by M. S. Parker
His lids flickered. Something flashed across his face – grief, maybe.
Moving past it, I said, “Why don’t you just save us the time and shower, come downtown with me so we can deal with all the paperwork?”
“I’m not copping to some deal,” he bit off. “If I have to do time, then I do time.” He turned back to the roses and began to work, sending more petals and buds fluttering to the ground.
Something inside me softened.
“Do you really think your mother would want you to throw the rest of your life away?”
A pair of short-handed pruning shears flipped end over end and landed in the ground three feet to my right. The handles jutted up, the wicked sharp blades piercing the dirt. Even as I was still staring at the tool, he was stalking toward me, catching me off-guard when he stopped only inches away. He was so close, each individual eyelash was on full display, and when I breathed in, the hot, male scent of him flooded my head.
“You think you got it all figured out, don’t you?” he demanded. Sweat gleamed on his skin, beaded in drops to roll down his tempting flesh. Thorns had torn thin jagged lines across his forearms. Probably another way of punishing himself. I wondered if it was a regular thing or if this was only because of the recent tragedy…and everything that happened after.
He loomed over me, his size shadowing the sun, I wasn’t a small woman, and the attempt to intimidate me didn’t exactly go as planned. Our gazes clashed, locked…held.
I suspected he was used to people backing down when he glared so fiercely, danger coming off him in waves.
My heart started to race, my blood humming through my system like a river coursing after a hard rain. I swallowed hard and might have backed down – just to get away from the chaos of emotions he was causing inside me. I’d known from the first moment I saw him that he would bring me trouble. One glimpse at his picture was all it took.
A flicker of awareness came and went in his eyes, and as soon as it was gone, I summoned the cockiest smile I had in my arsenal. “Seriously, Adam, if you want to intimidate me, you’ll have to do better than that.”
“If I wanted to intimidate you, sweetheart, I’d be doing a lot more than looking at you.” His lids drooped low over his eyes. “And what’s the point of that anyway? I just want you to remove yourself from my life. Tell my…” he paused, his lip curling in distaste, “father…if that’s who he really is, that I just wasn’t interested. He couldn’t be bothered to hang around when I was growing up, there’s no need for him to come around now.”
“Are you always this quick to judge?”
“Quick?” A harsh bark of laughter escaped him. “You think nearly thirty years of him not being in my life is quick?” He laughed again, and the sound was rich…full. I could have lost myself in that sound, rolled in it.
Despite that flicker that had danced between us a few moments earlier, he seemed unaware of it now and continued to talk. Lips curled in a quiver of a sneer, he said, “If he’d shown up in grade school, I would have done backflips. Middle school? It would have meant something. Even high school. But I don’t need him now. So he can just fuck off.”
He turned on his heel, a slick military move of dismissal.
Without thinking, I reached out and caught his arm.
Heat arced between us, and I swear I felt it all the way to the soles of my feet.
Immediately, I lowered my hand. Touching him wouldn’t be a wise decision. I needed to keep my hands to myself. Especially when he was half naked and hot, his skin gleaming with a fine sheen of sweat.
I was such a sucker for a man who looked like that.
Without thinking, the words spilled out of me. “He was married. When he and your mother met, he was married. They fell in love. He would have filed for divorce, but your mother wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to be involved in your life, Adam. But there were…circumstances.”
And my ass was in so much trouble if the boss knew I’d said any of this.
For a few seconds, he just stared at me in blank disbelief.
Then fury replaced that blank look, and I almost flinched. “That’s bullshit,” he shouted, shaking his head, his eyes going black. “That’s just bullshit.”
“It’s not.”
“My mother never would have gotten involved with a married man. She never would have tried to split two people apart.”
Jabbing him in the chest hard enough to skewer him on my nail, I said, “You’re not listening, big guy. He would have left his wife – for her. For you. But there were things going on, and your mom said no. She said she couldn’t have lived with herself.”
He started to argue again, but I cut him off. I understood the male psyche better than some, and when it came to a man like Adam – the testosterone-prone, testosterone over-laden male psyche – I understood it a little too much. Giving him an insolent sneer, I said, “I can prove it to you. Unless you’re too afraid to see the dirt.”
“Afraid?” He practically guffawed. “What’s there to be afraid of?”
I lifted a shoulder. “The truth.” I held up a hand, stemming the temper that I knew would come sooner or later. “Your mom was a good woman – I know that. But you’re painting her a saint and your dad the devil. You’re a smart enough man to know that the truth most often lies in the middle ground. Except you won’t let yourself see it.”
Stony eyes stared at me.
“There were two people trapped in an impossible situation. Give me two hours…and if I don’t change how you see things, I’ll leave you alone.” I might end up fired, but…
“Fine.” He bit the word off like it tasted bad, but he nodded.
12
Olivia
My boss wasn’t just going to fire me; he was going to kill me.
I was hoping my boss understood my rationale. He told me to do whatever it took to convince Adam to give him a chance. To give everything a chance.
