Framed: Brodderick Brothers, #1

By DK Howard

The Brodderick brothers can't help themselves when confronted with a damsel in distress, so when Mack Brodderick encounters Kelsey Bannon, what else can he do but help her out? He needs a renter, she needs a place to stay, but then he discovers that he wants so much more from the sultry young woman than simple friendship.

Kelsey doesn't want anything to do with men. It was a man who framed her for a crime that had her sent to prison, it was a man who wouldn't provide the defense she needed to keep her safe. No, all she wants is to live in peace and maybe revenge against her ex-fiance. Now, her landlord is the most stubborn, sexiest man she'd ever met and he is determined to interfere. Can she keep her heart intact, or is he a risk worth taking?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deslisle Publications
• Release date: Jul 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386100010

DK Howard

DK has always loved a good mystery and enjoys writing the kind she likes to read. She lives in the snowy frozen North, with her supervisor, a cantankerous cat named Mischief.

Book preview

One

An ominous feeling of dread nibbled at the back of Kelsey Bannon's neck, sending tingles grinding down her stiff spine. She trod at a brisk clip down the sidewalk along the main street of the small, rural town in Washington. She’d come here seeking solitude and escape from her soiled past. She hadn’t quite found it.

Shivering, she wished the apprehension would go away, but she lacked confidence it would. She’d been making the same useless wish for almost a year, and it hadn’t come true. Whether anyone else believed her or not, someone stalked her. Someone followed her every move since her release from prison last year. As if her year-and-a-half prison stint hadn’t been hard enough to survive, now someone threatened her. She hadn’t deserved her prison sentence, and she didn’t deserve the eerie tail chasing her. Fair didn’t play a part in the ugly turn life and fate dealt her though, so she’d have to make the best of her circumstances and fight to get ahead. Someday she’d win. She had to. She couldn’t take much more negativity.

She shuddered, catching a glimpse of a shadow out of the corner of her eye. Who could be it be? Had her parole officer and court-appointed psychologist been right? Maybe she was paranoid and delusional. Maybe there was no one following or watching her at all.

And maybe that was just bullshit. She shuddered again.

It wasn’t as if she could trust her parole officer back in Seattle, or her prison-appointed shrink. Neither could she trust any of the lawyers in that God-awful, corrupt city to reopen her cut-and-dried, sealed-up-tight, bogus case and help her put the real guilty party behind bars, or right the wrong perpetrated against her. Scumbags. All of them. Lawyers and men alike. Especially men.

She looked over her shoulder. Could John Rivers be following her? She doubted it. Her ex-fiancé would make himself known if for no other reason than to make it look as if he just happened to be walking down the same street, so when she tried to accuse him he could say he had the right to be there. She scowled. He framed her with ease, wrapping up the case all neat and tidy by hiring a no-account rookie lawyer to make sure she served his sentence for him. It should’ve been John in jail, along with the woman who’d helped him, the woman he’d probably slept with but was definitely in cahoots with. Whoever the bitch was.

Kelsey would never be stupid and naïve enough to trust an unscrupulous man like that again. Not with her heart, not with her body, not with anything. Not that she’d given John her body. She was blind and foolish enough to give him her heart and agree to marry him, though, before he’d embezzled two million dollars from the bank where they’d both worked for years and blamed her for it. He deposited the stolen funds in a bank in the Cayman’s in Kelsey’s name, and someone disguised to look like her on the bank video tapes withdrew the money. Kelsey suffered for it, while John and his mistress benefited from Kelsey’s devastation.

Kelsey almost wished she had a little bit of that money. While her bank account dwindled, her stocks had made money, but buying and selling took time. At least she had that much going for her. The stock market and finances were her saving grace. She studied them in college and graduated with an accountant degree. Her education hadn’t done her any good in prison, but, while incarcerated, she’d read up on the stock market and soaked up information from every book and newspaper she could, including the Wall Street Journal. Now, a year after her early release for good behavior from the penitentiary, she made fair profits and lived on her own. In that respect, she was lucky, or at least better off than most ex-cons. She could use her online brokerage system. That way, she wouldn’t have to work with the public, or see any more people than necessary. Her friend Maria might be right. Kelsey would live like a hermit and turn into an old maid.

Well, so be it. It’d keep her sane. And safe.

But lonely, too.

She shrugged. If that was what it took to stay of out jail and not be wounded emotionally, as she’d been by John, then that’d be the way she’d live. Alone.

