Order of Protection Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE LAWLESS NOVELS

  “I love Lexi Blake. Read Ruthless and see why.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lee Child

  “Smart, savvy, clever, and always entertaining. That’s true of Riley Lawless, the hero in Ruthless, and likewise for his creator, Lexi Blake. Both are way ahead of the pack.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry

  “Ruthless is full of suspense, hot sex, and swoon-worthy characters—a must read! Lexi Blake is a master at sexy, thrilling romance!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst

  “With Ruthless, Lexi Blake has set up shop on the intersection of suspenseful and sexy, and I never want to leave.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Laurelin Paige

  “The love story that develops will touch the hearts of fans . . . A welcome and satisfying entry into the Lawless world.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF LEXI BLAKE

  “The sex was hot and emotionally charged in many beautiful ways.”

  —Scandalicious

  “A book to enjoy again and again . . . Captivating.”

  —Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews

  “A satisfying snack of love, romance, and hot, steamy sex.”

  —Sizzling Hot Books

  “Hot and emotional.”

  —Two Lips Reviews

  PRAISE FOR THE PERFECT GENTLEMEN SERIES BY SHAYLA BLACK AND LEXI BLAKE

  “Hot and edgy and laced with danger, the stories in the Perfect Gentlemen series are just that—perfect.”

  —New York Times bestselling author J. Kenner

  “While there are certainly incendiary sex scenes at the top of this series opener, the strength is in the underlying murder and political mystery.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  TITLES BY LEXI BLAKE

  THE COURTING JUSTICE NOVELS

  Order of Protection

  THE LAWLESS NOVELS

  Ruthless

  Satisfaction

  Revenge

  THE PERFECT GENTLEMEN NOVELS

  (with Shayla Black)

  Scandal Never Sleeps

  Seduction in Session

  Big Easy Temptation

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by DLZ Entertainment, LLC

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK and BERKLEY are registered trademarks and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Blake, Lexi, author.

  Title: Order of protection / Lexi Blake.

  Description: First edition. | New York, New York : Jove, 2018. | Series: A courting justice novel ; 1 | “A Jove book.”

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017053744| ISBN 9780399587467 (paperback) | ISBN 9780399587474 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | FICTION / Romance / Suspense. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.L3456 O73 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053744

  First Edition: June 2018

  Cover design by Alana Colucci

  Cover photo: Couple © Claudio Marinesco / Ninestock

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Lexi Blake

  Titles by Lexi Blake

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank everyone who helped make Order of Protection possible. Thanks to my assistant and all around Girl Friday, Kim Guidroz; to my incredible editor, Kate Seaver, and the team at Berkley; and to Merilee Heifetz and Writers House. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge some experts who were willing to read this book to make sure I didn’t screw up too much. Thanks to Jennifer Zeffer, for providing the forensics and DNA information, and Margarita Coale—my personal lawyer and all around legal guardian angel—for explaining that lawyers don’t sleep with their clients and still going along with me anyway.

  ONE

  MARTHA’S VINEYARD,

  MASSACHUSETTS

  Henry Garrison sat on the back-porch steps, looking out at the Atlantic. The waves were calm at this time of day, an endless beat that once had been the rhythm of his childhood. The sky was darkening, a storm coming in with savage quickness. It was one of the things he’d always loved about this place. One minute the sky was perfect, and then some terrible storm would roll in, and thirty minutes later the world was back to flawless again.

  If only his life had turned out to be so quick to change. Oh, it had gotten shitty fast, but the cleanup afterward seemed like it might take a lifetime.

  He let the coffee cup he held warm his hands and concentrated on the beach. When he looked out over that sand, he could practically see his grandfather walking. The old man who’d raised him had walked the shoreline every single day, combing the beach he’d known for decades as though he would find something new. He would show back up with some shell or sand dollar like it was a treasure.

  Damn but he missed that old man.

  Sometimes he didn’t though. He was happy his grandfather hadn’t lived long enough to see the complete wreck Henry had made of his life. Along with his daily walk on the beach, Alistair Garrison had sat right here on this porch and read the New York Times every single morning while sipping his two cups of coffee. Never more, because that would be too indulgent.

  Control and discipline, my boy. Those are the keys to life.

