by HELEN HARDT
Which reminded me that I started my new position at the Steel Corporation in the morning.
Once we were dressed, we headed to the bedroom. “Don’t touch the guns,” I warned Marjorie. “Use a tissue or something. In fact, don’t touch them at all. I’ll take care of them.”
She nodded, grabbed the manila folders, and pointed to the metal box. “I wonder what’s in there.”
“It’s a gun case. Probably more guns.”
“Okay to touch the box?”
“No one’s going to arrest you because your prints are on a box,” I said.
She smiled and grabbed the handle— “Oh!” The box fell open, and its contents spilled to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
“No worries. Let’s have a look.”
No more guns. I gaped at the contents spread on the area rug that had hidden the floorboards.
“Jewelry?” Marjorie gasped.
Jewelry. A lot of it. Pearls and rubies and diamonds. I had no idea what the quality was or what any of it was worth.
My father had hidden fine jewelry in a gun case.
Only Tom Simpson.
“I thought you said it was locked,” she said.
“I thought it was.” I inspected the metal. “It’s rusted out here. It just gave way.”
“Whose is this?”
“It must have belonged to my father.”
“Which means it now belongs to your mother. And you.”
“Not necessarily. Not if it was bought with dirty money. Then it belongs to the Feds.”
“How can we possibly know?”
“Hell if I know.” Several velvet pouches sat among the necklaces and rings. I picked one up and poured the contents into my hand. “Diamonds?”
Marj grabbed her phone and turned on the flashlight. “No. They’re not clear. They’re yellow. Could be citrine, a semiprecious stone.”
“Why would he keep a semiprecious stone locked up?”
“The color’s not right either. They’re too light. Maybe they are— I mean, if they are…”
“What?”
“They could be fancy yellow canary diamonds. Those are rarer than clear diamonds.”
“How do you know— Never mind.” She was a Steel heiress. Of course she knew about jewels.
“Some of these are three carats at least. Maybe four or five.”
The gems sparkled in the light from her phone. She picked up what appeared to be a large pendant with a pink stone.
“This is gorgeous! I’ve never seen a pink sapphire so big.”
“Shouldn’t it be on a chain?” I asked.
Marjorie laughed. “It’s a brooch, silly. A pin to wear on your collar or lapel.”
“Sorry. I’m not a jewelry expert.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be.” She smiled.
“There are several other pouches,” I said, quickly putting the yellow gems back in their pouch. “What am I going to do with all this?”
“I guess first we need to figure out if they’re stolen or if they were bought with dirty money,” she said.
“And how are we going to do that?”
“We go home, and we go through these files,” she said. “Maybe there’s something in there.”
I placed my finger over my lips, signaling her to be quiet. We’d both forgotten that we shouldn’t be talking in here.
“Let’s just get this out to the car,” I said quietly.
She nodded.
Once everything was safely ensconced in my trunk, I led Marjorie away from the cabin and the car. The moon shone above in the clear night sky. I pressed my lips to hers in a soft kiss and then pulled away. “I hope I didn’t just make a terrible mistake.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “You said you love me.”
I laughed. “Not about that. I broke Joe’s confidence. In over thirty years, I’ve never done that.”
“I won’t tell a soul, Bryce. I promise.”
“I made that same promise to Joe.”
“You really don’t think he told Mel?”
“He swore he hasn’t.”
“But he might have. They’re really close, and they’ve both been through a lot of crap. Melanie was left tied up in a garage with a running car. Remember?”
I nodded. I remembered everything. “But Joe—”
“Joe will do what he has to do,” she said. “I doubt he’s keeping this from the most important person in his life, but even if he is, I won’t say a thing to him. I swear it, Bryce. You can trust me. Love isn’t anything without trust.”
I smiled. She was wonderful. Truly wonderful. I kissed her again, this time harder and with tongue. When my cock reacted, I broke the kiss. “We need to get out of here. Somewhere with a bed, or I’ll be doing you right here in the moonlight.”
“Anything wrong with that?” she teased.
“Only that it’s winter.”
“It’s a beautiful night. We’ll keep each other warm.”
“Hold that thought for when it warms up,” I said. “I have to get home, and so do you. I have an early day tomorrow, and I want to get up even earlier to spend time with Henry before he leaves with my mom.”
“I understand.” She touched my cheek, sending a shiver through me. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For trusting me.”
“No thanks needed.”
“And for loving me.”
“Really, no thanks needed. I should be thanking you for loving an empty shell like me.”
“You’re not so empty,” she said. “If you were, there wouldn’t be anything for me to love.”
I moved my head and kissed the satiny palm of her hand. “Your love will fill me. I only hope I can do the same for you.”
“You already have.”
We kissed again, a soft kiss with a promise of things to come.
A kiss under the moonlight, a kiss for all time.
