Grayson (11 page)

“Did she photograph the encounter with Leon, Nina and Sebastian?” Grayson asked.

He took the last turn to the ranch and could see the lights of the sprawling two-story house just ahead. Sometimes, he took home for granted. But not tonight. It was a welcome sight.

“Not that I can readily see,” Eve answered, her attention still nailed to the computer screen. “I need to enlarge the photos and study them.”

“Later.” The pictures were important, perhaps even critical, but he wanted to get her settled into the guestroom first. He’d already called the housekeeper, Bessie Watkins, to let her know they were on the way so that she could prepare the guestroom.

Eve looked up as if surprised to see they were already at the ranch. “Wow,” she mumbled.

That reaction was no doubt for the Christmas lights. There were hundreds of them lining the fence that led all the way to the main house. Even the shrubs had been decked with twinkling lights, and there were two fully decorated Christmas trees on each end of the porch.

“Bessie did this,” Grayson explained. “For Nate’s daughter, Kimmie. It’s her first Christmas.”

Grayson felt a tightness in his chest. Because it was a Christmas that his niece wouldn’t be able to spend with her mother. It made him even more determined to keep Eve safe. And he’d taken measures to make sure that happened.

The ranch was huge, over three thousand acres, but it was equipped with a full security system that monitored all parts of the house and property. There were also at least a dozen ranch hands in quarters on the grounds.

Then, there were his brothers.

Mason and Dade were still at work in town, but soon they would return for the night. Nate, too, even though Kimmie and he lived in a separate wing of the ranch house. The youngest, Kade, was at his apartment in Austin where he worked for the FBI, but he could be at the ranch in an hour if necessary.

Grayson hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

He stopped the car in the circular drive and looked around. It was pitch-dark now, but there were enough security and Christmas lights for him to see that no one was lurking around, ready to strike. Still, he didn’t want to dawdle. Grayson grabbed the suitcase that Eve had taken from her place in San Antonio. She latched onto the laptop, and they hurried up the flagstone porch steps.

Other than the Christmas lights, there was no glitz here like at the Collier estate. The porch was painted white, and the rocking chairs weren’t just for show. They used them often.

“You’re finally here,” Bessie said the moment she threw open the door. And despite the laptop between them, Bessie hugged Eve. “Girl, you are a sight for sore eyes.”

“It’s great to see you too, Bessie,” Eve answered.

“I got a room all made up for you.” Bessie caught on to Eve’s arm and led her across the foyer. Not marble, but Texas hardwood.

The furnishings here and in the rest of the house leaned more toward a Western theme with pine tables and oil paintings of the various show horses and livestock they’d had over the years. One of Dade’s girlfriends had joked that it was cowboy chic.

Eve glanced around and took a deep breath. She was probably thinking things hadn’t changed much since she’d last been here. Grayson’s thoughts went in a different direction. As always, she looked as if she belonged there.

Under different circumstances, she would have.

But it hadn’t been different circumstances since his father had walked out on his family twenty years ago. Since then Grayson hadn’t wanted a wife or a family. Of course, that hadn’t stopped him from having sex with Eve in the woods.

Later, he’d have to figure out how to deal with that.

Bessie directed Eve toward the stairs to the right of the entry. “I can run you a bath. And then you can have something to eat. I made chili and pecan pie, your favorites.”

Eve looked back at Grayson as if she expected him to rescue her. “I need to go over these pictures,” she insisted.

Grayson took the laptop from her, balancing it in his left hand since he had her suitcase in his right. “The pictures can wait a few minutes. Besides, I’m starving. Take your bath so we can eat.”

That wasn’t exactly true. Eve and he had grabbed some fast food on the way out to the Collier estate, but Grayson knew he could get Eve’s cooperation if she thought the dinner and bath breaks were for him and not her.

It worked. Eve didn’t argue.

While Bessie chattered away about the Christmas dinner plans, she led Eve into the bathroom of the guest suite. Grayson deposited Eve’s suitcase in the bedroom and went to his suite directly across the hall so he, too, could grab a quick shower.