  Yeah, his grandfather hadn’t lived long enough to watch his only grandchild, the golden boy, fall from grace because of booze and arrogance. He hadn’t had to watch as the New York Bar had nearly taken away his ability to practice law. He hadn’t been alive to witness the downfall of his grandson’s made-for-the-tabloids marriage, and Henry was sure as hell happy he hadn’t been alive to know that his precious house was being put on the market to pay off a never-ending series of bills he’d run up when he’d been married. He’d bought cars and houses and other shit he didn’t need.

  Most of which he di
dn’t even own anymore. He’d had to sell almost everything to simply keep his head above water. He’d blown it all on booze and luxury vacations and clothes with price tags that would have made his grandfather roll over in his grave.

  Henry gripped the coffee cup with both hands, willing himself to stay out here on the porch and not go back inside the small but beautifully decorated bungalow. That had been his grandmother’s doing, and he reminded himself that he was happy she hadn’t witnessed his tragedy either.

  He’d been packing up the closet in the smaller of the two bedrooms when he’d found a wooden box containing a lifetime’s worth of photos. They were black-and-white and color. Some had been professionally done—his father’s army photo, his grandfather’s wedding portrait, Henry’s Harvard graduation portrait. Some had been from the various cameras his grandfather had used over the years. There had also been a Bible with a pressed white rose in it. His mother’s.

  Pictures of the dead. Pictures of people who’d smiled and had lives, and then they were gone and he was left behind.

  But those bittersweet memories weren’t what had prompted Henry to practically run out of the house.

  Nope. It had been the small bottle of Scotch he’d found. There had been almost half the bottle left. He’d looked at that liquid gold and known exactly how it would taste, how it would smell, the way it would burn down his throat. He’d stared at it and figured he could get three decent glasses out of it. He could go to the kitchen, grab one of the crystal tumblers his grandmother had been proud of, and sit and toast all that death.

  He’d dropped the bottle on the carpet and walked out of the house. He’d walked to the small café two blocks from the beach and ordered a large coffee and told himself that he could keep the monster locked in that room. He would simply sell the contents of the house along with the structure.

  The problem was, the monster didn’t live in the bottle. The monster was with Henry always.

  His cell trilled, and he practically breathed a sigh of relief. Work was something he could deal with. Work was an addiction he could sink into. He set the cup down and answered the call. “This is Garrison.”

  “Hey, buddy. How’s the packing going?” David Cormack’s voice came over the line, a steady sound that soothed Henry. There was something about the ex–NFL star turned lawyer that Henry found oddly calming. David never flipped his shit, never got angry or emotional, but managed to also never seem cold.

  David’s whole world had turned upside down, all his hopes and dreams burned to cinders, and all he’d done was find a new dream.

  Henry would bet that not once had David ever had a drunken screaming argument with his wife in the middle of a Manhattan restaurant with a phalanx of reporters documenting every moment for posterity.

  Of course, David was a widower. He didn’t argue with his wife at all.

  “I’m getting through it. I only got in yesterday. I’m going to pack up anything personal and let the movers take the rest.” He wasn’t going to talk to David about the fact that he was on the back porch hiding out from a bottle of Scotch. David had enough to deal with. “Did the kid get in all right?”

  The kid was named Noah Lawless, and he was the only fucking reason Henry Garrison was still going to be able to practice law in Manhattan. After his disastrous divorce, he didn’t have the influence or the cash flow to keep up his private practice. Manhattan’s best criminal lawyer had become a has-been, and only his connection to the incredibly powerful Lawless family was saving him this time.

  Once upon a time, he’d defended Riley Lawless’s future wife from embezzlement and fraud charges. Not that she’d needed much defending, since she’d actually been innocent, but getting Ellie out of jail had apparently endeared him to the clan, and when he’d needed help, they’d been amenable. They were funding him for the time being. They were also his only real client.

  Of course, that meant doing Drew Lawless, the family patriarch and head of their multibillion-dollar company, a massive favor and taking on his baby brother as a freaking junior partner. But a desperate man did what he had to do. Noah wasn’t coming in as an associate, the way he should. He had his damn name on the door.

  “He’s not as bad as you think.” David knew how reluctant Henry was to take on an entitled kid. He’d dealt with enough rich pricks to last a lifetime.

  Despite the fact that he was sitting on one of the world’s most affluent islands, he hadn’t grown up wealthy. The house had been built by his boat captain great-grandfather back in the 1920s and passed down the line. His grandfather had been a fisherman, and his father had gone into the military. After his father had died, Henry had grown up here as a townie. It had only been later on that he’d turned into an overprivileged asshole of a human being.

