Grayson

by Delores Fossen

  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.

  She could coax him into kissing her again. Maybe even talk him into coming to her bed. But he would soon feel trapped, and he would blame himself—and her—for feeling that way. She cared for him too much to make him go through that. Grayson already had enough duty forced on him in his life without making him feel even a shred of obligation to her. Mor
e kissing would make him feel obligated.

  “You okay?” Grayson asked.

  She glanced at him and realized he’d seen her hand on her stomach. “I’m fine.”

  He seemed suspicious of her answer, but he didn’t press it. Nor would he. A discussion about the baby was off-limits for both of them, and Eve was thankful for it. Conversation wasn’t going to help with this matter. No. The only thing that would help was to put some distance between them.

  The voice on the GPS directed them toward another turn, and Grayson drove into the upscale San Antonio neighborhood. Of course, she hadn’t expected Cicely to live in a shack, but it was obvious the woman had done well in the divorce settlement.

  Grayson parked in the driveway of the two-story Victorian-style home. It was painted a soft buttery yellow with white trim, and despite the fact that it was the dead of winter, the lawn was as pristine as the house.

  “I have a warrant for Cicely’s DNA,” Grayson ex plained, grabbing the large padded envelope that earlier he’d put on the backseat. “I can compare it to Nina’s. If it’s a match, we’ll have proof that Nina is really Sophia Collier.”

  “What about Claude’s DNA?” Eve asked.

  “There’s a warrant for that, too. Nate’s over there now collecting it.”

  Poor Nate. She doubted Claude would make the process easy. For that matter, maybe Cicely wouldn’t either, especially when they told her that her long-lost daughter was likely dead. Murdered, at that.

  Eve was bracing herself for the worst.

  Grayson and she got out of the car and went to the door. Unlike at the Collier estate, Cicely already had the door open and was waiting for them.

  Cicely looked exactly as she had in the photographs that Annabel had taken of her in Claude’s office. Her short, dark brown hair was perfect, not a strand out of place, and she wore a simple olive-green wool suit. She was nothing like Annabel, her curvy young replacement, but it was easy to see that Cicely had once been stunningly beautiful.

  “Sheriff Ryland,” Cicely greeted. Her nerves were there in her voice and the worry etched on her face.

  “Mrs. Collier. This is Eve Warren. She’s helping with the investigation.”

  “Yes.” She stared at Eve and repeated it. “Sebastian called and told me that Ms. Warren had taken a picture that you have some questions about.”

  Cicely stepped back, motioning for them to enter. She didn’t say anything else until she led them into a cozy room off the back of the foyer. The painting over the stone fireplace immediately caught Eve’s eye. It was an oil painting of two babies. One was definitely Sophia, and she guessed the other one was Sebastian.

  “My children,” Cicely explained, following Eve’s gaze. “Won’t you please have a seat?” She motioned toward the pair of chairs.

  There was a gleaming silver tray with a teapot and cookies on the coffee table. Cicely sat on a floral sofa and began to serve them. Eve sat across from her.

  “Sebastian dropped by earlier, and we had a long chat.” Cicely’s hands were trembling when she passed Eve the tea that she’d poured in a delicate cup painted with yellow roses. “He’s worried. And so am I. You think Sebastian had something to do with Nina Manning’s death.”

  “Did he?” Grayson asked. He waved off the tea when Cicely offered it to him and sat in the chair next to Eve.

  “No.” Cicely’s pale green eyes came to Eve’s. “But of course, that means nothing. I would say that because he’s my son.”

  Eve was more than a little surprised that a mother would admit that. Of course, despite her comment about being worried, maybe Cicely and Sebastian weren’t that close.

  Grayson took out the warrant and the DNA kit from the envelope and handed them to Cicely. “I need a sample of your DNA.”

  Cicely’s forehead bunched up, and for a moment Eve thought she would refuse, but she only refused the warrant. She pushed it aside, took the swab and without questions, she used it on the inside of her mouth.

  “It’s not necessary, you know,” she said, handing the kit back to Grayson.

  Yes, it was, and Eve figured Grayson was about to tell her why. Eve held her breath.

  “Mrs. Collier—” But that was as far as Grayson got.

  “Yes,” Cicely interrupted. “I know that Nina Manning is…was my daughter.”

  Eve didn’t know who looked more surprised— Grayson or her.

  Cicely took a sip of tea, but her hand was trembling so much that some of it sloshed into the saucer. “I’ve already done the DNA test, and I can provide a copy of the results if you need them.”

  Grayson stayed quiet a moment. “How long have you known that she was your daughter?”

  Cicely dodged his gaze. “About a month.”

  “A month?” Grayson mumbled something under his breath. “And you didn’t think you should tell the police that your kidnapped daughter had returned?”

