by Dale Mayer
“No,” he said. “But I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she cried out. “We could’ve had an investigation and caught her back then.”
“I was too overwhelmed with grief. And despondent over her betrayal. Keith was special. I love you as much as I love him, but the bond he and I shared was there from his birth. And she hated it. She absolutely hated it. She always tried to do what she could to split us up, but I never thought she’d go so far as to kill him.”
“We could also put an element of doubt in here,” Gunner said. “It could be that she lit the hay on fire, not knowing Keith was working around it. Not knowing his clothes would catch fire, and it would kill him.”
Her father took a deep breath. “Thank you, Gunner. I’ll hang on to that for the moment.”
Lilianna wasn’t so sure she could. This was just too unbelievable and too damn painful. She returned to Liam and instinctively walked right back into his embrace. He held her close, and she knew he understood. Just too many damn shocks. She looked at Gunner. “Are we assuming she’s behind all of this then?”
“Your sister and Carlos are being picked up right now,” he said. “Once we realized the building was on fire, I brought the cops right back into it. It’ll take time to sort out what’s with the money and if they were into anything else criminal, but the cops will hold all three of them as suspects for now.”
“For everything?”
He nodded. “Everything.”
She sighed and let her head rest against Liam’s chest. “So, is it over then?”
Gunner nodded. “It’s over.”
“I should’ve come to you earlier, shouldn’t I?”
A deep rumbling laugh came from Gunner. “It would have been good if you had but better late than never. I don’t know about you guys, since you’re all young, but I want to go home and have a real bed to sleep in for the night.”
“I don’t feel like we should leave this place just yet,” Lilianna said. “I still want answers. It’s hard to not know why?”
“Why is easy,” Liam said. “Money.” He shook his head. “It was all about the money.”
“Lilianna, you can sleep in the main house,” her father said. “Your sister won’t be back tonight.”
“Are we sure about that?” she asked.
“Obviously not until we’ve heard they’ve been picked up by the cops, but, considering they were at a hotel, it shouldn’t be too much longer before we hear.”
Just then Gunner’s phone rang. He answered with, “Please tell me you have good news?” He nodded, turned to look at Lilianna and said, “They’ve got Brianna. No sign of Carlos.”
She buried her face against Liam, and his arms tightened. She let out a heavy sigh. “The next few days will be absolutely shitty,” she announced.
The others chuckled. “They will be bad,” North said. “At least we know the animals are safe, the rest of the buildings are safe, and your father is back to being his normal self.”
She beamed at him. “You are a half-full kind of guy.”
He chuckled. “That’s Liam. He’s always that way.”
She looked around at the men. “What happens now?”
Logan said, motioning at the men he’d arrived with, “We’ll stand watch all night. Just to make sure there are no other shenanigans.”
She nodded. “Dad, what are you up to?”
He sighed. “I’ll go to the main house and take a look around.”
Just then Liam’s phone rang. He pulled it out and answered it. “I’ll be right down.” He pocketed his phone. “That was North. They just caught Carlos inside the house.” He gave Lilianna a hard grin. “Guess what he was after?”
“Let’s go,” her father said. “I want to have a talk with him.”
Fuming all the way to the main house, Lilianna walked up to where Carlos stood arrogant and tall in front of her. North at his side, Carlos was handcuffed and curled his lip at her.
“How could you steal from me? From my father? What kind of man are you?”
“A real one,” he said snidely. “Not that you recognized it. You’re nothing but a faded copy of your sister. She was very anxious to set plans in motion to move her life forward. A woman after my own heart. The damn elephants don’t need all this land. There was enough after the sale for them and us. Your father went to pieces after his son died, and you went to pieces after Jim collapsed.” Carlos gave a head shake—sending the long lock of dark hair she’d once thought sexy back into place.
“And my mother? Brianna takes after her. Was she in on this too?”
“Of course. Although I’d have been fine if she wasn’t. She’s not the most stable person. Any mother who can kill her own son …”
A cry of pain escaped her. “Did she really kill Keith?”
Carlos nodded. “Brianna is a little afraid of her, I think. But your mother knew the developer. It was her plan. She wanted to get away from this dust bowl.”
Lilianna, hearing an odd sound, turned to see her father’s shocked face, his mouth working but nothing coming out.
She went to his side. “You don’t have to do this now. It’s enough we know the truth.” She turned back to Carlos, even as her arms went around her father. “Where did the money come from?”
His face turned ugly. He stepped forward, but North jerked him back.
Liam stepped in. “Oh, no you don’t.”
Carlos glared at him. “So Lilianna finally found herself another lover. You must be desperate.”
In a smooth move, Liam decked him. Carlos fell backward until North straightened him upright, holding him for Liam to take a second shot.
Carlos swore, his voice getting louder and louder.
Liam waited, his face implacable.