  “I think he’s probably pretty bad, so you’re not giving me a lot of confidence.” Henry wished he hadn’t stopped smoking. No more smoking. No more drinking. No more random, meaningless sex. Being virtuous was starting to get to him. He needed a good murder case, and soon, or he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. “The kid went to Creighton Academy. They’re all rich jerks who never worked a day in their lives.”

  “He’s not what you would think, and you know his background. He practically raised himself. I like him. And he’s damn good with computers,” David said, his enthusiasm coming over the line.

  “I would think he should be.” The Lawless family money was built on technology. 4L Software was known for innovation. “I don’t know why he didn’t go into tech in the first place. He could be working at 4L.”

  “Maybe you don’t know him as well as I do. Read the files I send you every now and then. Or at least pretend to. He used to be a hacker, and it got him into some trouble. Things got violent, and he wants to stay as far away from that world as possible. When he went to college, he liked the law classes he took, and here he is.”

  “Yes, big brother bought him a law firm.” And two partners. There was really no way around that. “I’m sure he’s also got a multimillion-dollar penthouse. I’m sure he’ll be supereasy to deal with.”

  “Can the sarcasm, please,” David admonished. “As I was trying to explain, he’s worth more than the cash he’s bringing in, and he is very helpful. The network went down, and he got it up and working long before the IT guy I called managed to get to the office. By the way, we could use an in-house IT guy.”

  They could use a lot of things they weren’t going to get. “Find me his salary in our budget and we’ll talk. Until then, the Creighton kid can do it, apparently. How did the meeting with Keillor go?”

  Greg Keillor was a Wall Street businessman accused of murdering his business partner. The police believed he had one hell of a motive. A quarter of a billion dollars was worth killing over in a lot of people’s minds. It was exactly the kind of case Henry liked to sink his teeth into. High profile, tons of billable hours, a client who could pay his freaking bill. Yeah, he wanted in on that. He’d been back in New York for less than a year, and most of his cases had been small-time. He’d done a couple of pro bono, mea culpa, I’m-still-a-beast cases, but it was time to move back into prime time.

  “I’m sorry, man. Keillor decided to go with Dustin and Klaus.” There was something tight in David’s tone.

  “What did he say?” If this had been three years ago, Keillor would have been begging to have the Monster of Manhattan as his attorney. Henry Garrison would have been the first number he called. Henry would have been the one to make sure the case was worth his time.

  Unfortunately, this was today.

  “It doesn’t matter,” David insisted.

  “It matters to me.” He should let it go, but he couldn’t. Now it was almost more real than it had been before, because now he wasn’t simply Henry Garrison, Esquire. He was a member of Garrison, Cormack, and Lawless. He’d brought himself down. How much harder would it be to bring them all down? After
all, he hadn’t meant to do it the first time.

  “He wasn’t interested in a lawyer who was more scandalous than he was,” David replied, his tone wry. “See? He’s a massive ass if he thinks divorcing your actress wife is more scandalous than beating his business partner to death with a polo mallet. Also, might I add that he was a shitty polo player and that was the most action his mallet ever saw. I don’t want him as a client.”

  That was David. He looked to the silver lining. “You need to think about this, man. I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but you might do better on your own.”

  It was an argument they’d had many times since the night his old friend had come to him and offered to start up a law firm. Henry had pointed out that no one wanted an addict, who couldn’t even keep a wife, as a lawyer.

  David had pointed out that no one would want a washed-up jock, who hadn’t been known for his brains, as a lawyer.

  “Stop. There’s no going back now. We’re in this and we’re a team. And you know it’s not all bad,” David quipped. “This office is small but spectacular. Drew Lawless knows how to pick real estate. The view impresses the hell out of everyone. I’ve already got two clients, and one of them is the Missiles. We should be rolling in dough soon, because you know how those athletes can be.”

  He sighed in relief. David had been trying to get on as the Manhattan Missiles’ lawyer on retainer for months. It was a secret no one liked to talk about, but many professional sports teams kept criminal lawyers on retainer just in case. They wouldn’t be rolling in dough, as he’d said, but that retainer would keep the lights on. And it was a serious win for his friend. “Good for you, man.”

  “Yeah, well, the new GM is an old friend of mine,” David admitted. “But you’re the one who told me half this business is who you know. Speaking of who you know . . . there’s a rumor floating around that a group of New York–based reality stars are hanging around Martha’s Vineyard for the end of the summer. No cameras. Apparently this is vacation time, so they might be willing to talk.”