Because of You (12 page)

Brady starts to open his mouth, probably to say something cliché like, “You can trust me,” when the ringing of his cell phone breaks through the silence in the woods that surround us.

Without taking his eyes off of me, he reaches into the back pocket of his shorts and answers the call without bothering to see who it is.

“Brady.”

He closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh. His face immediately relaxes and loses the look of anger that was all over it a moment before.

“What’s up, Gwen?”

A prickle of jealousy shoots through me when he says another woman’s name, and I immediately tamp it down.

What the hell is that? What do I care if he gets a phone call from one or a thousand other women? I don’t know anything about this guy, remember?

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Possibly.”

I listen to his one-sided conversation, wondering what this Gwen person is calling him for when he’s supposedly in the middle of a job.

Something she says causes his eyes to shoot to mine. I watch as they grow wide, and he turns away from me a little, cupping his hand over his mouth and the phone and lowering his voice when he replies.

“No. Absolutely not. I am NOT asking her for an autograph. I’m on a job, Gwen.”

I cover my mouth to try and stifle a laugh, but he whips his head around when he hears me.

Rolling his eyes and sighing again, he uncovers his mouth and moves the phone away from it a so he can speak to me.

“Sorry. My sister Gwen is a huge fan. She’s another giant pain in my ass. She wants to know if you would sign her CD case.”

His sister? He has a sister? Why the hell does this make me happy knowing that Gwen isn’t just some slut who’s calling him at work?

I smile, nodding my head at him. “That’s no problem. I’ll sign whatever she wants. You should invite her to the cabin one of these nights for dinner, and I can sign things for her then.”

Halfway through my sentence, Brady starts shaking his head frantically, but it’s too late from the sound of things on his end. Gwen must have heard me. Suddenly, he’s holding the phone a few inches away from his ear, and I can hear high-pitched screaming coming through the speaker.

I laugh and he just gives me a look of annoyance, his lips pressing tightly together in a thin line and his eyes narrowing at me.

After a few seconds, the screaming stops and he puts the phone back to his ear.

“No. No, do NOT put her on. Gwen, I’m working I don’t have time to—”

His voice instantly goes from loud and irritated to soft and happy. I’m completely taken aback by the sudden change, and I can do nothing but stand there and stare at what's taking place right in front of me. Brady Marshall, bad ass private investigator, just turned into a marshmallow.

“Hi, sweetie! Yes, I’m still at work. How was school? You did? That’s so good! I’m so proud of you! Yes, Uncle Brady will buy you something for your good report card. Um, ah, I don’t think that’s a good idea, pumpkin.”

His eyes flash to mine again, and there’s a look of panic in them.

“Well, because I’m working. I know I always sing with you, but now isn’t a good time.”

Oh my gosh, he sings with his niece? This just keeps getting better and better.

“Oh come on, Uncle Brady. I think you should sing with the girl,” I say loud enough for my voice to carry through the line to the little girl he’s talking to.

I’ll get you for this,
he mouths silently. I just shrug in response and place my hands on my hips. If he wants to know so much about me, then he better start doing some sharing of his own. Listening to him sing on the phone with his niece is an excellent start.

“No! Not that song. Anything but that song. Emma, please? How about that awesome Nirvana song I taught you last week? No, it does NOT suck. Where are your priorities?”

Brady lets out a huge sigh, rolls his eyes and then turns his back to me.

“Fine. But this is the last time,” I hear him say softly to her.

So quietly I have to strain to hear him, I make out the first few words to a song I am quite familiar with.

“It’s Friday night and the beat is sick. I’m gonna get my girls and hit the club up quick.”

It’s absolutely impossible to contain my laughter at this point. Clutching my sides, I laugh harder than I have in a really long time as Brady practically whispers a few more bars of the song before stopping abruptly and telling Emma he loves her before hanging up.

He turns around, stuffing his cell phone back in his pocket and refusing to look at me.

I quiet my laughter and put a serious look on my face.

“Just so I’m clear, was that
Waiting for the Weekend?
You know, one of MY songs that you were just singing?” I ask innocently.

He crosses his arms in front of him and glares at me.

“That’s what I thought. Just one more question,” I tell him as he rolls his eyes at me. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a
beautiful
singing voice?”

I can’t hide the grin that takes over my face, and before I know it, Brady is picking me up by the legs and flinging me over his shoulder so the top half of my body hangs down his back. Once again, I have a clear view of his sculpted ass.

“Oh my gosh, put me down!” I yell in between laughs as he turns towards the trail and heads back the way we came.

“Nope, sorry. Straight to the showers for you so you can wash away every bit of what you just heard,” he tells me before smacking his hand on my ass and tightening his arms around my legs.

As I watch the ground fly by while I dangle over Brady’s strong shoulder, trying not to think about what his warm hands feel like wrapped around the bare skin of my legs, I wonder if there just might be more to him that I originally thought.

“So, what’s she like?! Is she as gorgeous in person as she is on TV? Is she totally cool and approachable? I bet she’s totally cool. Oh my God this is so awesome! I can’t believe you get to spend every day with THE Layla Carlysle!”

Gwen’s been gushing and throwing questions at me nonstop since I walked into the office this morning, still sweaty from my morning run with Layla and still focused on how warm her breath felt against my back as it seeped through my T-shirt while she hung over my shoulder.

She hadn’t been happy when I tried digging into her mother, and that makes me even more curious about the type of person Layla is. Who just lets someone walk all over them like that, even if it
is
their mother? She has spunk and doesn’t mind telling me where to go, but when it comes to Eve, she just shuts down.

