“And they must be incredibly proud of you.”
“They are,” she repeated. “Even if this isn’t the path they would have chosen.”
His mouth quirked higher. “I know that feeling. But my old man wasn’t as understanding. Which may be why none of us went into the family business.”
Her mouth quirked in turn. “Our family business seems to be being the Harts of Westport.”
He laughed, and Ashley felt that quick jolt of pleasure yet again.
If this kept up, she wasn’t going to have any guardrails left.
* * *
Ty wasn’t sure what he’d expected. He didn’t really think she had exaggerated her skill, but he was having trouble reconciling his image of Ashley Hart, heiress, with the woman he was watching now. The woman who was consistently hitting the blocks of wood he was tossing, no matter what direction or height he threw them.
The sound of the shotgun echoed through the bare trees, and he could only imagine every living creature within a mile taking cover. They didn’t hunt much out here, but the sheer volume alone would send him running to hide if he were, say, one of those little prairie dogs.
He waited while she reloaded. Then she nodded, and he started tossing again. And as before, she didn’t miss. In fact, the only time she’d missed at all was in the beginning, when a bird had broken for cover just as he tossed the second block. She’d yanked the shotgun off target, he guessed, to be sure she didn’t hit the bird by accident.
He had a sudden vision of an eight-year-old Ashley fearlessly confronting her father, demanding he stop hunting living birds. He could just see her looking at him, the pain of what he was doing reflected in those deep brown eyes. And he wondered how many people around the world would never believe that Andrew Hart, head of the global Hart empire, would give in. To a little girl, even if she was his daughter and his only child.
He believed it. Because he already knew that when determined, Ashley Hart could be a nearly unstoppable force.
He also knew, with wry acceptance, that his own father would never give in like that, unless it was something he wanted to do anyway.
This time when she had emptied the weapon, she stopped, took out the ear protection he’d retrieved from the locker in the SUV and turned to look at him.
“You’re as good as you said you were,” he said, figuring she’d earned it.
She smiled so widely it made his chest tighten a little. “Your turn,” she said.
He laughed. “Not my thing.”
“Do you hunt?”
“Not much anymore, unless there’s another reason.”
Her brow furrowed. “Like what?”
“Renegade coyote. Rabid skunk. That kind of thing.”
“Oh.” She looked down at the Mossberg, then back at him. “Not birds?”
He gave her a rather sheepish look. “Nah. I like them too much. So I’m a hypocrite who eats them, but I don’t want to be part of the process.”
To his surprise, she smiled. “I’m afraid I’m with you on that. You sure you don’t want to try?”
“I’d embarrass myself.”
“I could teach you.”
His entire perception shifted in that moment. An image formed in his mind of Ashley standing close behind him as she showed him how to aim, to fire...things he already knew but had never done in this particular exercise.
And he knew from his own instant, fierce response to just that imaginary vision that the answer had to be no.
And he spent a good portion of the hours of darkness regretting that.
* * *
“Why do I get the feeling you didn’t call just to say hello?”
Ty grinned despite the fact that his brother Neil couldn’t see him over the old landline. “Come on, what’s the good of having a high-power attorney for a brother if he can’t give you a little helpful advice now and then?”
“You know what I make per hour to dispense helpful advice?”
“You want to charge the brother who saved you from drowning when you were five?”
“Yeah, yeah. One of these days I’m going to call that paid back.”
“I’ll consider it a big installment if you can tell me how we can put this jerk who’s after Ashley away for a long time.”
There was a split-second pause before Neil said, “Ashley?”
Uh-oh. He knew instantly that he should have kept it professional, referred to her simply as a client or protectee. Neil was just too damned good at reading people, even if he only had a voice to work with. He scrambled to cover.
“We decided it would be wiser not to throw around that particular last name,” he said.
“Hmm.” The non-word fairly echoed with his brother’s lack of acceptance of the excuse. But to Ty’s relief, he let it go. “You do realize I’m not a prosecutor?”