  “I considered many things but not that.” Cicely let the vague comment hang in the air for several seconds. “About a month ago, Nina showed up here and claimed to be Sophia. She said that as a baby she’d been abandoned at a church and had been raised in foster care. I didn’t believe her, of course. Not until I got back the results from the DNA test.”

  Cicely blinked back tears. “I thought my daughter was dead.”

  After twenty-two years, that was reasonable, but Eve knew if she’d been in Cicely’s shoes, she would have never stopped looking. Never.

  “What happened when you found out Nina was telling the truth?” Grayson asked.

  Balancing her cup on her lap, she picked at a nonexistent piece of lint on her jacket. “I begged her to come home. It was obvious that she needed help. Rehab. Counseling. Did you know that she’d been selling her body to support her drug habit?”

  Grayson nodded. “She had a record.”

  Cicely pulled in her breath as if it were physically painful to hear her suspicions confirmed. “She refused my help. She only wanted money, and I didn’t want to hand over cash because I knew she’d just use it for drugs. So, I called Claude to see if he would help me convince her to go to rehab.”

  Grayson and Eve exchanged a glance.

  “Claude knew that Nina was your daughter?” Grayson asked.

  “Of course,” Cicely said without hesitation. “What? Did he deny it?”

  “He did,” Grayson confirmed.

  Her mouth tightened. “Well, apparently he wasn’t just a weasel of a husband, he’s also a weasel of a father.” She practically dumped her teacup onto the table and got up. She folded her arms over her chest and paced. “Did you meet his new tart of a wife?”

  “Yes, we met Annabel.” Grayson didn’t say a word about the photos Annabel had provided. Without them, it might have taken a lot longer to make the connection between Nina and Sophia. However, Eve wasn’t sure that had been Annabel’s intention.

  “Annabel,” Cicely repeated the name like it was a profanity. “You can put her at the top of the list of suspects as my daughter’s killer. She probably hired her lapdog, Leon Ames, to murder my baby in cold blood.”

  Eve set her tea aside also. This conversation was definitely loaded with bombshells. “Why would Annabel do that?” Eve wanted to know.

  Cicely rubbed her fingers together. “Money, plain and simple. Claude’s dying, you know?”

  Grayson shook his head. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. Sebastian told me all about it. Claude has a malignant nonoperable brain tumor. Probably has less than two months to live. And when they put Claude in the ground, the tart will inherit half of his estate. If Sophia had lived, the split would have been three ways. Apparently, that wasn’t enough money for her.”

  Mercy. If that was true, then Cicely had not only just given Annabel a motive but Sebastian, as well. After all, Sebastian certainly hadn’t volunteered anything about the dead woman being his sister. In fact, he’d lied to Grayson from the very start.

  “I need to re-interview Claude and Sebas
tian,” Grayson said, standing.

  “Annabel, too,” Cicely insisted. “She’s the one who had my baby killed, and I’m going to prove it. I want her surgically perfected butt tossed in jail.”

  Cicely wasn’t so shaky now. She looked like a woman on a mission of revenge.

  “You need to stay out of the investigation,” Grayson reminded her. “If Annabel is guilty, I’ll figure out a way to prove it.”

  Cicely didn’t respond, and Eve wondered just how much trouble the woman would be. She wasn’t just going to drop this.

  “You can see yourselves out,” Cicely said with ice in her voice. She’d apparently worked herself into a frenzy and was no longer in the hostess mode.

  Grayson and Eve did just that. They saw themselves out, but Eve was reeling from what they’d just learned. Reeling and frustrated.

  “I thought by now we’d have just one suspect,” Eve whispered to Grayson on the way to the door. “Instead we have two—Annabel and Sebastian.”

  “We have four,” Grayson whispered back, and he didn’t say more until they were outside. “Claude might not have been so happy to see his drug-addicted, prostitute daughter return to the family fold.”

  True. He had a thing about keeping mud off his good name. “And the fourth suspect?”

  Grayson opened the car door for her, and she got inside. “Cicely.”

  Eve shook her head. “You think she would kill her own daughter?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” He shut her door, got in behind the wheel and drove away. He took a deep breath. “I could drop you off at SAPD headquarters while I re-interview the Colliers.”

  Eve gave him a flat look. “I’m going with you.”

  Grayson matched her look and added a raised eyebrow. “There could be a killer in the house.”

  She wasn’t immune to the fear, mainly because Eve believed that one of the Colliers was indeed a killer. But she was stuck on this investigation treadmill until Grayson made an arrest. Eve wanted to confront the danger head-on, and the sooner that happened, the better.

  Grayson mumbled something about her being stubborn and grabbed his phone. “Then I’ll have Nate bring the Colliers into the police station.”