Page 51 of Damaged Billionaire Daddy
I scooped up the goodies I had gotten for her and headed for the porch.
The man turned a glare on me. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “Get away from Kandy!”
There it was, the pet name I knew she hated, given her bya mom who probably thought it was cute on a toddler — and maybe it was. But her mom had abandoned her, so it wasn’t so cute anymore.
And here was this asshole using it like he had a right to it and ordering me away. I barely had the presence of mind to ditch the gifts right-side-up. I grabbed the fellow by his shirt-front, yanked him away from Kandis, and busted him one in the chops.
He was surprisingly strong. And fast. He busted me one in the bread basket. I wasn’t expecting it, so the breath whooshed out of me, but I used the last of it to slam my head into his breastbone.
He let out a yelp like a kicked hound dog, so it must have hurt. He back-pedaled, which put me off balance, but as I was going down, I grabbed his knee and took him with me.
He hit hard, and he didn’t have my training. I bounced back up, completely ignoring the pain in my hip and knee, and was ready to go another round.
I was fairly pawing the ground, ready for him, when a solid little body got in front of me and started pushing back.
The asshat started to get up, swearing a blue-streak and calling me every name in the book and then some. He looked ready to charge, but Pops Quinn got him by the collar and started a choke hold.
We stood there, glaring at each other.
“Who the hell are you, motherfucker?” the asshat snarled.
“I’m Richard Lane, pipsqueak,” I said. I wasn’t about to let my language fall to the level of his.
“Oh,” he sneered, “You’re the retard who’s kept my girlfriend too busy to return my calls.”
“And I guess you’re the degenerate who laid her best friend in her bed under her roof. Smooth move, dickhead.”
All right. My resolve didn’t hold very long. I would have gone for him, but Kandis had her shoulder firmly in my solarplexus, about where his fist had hit me. To get at him, I would have to go over her.
“Well, Kandy Kane,” her grandfather drawled, never letting go of the asshat’s collar, “Looks like you got two fellers willing to fight over ya. Which one looks the best to you?”
“Neither one, Pops,” Kandis retorted. “They both look like rutting idiots to me. I interrupted the one you got making out with Cali, like Richard said, under my own roof. And this one,” she hitched her shoulder right into my diaphragm, nearly making me lose my breakfast, “just wants the vineyard. He thinks that I’m his route to taking over Quinn Vineyards.
“What?!” Pops Quinn roared. He whipped the asshat around, booted him one in the butt, and pointed him toward a beat-up chevy. Then he punched me one in the chops, grabbed me by my shirt, and pushed me toward my SUV. “Get out of here, both of yez, before I call the cops. You get off my land, and don’t neither of you come back.”
I could see I would have to move my car before the faithless hunk of garbage could get his rolling junk heap out of the drive.
I didn’t want to fight Pops Quinn anyway. The old man was just defending his granddaughter, and his business. I really couldn’t fault him for it.
I meekly backed down the driveway, and around into the street, then waited to make sure asshat left, too.
Once he was out of the drive and his tail fins (yeah, fins — like some teeny bopper greaser) were disappearing down the street, I slowly drove on past the entrance to the Quinn Vineyards.
Looking back in the rearview mirror, I could see Kandis with her head down on Mimi Quinn’s shoulder, and Pops Quinn, hands on hips, glaring after me.
Yeah, I’d made myself real popular.
When I got back to the office, the phone was ringing off the hook. Stupid landline didn’t have caller ID, so I picked it up on the off-chance that it might be Kandis.
Instead, Delard’s voice came boiling over the line, “What do you mean, the Quinn deal is off? That’s the sweetest little vineyard you’ve found yet.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know. But it’s off limits. It’s a small family business, and I’m not going to break up their happy home.”
“Why?” the voice crackled through the phone lines. “It’s not the first family business we’ve taken down. We always pay good market value, so they aren’t hurt. Shoot, that couple of old fogies could retire and live out the rest of their lives on the beach.”
I rubbed my chin where one of those old fogies had popped me a good one, then took an experimental breath. Kandis hadn’t been gentle about stopping me, either.
I resisted the urge to yell at Delard. He was in standard operating mode, and yelling would only make him worse. Instead, I held the receiver away from my ear until he ran down.
