Leah Vale - The Bad Boy

She didn’t look at him, but her nostrils flared and her chin went up a notch.

Joseph asked, “Did any of our divisions snag your interest?”

Cooper cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Well…”

From the doorway behind them a deep voice said, “I know the perfect place for him in the company.”

Cooper’s pulse jumped and he turned in his seat, seeing Alexander McCoy up close for the first time.

In the past, Cooper had always thought of Alexander’s physical appearance as nothing more than a younger version of Marcus’s, though their similarities weren’t striking. Now he realized Alexander was more an older version of himself. They were roughly the same size and put together the same way. Definitely the same hair and eyes. Guilt and remorse sparked white hot. How could he have doubted his mother for a second?

But because of that doubt, he’d generally tried to avoid anything having to do with the McCoys, doing his damnedest to pretend they didn’t exist. Though he was aware that the media had portrayed Alexander as the serious, down-to-business McCoy, well equipped to take the corporation into the next era.

Jaw tight, he stood and met the other man’s gaze.

Alexander’s expression was just as wary. This man didn’t trust easily. No big shock there, considering recent revelations. He wasn’t going to embrace anyone without question for a long time, if ever. Maybe making the McCoys pay wouldn’t be as easy as Cooper had thought. Alexander looked as though he wouldn’t miss much.

But Cooper never could resist a challenge.

Apparently equally clueless to the tension between the two younger men, Joseph said, “Excellent. Where?”

Not breaking eye contact with Cooper, Alexander answered, “With his construction experience, he’d do well handling the new stores—”

Sara made an odd sort of noise, but Cooper couldn’t tear his gaze away from his half brother’s. There was so much of himself in the other man’s eyes, and so much he’d never seen before. Primarily, what it was like growing up a McCoy in name, as well as blood.

Cooper thought it amazing that Marcus had looked at this guy every damn day and lied like the dog he was.

Shifting his attention finally to Joseph, Alexander concluded, “Under the guidance of the VP of Operations, of course.”

“Of course,” Joseph concurred, sounding pleased. “At least, at first. So what do you think, Cooper? You interested in working for Ms. Barnes?”

Cooper glanced at Joseph. “Ms. Barnes?”

Alexander came to stand behind Sara’s chair, a suspicious glint in his steel-blue eyes. “Let me guess—no formal introductions were made. Allow me. Cooper Anders, I’d like you to meet Sara Barnes, vice president of Operations. Your new boss.”

Cooper had to snap his mouth shut for the second time that day.

Damn. He’d nearly felt up his boss.

Monday morning, Cooper unbuttoned his charcoal suit coat as he turned the desk chair he occupied away from the bucolic view out the office window of Vice President of Operations Sara Barnes on the fifteenth floor of McCoy Enterprises headquarters. He faced the expanse of her orderly desk.

Just as he’d expected: no messy piles of papers, In basket clearly tackled on a regular basis, a crystal candy dish half full of red heart candies sharing a corner with a photo frame that matched the dark burgundy of her desk chair and the other pieces of upholstered furniture in the spacious corner office. The picture was of a fresh-faced Sara with her arms wrapped around an older gentleman sporting the same wide smile.

Probably her dad. The twinge of an ancient hurt made Cooper pull his gaze away. There’d been no father-son photo-ops in his life.

The day’s agenda, typed on McCoy corporate letterhead, awaited her front and center. Meetings, meetings and more meetings. My, but she was a busy girl. Hopefully, too busy to notice whatever he might be up to.

He figured she’d come blasting through the door any second, furious that he’d slipped out of The Big House—he still couldn’t believe they called their mansion that—and made it to the office while she waited patiently downstairs for him to roll out of the sack.

He’d been up and ready long before dawn, prowling his new home. Sleeping hadn’t exactly been easy since old Joe had insisted Cooper move his stuff into a suite of rooms in The Big House, accommodations that were larger than Cooper’s whole apartment. He’d roamed around, feeling like a thief with a burning desire to take the one thing he couldn’t get his hands on: what was to him a false veneer of moral purity and trustworthiness still clinging stubbornly to the McCoy name.

Sorry, but in his book, if you were willing to do the crime you had to be willing to do the time. After his mother’s death, he’d made the bad choice more often than he cared to count, but at least he had always owned up to the mistakes. Unlike his hound-dog father.

Cooper fisted his hands on the arms of the chair. Marcus had gotten off way too easy becoming a grizzly snack. And clearly Cooper had a much different definition of the right thing than had Joseph.

And he’d see to it that there were consequences.

Since Sara always seemed to be around, he’d initially been concerned that she’d dog his every step. But the housekeeper, Helen—Alexander’s mother, no less, still working for the McCoys as a glorified servant—had told him the first night that Ms. Barnes lived in a quaint apartment above the carriage-house–style detached garage. He supposed that qualified as a “little house.”

If he hadn’t seen firsthand the adoration for the McCoys shining in her big green eyes, he would assume her loyalty stemmed from a desire to keep her cozy digs. Which happened to be located a little too close for Cooper’s comfort and did absolutely nothing to help him sleep.

But thinking about her silky hair beneath his cheek, the sweet, cinnamony smell of her breath—he jerked his gaze to the candy dish and smiled—beat the hell out of remembering the feel of Joseph’s hand on his shoulder and the warmth in the old man’s eyes. A look he’d never seen once from his mother’s father.

His smile faded and the twinge became a twist that had him clenching his jaw.

Right up until his death eleven years ago, Ned Anders hadn’t had the bank account, Swiss or otherwise, that Joseph McCoy had, though, so being stuck with another mouth to feed hadn’t endeared Cooper to Ned any from the get-go. Joseph could afford to haul in a hundred strays to play grandpa with. If Marcus had lived longer, Joe might have had to.

Cooper would have to remember to hoist a cold one to a certain grizzly bear the next time he visited what he considered “the office.” Marcus had had his quota of lives to mess up.

Cooper leaned forward and placed his palms flat on the cool, smooth surface of Sara’s desk, his arms spread wide. This particular stray wasn’t about to come crawling in on his belly, wagging his tail in gratitude for the scraps finally thrown his way. This stray had teeth, and every intention of using them.

Thanks to the new designer suits Joseph had procured for him, the McCoys would never see his bite coming. He sarcastically wondered if the county jail had been kind enough to relay the size of the orange jumpsuit they were going to outfit him in if he hadn’t made bail. Hopefully, he looked as though he was trying to make the best impression he could, not ferreting out the best way to strike a blow to the company that had allowed Marcus McCoy to charm everyone into trusting him. Everyone who didn’t happen to know the truth, that is; then his true nature would come out.

A noise from the doorway jerked him from his thoughts and he looked to where Sara Barnes, briefcase in hand, stood poised just inside her office as if the sight of him had stopped her in her tracks.