Problem was, as Maria so eloquently put it, no man, or woman, is an island, and damn if Kelsey didn’t know it, because whether her parole officer believed it or not, someone was after her. The hair standing straight up on the back of her neck proved it.

Kelsey glanced around, jittery as all get out. Was someone back there? Was that a shadow of a man diving into the doorway of a furniture rental store behind her? She picked up her pace, practically running toward the newspaper office. Why was the street so deserted? Didn’t anyone else do business this early in the morning in this town?

She forced herself to calm down, slowing to a more normal pace. She’d taken self-defense classes every week for the past year. Surely, she could ward off an attack on Main Street, at least long enough for someone to come out of a building and assist her.

She cringed. She wasn’t truly free from her past. The past held her in its icy grip. Ghosts crept into her mind, relentless in their quest to haunt her. So much for gaining her freedom from prison in less than two years, instead of serving the original twenty-year sentence. So much for thinking she could come here to hide from danger and society. So much for believing she could remain unknown and nameless.

She clenched her fists. Her short nails dug into her sweaty palms, cutting tiny indentations. Her pulse rate kicked up, erratic and wild. She forgot about the possibility of someone tracking her and recalled instead the day the verdict had been read. Guilty. John was thorough when he witnessed against her on the stand, and the jury found her beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt responsible for the crime.

Kelsey sucked in a shallow breath. Blood pounded crazily in her eardrums. The echo of the solid iron bars of her cell slamming shut made her blood run cold. They’d locked her into her dreary, lonely cell on her first night in the minimum security prison. Frightened out of her mind, she curled into a tiny ball on the narrow cot and cried herself to sleep.

Kelsey placed her shaking hand on the door knob of the newspaper office, glancing up and down the narrow, empty street. A tall man in a trench coat and baseball cap crossed. The trench coat was out of place on such a warm morning. He disappeared around a corner and onto a side street. She drew her brows and gripped the door knob tighter, close to panicking. Had the man in the coat been the reason she felt so funny, so worried, so watched? So paranoid?

Kelsey took a deep, calming breath, released it, and swore she’d try harder to forget her troubled past. She needed to turn to the future, however bleak her prospects might be at the moment. She didn’t want history to repeat itself. She would keep her vow.

Never again will I let anyone get close enough to hurt me.

She chanted that mantra and her other favorite slogan as she entered the advertising office.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Kelsey was nobody’s fool. Not anymore.

Two

Mackenzie Brodderick walked into the newspaper office where he’d advertised his rental properties for the past three years. He would put in the ad for his rental properties, go on about his business-as-usual day, wait not-so-patiently for a possible response, and hope for the best. A rather average, menial task, in a rather uneventful sort of day, albeit a busy one.

All morning he’d run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Completing countless errands, he marked them off his mental checklist in preparation for the fast-approaching opening of Memorial Day weekend festivities at his resort. He and his two brothers, John and Nick, bought equal part-ownerships three years ago.

Mack halted inside the office, brought up short by the vision ahead of him. There was nothing average about her. He held his breath and took in the longest, leanest, tannest, sexiest set of legs he’d ever seen, standing right in front of him at the desk Isabella, the receptionist, always sat behind.

His eyes gobbled up the vision of shapely legs, trimmed at the top with raggedy blue-jean cutoff shorts and offset at the bottom with sandals, just plain sandals, but there was nothing plain about the ankles above them.

Okay, so maybe he had a slight fetish, but nothing weird. He wasn’t a pervert or anything. A playboy womanizer, maybe. He was accused of that often enough, especially by his brothers and the brotherhood of his fellow attorneys at the firm. Still, he wasn’t a crazed sick-o. He just liked nice, trim, slim, soft, touchable ankles and feet, and these were spectacular.

Before he could stop himself, he sucked in his breath in a quiet hiss and held it, covering his mouth with his fingertips. He stared at the hand-written copy of the ad he came to place and tried to appear deep in thought, in case someone heard his reaction and turned their gaze his way.

He was glad the fan in the office window ran on high. Neither of the women noticed his strange response to the vision of loveliness in front of him. If they had, they’d be curious, and the remarkable woman whose backside he now ogled with his peripheral vision might turn around and bash him in the face. He deserved it for his wayward, erotic thoughts.

If the legs were that great, he should check out the rest of the body. While the woman continued to speak to the receptionist, his gaze wandered, taking in the exotic vision before him, roaming upward, absorbing her body, memorizing its scrumptious shape and texture.

His hungry eyes rested at her soft thighs. They lingered a little longer on the nice rear end, then stopped at her curvaceous hips, hips so round and enticing they begged him to reach out and touch them. He itched to do so, and his sweaty palms tingled. He ached to have those well-toned legs wrapped around his waist.