Lilianna had to admit, she was impressed. Carlos always seemed to be the one in control. Only Liam had him running his mouth off. She grinned. “What’s the matter, Carlos? Up against a real man for once?” she taunted. “Don’t look so good now, do you?” She couldn’t help herself; she laughed at Carlos. “For stealing from the sanctuary, for trying to ruin the charity, sabotaging the website… I hope they lock you up and throw away the key. You’re a taker in this world that’s desperately in need of givers.”
“That money you stole is mine. Your sister is the one who stole from the sanctuary. I came to collect my money. But you got here ahead of me, bitch.”
“Resorting to name-calling now, are you?”
“Bitch, there’s only winners and losers,” he spat out.
Liam gave Carlos another taste of his fist.
Even with North’s help, Carlos didn’t seem as able to stay upright this time.
“And,” he said, spitting out blood, “you’ll never be anything other than a blander copy of your sister.”
“Well, this sister,” she snapped, “will be living free and clear and enjoying life at large while you and the other women in my family spend a lot of years contemplating your navels.”
Her father’s arms clutched her tight. She smiled at him, so glad to have him back here. Where he belonged. But maybe not for tonight. “Come on. Time for you to leave.”
He shook his head. “No, we have too much to sort out.”
“Tomorrow,” Gunner said firmly. “We’re going home. We’ll have a good night’s sleep. We’ll get up in the morning. We’ll have a good breakfast. Then we’ll come back here and pick up the pieces.”
Her father looked like he wanted to protest, but Gunner wasn’t having anything to do with it. He grabbed his friend’s arm and said, “Come on. Back to the truck with you. There are beds calling our names.”
Within a few minutes the truck with the two of them inside slowly traveled down the road toward the highway.
“Daniel,” Lilianna asked, “are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Your mother must have hit me over the head and knocked me out. I have to admit, I’m looking forward to some sleep myself.”
He chuckled. “I will.” He walked back down the hill.
Harrison said, “Come on. Hop in, and I’ll take you back to your vehicle.”
Lilianna looked at the rest of the men. “North, what are you up to?”
“While I figure three spare bedrooms are in the main house, one of them might just be for me.”
She nodded. “There absolutely is one for you.”
With that settled, the four of them walked to the house. “Logan, are you and the rest of your team staying?”
“Hell yes,” he said. “We’ll make sure that fire doesn’t go out of control.”
“Will it burn all night?” she asked, casting a look at where her cabin still smoldered.
“It will. In the morning, if it’s out, we’ll take that tractor and spread the ashes around so we don’t have to worry about it erupting again.”
“If you want to put on coffee or avail yourself of any of the food in the house, please do.”
“I’ll come and make a pot of coffee right now,” he said. “The guys will need it to stay awake as we take shifts tonight.”
“There’s probably marshmallows somewhere too,” she said, her sad attempt at humor.
He chuckled. “I might not say no. There’ll be a lot of good coals coming up.”
Walking back into the house was a sad and eerie feeling. It didn’t feel like her home. But once her father returned in the morning, she knew things would improve tremendously. She was too damn tired to worry about it now that everything was basically over, and her father was safe now, and Liam was safe, and the animals were all fine. She was just way too damn exhausted to deal with anything else.
It was like the stuffing had been ripped out of her, and she had nothing left. She walked through the main house, showing Logan where he needed to get stuff, and then she headed upstairs. North walked into the bedroom at the front of the house, and she stopped, looking at the master bedroom where her sister and Carlos had been. No way she would sleep in there, and, by rights, it was her father’s room. She headed instinctively back to the room she’d always been in. It was on the opposite side of the house.
As she walked in, she saw Liam’s back as he stood at the window. “Oh. You’ll be in this one. I will go to the other one,” she said apologetically.
He turned and smiled. “This is your room, isn’t it?”
She frowned and looked around at it. Nothing even remotely said it was her room. “Yes, but how did you know?”
“Smallest and the least nice.”
She shrugged. “I never minded it.”
“Of course you didn’t.” He walked toward her, and, on the way, he closed the door. “Come on. Get some rest.”
“And you?” she asked, a bit of challenge in her voice.
“I’ll lie beside you and make sure you don’t have nightmares,” he said firmly.
She stopped and stared. “How did you know I had nightmares?”
“I think we all have nightmares,” he said gently. “For one reason or another. What you need is sleep.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She walked into the bathroom, scrubbed down as best she could, brushed her hair with a brush forgotten in one of the drawers and came back out again. “It’d be good if I had clothes.”
“Everything’s at Gunner’s,” Liam said with a chuckle.
She nodded, kicked off her boots, stripped down to her panties and bra, and slid under the covers. “Even if you were to try anything,” she said, “I’d be too damn tired.”
He chuckled. “You were the one kissing me earlier.”
She yawned. “I was. But again we’re back to that I’m too damn tired.” She closed her eyes and slept.
*
Liam watched as she completely left behind all of today’s events and drifted off to sleep without a care. It took special skill to do that. He hadn’t mastered it himself. He walked to the bathroom and followed her ritual. He washed up as best he could, came back, stripped down to his boxers and crawled into bed beside her. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him. She snuggled deeper into the curve of his body without a complaint. He kissed the side of her head and closed his eyes.
