Ember's Fire: A Hearts of Harkness Romance (The Standish Clan Book 2) Read online

  Gone were the jeans, T-shirts and hoodies she’d seen during their days together. Today, he’d dressed in tan khakis, a black cashmere crew neck sweater and a tweed sport jacket. On his feet, he wore desert boots. She suspected the footwear choice had more to do with ankle support than fashion, but they looked great with the business casual look he was rocking. His dark hair was neatly combed and his face clean-shaven.

  Axl trotted into the kitchen. Jace waited for an invitation.

  “Good morning, Arden.”

  Her father acknowledged him with a nod and moved aside to let him in. “Jace.”

  Jace stepped inside, letting the screen door close behind him. His eyes locked with Ember’s. “Ember.”

  Before she could respond, Titus thumped his coffee cup down on the table. “What are you doing here, Jace?”

  “I’ve come to speak with your sister,” Jace said, evenly.

  “Well, my sister might not want to speak with you.” Scott stood, his chair scraping back. He stared at Jace, matched him toe to toe. “I know the warning I gave you was years ago, but it still stands. I told you not to hurt her, man.”

  Jace drew a breath, seeming to grow taller, bigger. “I believe I told you I never would.”

  Hello?Right here and able to speak for myself. “Scott, for the love of—”

  “WRP got the land,” Titus said, “but you’ll never get that hazardous waste project off the ground. Not as long as there’s a Standish left in Harkness. Not as long as there’s breath in—”

  Ember’s mother’s clock began to chime, cutting across Titus’s words. Everyone stilled. It was as if their even-tempered mother were interjecting herself in the conversation, telling them all to calm down. Telling the men to lower their voices.

  But she was also telling her daughter to speak up.

  “Jace.” She held a hand up toward her brothers as she faced Jace. “You said this wasn’t what I thought, the sale. That there was something you needed to explain.”

  “And I can,” he said. “I can explain it all, Ember.”

  “You also asked for my trust. I lost you all those years ago because I chose not to trust you.” She could hear the way her voice vibrated, but couldn’t seem to help it. “I know I ran initially, hid out at Ryker’s. But I’m not running anymore. I won’t make that mistake ever again. I do trust you. I’ve seen how much you love this region, the people. And I know you share Wayne’s ethos about the environment. And because I know all of that—because I know you—I know there’s a good explanation.”

  “That’s exactly what I’d like—a fucking explanation.”

  At the voice from outside, all heads swiveled to the screen door. Terry Picard stood on the porch.

  Axl, who’d gone to lay under the kitchen table, leapt to his feet, barking his deep, scary alarm bark. Titus took him in hand. “Easy, boy.”

  Terry opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. “What the hell is going on here, Jace?”

  A muscle-bound man—presumably Terry’s henchman—let himself into the house behind Terry. Ember’s eyes widened as she recognized the man as Dundas Bloom. Definitely muscle. He didn’t have the smarts to occupy a higher level position in a company like WRP. This was the jerk who’d spread stories about her in high school. She wanted to claw his eyes out still.

  Axl growled low in his throat at Dundas. Titus kept a good grip on his collar, but made no attempt to quiet him.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Terry,” Jace said.

  “You know damn well why I am here, little brother.”

  Scott stepped forward to stand beside Jace. “Judging by what you just dragged in,”—he glanced sideways at his archenemy, Dundas—“I’d say it looks like you’re spoiling for a fight.”

  The testosterone-fueled tension in the kitchen was thick enough to cut with a knife.

  “Everybody just simmer down!” Arden said. “The first man to throw a punch in this house is going to feel my boot up their—”

  Arden was interrupted by the sharp crack of Ember’s palm across Terry’s face.

  That shut everyone up. And despite her stinging hand, it felt pretty damned good.

  Terry put a hand to his face. “You little—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish whatever nasty epithet he’d planned to say. With a roar, Jace bulldozed him out the screen door, across the porch and down the steps. Terry landed on his feet, but stumbled against the side of his own vehicle, a big yellow Hummer he’d parked too close to the door. Jace launched himself down the steps after his brother.

