Page 17 of Somebody's Watching Me
She joined her brother at the serving cart, needing more wine. She wanted to get good and drunk so she could sleep all day tomorrow. “Let’s just say I think you might lose that fifty-dollar bet you made with your wife.”
Chapter 5
“Aunt B, you worry too much.”
Rowan sat in the future office of his new condo. The entire place was empty except for the desk in front of him and the computers he had already set up. Purchasing it sight unseen, the idea had been to find a solid home base as he lobbied Ben Fairweather for a transfer to the Florida offices.
“Your mother is beside herself after hearing how you went out and bought a condo in Florida,” his Aunt Bianca said. “Margie is acting as if she’s never going to see you again.”
“I offered for her to come with me.” Rowan set the phone down to open a bottle of Irish whiskey. Just because he was alone didn’t mean he couldn’t celebrate. “Florida is a better alternative than what she’s currently dealing with.”
His father, the great and esteemed Phillip McIntyre, had recently been forced to retire due to a heart condition, and was currently driving Rowan’s poor mother insane as he worried over the fate of McIntyre Enterprises. The eldest of Rowan’s siblings had taken over the company, and Killian was known to butt heads with their father.
In short, things were not going well.
“Anything is better than a bored Phillip,” Bianca agreed over the squawking of what was most likely a parrot. She moved to Costa Rica years ago, living a pretty awesome existence in Rowan’s opinion. “At least Margie loves him. The rest of us would have killed him by now.”
His parents did love each other. They loved their kids, too. Killian was the responsible one. A quintessential McIntyre who lived up to the expectations set out for him. He never wavered in his duty to their family or the betterment of their company.
And then there was the apple of their parents’ eye. The baby and self-proclaimed free thinker of the family, his sister Caitlin handled the equine division at McIntyre. Long gone were his family’s ranching days, but a small branch of the company continued to support their interests in the field.
And then there was him. The rebel who left the fold to break bread with the enemy. As a rule, McIntyres and Fairweathers tended to stay far away from one another.
A reminder alarm buzzed on his phone, and Rowan powered up the three monitors on the desk. “Listen, Aunt B, I’ve got to go.”
“Hot date waiting for you?”
“Nah, I’ve just got work to do.”
“Ben Fairweather is a workaholic. Don’t let him turn you into one.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you know he had sex with your Grandma Paula once? She confessed to it right before she died,” Bianca said, smacking her lips at the bird to get it to shut up. “Never a damn dull moment between the McIntyres and the Fairweathers.”
Rowan learned two lessons at once. The first was never to let your guard down when talking to Bianca McIntyre. His aunt often allowed whatever she was thinking to fly right out of her mouth.
The second was that Irish whiskey really fucking burned when it shot out of your nose.
“Jesus, B!” Rowan coughed, trying to catch his breath through the fire. “Why would you tell me something like that?”
“I figured you were finally old enough to know.”
He was thirty-two and would never be old enough. “I’m not.”
“Loser.”
Rowan’s choking dissolved into laughter. “You’re such a loving aunt.”
“Oh, whatever.”
And with that, the phone disconnected. Bianca wasn’t one to say goodbye. She didn’t believe in the word, thinking it too final.
Laying the phone on the desk, Rowan logged into the Fairweather security system to run an oversight scan on the network. It was a menial task completed regularly by his staff, but doing it now created an excuse for his credentials to be in the manifest.
Ignoring the scan scrolling at a paralyzing speed to his left and right, he focused on the large center monitor instead. The one currently displaying Haven House tucked in for the night. One at a time, he shuttered the cameras to where only a single unit remained active. A high-def piece of equipment positioned in a way that gave him a prime view of the balcony doors.
Doors that would open in a minute and reveal something he wanted.