But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. At least not like she was. Too much shit had gone on. Too many puzzle pieces remained adrift in his mind, and he needed to fit them all together. He would have to wait for some answers. But considering Brianna and Carlos had a deal with the mother to sell off a large portion of Jim’s land to a big property development company and then to take the money and run, this was just the tip of the illegal-activities’ iceberg.
He wasn’t sure what the trio had planned to do with the elephants, if anything. Or if they would just keep sectioning off the land to sell to other people. He couldn’t imagine them trying to kill the sanctuary because it did bring in money. And it appeared they were very creative with accumulating money. He hoped the tax man had a really good look at Carlos’s income. Liam would like to see all of them go to jail for a lifetime.
Lilianna had been through enough. With her father back in better health, Liam was sure she was happy to start fresh, finally not giving a damn about her sister, Carlos and her horrid mother—who Liam learned, via a text from the detective while Liam waited in Lilianna’s room, were quick to turn on each other, each hoping to cut the first deal and get less jail time, less restitution. No honor among thieves.
As he lay here, his mind processing all the events, she murmured, “Stop thinking so loud.”
He leaned forward and whispered, “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was until I felt how damn good it was to be in your arms.” She rolled over and stared at him, her arm sneaking up and around his neck. “And how much I really like being with you.”
He dropped a kiss on her lips. “This is where we head into dangerous territory.”
She smiled. “What’s the matter? You scared? That’s okay. I’ll be gentle with you,” she said with a chuckle. She gently stroked his bottom lip with her finger. And then she followed it with her lips.
He loved this playful side of her. This woman was totally content with her own sexuality, and that was damn sexy.
She kissed his lips, taking his lower lip in between her teeth and suckling it gently.
A pull deep in his groin had his body coming to life. He rolled over until he was stretched out on top of her. He kissed her gently at first and then with mounting passion as she whimpered and moaned beneath him. He lifted his head and took a deep breath, trying to slow things down.
But she wasn’t into slow. She grabbed him by his ears and tugged him closer.
He chuckled and said, “We have all night.”
She shook her head. “No, we don’t because, after this, I’ll collapse from complete exhaustion,” she murmured. “And then tomorrow the real world interferes again.”
“But there’s always tomorrow night,” he whispered gently.
“Where are you living?”
“At Levi’s compound.”
She thought about that. “Not too very far away.”
“Two hours from our side of Houston. So not very far away.” Although privately he thought it was too damn far if this was what he would come home to every night.
“But it’s not like a long-distance relationship where you and I live in different states,” she murmured, kissing him gently and then deepening it, her tongue meeting his, coaxing him to slide past conscious thought.
He chuckled, but the laughter died on his lips as she pressed her pelvis hard against his. He shuddered, and she slid her hands down his back, stroking, scratching, caressing. When she reached his buttocks, she dug in her nails, and his hips responded, pounding against hers. She moaned, “Oh, yes.” She whispered, “Oh, yes.”
And he lost the little bit of control he’d had. He slid his hands under her bra strap, undoing the clip before tossing it to the
floor, then pushing back the sheets so he could see the bounty before him. She lay on the bed, long and lean with full high breasts. He lowered his mouth, took in a nipple, tugging it deep into his mouth. She moaned and rolled beneath him, her hips moving, pulsing, her hands stroking, caressing, as she held him close.
He wanted to do so much more with all the heat throbbing through him, and he couldn’t hold off too much longer. But he tried to make it last. Only she wasn’t helping. She kept urging him on, her words driving deep inside him.
“I love what you’re doing. Oh, my God! Yes, yes, yes.”
His body was racked in shudders. He slipped his fingers inside the elastic waistband of her panties and paused for a moment, but her hips rose, her hand sliding over the top of his fingers, pushing him lower and lower. He removed the scrap of lace and slid his fingers through the soft moist area already waiting for him.
Gently he stroked her outside lips, then just inside the entrance to her body, her hips already pulsing, waiting for him to take her fully. She tugged at the elastic on his boxers and murmured, “You’re wearing too much.”
He slid a hand down, pulled off his boxers and settled himself between her legs.
Even then she reached between their bodies, her fingers wrapping around him gently, stroking, caressing him until Liam groaned. She wrapped her thighs around his hips and surged upward, seating herself where she wanted to be. He gasped, rising up on his arms, his head lowering as waves of heat rippled through him. She stroked his chest down to the curls at the apex of his legs and back up again, and then she wrapped her arms around his neck, and she started to move.
He groaned. “You’ll finish this really fast,” he gasped out.
“That’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s all I can think about right now.”
He eased onto her, his hands now grabbing her hips, and, holding her firm, he took over. He drove deep and hard and fast, and then faster and faster. She came apart in his arms, her cries of joy filling the room as her body wrapped all around him. He wanted to take a moment to enjoy her reaction, to feel her own pulses as they wrapped around him. But he couldn’t for long, and he drove deeper and deeper for his own end—finally reaching his climax as it broke over him.