The house was a ninety-minute drive away. Ninety minutes there, probably thirty minutes on the grounds, ninety back. Three and a half hours. Good thing I’d gone out there early. It was just now coming up on ten. I’d plan for four hours and see if Barrett couldn’t finesse things and make it all happen at four. Barrett would finesse things – he wasn’t one of the most influential lawyers in all of Cincinnati for nothing.
He got back to me within ten minutes, and I could almost feel his genteel, patient tones as he told me he’d worked things out. He’d contacted the DA’s office with his request, letting them know it would be quite the favor to the boss if they’d work with Barrett in this case.
Great.
Now I’d have to let the boss know.
But we did what we must.
The prosecutor was young and determined to climb up the ladder. I understood that, even recognized her drive. She’d be somebody who could either be a best friend, or she’d piss me off. I had no idea which way it would go from here, but if she knew the boss was using his influence, I knew exactly which way she would turn.
And none of it mattered, because I had what I needed – a meeting with the prosecutor and Adam Dedman in my car. As we rounded the final curve in the highway, the boss’s estate opened up in front of us.
The man at the guard house recognized me and went to wave me through only to stop when he realized I wasn’t alone. Although the smile stayed congenial, the flicker in his eyes assured me that everything would change if something set his instincts off.
The two men recognized each other immediately, I realized. Not that they’d ever met. They were both military men. And they recognized the type. The boss only hired former military for security. As the guard took in Adam, Adam was taking him in as well.
“Sousa, this is a guest of mine. Chief Adam Dedman, US Navy. Chief Dedman, this if Lieutenant Sousa, Army. Retired. He did some time with the military police for a while.” I arched a brow at Sousa. “Did I forget the terminology or any of your bio?”
“You did good enough, ma’am.” He slid hi
s eyes to Adam, taking his measure. “I didn’t know you were bringing a guest out today.”
“I didn’t know I was required to inform you of my every visit.”
“Point taken.” His pale blue eyes returned to mine. I didn’t have to inform him of jackshit. This had been my home for almost a decade, and I still felt more at home here than anywhere else. Sousa knew that.
But Sousa’s job was to protect this place – and the boss. He didn’t take that job lightly and wanted a heads up next time.
I might have considered it, but Sousa would have given the boss a heads up too, and I didn’t want him trying to stop me.
Besides, it wasn’t like this would happen again.
It would either work or it wouldn’t, but repeats would be very unnecessary.
A few more seconds passed, then Sousa retreated back into the guardhouse and pushed a button to let us pass through.
“Damn, and here I thought they kept all the gold in Fort Knox a few hours south of here,” Adam drawled, his voice heavily underscored with sarcasm.
When I didn’t respond, he continued, “Am I meeting a prince? Is my dad a king of some tiny little European municipality?”
“Would you shut up?”
“If I do that, I don’t get to hear your smart ass remarks, O.”
The way he said my shortened name was downright pornographic, dirty. Practically orgasmic. In self defense, I blurted out a question that had been eating at me all day. “Why didn’t you stay at your mother’s visitation?”
He shut down.
It was such a hard and cold switch, I wanted to punch myself. Everything about him changed, and I wished I could have taken the question back, but there was no doing that. He withdrew, mentally, physically. In all ways. Retreating in on himself, he turned his head to stare out over the rolling green hills that made up the boss’s estate.
“Not ready.”
So much time had passed that I’d almost forgotten the terrible question I’d asked. At those two words, I had to think to understand what he was saying.
Softly, he went on, “She’s all I have – had. She’s all I’ve ever had, and just to see her like that?”
“I’m sorry.”
I came to a stop in front of the house, and he straightened in the seat, looking around. I tried to see the estate through his eyes. The fountain in front. The house itself, a creation of brick and wooden beams, a mixture of classic and modern design. The first time I’d seen it, I wondered if this was what castles looked like.
Since then, I’d seen real castles all across the world.
But this…this was still the most magnificent place I’d ever seen.
This was still home.
But it wouldn’t be home much longer unless I managed to talk the man next to me into seeing things the way I needed him to see things.
I only had one chance, and it was looking slimmer and slimmer all the time.
In moments like this, I could almost understand Adam’s apathy toward the old man. Except he didn’t even know the boss.
I did.
And he’d saved me.
13
Reaper
I didn’t have to guess where we were.
Ninety minutes.
If what O was telling was true – and I had a bad feeling it was – then my father lived less than two hours away from me. I couldn’t call this a house either. It was an estate. Nothing else would fit. If the house was any bigger, it just might qualify as a castle.
It was huge. Four stories stabbed into the air with pillars of wood, brick, and glass that was beautiful, classy, and surreal. It was landscaped but not in that touch-me-not kind of way. Everything about the place looked inviting and warm. Like that fairy tale kind of home a kid might read about in a book where some orphans ended up finding out they had a rich, loving uncle or grandfather or something.