Grayson tossed his clothes and Stetson onto the bed and hurried because he wanted to get back to the pictures. He also needed to find out the status of the background checks on Annabel, Claude, Sebastian and Nina. However, he wasn’t nearly as quick as Eve because he had barely dried off and put on a pair of clean jeans when there was a knock at the door.

“It’s me,” Eve said, but she didn’t wait. She threw open the door just as Grayson was zipping his jeans.

“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled. Her hair was wet, no makeup, and she was wearing a dark green sweater top and pants. She wasn’t wearing shoes but rather a pair of socks.

She fluttered her fingers behind her as if indicating that she was about to return to her room so he could finish dressing. But she stayed put with her gaze pinned to his bare chest and stomach.

She pulled in her breath and held it for a second. “You have a scar,” she whispered.

For a moment Grayson had thought that breathless reaction was for his half-naked body. It’s a good thing it wasn’t.

And he was pretty sure he believed that.

She walked toward him, slowly, leaned down and touched the six-inch scar that started at his chest and ended on his right side. “How did it happen?”

“I broke up a fight at the cantina on the edge of town. Didn’t see the switchblade until it was too late.”

Another deep breath. “You could have been killed.” Her voice was suddenly clogged with emotion.

Yeah. But Grayson kept that to himself. He also caught her hand to move it off his stomach, but somehow their fingers ended up laced together.

And neither of them pulled away.

Their eyes met. She was so familiar to him, but those eyes always held a surprise or two. Sometimes they were a misty blue. Other times, the color of a spring Texas sky.

Grayson cursed that last analogy.

He was a cowboy, and the last thing he should be doing was thinking poetic thoughts about the color of Eve’s eyes.

His thoughts weren’t so poetic when it came to the rest of her.

Grayson knew exactly how she looked beneath those winter clothes. He knew how much she liked it when he kissed her belly. And the inside of her thighs. He knew the way she smelled. The way she tasted. The sounds that she made when he was driving her hot and crazy. And it was because he knew all those things that he had to back away.

But he didn’t.

They stood there, gazes locked, as if paralysis had set in and neither could move. Eve’s breath became thin. Her face flushed. She glanced at his bed, and Grayson knew exactly what she was thinking.

He’d made love to her in that bed.

Things had been different then. Ten years ago they’d remodeled the house and turned all the bedrooms into suites. But the black lacquered wrought-iron bed was the same. It’d been his grandfather’s, and Grayson had staked claim to it twenty years ago after his grandfather had been killed. He’d gone through several mattresses in those twenty years, but the bed itself had remained unchanged.

No telling how many times Grayson had sneaked Eve up to his room. To this very bed.

In the beginning, neither had had a clue what they were doing. They had followed their instincts. Did the things that felt good. And plenty of those times, he’d had to kiss her hard and deep to muffle the sounds she made when she climaxed.

Grayson could hear those sounds now echoing through his head.

He couldn’t help but respond to those memories. To the touch of her fingers linked with his.

Part of him, the part straining against the zipper of his jeans, started to rationalize that he could put her on that bed again. He knew how to get those sounds from her. Knew the delicious heat of her body.

“Mercy,” she mumbled, but it didn’t have any sound. She shook her head. Moistened her lips.

He wanted to hear her voice. Those sounds. But most of all, he just wanted to kiss her.

“It would be a mistake,” Grayson said more to himself than her.

“Oh, yeah. A big one.” But she inched closer. So close that he tasted her breath on his mouth. That taste went straight through him.

Something inside him snapped, and he latched onto the back of her neck and hauled her to him. Their mouths met, and he heard the sound all right. A little bit of whimper mixed with a boatload of relief.

Grayson knew exactly how she felt.

Helpless. Stupid.

And hot.

“Should I close the door and give you time alone?” someone snarled from the doorway. It was his brother, Mason.

Eve and Grayson flew apart as if they’d just been caught doing something wrong. Which was true. They couldn’t lust after each other. Sex against the tree to make a baby was one thing. But real sex would turn their status from
it’s complicated
to
it’s damn impossible.

