Read Online Hot Contract by Jodi Henley - Free Book Online

her
cousin, Tris.
    Rafe fished in his pocket for a lighter. A
sullen red glow flared over the elegant line of his jaw. He took a
long drag and eyed her, smoke curling from his lips. “Trouble in
paradise, poverina?”
    Jen tilted her head back, eyes narrowed on
the tall Italian. “Doesn’t Tris know?”
    “Tris knows everything. I merely work for
him.”
    Jen told Rafe everything up to and including
Keegan’s involvement.
    “Per Dio,” he said. “That’s messed up.”
    Jen looked past him to the line forming
outside a tall pavilion picked out in gilt and sapphire lacquer.
“I’ll be messed up if I don’t pay my respects to Aunt Kate.”
    “Then go,” said Rafe. “You were
announced.”
    Keegan followed Jen through the growing
crowds until she found a place where she could cut through and come
out near her aunt. Katherine Stalling-Kualani was Art’s sister, and
she held court like a queen, sitting on a throne-like chair lit by
the glow of antique Japanese lanterns. A whisper of chamber music
brought the doomed court of Marie Antoinette to mind, but this was
no girl playing dress up. The former Stalling had married her
cousin Teddy, reinforcing bonds that had been in place since the
time of the missionaries. Born to money, Katherine carried herself
with all the arrogance of Old Bess.
    Teams of heavyweight thugs in matching suits
watched the line and the people trying to get in. Noise and
laughter, and the thumping wail of something with a lot of
percussion washed over Keegan in waves. There were people
everywhere, walking, talking and eating too much. Keegan left Jen
at the end of the receiving line and faded back. For every man that
glanced at him, anonymous in his black t-shirt, there were twenty
more that walked right on past.
    Caravaggio ghosted around a table laid with
fancy pastries, coat flared out behind him.
    Keegan would never have pegged the Italian
ex-pat as a StallingCo operative. They’d met in passing over the
last two years and what Keegan knew of him didn’t suggest the
elegant former aristo would accept an actual corporate hierarchy.
It was a good thing Caravaggio had interrupted that argument with
Jen. If the operative hadn’t appeared like the ghost of Christmas
Past, Keegan would have done something so messed up that
repercussions would have shot out in all directions. Despite her
ugly pink dress, it’d been hell to confine his touch to her wrist.
He’d wanted to slide his hands up inside her sleeves and touch the
rest of her velvety-plush skin.
    She shuffled forward, almost to the front of
the line. Only a handful of people separated her from her aunt. A
girl as short as Jen, with purple-tipped black hair and a big
notebook, pushed aside a guy wearing what had to be the world’s
tackiest aloha shirt.
    Keegan couldn’t make out what they said, but
Katherine Kualani handed over what appeared to be a check, which
the girl smiled at and immediately put in her notebook.
    Jen took her turn, talked to her aunt for a
while, then struggled to escape the crowd.
    “Hey, you! Jen is family, yeah?” A boy
planted himself in front of Keegan, arms folded over a pouter
pigeon chest—still a kid despite the man-sized attitude.
    People were moving up on his right and damned
if that wasn’t Kualani running a fast intercept on Jen. She swerved
around him and pointed at Keegan. If Keegan had to fight his way to
her, he wasn’t going to make it and he didn't think Queen Kate
would take kindly to someone shooting her kid.
    Kualani stood down reluctantly, his voice
weirdly distorted by the ambient noise. “Rescue him? He’s a piss
poor bodyguard if he can’t protect himself from a
seventeen-year-old kid.”
    Aww, shit. She wasn’t asking Kualani for
help? Yes, she was.
    “You, Dalfrey! Over here—oww! God damn it,
Guinevere! Why’d you kick me?” Kualani glared at the boy. “Wendell.
Move and take your friends with you.”
    The boy hesitated and took two steps back.
“Kimo said—”
    “Kimo