  “Hey!” A slow-to-react Dundas lumbered after him.

  The rest of them spilled out of the kitchen and onto the porch.

  Before Dundas could come to his boss’s aid, Scott shot down the steps and barred his path. “Don’t even think about it, Bloom.”

  Titus, still holding back a snarling Axl, joined Scott, reinforcing the message.

  Dundas stepped back, holding his hands up, palms out. “Whoa. Take it easy.”

  “You asshole!” Jace spat the words at his brother, drawing everyone’s attention back to the Picard brothers.

  Ember bit her lip. She wanted to call out to Jace, remind him that he’d promised not to let Terry goad him. But after that slap, she didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

  Jace grabbed Terry by the shirt front and shook him. “You told me that Ember slept with you.”

  Ember’s glance flashed to Scott, whose head had jerked around at Jace’s words. His body held a whole new tension, muscles bunching for action. She rushed down the steps and grabbed his arm. He looked down at her, his eyes hazed with fury. She dug her fingers harder into his arm and shook her head. Thankfully, that seemed to reach him. Some of the tension flowing out of his muscles.

  “I was all set to go after her and you told me not to bother,” Jace said. “That she didn’t give a shit about me anymore. You lying son of a bitch! You cost me everything.”

  “Oh, so what!” Terry shoved Jace’s hands away. “That’s ancient history.” He touched a hand to his grazed forehead. She could already see the lump forming from where he must have clunked it against the vehicle.

  Good.

  “So what? You broke us up with that stunt with Bridget Northrup, and you made damned sure we stayed broken up with those vicious lies.”

  “Grow up, man.” Terry drew himself to his full height. “I did you a fucking favor. She had you wrapped around her little finger. No sex, no drinking, no fun. I saved you from a future as a pussy-whipped loser. At least I thought I had...”

  Jace punched his brother. Not a fancy jab or an uppercut; just a furious roundhouse that would have left him wide open if Terry’d had an ounce of boxing skill.

  Terry went down, but he didn’t stay down. Spitting blood, he got to his feet and glared at his henchman, but it was clear Dundas wasn’t getting past those Standish men until they were ready to let him through.

  Terry turned back to Jace, his face flushed and bloodied. “That make you feel better?” he said. “Go ahead, take another shot.” He thrust out his chin and pointed to it. “You were a provincial champ, weren’t you? Let’s see what else you got.”

  Jace dropped his hands to his sides, unclenching his fists.

  “No?” Terry jeered. “Well, here’s some truth for you, brother. You can get your panties in a knot all you want, but if your pathetic puppy love couldn’t survive a few lumps and bumps, it wasn’t much of a love, was it? It deserved to die.”

  Jace’s fingers balled into fists again, but his voice remained calm, controlled. “I’m not going to hit you again, no matter how hard you try to make me. You know why?”

  “Yeah.” Terry spat more blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Because you’re still a pussy.”

  “Because you’re done pulling my strings. And I’m done at WRP too. I quit.”

  “You’re right about being done, but you don’t get to quit. Your ass has already been fired. I wrote up a press release o
n the way over here.”

  Jace shrugged. “Okay with me, long as I’m done.”

  Terry got in his face. “We’ll see how okay you are with it after I drag you through the courts. You were paid to negotiate a deal for WRP, but you had the deed drawn up in your own name. You stole it right out from under the company.”

  What? Ember shot a look at her brothers and her father. They all looked as stunned as she did. Jace had bought the Standish farms, not WRP Holdings?

  “So you finally noticed.” Jace stood toe-to-toe with Terry and smiled. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever quit swanning around long enough to see what was happening in your own company. I mean, making employees call you Old Man Picard?”

  Terry’s face flushed an even deeper red. “I wasn’t looking over your shoulder because I trusted you to do your job! Until last night, when I got wind of you agitating politicians in Ottawa and interest groups in the region against a waste treatment facility. When I heard that, when I saw you were working against the company, I checked with the lawyer’s office and found out what you’d done.”