My time in the morning with Henry was too short. He dealt with the separation much better than I did. When the car came to pick up him and my mother for the airport, I didn’t want to let him go. After he gave me several sloppy kisses, I finally gave him up to my mother’s arms.
“Do a good job for the Steels,” my mother said.
“I will.”
“I know.” She smiled. “We’ll miss you.”
Then she was in the car with my son, driving away.
His absence left an emptiness in me, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I needed to get my head in the game. Work started today. I already had a good idea of what I’d be doing, thanks to my previous meetings with Joe and his brothers. More good news… I didn’t have to wear a suit. It was strictly casual in the office building, so jeans and a button-down it would be.
I took a few more sips of my coffee, grabbed my briefcase and laptop, and headed for the car to drive to the office building. Everything was on Steel property, but the ranch was huge. It was nearly a half-hour drive from the guesthouse to the office building, which was located between the cattle ranch and the orchard. Ryan’s vineyards were farther east, on the actual slopes of the Rockies.
Joe was waiting for me outside the building.
“Hey,” I said. “I didn’t expect an escort.”
“Unfortunately, this isn’t business. I need to talk to you.”
My heart fell. This couldn’t be good. I already felt like a shithead for telling Marj our secret. Why had I burdened her with it? She certainly didn’t deserve that, and Joe didn’t deserve having his trust broken.
Then again, he had some explaining to do. I’d found encrypted emails in the trash bin of our account with the Spider. I’d been on my way to confront him when I’d been waylaid by Marjorie.
I sighed. “Yeah. I need to talk to you too.”
“Shit. Did you get another call too?”
“No. Did you?”
He nodded. “I couldn’t tell if it was the same voice or not. It was muffled this time. Like he was talking through a rag or someth
ing. Or maybe using some voice-scrambling software. I have no idea.”
“It was a man, though?”
“I think so. I couldn’t actually tell. The first one was a man, or maybe a woman with a really deep voice.”
“What did he say?”
“The same, that he was watching, but then he said something really disturbing.”
“What?”
“He said to watch my back.”
“Okay. That’s weird. If he’s watching, you’re obviously already watching your back.”
“It was the way he said it, Bryce. Almost like he meant someone close to me was betraying me.”
“Who would do that? No one but us knows about this.”
But chills rippled up my spine. Had this person somehow heard my conversation with Marjorie at the cabin?
No. Couldn’t have happened. The outside couldn’t be bugged. Could it?
If it could be done, it would require a huge level of sophistication that I couldn’t even begin to fathom.
But there was an easier way to eavesdrop.
Someone could have been in the woods with us.
More chills.
“I always have your back, Joe.”
In my heart, I knew it wasn’t a lie. I’d confided in the woman I loved, as he probably had as well. Marj had said she couldn’t imagine him keeping this from Melanie.
Then again, Melanie was pregnant. She didn’t need any extra stress.
I had to come clean, and I had to do it now. Coming clean also meant telling Joe about Marjorie and me.
It was time.
Joe and I were about the same size. I could fight him off if he decided to take me out. But he was a hothead.
“I have something to tell you.”
“Fuck. Are you telling me—”
“No. I mean, yes. I told someone.”
“Damn it, Bryce. Goddamnit all to hell!”
He didn’t advance on me. Instead he paced in the grass, the heels of his boots digging in.
“I could say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I trust this person completely, and when you find out who it is, you’ll agree.
“Not your mother.”
“God, no. Not my mother. I couldn’t burden her with this.”
“Yeah? Who could you burden, then?”
His baby sister. The person he was most protective of in the world, other than his pregnant wife. I hadn’t thought this through. Too late now.
Joe continued, “One of my brothers.”
“You’re getting closer.”
“Who, then? Who else is there? One of their wives?”
“I hardly know Jade and Ruby.”
“Then who, Bryce? Christ.”
Marj wasn’t even in the running, as far as Joe was concerned.
I was in deep shit.
“I’ll tell you, but first you have to know something else, which, when you get over your shock, I hope you’ll consider good news.”
“I’m really not in the mood for your evasive language, Simpson.”
He never called me by my last name. We were always Bryce and Joe. Never Simpson and Steel, like some of the other guys in school had called us.
“Calm down. This isn’t easy for me to say.”
“I ought to fucking knock your lights out.”
In truth, I was surprised he hadn’t tried already. The Joe I knew would have come at me as soon as he found out I’d broken our trust. “If it’ll make you feel better.”
“I’m angry as shit right now.”
“I know. I get it.”
“You’ve pissed me off before, Bryce. You know you have, and even though I’ve wanted to smash your face into the ground more than once, I never have. You know why? Because you’re my brother, man. As much as my brothers by blood. So you’d better start talking.” Then, “Wait. Let’s move farther away from the building.”
