“Did she also tell you her husband not only cleaned out their mutual bank accounts, but drained their savings and investments to clear gambling debts?”
“How the hell would you know that?”
He kept his face impassive. She really didn’t want to know how they’d uncovered that fact—and he wouldn’t say even if she did. His team didn’t always use the most…legal…means to expose the truth. They hadn’t discovered any major deposits in Keller’s accounts that weren’t directly tied to her salary, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t received any.
“Has she discussed with you what she’ll do now? Any financial discussions? Any hint that she’s not as worried about her current situation as, maybe, she should be?”
Sadness softened the lines of Charlotte’s face. “No. She’s understandably distressed, but Wes recommended a lawyer who was able to sever her husband’s access to their assets and is now working on the divorce. Susan earns a good salary—I made sure I got the best and pay them every penny they’re worth—but even so, I’ve assured her she will have whatever she needs. We won’t leave her hanging.”
Because Charlotte made everyone around her family, even when they weren’t. It was one of the things that had pulled him in from the beginning, having never had a warm family to rely on. “And there’s never been a time that you worried she wasn’t the right choice? Any hesitation? Anything at all, Charlotte,” he cautioned her.
“No.”
“What about Vicky Newcombe?”
The change in direction obviously threw Charlotte, but not for long. “What about her? Vicky has worked for us since the first year Creating Families opened. She was one of our first clients before agreeing to stay and help other mothers like her.”
“She also has a criminal background.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “In our business that’s not unusual. A lot of the mothers we work with come from hard lives and made hard decisions just to stay alive. We provide an opportunity out of that kind of life, not just for their children but for them.”
“As your office manager, Vicky has access to every adoption, every piece of paper related to clients on both sides of the process,” he pointed out.
“She’s my right hand, so yes. She coordinates every step, every appointment—she keeps CF running in an orderly fashion, freeing me up to focus elsewhere.”
“Any issues with finances, any hints of problems at home?”
“No! For God’s sake, King…” Visibly forcing herself back under control, Charlotte continued. “As far as I am aware, everything at home is stable. Vicky’s adoption was open, so she has occasional contact with the adoptive parents and her daughter. She married a couple of years ago, and just became pregnant with their first child together.”
“A growing family sometimes causes financial strain.”
“Her husband owns a movie production company here in Atlanta. They are not hurting for money.”
Damn. “Becky?”
The girl was already shaking her head. “I’m not close to Vicky. I’ve spoken to her on the phone or when I come into the office, but never anything personal.”
Which led him to the employee he’d hoped not to discuss. Turning back to Charlotte, he braced himself. “What about Wes?”
A sharp gasp from Kim filled the room, but King kept his gaze on Charlotte. The anger glaring back at him didn’t bode well.
Charlotte stood. “I’d like to speak to you in the hall, please.”
A glance at Charlotte’s mother told him Charlotte would speak more freely outside of her hearing, so he followed without complaint until they stood in the hallway, the door solidly shut behind them. Charlotte paced a few feet away, her balled-up fists convincing him to give her a bit of room. That didn’t mean he could stay silent.
“You know I have to ask, Char—”
She whirled to face him. “Don’t! Don’t even try that with me.”
“I’m not trying anything but to clear Wes as a suspect. He has access and you know it.”
“What I know is you waltzed back in here and decided your cousin had taken your place, and now you’re attacking him.”
Shock reverberated through his body. Taken your place rang in his ears, blocking out every other sound, every thought. “So you are dating him.”
The words dragged, the devastation in his chest echoing in every syllable. He shouldn’t be devastated. He shouldn’t care one way or the other whether they were together—what he and Charlotte had was over a long time ago. That’s what he’d told Wes, and what his head told him now.
Apparently some deeply hidden part of him hadn’t gotten the damn message.
Deep down where he didn’t have to acknowledge its existence, the certainty that Charlotte would always be his had remained alive. Maybe that was why he hadn’t kept track of her, because he couldn’t bear for the illusion to be shattered by seeing her date, marry, have children. If he didn’t look, she still belonged to him. Even when he’d told himself, told Wes he was fine with whatever the two of them did, that certainty hadn’t died.
But now…
“Jealousy doesn’t become you, King.”
He fought to keep his emotions off his face, out of his voice. “This isn’t about jealousy.” A total lie. His heartbeat rivaled a jackhammer trying to break through his ribs. “I— We need to know exactly what’s going on.”
“I’ve told Elliot all your team needs to know. As for your question”—Charlotte straightened her spine again, as if doing so would somehow make her taller than a pixie, more battle ready—“Wes and I are none of your business.”
The words burst from her lips like a grenade, but they didn’t hit her target. Because they weren’t the right words. If Charlotte and Wes were in love, she’d have declared it outright.
The relief nearly brought him to his knees.
Charlotte brushed past him, knocking into his arm. It was pure instinct to reach for her, to grasp that slim waist and swing her around to face him. Pure instinct that pulled her close, then closer still, till their bodies met and heat sizzled down his spine to settle in his balls.
His Charlotte. His woman.