But the illusion shattered the second I stepped inside. While there was life outside these walls, once that door closed behind me, it felt like a tomb. I’d been inside plenty of places that felt like death was just a whisper away, and this wasn’t any different.
Well, yeah it was.
It was fancier than hell, and when death came calling, he’d have a nice place to hang his hat for however long he was here. But I don’t think death much cares about that.
Everything inside felt cool and quiet, save for the woman at my side.
I could feel her life, pulsing and throbbing. She had more life in her than anything I’d been around in a long, long while.
Inexplicably, I didn’t want to go any deeper into the house.
No, what I wanted to do was grab O’s arm and pull her out of the house, back to the car. Tell her to drive. We could take her car down and go hit the road, maybe go head down to Eastern Kentucky, head to Natural Bridge or go even farther, down to Tennessee.
Anywhere but here…or to the funeral.
As if she sensed my reluctance, she paused and held out her hand.
I looked down, staring at it.
Then, slowly, I placed my hand in hers, and she curled her fingers around mine.
Strong hands.
Not like mine.
I’d been taught how to destroy, maim and kill with mine, so yeah, they were strong.
But hers were…efficient. Slim fingers, calloused. Neat, short nails. Everything about her was neat, and it appealed to me in ways that I just couldn’t explain.
It was like she just didn’t mess well with chaos.
It made me want to bring some chaos into her life – maybe by pushing her up against a wall and stripping her naked, pounding into her until she was moaning my name and coming so hard and fast, she forgot her own.
I had a feeling she’d even let me.
I damn well wanted to put my hands on her.
I had a feeling she wanted me to.
But now wasn’t the time for me to go thinking with my dick.
“This place feels more like a hospital than a home,” I said, trying to shift my focus from my cock to…something else. Anything else.
“It didn’t use to.” She continued to walk, no longer tugging me along by my hand.
But she hadn’t let go either.
It was as quiet as a cemetery in the dead of night, silent save for the elegant click-click of her heels on the highly polished marble floors. But as we walked, I began to hear music.
Classical music.
We turned one more corner, and O stopped, staring at an open door. The hall led straight toward those doors. Those doors were flung open in an invitation, and there was nothing else in this hall – just those wide open doors.
O didn’t take another step though.
She let go of my hand and reached up to rub at her upper lip, her hand shaking a little.
“What’s wrong?”
She glanced over at me and shook her head. “Nothing. I’m just…second-guessing myself, you could say. This is either a smart move or a really, really dumb one.”
“No in between?”
“Absolutely not.” She laughed nervously, then slowly tipped her head back and stared up at the ceiling, her lashes laying thick and full over her high cheekbones. Finally, she swung a look over at me. “You’re going to behave yourself in there, Chief Dedman. Otherwise, I’ll kick your ass. I don’t care if you’re a Navy SEAL. You might be a special agent from God’s own army, but if you act like an asshole in that room, you’re going to deal with me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Call me crazy, but I know when a person was protecting someone they love.
She gave me a narrow look, then started forward.
I trailed along in her wake, looking at the art on the walls, searching for some clue as to what I was about to find.
The clues, though, were coming from inside the room itself. They weren’t in the hall…I didn’t think.
Beep…beep…beep…
My mind cataloged that noise, told me what it was.
My nose had already taken inventory
.
Antiseptic smells, although somebody made a valiant attempt to hide it with potpourri and other homey scents. There was also the faint scent of urine.
A woman came rushing toward us. “O, how lovely to see you. Have you brought…” She looked at me, and her words tripped, then trailed away.
Her face paled, and she stared at me like she was looking at a ghost.
“Nancy, can you give us some time?”
“But–”
“It’s okay,” O said, resting a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of her. She looks like you just changed and rotated her, yes?”
Nancy nodded.
“I only need a few minutes. We’ll read some of the book to her, okay?”
Nancy left, but not without shooting me another dubious look.
But I’d already dismissed her.
Somebody else was checking me out.
The force of her gaze was something to be reckoned with. If she hadn’t been confined to that bed, I had no doubt she would have been commanding an army of her own in some shape or form.
Austere intelligence gleamed from those haughty green eyes as we approached, and for a long moment, she didn’t even blink.
It wasn’t until O stepped in between us that the woman even acknowledged her. There might have been a faint smile, but it was hard to say.
“Hello, Queen Elise,” O said, her voice obviously teasing, but there was an undercurrent there.
Not rebuke, exactly.
Warning, maybe. Warning the woman? Me?
“I’ve brought company, as you can clearly tell. Mind if we sit?”
I watched as the older woman gave two slow blinks.
“Thank you.” O gave me a look and nodded at the chair near my right. “Elise – or Queen Elise – as I call her, doesn’t always hold court. I don’t force myself on her if she doesn’t want company.” She winked at the woman and then nodded at me. “My grandma once told me that if you live to be a certain age, you get to decide if you want to put up with…” O paused, then smiled again, “the bullshit of courtesy that society forces upon a woman. I told the Queen that once. She laughed so hard she almost cried.”
