Aaron's Kiss Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 7) (92 page)

“His newest, huh?” Bailey looked at the sleeping baby. “I’m not sure about all this. I don’t do well with people, you know, and what about her? About the baby…do you know her name?” Bailey touched her again, but left her to sleep on the bed.

“No, someone killed her parents, and tried to kill her too. She is only a couple of months old. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to figure out who her family is. But I want her to be with us, Bailey. I would like for you and me to raise her.”

Bailey didn’t say anything for a long while, just stared at the baby. He couldn’t see her face as she stared at the baby, but he could feel her relaxed against him. When she looked back at him, his breath caught at the smile on her mouth.

“I would like to raise her with you too. But you have to know, if she wants to be girly, she’s going back to live with Shade.”

He laughed. “What should we call her?”

“Emma. Emma St. James.”

About the Author

I woke up one morning and decided to give play time to the people in my head who were keeping me awake. Little did I know that they would be so relentless and want their time right now! I wrote for the pure joy of it and to entertain my family and friends. But mostly it was to get more than an hour of sleep without a story playing out. Of course, the more I write, the more they want. So…well, as a result of sleepless days (I work through the night as a gun toting grandma – nope not a vigilantly but an armed security guard) I have lots of stories written.

Hello! My name is Kathi Barton and I’m an author. I have been married to my very best friend Sonny for at times seems several lifetimes – in a good way, honey. And together we have three wonderful children and then the ones we brought into the world - Paul and Dale Barton, Jason and Wendy Barton and Danielle and Ben Conklin. They have given us seven of the greatest treasures on Earth. They don’t live at home seven days a week! No, seriously, seven grandchildren – Gavin, Spring, Ben, Trinity, Sarah, Kelly and Kian.

Table of Contents

Fated Absolution

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

WCP

World Castle Publishing, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © by Kathi S. Barton 2012

ISBN: 9781938243196

First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, April 5, 2012

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover: Karen Fuller

Photo Shutterstock

Editor: Brieanna Robertson

Chapter One

“You’ll go on this assignment or else.” Robert Button’s face was bright red; his jowls were shaking as were his fists. Maddy was sick and tired of fighting with this stupid little man every day. If it weren’t for the fact that she was the best damn researcher he had on staff, he’d fire her ass, and she knew it.

They were standing in his office on the twelfth floor of the Schaller and Schaller law offices. The office like the man was overdone and pompous as far as Maddy was concerned. The couch also like the man was overstuffed and sausage link like, even the colors were about the same, his suit and the couch; the carpet was pale yellow just like his beady little eyes that now that she noticed were set way too close together. He wore clothes that she could swear she saw that pimp on Twenty Second Street wearing the other night when she was on her way home. And he had more rings on his fingers than what was on display at the local jewelers. He was in a single word a Prick.

“I have things to do. I’ve said that nine times now. I’d think you’d of gotten it already. I am not going out to this client’s house and I am not doing it on my own time.”

Maddy thought this man represented every vile thing a person could think of and then some. She had a life damn it, not a great one, but it was hers.

He stared at her for about three minutes, and then smiled that smile that didn’t say ‘
hey, let’s be friends’
but rather
‘I’m gonna have you for lunch’
Maddy really hated that smile. He had her and she knew how too; it was the same threat that he used everytime. He had to pull out the one thing that pissed her off more than anything else, the only thing that would make her cave into his demands.

“If you don’t go, then I will simply renew your contract with us or you quit. Either way we win. Breach of contract or let’s see I’ll add, oh let me see, eighteen more months onto it. No! I think I’ll just make it an even twenty four.” He wasn’t very bright she thought, not bright at all.

“Eighteen is an even number you moronic ass hole. I hate you. I really hate you and this fucking job. I wish everyday that I would have turned down your offer and never worked for you and this fucking firm. You have never, in the four years I’ve worked for you played fair. I hope I get hit by a car on the way there and you will be stuck with having to do all of your work by yourself or better yet, you get hit by the bus.”

“Here’s the address, and don’t be late. Oh by the way, I loathe you as well. And the day I can get fulfill my contract where you are concerned will be the happiest day of my life.”