“Please. Who would know better how to destroy the perfect defense than the guy who builds them?”
That got him a laugh. “Are you sure it’s who you thought it was?”
“It’s not confirmed,” Ty had to admit. “He’s been lying low since we pulled her off stage.” He’d talked to Mitch early this morning, before Ashley had come downstairs. Wearing that damned silky-looking robe thing that made her look like some forties movie star or something. And he’d waited until she’d gone back upstairs to dress to call Neil, denying even to himself it was so he wouldn’t think about that sleek fabric sliding off her sleek body.
“Maybe he thinks he won when she went quiet.”
“Maybe. But she won’t stay quiet, so we need to be ready.”
“Stubborn, huh?”
“Determined. And dedicated.”
“Was that actual admiration I heard in my hard-to-impress big brother’s voice?”
He opened his mouth to refute it, but the words wouldn’t come. “She’s...not what I expected.”
“And I gather in a good way? Sounds like it’s getting personal, bro.”
No. It can’t. I’m not that stupid. Am I?
“Can we dispense with the analysis and get to an answer?”
“All I can say is that where it stands right now, if it is him, at most he’d likely get off with a fine and probation. He’s done nothing but mouth off, so far.”
“So far,” Ty said grimly. “If he gets angry enough, he could follow through and come after her physically.”
“If he does, you’ll keep her safe,” Neil said, with such certainty that Ty couldn’t help but feel warmed by his brother’s faith.
“Yeah,” he said. “I will.”
And it was a vow to her as much as to himself. He would keep her safe. The world needed more Ashley Harts, not less.
Chapter 22
“You have to do it anyway, right?” Ashley asked as she stood looking at the downed tree he’d made note of when they’d first arrived.
Ty sat on the thick trunk and grinned at her. “I was thinking I’d leave it for my little brother Neil,” he drawled lazily. “So he doesn’t get soft sitting in that office all day, wearing those expensive suits.”
She laughed, because she knew he was anything but lazy. And when looked at in the larger scheme of things, he was working very hard at making this as easy as possible on her. Including trekking out every day because she wanted to learn about this place she’d never been, when it would obviously be easier to do his job if she stayed safely inside the cabin. She studied him for a moment, trying to picture him here as a kid. She wondered if he’d ever had an awkward stage, or if he’d always been...
“What?” he asked at her look.
“Just pondering the sibling thing again,” she said hastily, trying not to betray that she’d been mentally drooling over him. Again. “And what I missed, being an only.”
“Maybe you gained just as much,” he pointed out.
“Did you all compete?”
“Sometimes. Unless someone outside came at one of us.”
“Came at?”
“You know what I mean, when—” He stopped, and his mouth twisted wryly. “No, I guess you don’t.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “When she was thirteen, some older kid started harassing my little sister Bridgette. She’s the girl of the triplets.”
“Older kid?” Possibilities tumbled through her mind, none of them pleasant.
“Yeah.” His lips quirked in that way she was coming to quite like. “He was thirteen and a half.”
She smiled. “What happened?”
“I found her hiding and crying one day, and it seriously pissed me off. So I went after him.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.” He gave her a sideways look. “And I’d already hit six feet tall. He wasn’t much over five. I picked him up and took him behind a dumpster for a chat.”
Her eyes widened at the image that made. “You must have scared him to death!”
“That was the intention. He made Bridgette cry.”
Ashley felt a wave of something warm and almost wistful. “I... That’s wonderful. You must have been a great big brother.”
He shrugged. It seemed to be his reaction to compliments. “Anyway, that’s what I meant. We might be at odds with each other, but to the outside, it was all for one and all that.”
“Sometimes I do truly wish I hadn’t missed out on that dynamic.”
“It had its moments.” His mouth quirked again. “Looking back, I think he probably had a crush on her, but I didn’t recognize that then.”
Do you now? Recognize crushes?