Damn. He’d been too long without a woman in his bed, if this woman got to him so quickly on such a primal level, especially since he hadn’t even seen her face yet.

Get a grip, Mack.

Even as he admonished himself, he continued his enjoyable peruMack of the luscious torso, studying the rest of the gorgeous blonde in front of him with the greed of starving animal.

Her short, choppy haircut was sassy yet sexy. She’d obviously just washed her locks, and she ran her hands through them. The strands stood up on end, purposely-haphazard, if there was such a thing. The style she achieved said one of two things to someone like Mack: blondes have more fun...or...hands off. For some reason, Mack suspected the latter.

After admiring her backside, he couldn’t wait to see the front. He hoped he wouldn’t drool.

Get a grip, man. You don’t even know her. She could be ugly as sin, both inside and out.

Mack tried to curb the curious, overwhelming attraction he felt so acutely for the mysterious stranger. He didn’t care if he knew her. She only affected him on an elemental level, anyway. It was all about chemistry, the most basic of instincts. He was a man, and he was just looking, after all. Couldn’t a man look and enjoy the view, for goodness sakes?

The vision in front of him spoke. I’d like to buy the past three issues of your paper, if I may. It is a weekly paper, isn’t it?

The huskiness of the exotic woman’s voice rolled through Mack’s roiling system with the subtly of a freight train. Her sultry drawl worked its way under his skin and stayed there, the sensual effect of it setting his pulse to racing at a speed of about ninety-to-nothin’ and making his temperature rise to dramatic heights.

Damn. He hadn’t even seen her face yet.

The receptionist, Isabella—having apparently still not noticed Mack, or at least she hadn’t yet acknowledged him—nodded. With her usual politeness, she said, Well, yes, it is, and I can get those back issues for you, right now, if you like. We have them here in the office.

Before Isabella could rise from her desk, the woman stopped her.

I’d like to take out a subscription. I arrived in town yesterday, but I went this morning and got a post office box, so I already have an address to mail the subscription to. Would that be all right? She sounded timid to Mack’s experienced-attorney, witness-questioning, psychology-profiling ears. The woman’s meek tone surprised him. Why would someone who looked and dressed like that be shy?

Certainly, Isabella agreed, her voice sweet but professional.

The goddess waited, frozen, while Isabella searched for the past issues of the paper. Mack stood back, his arms crossed, a satisfied grin on his face. He hoped to catch her name, or maybe even get an introduction.

In all the years, summers especially, he’d been coming to this small town, he’d never once seen anyone like this woman, a combination of elegance, poise and rigidity. How did she do that anyway, pull off that fascinating combination? Why the rigid part? Her back was stiff as a board. She reeked of tension. He’d been a lawyer long enough to sense fear in a witness during testimony, or anyone else for that matter. This woman was afraid of something.

Perplexed, Mack eavesdropped, as was his usual, unbreakable habit. Isabella returned with a stack of papers, handed them to the woman, and explained when and how she’d receive the paper.

Isabella was a real beauty. Mack’s brother Nick was a lucky guy. Not that Nick admitted their relationship was anything more than superficial, but there was definitely something going on there. Something serious. Neither of them confirmed his suspicions, so maybe it was a summer fling, but a three-year, off-and-on summer fling was an oddity in Mack’s mind.

Mack liked to set limits. He made sure the women he dated knew exactly where he stood. He had no intention of becoming serious with anyone until he made partner at his prestigious law firm in Clayton, Washington, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in St. Louis County.

He had plans. He always made good on his plans. His future consisted of marrying someone respectable, settling down, having a couple of kids, and living in a safe neighborhood, in a nice house, with a white picket fence and a two-car garage. He’d probably have to give up his Ferrari and his bachelor lifestyle, but, hey, by then he’d be too old to care about that sort of thing. Unless he reached the mid-life-crisis stage before he got married, but surely not.

He shook off the idea of such a possibility. He wanted to enjoy life and women and have some fun. The woman in front of him looked like she’d be a blast.

Isabella pushed a pen and paper toward the siren. Okay, Kelsey. So that’s her name. Fill out this paperwork, and we’ll get this subscription started for you. Would you like to pay with check, cash, or credit card?

Cash, Kelsey responded with haste. Do you happen to know about any rentals or places for Macke around here? I don’t want to go through an apartment locator. I prefer to pay cash for whatever I rent, and I need something secluded and out in the country, maybe about ten miles out of town or so. Possibly a small, rustic cabin or a nice, newer mobile home. Perhaps along the river or on a lake.

