The Rider's Dangerous Embrace (An Interracial Bad Boy Romance Story) by Nicole Jordan

tantrums.
    “You’re right, but I wasn’t sure you would give a shit.” He looked up at her, a little smile on his face. He thought it was a tantrum, alright.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You’ve been vacant for months, Jayda. Not even coming into the office. Doing it all on the phone, telling me to ‘handle’ it. I figured this was just one more thing for me to handle. I made a promise to your daddy so I’m handling it.” Thomas didn’t scream. He didn’t yell. He just gave her a look that said it all, he still thought she was a little kid.
    “Who is it?” She asked, sitting down. She needed to calm down. Blowing out a few breaths she let her face relax.
    Thomas waited until she was visibly less agitated before he started talking.
    “I have a couple of ideas, but you need to be patient with me, Jayda. I’m just tryin’ to devise a plan. Give them some bait and then catch them red handed. But, if you are interested, I sure could use your help. I have a contact or two out at the practice facility who want to help.” Thomas ran his hand through his thick salt and pepper hair. At forty-eight he still looked good, strong and handsome, but the weight of stress was evident in his eyes and it made him look every bit his age.
    “Who?” She asked tentatively.
    “Dustin and Luke.”
    “But Luke isn’t even a part of this.” She was confused. He was just a recruit. Someone who used the facility and rode. Someone Thomas asked her to look at. “He doesn’t belong to the ranch at all yet. Still has to sign the papers for my sponsorship.
    “He hasn’t told you?” Thomas’s eyebrow cocked, just slightly. “Thought that you had been in contact with him on more than one occasion by now.”
    “Told me what? That he is willing to sign on with us?” She was starting to get frustrated. “It hasn’t happened yet. I am working on it.”
    “Is he now? Well, that’s something else. What I’m talking about, well, it isn’t my place.” Thomas was always crafty like that, giving her just enough information to be curious about, but never divulging more. All because he knew she would investigate.
    Oh come on.
    She wasn’t going to get anything out of him and she knew it.
    “It’s my company, Thomas.” She could feel her face going red. Again. “What aren’t you telling me?”
    “It’s our company. You hold majority partnership. I don’t know how to explain how serious this is, Jayda. This could ruin your stake in the company. You are being framed, and people are going to force you to sell. There are people who would benefit from that.
    “Like who? My partners? You wouldn’t do something like that, Thomas. I trust you.”
    “Yeah, but you don’t know all your partners, Jayda. Some of us are totally honest, me, Muriel, but not everyone. You have a couple other partners to worry about.”
    “A couple?” She hadn’t exactly read the partnership agreement when she signed it, her lawyers told her that everything looked legitimate and that she was by far the majority owner. She just assumed that Thomas was her only partner. The only partner that her father had ever spoken about.
    “Talk to Luke.”
    “I intend to do just that.” She gathered up her things and looked at him. He was hiding something and so was Luke.
    And she wasn’t going to let it stand.
    The last thing Jayda was going to do was come at Luke without any kind of information about him. She needed to know everything there was to know about him if she was going to get the answers she needed.
    “Mary, do we have anything on Luke Daniels?” She asked, bursting into her office her drive renewed. Solving problems was easiest when she had leads, when she had any kind of evidence or device pointing to her to a solution.
    “Oh, Ms. Rivers! I was so hoping you would be around, especially because you looked so upset when you came in this morning. I have just the thing! I bought some donuts for us, and I even went and picked up a few different brews of