  “I didn’t have a choice, Terry. Believe it or not, I have been operating in the best interests of WRP. At least, the WRP I worked for under Dad’s watch.”

  “Bullshit! WRP Holdings was going nowhere. Dad was satisfied with the status quo. He didn’t pay enough attention to growing the company, and if you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

  “Talk about bullshit.” Jace snorted. “That’s the philosophy that’s killing this planet and it’s unsustainable. Wayne knew that.”

  “Well, I hope your organic farm investment pays off for you, Jace, because you’re going to need something to fall back on. When I’m through with you, you’ll never work again. Not as a CFO, not as a consultant, not as a fucking bank teller. I will crucify you for corporate wrong-doing. And the judgment I get against you? The sheriff just might have to seize this big, old parcel of dirt to satisfy it, in which case I’ll get it for a song.”

  “You might want to re-think that lawsuit, brother.” Jace’s smile turned menacing. “I’ve been working at WRP long enough to see how you operate. The bribes, the kickbacks, the payments to so-called contractors whose only work was done in the back seat of the company car. And you’d better believe I kept proof.”

  Terry’s complexion was approaching an unflattering plum color. “You bastard!”

  “Yeah, so you kept reminding me when we were growing up, Terry. But I’m the one following in Dad’s footsteps. Or at least trying to,” Jace said. “But you’re kinda right. I can’t say I’m proud of the methods I’ve had to stoop to in order to protect this land. But you know what they say about fighting fire with fire...”

  “You’re going to regret this!” Terry uttered the promise so vehemently that blood-flecked spittle flew out with the words.

  Jace sighed. “You’re nothing if not predictable, Terry. Which is why I’ve taken measures to ensure that if anything remotely untoward should happen to me, the evidence of your shady deals will be made public. That goes double for Ember or any of the Standishs. You do anything to hurt any one of them, there will be consequences. For you and for everyone whose palms you’ve greased.”

  “Fuck you.” Terry dug his keys out of his pocket. “Fuck you all.”

  “Back atcha,” Jace said.

  Terry jumped into the Hummer and fired it up.

  “Hey, wait for me!” Dundas edged around Scott to get to the truck, but Terry put it in gear and peeled out before he could reach the passenger side. Dundas ran down the drive after him. “Hey, wait up! C’mon, Terry.”

  Terry turned onto the highway and nailed the accelerator, leaving a patch of rubber on the road. Dundas stopped running a few yards short of the mouth of the driveway. He looked back at the group outside the house, then down the highway after the disappearing Hummer. Correctly gauging the likelihood of Standish help, he spat on the ground and started trudging toward town.

  Chapter 33

  AS HE watched his brother’s Hummer race off, Jace expelled the breath he’d been holding too long.

  Ember came to stand beside him, her eyes luminous as emeralds. “You bought the farm?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the agreement I saw—it was between Dad and WRP Holdings.”

  “You’re right.” He lifted his gaze from Ember’s face to meet her father’s confused eyes. “I got Arden to sign two agreements. I led him to believe they were duplicates of the same contract, but one listed WRP as the buyer and the other listed me. The first one—the one Ember saw—was for Terry’s benefit. Terry watched me like a hawk until that agreement was in hand, signed, sealed and delivered. Then he jetted off to Nassau for his vacation, leaving me free to present the other agreement to the lawyer and have the documents drawn up accordingly.”

  “Pretty slick, Son,” Arden said. “I sure didn’t notice anything amiss, even when I signed the deed. But why go to all that trouble? I’d have been much happier to sell the place to you personally than to the company.”

  Jace grimaced. “Terry might have been out of the country, but he has spies aplenty in the community. I needed you all to behave as though the sale was to WRP, at least until the transaction closed. You had to be seen packing the house up, talking to people about it, that kind of thing.” He shrugged apologetically. “I figured the best way to pull that off was if you really believed it.”

  “I don’t get it.” Ember said. “Whether they sold to you or WRP, Dad and Titus would still have been packing the place up, right? They could easily have pretended the sale was to WRP.”