Maddy Harm had come to work for this firm straight out of law school having been at the top of her class, as well as the youngest graduate in more years than anyone knew. Schaller and Schaller had made the promise that they would help her pay back her student loans, all three hundred and fifty six thousand dollars’ worth and she would work for them at a standard rate for two years. Slave wages really when the expected you to work eighty hours a week and to do whatever they asked without question. She had been a very naive twenty years old even for a lawyer, so with stars in her eyes she agreed. But nothing they had promised had been real. Their idea of helping her with the loans was to give her a job, no extra money to pay the loan, just the job, and they took twenty five percent from each check to pay to her lenders after taxes. Then something she didn’t realize until fourteen months into the contract was that they had sole option to renew without notice. She knew about the option, just didn’t know how they would use it, so everytime something happened. They were adding on another few weeks to months extra to her what she had come to call her prison sentence. And there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

There had been the time she had been sick, as everyone at the firm had been, they had added on one week for every day she was off. She had missed a filing deadline, three months more. No one had cared that the deadline had been missed because she wasn’t aware that she was supposed to be the one filing the riff, and that it hadn’t even been her case, none of that mattered at all to them. Now four years, three months and nineteen days later, she still fucking worked for them, not that she was counting. She’d tried everything, but her pride in herself and her unwavering work ethic kept her from sabotaging herself completely by doing a poor job.

Maddy graduated from college with a fine arts degree when she was barely sixteen, young and very pretty she worked summers at the local ‘Y’ as a life guard until she could afford to pay for a second hand car that she still used and it was old when she bought it. Her long curly blond hair, voluptuous figure and periwinkle eyes would have opened a great many doors for her, but most of them led to some man’s bedroom, and on a few occasions a women’s too that would have her working flat on her back. So she went to college the old fashioned way, hard work and study. Maddy had a slight advantage over a lot of students that were older, in that she had a photographic memory. No matter what she heard, read or saw, she could recall it with perfect pitch, diction or clarity. It had served well then and better now.

She gathered up her things from her work area where she spent most of her day and left the building. Her cubby hole, as she called it, was on the fourth floor in the back of the building, and it didn’t even have a little window to let in a breeze once in a while, or the sunlight. She couldn’t call it an office, as it was just a long table set up in the research area with floor to ceiling books on all the walls, the carpet was so worn there wasn’t any nap in several places and it smelled odd. A smell so dank, some days she thought there might have been something dead under the floors. There was no phone, not even a decent desk lamp, just the cheap clip on thingy she’d gotten on clearance somewhere. She didn’t even have a company computer, but used the second hand laptop she had bought for school six years ago. It was slow and out of date, but all she had. She couldn’t even afford a decent bag for her stuff, but carried everything in a grocery store recycle bag to and from the office every day.

She had gone to see the owner, Mr. Sherman Schaller, the fifth once about the shabby treatment she was getting, and had nearly been disbarred the next afternoon. The only reason she hadn’t been was the fact that she had agreed to shut up and do the job she was hired for and to stay out of his personal office. That had been her last time on the top floor and her one and only time invited in the inner circle to date. She hoped to keep it that way. It was his threat the next afternoon that still gave her goose bumps.

“Learn anything? Or would you like another lesson in keeping your big mouth shut? I don’t have the time, nor do I care to be bothered by your petty shit, Ms Harm. And everything about you is petty if it doesn’t bring me in any billable hours. So remember this the next time you think to complain to me.”

Mr. Schaller had inherited the firm from his father, who had from his father. Maddy didn’t think any of them had ever been in a court room, wouldn’t know how to get there without a driver to take them. She herself had only had one court appearance and that case hadn’t won her any favors with anyone on the top floors. It was the trial of a homeless woman, Shade Doe who had been witness to the death of child and the brutal rape of another. She had done the case in her spare, what little there was, and pro-bono. The case had been dismissed on evidence.

“I learned that this is the worse firm in the city to work for and that no one will help me get out of this mess.” She was dirty, tired and just didn’t give two shits about them anymore.

“Well then, with the exception of the worse firm, you learned what I wanted you to. You will keep doing the job you were hired to do and you will do it with the same integrity and dedication as before. Or, I will have your name smeared all over this town as a thief and anything else I can think of and you will never be a lawyer anywhere. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly.” After that Maddy was never without her recorder. Everytime someone opened their mouth to say a word to her, she was recording it. She had hundreds audio cd’s filled with daily comments made to her, mostly about her, but sometimes about a client. Against the law? Yes it was, but so was their treatment of her. Sometimes you needed to work fire against fire.