Mack cleared his throat and spoke evenly, trying to conceal his excitement. This was the best chance he’d get for that introduction and a business deal at the same time. Excuse me.

Kelsey’s back straightened, but he ignored her reaction. He couldn’t have gotten any luckier if he’d tried. Here was an extraordinary opportunity fate dropped right in his lap, in the form of Aphrodite the love goddess. Perfect.

Ma’am, I think we might be able to help each other. Maybe this is our lucky day. Mack plastered a wide grin on his face and kept his voice calm, not wanting to seem too anxious. Of course, he was anxious, for two reasons. He wanted to rent his property, immediately if not sooner, and he wanted to see the rest of the seemingly beautiful woman in front of him.

Why he felt so needy, he couldn’t say. Probably that all-too-often, all-too-consuming chemistry and lust that got people into so much trouble and assured him job security and financial stability.

Kelsey faced him. I don’t think so. I...

Her voice cracked, and she stared at Mack, wide-eyed. Mack stared right back, his knees suddenly weak, watery and turning to spaghetti. He leaned against the desk next to him to hold himself upright, and slumped forward. He’d been sucker-punched.

What the hell was wrong with him? It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a beautiful woman before, but he’d never reacted in such a drastic physical and emotional way to any of them. Still, he could handle this.

Mack drew himself upright, growing irritated for being so stunned, irrational, and horny. He gazed into the largest, roundest, deepest set of oceanic aqua eyes he’d ever seen. After staring into the florescent blue pools perhaps a little too long, he nearly drowned in the depths of her fathomless, stark, sparkling, mesmerizing eyes. Lord, she was beautiful. Strikingly so.

Mack was struck temporarily speechless, which hardly ever happened. Just ask any one of his family members, his friends, or his colleagues. They’d tell you what a smooth-talker he was, until now.

He was going down fast, sinking when he should’ve been trying to convince the intoxicating, bewitching woman to rent one of his properties, for his and his brothers’ financial sakes.

That realization smacked him right in the face and brought him out of his stupor, but he took the risk and dared to tread the dangerous murky water he found himself swimming in up to his very Italian nose. He checked out the rest of the alluring woman, while he had the chance. She might turn furious and kick him in the shins any minute. She grew angrier by the second. Mack could tell. She plopped her hands on her curvaceous hips and glared at him with the ferocity of a mother wolf protecting her cubs.

At least she wasn’t wearing a ring. That was one small victory and a step in the right direction. There’d be no jealous, beast-of-a-husband flying through the door, ripping his head off and hammering him into the shiny hardwood floor of the newspaper office.

Kelsey would sue him for his vulgar thoughts, if she could read his dirty mind, as well as for public molestation of her with his eyes. She might win the case, too. Not even he was a good enough lawyer to convince a jury he didn’t want her. They’d see right through his ridiculous lies. He might as well make

use of this small window of fortuitous opportunity.

Kelsey hadn’t moved to box his ears yet. She remained speechless and immobilized, much like him. He took advantage of her frozen pose and dropped his measuring, admiring gaze, allowing himself to take a good look at the full kissable lips that made him ache to taste them. He practically drooled and had to force himself not to reach out and take her into his arms and kiss her senseless.

What kind of animal was he, anyway? Why was he reacting this way with someone he’d never even met before? He was usually a sensible sort. Logical. Methodical. A lawyer, for cripes sake.

He’d never had this intense of a physical reaction before in his entire life, not even when he’d known someone for years, or when he’d taken a woman to bed for the first time. He wasn’t quite prepared for the impact of his desire when it rammed into him and turned his blood to molten

lava.

What was he doing? What was he thinking? He couldn’t stand there in a public place and drool over a woman’s lips and other outstanding assets, even if he was picturing her wearing nothing but him, wrapped around her.

Well, that did it. He was hard in places he shouldn’t have even been utilizing when talking about a business deal. So much for professionalism.

Kelsey’s face flamed crimson, and she changed from beautiful to glorious. His dazed mind whirled in a smoky, smoldering haze. Uh, oh. She wasn’t blushing from embarrassment. Rage took over her entire aura.

Boy, was he in for it.

Three

Kelsey locked eyes with the man accompanying the sexiest voice she’d ever heard. She wanted to look away, but he was the most devastatingly handsome man she’d ever seen, and he smelled delicious. His cologne wafted through the air and entered her flaring nose, attacking her brain and making her irrational. It was her only explanation for this silly attitude and reaction that would get her nowhere good.