He sucked in a breath and let pure instinct guide him.
His mouth met hers.
Chapter Twelve
King’s lips felt exactly as she remembered, and yet, totally foreign. Their shape, their texture, the way his tongue fit in her mouth, those were familiar. But the way he kissed her…
They’d been apart for ten years, and he was no longer a young man learning his way around a woman’s body. No, he knew what he was doing, and it showed. She tried to shut out the thought, knew he had to have practiced on someone other than her—a fact she thought she’d accepted long ago, but the hurt flared anyway, enough that she went stiff against him.
King wasn’t letting go.
His palm cradled the back of her head, his fingers digging into the fall of her hair, positioning her exactly where he wanted her. Hard lips brushed, massaged, kept hers open to allow him complete access. Their tongues tangled, thrust and parried, coming back again and again to slide and stroke the other. His taste in her mouth…
God, she’d missed this, more than she’d ever let herself acknowledge. And not just his taste or his kiss. King had always reserved his emotion for the people who’d earned his trust. His family, cold and distant, had taught him to hold back, to appear emotionless, but when he let go, it was a dam of feeling breaking over her, drowning her in his essence. He’d shown her that cold and distant face since he’d come back into her life, but here… Here was the real King.
She couldn’t resist; all she could do was surrender.
Memories burst forth—the way his body had felt under her fingertips, the way his heart used to raced when he touched her. Her breasts bare, nipples hard against the slight, crisp hair dotting his chest. His palm at the small of her back, just as it was now, holding her still for the press of his hard cock against the softness of her belly. The
world faded away when they were like this, when she was sheltered in his arms.
She wanted this more than anyth—
“Charlotte Eve Alexander!”
Those hard, sure hands were gone in an instant. Her mind whirled, trying to remember up from down, trying to make sense of the sudden emptiness of the space around her. And then the words registered.
“Charlotte!”
She groaned silently, eyes squeezed tight. Of all the people to walk in on her kissing her ex-fiancé… “Give me a minute, Mom, please.”
“I will not.” Rage quivered through her mother’s voice. “I will not let this man barge his way in here and take advantage of you.”
Charlotte opened her eyes to the sight of King’s broad chest barely moving beneath the thin T-shirt he wore with his fatigue pants. The hard line behind his zipper told her he wasn’t completely unaffected, but he wasn’t even breathing heavy.
So much for shattering his reality as much as he did mine.
Shame kept her from daring a look into his face. Instead she turned on her heel. Facing her mother’s anger was far easier than facing the fact that King no longer felt anything more for her than a simple passing chemistry. Easily aroused, and just as easily forgotten.
“Mom—”
“No.” Her mother shook, her hands fisted at her sides as if it was the only way to keep from attacking. Charlotte’s heart ached, witnessing her struggle for control. “For too many years you let this man dictate how you lived your life—or didn’t live it, running away from every possibility of love, of a family. Don’t let him back in. He’ll just destroy you all over again.”
King hadn’t forced her to run from life, but her mother was right about one thing. King did have the power to destroy her. She should listen to the woman who had raised her, the woman who’d guided her through the hardest moments of her life. And yet, even her mother couldn’t know the secret parts of her heart; no one had, for so, so long. The safety of being bare and accepted by the person who truly saw you, knowing that person would shelter and protect you just as you would shelter and protect them. It was why she returned to the land she and King had bought during their engagement, the place they’d planned to build a life together. So she could pretend that safety still existed.
So she could delude herself. She knew it, and anyone else who became aware of those little trips would know it too. The King standing behind her wasn’t a delusion, but the fantasy she’d built around him for those few, precious moments in his arms definitely was. She couldn’t fall into that trap, only for him to walk away when this was all over. And he would walk away when he found out her secret. She knew, without a doubt, that giving herself to him now could release every ounce of love she’d harbored secretly in her heart for a decade.
But loving him with every fiber of her being couldn’t make up for all the things she couldn’t give him.
Realizing that her hand was rubbing at her chest, trying to ease the ache, she dropped it. “Mom, just a moment, please.” She nudged her chin toward the door. “I’ll be inside in just a second.”
Her mother hesitated, and Charlotte held her breath. Then with one last murderous glance at King, Mom turned back to the guest suite. Only when the door had banged shut—not a slam; Kim Alexander was too refined for a slam, but something pretty darn close—did Charlotte let her breath out, steel herself, and turn to face King.
His hands rested at the small of his back, his legs shifted out the slightest bit—parade rest. It was easy to forget King had been trained as a cop first and mercenary second—she hadn’t known him as a cop, after all—but that stance was unmistakable.
His blond hair held grooves as if he’d shoved his hands through it, but that was the only sign of emotion. His blue eyes, so light they still startled her sometimes, held her own, his mouth was relaxed, and the ridge she’d so clearly felt and saw had disappeared from behind his zipper.
That wasn’t disappointment zinging through her stomach; it just wasn’t.
I can’t talk about that kiss. She wanted to have the courage to face her choices, wanted to be able to act as if having his mouth on hers hadn’t blasted to pieces all the shields she’d built around her heart for so many years, but she simply couldn’t. So she turned to the next best thing.