“Okay, enough already with the twenty questions. She’s a normal human being, not some science experiment you stare at through a cage,” I tell Gwen as she bounces up and down on her feet, waiting for me to tell her everything about her favorite singer.

“Well, well, well. Will wonders never cease? Just last week you were calling her a 'no-talent drama queen,'” Gwen reminds me. “And for your information, she is NOT a normal human being, Brady. She is Layla Carlysle. One of the best recording artists and entertainers of the twenty-first century. She is a pop icon.” Judging by her foot tapping and the scowl on her face, clearly she's agitated that I don’t share her same excitement.

How could I? Everything I read about her in the tabloids is false. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise to me since the tabloids also write about movie stars buying land on Mars and a country singer finding a bat child in a cave. It shouldn’t have shocked me that she has a sense of humor or that she's more beautiful that humanly possible when she doesn’t have all that make-up on her face or shellacked hair. What amazes me, though, is the fact that she's allowed a woman that should have been her number one supporter to verbally abuse her.

The real Layla Carlysle intrigues me as much as I hate to admit it.

“Can we get down to business, please,” I beg Gwen as I take a seat at my desk and power up the computer. “Tell me what you’ve found on Eve Carlysle so far.”

Gwen lets out a huge annoyed sigh because I'm not going to give her the goods on Layla. Finally, she walks over to her own desk and grabs a file folder off of the top of it. Flipping it open, she scans the pages as she makes her way to me.

“Well, there isn’t much to be found about Eve. I had to do quite a bit of digging, and even then what I found wasn’t very interesting. Parents were blue collar workers, lower middle class. She wanted more out of life and made sure she got it. After high school, she worked hard and put herself through community college. Her first real job out of college was as a secretary for Hummingbird Records, where she met and married Layla’s father, Jack,” Gwen explains, rounding my chair and putting the file down in front of me so I can flip through it.

“I don’t like how little information there is about this woman. I mean, everyone has SOME kind of skeleton in their closet. She has nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean nada, zero, zip. Not even a parking ticket. Which is weird, right?”

I nod my head in agreement. “No one is that clean.”

“Exactly. Which makes me think she’s got something to hide. As awesome as I am on a computer, I couldn’t find squat. I called your friend Garrett for help, but his wife is on some kind of photo assignment and their daughter has been sick so he doesn’t have time to help. He gave me your friend Austin’s number. Let me tell you, that guy is annoying.”

I chuckle as I watch Gwen go back to her desk and sit down.

“What did Austin have to say?”

I pull up my email and shoot off a quit note of thanks to Austin as Gwen regales me with his charm.

“You mean aside from asking me my bra size, what I was doing for dinner tonight, and whether I preferred eggs or pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning?”

Oh, that boy is so getting his ass kicked the next time I talk to him.

At the closing of the email, I add a threatening little reminder to Austin: My baby sister is off limits.

“Well, when he isn’t thinking with his dick, he’s actually not too shabby at getting information that I can’t. I really don’t want to know
how
he got this information. He started to tell me it had something to do with two bottles of wine and a lot of sweet talk, but I cut him off when he mentioned some trick he does with his tongue that always makes women talk. I mean really, Brady. These are the people you worked with in the Navy?”

Same old Austin. He could make a mute talk. He's always been our go-to-guy when the computer had us at a disadvantage. With his good looks and southern boy charm, he could walk us through airport security with a bomb strapped to his chest and no one would pay any attention.

“Sorry, Austin is in a class all his own. What was he able to find out?” I ask, shutting the file folder that has no real useful information in it.

“So get this. According to a few ex-employees from Hummingbird Records, Jack Carlysle married Eve because she was knocked up.”

I stare at Gwen for a few seconds trying to do the math.

“That doesn’t make sense. They got married over a year and a half before Layla was born.”

Gwen nods enthusiastically. “Exactly. According to these employees, Eve faked the pregnancy to get Jack to marry her. He was getting ready to break it off and she needed to do some quick thinking so the money he lavished her with didn’t dry up. She never had any doctor’s appointments at that time or anything confirming the pregnancy, but Jack, being the upstanding guy he was, took her at her word and made her Mrs. Carlysle. Surprise, surprise. A few months later she
lost
the baby. Once again, no medical records confirming this at all.”

I shake my head in confusion. “So if he was getting ready to end things with her, why the hell didn’t he just divorce her when she supposedly lost the baby?”

Gwen leans forward in her chair, so excited to tell the rest to me I think she might fall right out of it and onto the floor.

“This is where it really gets interesting. Right around that time, like the same week, Jack added Eve as the co-owner of Hummingbird Records. He made her a shareholder, put her on the board of directors—the works. And what do you know, four months later Eve gets pregnant with Layla,” Gwen finishes.

“It’s like he bribed her to have a baby,” I state in awe.

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Gwen replies, letting out a deep, gratifying sigh.

I sit back in my chair and run my fingers through my hair.

“Jesus, no wonder Eve hates her. She probably never even wanted kids. Jack only kept her around to pop one out for him.”

Gwen looks at me questioningly. “What do you mean Eve hates Layla? Are you serious? How is that possible? Every single interview or news article I’ve seen of the two of them together, they are like two peas in a pod. They look like the best of friends.”

I’m momentarily ashamed at myself for thinking the same thing
and
for thinking Layla was a princess that enjoyed doing things to make her poor mother worry.

“Looks can be deceiving. They are anything BUT the best of friends. Jesus, Gwen. If you could have seen the way this woman speaks to her daughter. It’s disgusting,” I tell her sadly.