When we’d walked several hundred feet more, he turned to me, his dark eyes angry. “Now.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets. This was Joe. The guy who’d been at my side for nearly forty years. Jonah Bradford Steel, oldest heir to the Steel fortune. The ultimate hothead—but also the ultimate good guy.
“I’m in love, Joe.”
His facial features softened. A little. He said nothing.
“Did you hear me?”
“Do I look deaf to you?”
“So you have no comment on that?”
“You haven’t left town without me knowing about it since your father died. How the hell could you have met anyone?”
“It’s someone you know. Someone you’re close to.”
Confusion marred his features, and then—
His eyes changed. He’d figured it out.
“You brought her into this?” Joe curled his hands into fists.
“I love her, man. I fucking love her.”
“Fuck!” He punched the air. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“I didn’t want to—”
“Then why did you? Why? Damn! Now there’re four of us who know.”
“She’s strong, Joe. She’s strong, and we love each oth— Excuse me? Four of us?”
Finally I knew why Joe hadn’t thrown a punch when I started this conversation.
“Don’t even get on me now. You knew I couldn’t keep this from my wife.”
“So it’s okay for—”
“No, damn it. None of this is okay. Fucking none of it.” He punched the air again and then unclenched one fist and rubbed his forehead, his eyes squinting as though the sunlight was bothering him.
“Joe…”
“Don’t even. Don’t even talk to me.”
“You want to be mad at me? Fine. But be mad for a good reason, not for something you’re just as guilty of.”
“Melanie is my wife.”
“She is. But you made the same promise I did. You said no one knows. Not Melanie. Not anyone.”
“And sure as fuck not Marjorie.”
“I’m sorry. I love her, man.”
“She’s just a baby.”
“She’s almost twenty-six. She’s Jade’s age, and Jade is Talon’s wife.” I paused a few seconds. “These are all things I’ve been over and over again in my mind. I remember when she was born. I’d just turned thirteen. I remember all of it. Believe me, I didn’t expect this.”
“How am I supposed to protect her if—”
“You don’t have to protect her. That’s my job now. Your job is to protect Melanie.”
“Protecting my baby sister will always be my job, Bryce.”
At least he was back to calling me Bryce.
“How the hell did this happen, anyway?”
“We started to get close when she babysat Henry. Turns out she’s had feelings for me since she was a kid.”
“That was puppy love.”
“Yeah, that’s what I told her. But it turned into something real. For both of us.”
“Have you…”
“None of your business, man.”
He huffed. “You just answered my question.”
“Hey, I don’t ask what you and your wife do.”
“My wife and I are married.”
“Okay. Play that card if you want to, but I’m willing to bet you were engaging in stuff well before your marriage.” I could have thrown in his membership at the BDSM club for good measure. You didn’t go to a club like that to be celibate. But I kept my mouth shut.
He said nothing, just gave me a “fuck you” look.
I’d seen that look before. I was actually happy to see it now. It meant he was cooling down.
“It’s the real thing, Joe.”
“You know she decided to go to Paris?”
I nodded. “I actually want her to go.”
“You do?”
“She’ll be safe there. We’ll hire a bodyguard, just in case.”
“I was going to anyway.”
“I figured you were.”
“She won’t want to go now. You know that, right? She’ll
want to stay with you and help you.”
“I know. I’m going to insist. She’s going if I have to carry her onto the plane and buckle her in myself.”
That got a laugh out of him. “I see you don’t know her that well yet.”
I returned his smile. “Actually, I do.”
“Then you know she’s not going anywhere. At least not now.”
I sighed. What could I say? He was right. And though I wanted more than anything for Marjorie to be half a world away where she’d be safe, I couldn’t bring myself to be unhappy that she wasn’t going.
“There’s one more thing,” I said.
“What?”
“I found some encrypted emails on our account. In the trash.”
“What?” Joe hurriedly fumbled with his phone.
“Have you been contacting the Spider without telling me?”
“Hell, no!” He pulled up the account. “Shit, I don’t know—”
Joe’s phone dinged with a text. He raised his brows when he looked at the screen.
“What?” I asked.
“The Spider. He says he has news. Maybe he can explain the emails.”
Chapter Thirty
Marjorie
My emotions were tangled. I put them on hold long enough to get the boys off to school and fix a light breakfast for Jade.
Then I couldn’t put it off any longer.
Was there a name for this feeling? This feeling of complete happiness and love mixed with dread?
Bryce loved me. He really loved me, and I’d finally broken through the wall of armor he’d built around himself after discovering the truth about his father. I should be over the moon, and I was.
But I also wasn’t.
Our hell wasn’t over, not by a long shot. Someone was stalking Bryce and my oldest brother, who’d been witness to another heinous crime Tom Simpson had perpetrated.
Now it was coming back to haunt them.
Bryce wasn’t safe. Joe wasn’t safe.
I could escape all of this. I could go forward with my plans for Paris. Indeed, Bryce had told me to go because I’d be safe there.
