“Sit down,” Tenn orders Reggie and pushes him into the nearest chair. He then points to me. “Park your ass on the couch and you better do some fucking fast talk to clear this up.”
I refuse to take the couch as my brother orders, because I’m not a child, but I go ahead and lay it all out for him. “A little over a year ago, I started construction on a nightclub called The Wicked Horse. It’s been open a few months now.”
“It’s a sex club,” Reggie growls.
I hold my hand up to him and give a glare. “It’s a nightclub, but there are buildings behind it that I sell private memberships to. The patrons have access to a secure and private place where they can meet up with people of like minds—”
“Perverts,” Reggie huffs.
“—who can live out their sexual fantasies safely.”
Tenn’s mouth flops opens, and he stares at me as if he didn’t understand a word of what I just said. But then it seems to hit him all at once.
“You built this on Double J property?” he asks slowly.
“Yes.”
“With family money?”
“No. With my money,” I tell him without breaking eye contact.
“And what the hell does this have to do with Callie?” Tenn asks me and then looks over at Reggie. “I thought she was living back East.”
“I wish,” Reggie snarls. “I didn’t like Will much but at least he kept her safe from this… this… debauchery.”
I shake my head.
Oh, Reggie. If only you knew what kind of shit your daughter’s fiancé was into.
Standing from the couch, Reggie turns to Tenn. “Colton Stokes told me that Woolf owns that club and that he took Callie there.”
Motherfucking twat. I’m going to kill that fucker.
Pointing a shaking finger at me, Reggie’s voice gets high with hysteria. “He said there was an orgy going on and he saw Callie coming out of one of the buildings with Woolf. He brought my little girl to an orgy and took advantage of her.”
“Not denying he saw Callie and me together,” I growl, because I’m about sick of this shit. “But that’s all he saw.”
“Do you deny that there was an orgy going on in that building you came out of with my sweet Callie?” Reggie practically screams.
“I think you need to take a chill pill, old man,” I sneer at him defensively.
“Christ,” Tenn mutters as he scrubs his hand through his hair.
“Where is Callie?” I ask Reggie, figuring she took her father’s fury first.
“She’s at home and you had better stay the fuck away from her,” Reggie says shakily.
“Is she okay?” I ask, needing him to at least tell me that.
Reggie laughs as he takes a step toward me. Tenn is poised to pounce if necessary, but Reggie’s voice stops him in his tracks. It’s soft and deadly sincere. “You’re a selfish man, Woolf. Did it ever occur to you the people you could be hurting with all of this? Callie’s reputation. My reputation. Do you know what would happen if word got out that the governor’s daughter was at a sex club? What type of turmoil you’d throw this precious state—that you claim to love—in? Did you even think once what this would do to Callie if it became public?”
Guilt and shame crush me, because most of that shit never once crossed my mind. Not seriously, anyway. I was too focused on pleasing myself and giving into Callie’s desires, that I never once considered the repercussions.
“I’ll talk to Colton,” I say lamely.
“Colton Stokes won’t say a word,” Reggie says with an impatient wave of his hand. “He only wanted me to know so I could put a stop to it for Callie’s sake. He’s an honorable man.”
Naive son of a bitch. That same honorable man is a member of my club, you moron.
But I don’t say a word. I just let my shoulders go ahead and sag under the weight of recrimination.
Tenn falls down into the seat that Reggie just vacated and stares out the window. Reggie turns away from both of us and heads to the staircase that leads up to the foyer. When he reaches the bottom step, he says, “Don’t come around Callie. I’ll shoot you on sight if you do. And as of this moment, the Hayes and the Jennings have no ties to each other. We’re done.”
I wince as I watch Reggie walk heavily up the stairs and slide out the front door. I figure my dad and Richard are rolling over in their graves right now, probably sick with disappointment in me, but I can’t think about that right now. Whipping my phone out, I call Callie, but her voice mail picks up.
“Callie… I need to see you. Call me and we’ll figure a place we can meet.”
I disconnect the phone and shove it back in my pocket. My brain is spinning, and I need to talk to Bridger about this. But first… I need to kill Colton Stokes. No wait… I need to go see Callie. That’s what I need to do first.
I can kill Colton later, because that’s about all I can do to him. It’s true enough he signed the same non-disclosure agreement that Callie signed, but there’s no way I can collect on it. That would take a lawsuit. Lawsuits are public record, and Reggie has made it painfully clear how much public knowledge of my club could hurt Callie and their family.
“How in the ever-loving fuck could you have done something so stupid?” Tenn asks me quietly and I jolt, having forgotten he was there.
I turn to look at him, my face flushed with anger. “It’s a legitimate business. I was going to—”
Tenn waves his hand at me. “I don’t give a fuck about your… your… whatever the fuck it is. As long as you aren’t breaking any laws or hurting anyone, I don’t give a shit what you do, but how in the hell could you have gotten Callie involved in that? For Christ’s sake, Woolf… she’s like our little sister.”
With a sigh, I cross over to the couch and flop down on it. I stare at Tenn morosely. “I don’t know. It just got out of control with her. She wanted to go, and I couldn’t say no to her.”
“Well, you should have tried harder,” Tenn snaps at me.
“I know,” I say apologetically, and then again resolutely. “I know.”
“Stay away from her,” Tenn warns. “Her family cannot be connected to that shit. You owe that to them out of respect for Dad and Richard.”
“I fucking got it,” I snap back and then push up off the couch, grabbing my hat off the table.
“Where are you going?” Tenn asks with brotherly concern. Or overbearing concern. Not sure which.
“Out,” is all I tell him as I trot up the stairs.
I need to talk to Bridger.
Chapter 20
Callie
I lift the glass of champagne and drain the remainder. It’s my second glass and I’m already slightly tipsy from it, but that’s what the bubbly does to me. A tuxedoed waiter walks by and I replace the empty with another, taking a tentative sip at it. I want to get stinkin’ drunk, but I’m in “good daughter” mode tonight so that’s not possible.
I’ve been trying to stay in “good daughter” mode since last Saturday morning when my father called me down to his study and proceeded to light into me about The Wicked Horse. Apparently, Colton had a little talk with my father, and so he was having a little—okay, really fucking big—talk with me.
He then left and went straight to Woolf’s house to confront him, and I had hoped Woolf had half a brain and did as I did.
Deny, deny, deny.
I told my father I had no clue what he was talking about and told him that what I did in my personal time was my business and not his. I refused to admit a thing, and so he basically ranted at me for almost forty-five minutes. When he saw he wasn’t getting any satisfaction from me, he informed me he was going to confront Woolf.