She clenched her fists and set her jaws. She’d let down her guard, and it pissed her off. She had no desire to think of this smug man as anything but obnoxious. She pursed her lips, steeled herself against any charm he might emit, reined in her unwanted reaction, and forced her traitorous body under control. It couldn’t matter that the man was gorgeous. She hadn’t let it matter since...

Oh, God. She had to get a hold of herself and calm her ridiculous physical response and wayward emotions. She had to stop staring at the big galoot, and she definitely needed to tell him to go fly a kite. He had no right to talk to her or interrupt her impending business deal. He was, after all, a man, and a dangerous one to boot, judging from the dark, daring, and masculine-to-the-hilt appearance of him. He glowered at her. She glowered right back.

Enough was enough. She cleared her throat and lifted her chin. Pardon me, but I’ll get my own information and find my own place, without your help or interference. I’ll thank you very much to mind your own business.

She spun back to Isabella, who’d stopped entering Kelsey’s subscription into the computer and stared at Kelsey, her eyes wide, then glanced nervously, even apologetically, at the man beside her. Did Isabella know this guy? Kelsey grew more worried now.

Great. She’d alienated and offended practically the first person she’d come into contact with here. Isabella looked confused, and who could blame the poor girl? She was probably shell-shocked after Kelsey’s rudeness toward some stranger who offered assistance. Isabella probably thought Kelsey was the meanest person in the world, and certainly not prone to country hospitality.

Did it matter what these people thought? It irked Kelsey that the man was able to make her react at all, much less that he’d made her so angry she’d practically slammed him in front of someone who’d been so pleasant to her thus far.

Kelsey sighed inwardly. She wasn’t exactly going to be warm and cozy friends with Isabella, or anyone else for that matter. She wouldn’t let the confused expression on the girl’s face bother her. She couldn’t afford friends here, any more than she could’ve afforded them in prison. Behind bars, friends either got you into trouble or betrayed you. Kelsey wanted neither to happen, so she’d avoided every chance at friendship during her incarceration. She planned to do the same thing here. So, of course, she shouldn’t care if Isabella liked her, and, small town or not, these people needed to learn how to mind their own damn business.

There. That was the right attitude. Not that she had a bad attitude. This was a good attitude, a safe attitude.

For years, she’d bowed down humbly to authority, but she wouldn’t bow down to any man. She’d be on the defensive, even to the point of being offensive, if it’d keep her out of harm’s way. So the gorgeous clod could bugger off.

MACK WICKEDLY ENJOYED her hostility. Not that he wanted her upset. He liked her spunk, and the challenge accompanying it. He’d thought her shy. He was wrong. She might’ve been humble and yielding for Isabella, but she had spirit. Plenty of it.

Odd, and such an intriguing combination, wrapped up in such an enticing package.

He enjoyed seeing her reaction to him as a man before she squared her shoulders and blinked, shuttering her desirous expression and slamming him with the mind-your-own business routine.

Kelsey wasn’t quite quick enough. Her heated response to him was more than obvious. She liked what she saw, whether she admitted it or not. She just didn’t want to like anything about him. She was good at concealing her approval, and even better at showing her disapproval. Mack held back a chuckle.

Even now, she slid her brilliant, vibrant eyes over his ever-tightening body, heating him up even more in response to her perusal. Her gaze affected him as if she caressed him with those elegant, dainty yet capable-appearing hands of hers.

She put him in his place neat as a soldier making his bed in basic training. She was amazing, and she mesmerized Mack with her perplexing contradictory attitude and actions. He shrugged inwardly. He’d take her feisty little attitude as a challenge, something he’d have to overcome, as he did any other obstacle in his path through life. She was a perky little hill he wanted to climb and conquer.

Not a very romantic or ideal way to think of the woman who told him in no certain terms he could take a hike, but he typically used romance to woo his women, love them, then leave them. They didn’t mind. They expected it of him.

Kelsey was different, and he liked that in a woman. He wanted her, so he’d start by getting to know her. He could take it slow and easy if that’s what she wanted. He had the whole summer, so there was no rush. He wanted to know what lay beneath that tough exterior, behind all that fiery attitude and grit.

Mack vowed to find out by summer’s end. In this small town, he’d run into her again. No way around it. He ran into the same people all the time, whether he wanted to or not.

Judging by her instant, volatile reaction, the passionate woman would be no easy catch. She’d put up formidable, invisible road blocks all the way, but she’d succumb to his seduction in the