  “Actually, whether or not Arden moves is completely up to him. I own the property now, but Arden, if you’d like to stay on in the house, you’re more than welcome to rent it.” Jace glanced at Titus. “I know Titus is RCMP-bound, so I’m not sure what your wishes are about the farm.”

  Titus shifted. “Actually, I’m not.”

  Jace blinked. “Come again?”

  “Something has since...uh...happened.” Titus cleared his throat. “My situation has changed.”

  “Something happened?” Ember laughed. “More like someone happened. Ocean Siliker, to be specific. It seems Ocean is putting down roots in Harkness again, to help take care of her mom, so...”

  “So I’m available to work the farm again,” Titus said. “We could lease the land back from you. Put me back in the traces, and we won’t miss a beat.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have the farm back in Standish hands?” Jace looked from Titus to Arden.

  “Really?” The old man’s eyes filmed with tears. “Wouldn’t that cost a lot to change the title again? Transfer taxes and such?”

  “The deed hasn’t been registered yet. The land is still in your name, Arden.”

  “So if we were to return the money...”

  “I’d tear up the deed. But only if you want to. If you’d rather keep the cash and lease it back, that’s cool too. I won’t be hurting. Either way, the property will be safe from Terry.”

  “If it’s just the same with you, I’d like to have it back in the Standish name.” Arden’s voice was gruff. “I was thinking just this morning how much of Margaret’s spirit is here. Some of it we could take with us, like that clock on the wall or the dishes in the cabinet. But so much more is worn into the bones of this house, or rooted in the soil like that Bramley tree out front.”

  “Then let’s do it that way,” Jace said.

  “I’ll go to the bank today,” Arden said. “But if we’re going to do this, I’m going to have to insist on one change.”

  Jace felt Ember tense beside him.

  “Dad, I don’t really think you’re in a position to dictate terms,” she said, her consternation evident. “Jace just saved the homestead for you and he’s offering to hand it back.”

  Arden held up a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that comment for you, Jace. This is an issue for us Standishs to resolve. What I was going to say is that we can’t go back to bus
iness as usual. Titus has been carrying too much of the weight. He was planning to devote himself fulltime to the motorcycle restoration business, build it up. Was looking forward to the challenge, I’m pretty sure. So I think he should still do that.”

  “But Dad—”

  “Hear me out, Titus. I’m not saying you shouldn’t come back to the farm. It needs you. I need you, if this is going to work. But we need to make sure you have enough time to pursue other things. I can step it up and do more than I have been doing, but I’m not getting any younger. Come spring, we need to find a reliable foreman. Someone to shoulder some of the burden.”

  “I can help,” Scott said.

  All heads turned to him.

  “What?” Scott looked at their stunned faces, then turned to look behind him. “Did a bomb go off and I didn’t notice?”

  “Son, that’s a kind offer, but—”

  “But nothing. And just to be clear, I’m not saying I’ll stay forever. I’m just talking about giving Titus a vacation.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Titus said.

  “It is,” Scott said. “When’s the last time you got away from this place?”

  Titus didn’t have to think long about it. “Other than a trip to buy machinery or see a specialist for dental work? I guess that would be college.”

  “Exactly. You need a break. You can hit the road or hang around, whatever you want. I’ll be here with Uncle Arden. Well, after a quick trip to Montreal to finish up some odds and ends from that last job. But that’s a few days’ work, at most. I’ll come directly back. I can stay for a month, or two.”

  “You sure?” Titus said.

  “I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I hang around?”

  “Thanks, man,” Titus said. “Ocean will appreciate this almost as much as I do.”

  “No trouble.” Scott glanced at Arden. “I intend to make myself useful while I’m here, Uncle Arden. I notice the chimney liner in the fireplace needs to be replaced, and the plaster is cracked in the living room, in the corner up near the ceiling. I have to hand it to you and Titus—you’ve taken great care of the place. But it’s gotta be better than ninety years old. If I really looked around, I’m sure I could find a few more things to keep me busy.”