“Well?” Mason prompted in that surly noninterested way that only Mason could manage. “You need time to do something about that kiss or what?”

“Did you want something?” Grayson fired back at his brother.

Mason lifted the papers he had in his hand and dropped them onto the table near the door. “Background reports on the Colliers and the dead girl. You should read them. There’s some interesting stuff in there.” He tipped his head to the laptop. “Anything with the photos?”

“Not yet,” Eve and Grayson said in unison.

If that frustrated Mason, he didn’t show it. He turned but then stopped. “Good to see you, Eve.” From Mason, that was a warm, fuzzy welcome.

“It’s good to see you, too.” Eve’s was considerably warmer. Strange, most people steered clear of Mason, but Eve went to him and planted a kiss on his cheek.

Now Mason looked uncomfortable. “Yell if you need me.” And with that mumbled offer, he strolled away.

Both Eve and he hurried to the reports that Mason had dropped on the table, and Grayson snatched them up. There were at least thirty pages, and with Eve right at his shoulder, they started to skim through them. It didn’t take long for Grayson to see what Mason had considered
interesting stuff.

There was a photo of Claude’s first wife, Cicely, and it was the same woman in the photos taken in his office. So that was one thing cleared up. Claude’s ex had visited him. Nothing suspicious about that. Since she was the mother of his son, they would always have a connection.

That required Grayson to take a deep breath because he couldn’t help but think that one day, soon, Eve and he might have that same connection.

“Cicely had twins,” Eve read, touching her finger to that part of the background. “Sebastian and Sophia.”

This was the first Grayson had heard of it, but then he’d only had a preliminary report of Sebastian before the interview at the Collier estate.

Grayson read on. “When Sophia was six months old, the nanny, Helen Bolton, disappeared with her, and even though Helen turned up dead three months later, Sophia was never found.”

On the same page of the report, there was a photo of baby Sophia that had obviously been taken right before she went missing.

“You have a scanner in the house?” Eve asked, her attention nailed to the picture of the baby.

“Sure. In my office.”

Eve grabbed the laptop and headed up the hall. She practically raced ahead of him, and the moment they were inside, she fed the picture into the scanner and loaded it onto the laptop with the other photos they’d gotten from Annabel.

“What are you doing?” Grayson wanted to know.

While she typed frantically on the keyboard, Eve sank down in the leather chair behind his desk. “I have age progression software. It’s not a hundred percent accurate, but it might work.”

Grayson watched Eve manipulate the copied image of the baby, and soon it began to take shape. The adult version of Sophia Collier appeared on the screen.

Grayson cursed under his breath. The hair was different, but there were enough similarities.

“Oh, God,” Eve mumbled. She leaned away from the laptop and touched her fingers to her mouth. “Do you see it?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Grayson saw it all right.

And it meant this investigation had just taken a crazy twist.

Because the dead woman, Nina Manning, hadn’t been Claude’s mistress as they’d originally thought. She was Sophia Collier, Claude’s missing daughter.

Chapter Twelve

“I wished you’d stayed at the ranch,” Grayson mumbled again. He kept his attention pinned to the San Antonio downtown street that was clogged with holiday shoppers and traffic.

Eve ignored him. She’d already explained her reasons for tagging along for this visit to Cicely Collier. She wanted the truth about the dead woman, and when that happened, the danger would be over. She could go home and, well, wait until she could take a pregnancy test.

It had been less than twenty-four hours since Grayson had agreed to have sex with her, but she’d read enough of the pregnancy books to know that conception could have already happened.

She could be pregnant.

Despite everything else going on, Eve smiled and slid her hand over her stomach. Even though it was a long shot, she wanted to hang on to the possibility as long as she could.

Even if she couldn’t hang on to Grayson.

That kiss in his bedroom had felt so much like old times, and as stupid as it sounded, it had felt more in timate than the sex. It had been real, not some gesture that she’d had to talk Grayson into doing.

And that’s why it couldn’t happen again.