She looked up the address on the map she always had in her car and consulted her compass and headed toward the client’s home, she hoped. For a really smart person, she had a terrible sense of direction; actually it was a negative sense of direction. Maddy knew from experience that she would have to stop at least twice to ask for directions and look on the map a minimum of four more times before she got there. She couldn’t tell north from South with a compass and leaving early for an appointment had not only become a habit, but a necessity. And most times, while she wasn’t late to her appointments, she was showing up right on time.

‘Great! They live in the riches part of town. Oh well, my car will be easy to find among the Hummers and Audi’s.’

She also talked to herself. A bad habit but her grandmother had done the same thing. She had claimed that it was because she was the only one who gave her the answers she wanted to hear. That became more true the more she worked for this flipping firm. Grammie had died three months ago, and Maddy still missed her horribly.

‘Okay, here we are. Oh great, a friggin gate. I certainly hope my window goes back up, you pretention prick.’

Her car was older than she was and had been slowly falling apart for years. But what did you expect when your car was thirty one years old and no one made or carried parts for it anymore. She pushed on the intercom button and waited.

“Yes, may I help you please?” A disembodied voice came over the speaker just outside the address she needed to go.

“Yes, please. My name is Madison Harm; I’m with the law firm of Schaller & Schaller. I’m here to see a Mr. MacManus. I have an appointment.” 

At least she hoped she did, it would be just like Butt Hole to send her out here on a wild goose chase just to make her look stupid. They had done that once before, set up a luncheon with someone at a nice restaurant and when she had gotten there the man had no idea who she was or what she was doing there.

“Oh, yes Miss Harm, we have been expecting you. Please stand ready and I shall endeavor to get this opened for you momentarily. Just follow the drive up to the house and I shall meet you there.”

‘
Endeavor
?
Momentarily
? Who are these people, and what century are they from?’ As the gate slowly opened to reveal the manicured lawns she whistled under her breath, ‘figures, she thought out loud, ‘I just bet there’s a house to match all this expensive yard work’.

Maddy drove the one mile up to the biggest house she’d ever seen. When she parked her car as far away from the garage as she could, ‘don’t want the other cars to get jealous of you baby,’ after patting the hood, she grabbed her Wal-Mart bag, and the file she was to have Mr. and Mrs. MacManus go over and sign. She almost left her laptop in the car, but decided to bring it in case there were any changes that needed to be made to the document since she had written it. She could make them at once and not need to come back out anytime soon, provided she could use their printer. The firm did not help out with gas money when they sent her out on these extra little duties.

She was met at the door by, one could only assume the butler, a man named Duncan, and led to a very nicely appointed office/study. There were windows everywhere, covered now against the late evening sun. The room was done in earth tones, blues, golds, teals and reds, and soft materials and textures. Several chair groupings and tables were scattered about the room, with large plush pillows scattered about the room’s rug covered floor. Along the other walls were shelves, brimming over with books, pottery and pictures of groups of people Maddy assumed were family. The desk, however, was a mess; papers piled high on it, on the floor around it and even on the one other chair that sat facing the massive sucker.

“How on earth do you work in this mess?” She asked the room in general. As she walked to the business side of it and taking into consideration what anyone might think, she started straightening it up. Duncan told her that his Lordship was running behind and would be here as soon as his mate was free. ‘Weird terms buddy.’

Maddy didn’t have a clue why she was doing it other than she just knew that if it wasn’t done soon, she’d be insane within twenty minutes, or at least insane-er. Organizing came to her as naturally as breathing. She first took a quick inventory of what the paperwork consisted of, bills mostly and a few household repairs, noting in the back of her mind that everything had been paid for within days of the receipt. After that, it was a simple system of putting things where it belonged. She never noticed the beautiful furniture all original pieces to the house and the original owner the previous Master of the realm nor the antique carpet that drew the eye to it and the books, rather it all faded to the background of what she was doing.

Aaron MacManus, his Lordship, was a very well respected as well as feared Master Vampire. He had fought and won a duel to take over this realm some six years ago from Carlos Santchez. The fight was a horrific one and lasted a good deal longer than either vampire had thought it would, both of them giving everything they had to win. But in the end Aaron had decapitated Carlos, killing him and inherited the house, the grounds, subjects and the mess on the desk. Not one bit of this matter when Maddy was in a zone.