“Wes is not involved in this, King.”
“We have to eliminate all suspects.”
“And it doesn’t hurt that this particular ‘suspect’ happens to be interested in me?”
Of course it doesn’t, because you don’t care about me anymore, do you? Why did she feel this need to drive him to say it? Why couldn’t she simply let it go and walk away?
“I’m not jealous of my cousin, Charlotte.”
“Of course not.”
She could hear the skepticism in her words.
King dropped his hands and stalked toward her, his expression so intent she found herself scrambling back to avoid him. When she hit the wall at the end of the hallway, it left her with nowhere else to go.
Trapped. With King closing the distance far too fast for her comfort.
He got right into her face, the faint scent of his aftershave hitting her like a blow. “I am not jealous of Wes. There’s no reason for me to be jealous.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, then met hers again. “Want to know why?”
She swallowed hard. “Why?” she rasped.
One calloused finger rose to stroke across the sensitive skin of her lips, sending a tingle of sensation through them. “This is why I’m not jealous, Charlotte. Because, even after all these years, this can still bring us both to our knees. No one else has ever done that for me, and I know they haven’t for you either. So no, I’m not jealous.” A light tap against her mouth and King was gone, striding down the hall, his words ringing in her ears.
King, brought to his knees? Weird way of showing it, dude.
Had he really been affected by their kiss? She’d assumed she could read him, that whatever key she’d held so long ago that unlocked the man within was still hers to wield. How could it be? King knew how to protect himself, how to keep his secrets safe. Maybe he was just as shocked by the strength of their renewed attraction as she had been.
Or maybe he was using their chemistry for some other reason, but what?
She didn’t know and wished she did. Wished she wasn’t so confused by everything that surrounded her right now. She—
The alarm directly above her head blared without warning, scaring the shit out of her. King paused at the opposite end of the corridor, raised his head to the matching alarm overhead, then jerked around to race back to her. “Come with me!”
She forced her frozen limbs to move. Her brain couldn’t think past the shriek of the alarms; instinct alone guided her to King and the safety he offered. With a quick push, he got her inside the guest suite and closed and locked the door. Before she could turn around, he had his phone to his ear, hopefully dialing Dain.
“Status,” he barked. She’d never heard him use that tone before. She’d also never seen him in a dangerous situation before, so why was she surprised? Shock. Fear. Her mind was a jumble of both, and the noise exaggerated it tenfold.
A quick glance told her Becky was huddled on the couch with Charlotte’s mom, the two of them staring at King with wide eyes. Charlotte crossed to Becky’s side.
King grunted a couple of times, then clicked off the call. His gaze met hers, and something hard twisted into knots inside her stomach. “What is it?” she asked.
King’s mouth tightened. Pocketing his cell phone, he said, “We have an intruder.”
Chapter Thirteen
The back wall of the sitting room in the guest suite had three large windows to let light in. They were covered with thick curtains at night to block sight, and sheers during the day to allow light without silhouetting the occupants. King made his way to the edge of the left-most window and inched the edge of the sheers over enough to give him a view of the sweeping backyard that made up the Ale
xander estate. A pool lay closest to the back of the mansion, with a small pool house to one side that had been remodeled into Ruth’s home when climbing the stairs was no longer an option for her. Beyond that, a wide expanse of patio and landscaping gave way to lawn as the yard sloped upward until, at the very back, it met a wooded area and the perimeter fence farthest from the house.
King tapped his earpiece, and Dain’s voice sounded in his ear.
“I’m on,” King said, careful to keep his voice low and calm. Kim was soothing Becky where they sat on the couch, the teenager crying from the shock of the alarms and knowledge that someone was here to take her and her baby. Charlotte was right behind him, her breath fast and light, probably worried about what was happening that she couldn’t see. No one in this room needed him to add to the agitation.
“Eyes on the target?” Dain asked.
He narrowed his eyes, scanning quickly. “Not yet.”
“He’ll come through the trees,” Saint said. “The bastard went straight to the highest point of the land, farthest from the house.”
“Weakest point of the perimeter.” He waited, not fixating on any one point but keeping his gaze moving across the gently swaying trees. “Not the front gate.” Not that they’d expect anyone to try such a prominent area in full daylight. They hadn’t expected anything during the day, but they’d been ready one way or another.
“Or the sides,” Saint said. The clicking of keys as his teammate typed told King he was scanning the various channels from the equipment they’d set up around the house—cameras, sensors. Those tools would tell the team something about the man coming into their territory.
Including the fact that he’d chosen to invade the one area without cameras, at least until King’s team had set some up, inconspicuously, in the trees.
“King?” Charlotte’s scent hit him as she sidled closer, warm and sweet. At once familiar and shockingly new. “What’s happening?”
A glance across the room showed Becky slowly calming in the quiet now that the alarms had been silenced. And yet two pairs of anxious eyes stared back at him, one wet with tears, both women intent on his every word, any indication of what was happening.
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