As if either the Hollands or the Andersons needed any more assets.
He would have been digging into this even if Caroline hadn’t showed up with a lion cub. And hadn’t cried. And wasn’t gorgeous. And hadn’t taken her clothes off in front of him.
He really would have.
She’d almost been kidnapped. And she’d dropped that bit about people buying and selling illegal exotic animals.
She also hadn’t denied that she’d been testing him to see which Caroline—the ballsy one, the desperate one, or the sexy one—would do it for him.
They all fucking did it for him.
And he’d admitted that to her.
Zander scrubbed a hand over his face. He needed to focus.
She was the only daughter of Charles Holland and she was in Autre. Zander would have checked that out. There was no reason for the heiress to a multi-million-dollar inheritance to ever be this close to muddy water and alligators.
Charles Holland was still the CEO of Holland Shipping. He still had shady business associates. Some of them had been indicted on things like embezzlement. Some had been taken to court by their ex-wives because of cheating, and in one case, domestic abuse. A couple had gone to court but had escaped jail time by setting someone up lower in the company as a scapegoat. It was all very typical, greedy, corrupt, elite bullshit carried out by greedy, corrupt, elite assholes. It was stuff that Zander didn't get his hands in anymore.
Even in his time as a cop and his very short stint as a detective in New Orleans, he tended to deal with the grittier side of things. Not so much the CEO level, but the guys who were doing things like transporting goods stolen from the big shots’ warehouses or the guys who were sent out to get money back from people who were late on debt payments to those bigwigs.
Guys like Charles Holland and his friends didn't get their hands dirty. They didn't touch the stolen merchandise, they didn't bloody noses, they didn't even make the direct threats or direct deals, for that matter. They knew better than to be involved face-to-face and have their fingerprints on anything. There were middlemen who did the dirty work. Those were the guys Zander had dealt with.
But he definitely knew who Charles Holland was. And the fact that Holland’s daughter was now in Autre, Louisiana, having run away from her wedding and telling Zander that she needed help was far more intriguing than Zander wanted it to be.
Dammit, he had to find out what was going on. He’d hoped he could look up her name and something would've jumped out to him that he could call up to New Orleans and pass off to someone else. He’d hoped that something would've stood out in the gossip pages about her fiancé or in the business pages or even the front page about her future father-in-law that would be worth looking into but wouldn’t require Zander's assistance.
The thing was, he couldn't find anything obvious, and he had the nagging feeling that even if he had, passing this off wouldn't have been that easy. Which really pissed him off. He did not want to be involved. Not with this woman.
Okay, not with any woman.
He was very happily single. Very purposefully single. He had a lot of people to take care of and he wasn't interested in adding any more. The additions to his family kept happening and would keep happening. And he was happy about that. He wanted his cousins and brothers to be head over heels in love and find their life partners. And he would welcome them into the family with open arms and protect them with his dying breath.
But because he knew that was going to keep happening and his family was going to keep growing and they all wanted and needed Autre to continue to be a happy haven, it was going to be more and more important that Zander was able to keep things stable and steady and safe.
None of them knew how close the bad guys really were sometimes. None of them knew how close things had gotten to shaking the very foundation of Autre, Louisiana, two years ago. They didn't know what it took to keep the perimeter solid.
There was a band of badges—guys who had gone into various types of law enforcement and civil service—keeping Autre safe. And keeping the things they did to keep it safe out of the public eye.
Everyone thought Zander, Michael, Theo, Wyatt, Spencer, and a few other friends who had vowed to keep their work a secret, were just fishing-and-beer-drinking buddies. And that worked great. The fishing cabin deep in the bayou that was accessible only by boat and only if you knew exactly where it was, served as the perfect place for them to plot and plan.
And they did catch some pretty great fish there too.
Everyone thought Autre was a fun, easygoing, safe, relaxed place to be. They thought the badges came to Autre as a break from all the other places in the world where they were called upon to protect and serve. But the truth was, they all came to Autre to fight the good fight when needed to keep this corner of the world safe. And it was needed far more than anybody in Autre really wanted to know.
So the last thing Zander was interested in was adding anyone else that he might need to worry about. Especially someone like Caroline Holland. Caroline had I’m gonna be a huge, gorgeous, sweet, lose-your-mind distraction written all over her. And Caroline had a direct line into a bunch of shady characters.
That didn’t mean she was shady. That would remain to be seen. But Caroline hung out with some people who had proven that they were not above stepping on people, bending the rules, pushing boundaries, and flat out putting themselves above everyone else when it benefited them. Zander wasn't bringing that into Autre.
And he'd already felt the spark that absolutely made every self-preservation instinct kick into high gear.
Caroline Holland, of all the fucking women who could have gotten stranded in Autre, had to give him a spark.
He didn’t want it, but he wasn’t about to blow that spark off as nothing either. In fact, he was going to treat it with care and respect.
Like a bomb.
But he wasn’t stupid enough to think that would be easy. He’d seen Landry men go gaga in the blink of an eye. Like magic. Not just the romantic ones, or the ones getting a second chance with a woman they’d loved before, or the ones who were ready to settle down. Oh, no. Landry men set on being bachelors, Landry men who were happily single, Landry men who were dead-set against falling in love had gone and lost their hearts.
And then there were the men who weren’t Landrys, but who fell for Landry women.
Some of ’em had put up a fight.
But they’d all gone down.
Being loud and obnoxious was the second best thing Landrys did.
Loving was the first.
With a heavy sigh, he pulled his phone out and dialed Fiona Grady's number. Normally, he wouldn’t have any trouble calling, but she wasn’t at home in Florida right now. She was just a few blocks away at Ellie’s with all of his family and friends.
She answered on the second ring. “Hey.”
Zander appreciated the fact that she didn't use his name. Fiona was one of those people who understood that sometimes phone calls needed to be under the radar.
“Hey, don't let anybody know who's calling.”
“You got it.”
“Has Donovan or Griffin said anything about the state of the lion cub?”
“Yeah. Good to go.”
He also appreciated the fact that Fiona knew how to have a conversation without giving anything away on her end. “So he’s healthy?”