty-seven now,” Van said, no trace of his usual shit-eating grin. “She’s an adult, and she gets to make her own decisions.”

“Not to be moved into your place to be one of your little sluts, she doesn’t,” Finn blustered, but as he was about to get to his feet and confront us physically, Gage stepped forward.

“Where was Kendall living before?”

“What?” Finn’s arse hovered mid-air. “How the fuck would I know? We were never exactly close.”

“Why did she walk in through our door looking for a place to stay?” Gage asked questions like an executioner might as he hefted his axe.

“I dunno, but she’d have to be desperate to consider living with you three.”

“She was. She didn’t want to move into our spare room, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Her flatmates were fucking in the living area when we came around to help Kendall move, and she didn’t have a lot of stuff.” Van’s arms crossed his chest. “Her best friend said they’d looked at corridors being rented out as rooms, or sheds, and that they were going to be charged top dollar to take them.”

“Well, you know what the rental market is like right now,” he said with a wave of his hand.

“How can you care more about who’s in her bed than if she actually has a bed to sleep on?” I asked, remembering that bloody bed frame. It was still too damn rickety for my liking. Part of the timber order that had been delivered would be coming home with me so I could build her something better to replace it. “How can you not even know where she lives or how she’s going?” Finn’s jaw locked tight, his eyes blazing fire as he stared at me. “How can you let her drive that fucking piece of shit car around, that’s about fifty kilometres from its engine dropping out through the chassis?”

“I’m not my sister’s fucking keeper!” Finn snapped.

“Damn right,” I said, crossing my arms and squaring my stance. The prick might take a swing at me for this, but it needed to be said. “You aren’t.” I felt the others come to stand beside me. “But we are. I don’t give a fucking shit what you have to say about it, mate, because here’s the deal. We don’t know what went down when Kendall left home all of a sudden, but we’ll find out.”

Did the prick go pale all of a sudden? No, that couldn’t be right. He blamed us for her taking off.

“And in the meantime, until she’s ready to talk, we’re going to make sure she’s safe, she’s happy, and she has everything she needs.” His lips moved, ready to protest, but I cut him off. “Absolutely everything she could possibly want, and I don’t give a fuck about what you have to say about that.”

I didn’t wait for Finn’s comeback, nor to see if the other two were following me, but I wasn’t surprised to see them at my sides as we walked back on site. Someone warily called out my new nickname, obviously testing the waters to see how I’d respond. I just smiled. Connor was the dickhead who managed to hurt the one girl he cared for so badly she took off and never came back, but maybe Bonox… Maybe his chances were a whole lot better.

“Finn’s here,” I said. “He can keep an eye on things for once, because I dunno about you,” I turned around slowly to face the other two, “ but I’m thinking we’ve got another couple of jobs that really need doing at home.”

“Build Kendall a proper bed frame?” Van asked.

“Fix that fucking car of hers.” Gage’s work boot scuffed the dirt.

“And cook a dinner worthy of our girl. A piece of piss, right fellas?” I said.

“Whatever Kendall needs.”

Gage summed it up perfectly.