Her breath jammed up in her throat, and she quickly turned away, masking it as looking toward the sky, which was rather gray today, as if rain were on the way. She was not used to this, not at all, and it was very unsettling. She heard him move, looked back just in time to see him stand, that tall powerful body moving with a grace and ease that made her pulse kick up all over again.
“Are you sure you don’t want to cut this up?” she said quickly.
“Not my job right now.”
No, she was his job right now. Job, not...crush. “What if I stay here with you?” Oh, now that sounded disinterested.
“You’d end up being put to work.”
She was startled at how much that idea appealed. “I’d like that. A lot. I need something physical to do.” She nearly groaned aloud at that. But he didn’t make any suggestive comment. Because it never occurred to him that something physical could mean...something else?
And so an hour later—after he made yet another check of the property—he was armed with a chain saw and an ax and, wearing a pair of goggles, attacking the dead tree. The moment he started trimming the smaller branches, she started gathering them up and piling them a few feet away. He looked over at her, then nodded. And before he went back to work, she thought she saw a trace of a smile.
They continued the process, and she had the silly thought that they worked well together. She guessed she was trying to focus on that rather than notice he’d pulled off his jacket as he worked. He was into the bigger limbs now and cutting them into smaller—fireplace-sized, she realized—lengths. She started stacking those, trying to keep it neat until he shut the chain saw off and spoke.
“They’ll need to be split anyway, so don’t worry about neatness yet.”
She turned around to look at him. And nearly choked as he raised an arm to shove the goggles up to his forehead so he could wipe his face. In the process, his shirt lifted and gave her a full view of what she’d only suspected all along: a perfect set of abs.
She looked away quickly before he lowered his arm and caught her gaping at him. Went back to her stacking before her rattled mind recalled what he’d said to her. She tossed down the logs she’d been about to place neatly on top and turned to go get more. And ran smack into those abs as he brought over more wood.
“Whoa,” he said, twisting to drop the logs to one side rather than have them hit her, then grabbing her as she wobbled forward. The motion pressed her harder against him, and suddenly she couldn’t seem to remember how to move. Nor could she look away. She just stood there, looking up at him, barely capable of breathing, let alone moving.
The only saving grace was that he didn’t move either, for a long silent moment. And when he did, it was to slowly, as if against his will, lower his head. Then his gaze shifted from her eyes to her mouth, and her pulse began to race and her lips parted and he was—
He jerked away. Took a swift step back. Started to speak but stopped, and she saw him swallow. Then, in a voice that had no intonation at all, he said, “Let’s wrap this up. Rain coming in.”
It took them another half hour to get everything he’d cut moved to the pile for splitting. And she spent every minute of it telling herself that he had not been about to kiss her.
* * *
Ashley turned a page, listening to the rain that had started last night, just as he’d predicted as they left the half-finished tree yesterday. She was more than a little surprised at herself. And it wasn’t just her unexpected reaction to Ty, although that was surprising enough. It was that she was actually enjoying this.
They’d been here five days now, isolated, in a place with no internet, no connection with the outside world except for seeing the occasional boat going by and that ancient landline phone. There were books to read and movies to watch—on DVDs—but no streaming, online research and no social media. And yet she wasn’t climbing the walls. In fact, she was more relaxed than she could ever remember.
Well, except for the Ty-making-her-pulse-race thing. And that near kiss she kept telling herself hadn’t been that at all.
She’d spent days quietly reading with Simon, but even that was different. Because he had seemed startled whenever he’d looked up and noticed she was there. With Ty, it seemed every time she looked up, he looked at her within seconds, as if he somehow knew when her attention had shifted. As if he was utterly, completely aware of her no matter what he was doing.
That’s his job.
It had become a mantra, repeated to herself time after time as she tried to convince herself it was nothing more, that she was imagining that...something that seemed to flash in his gaze for an instant.
They’d spent the nicer days outside, and he’d seemed okay with letting her simply explore their property however she wanted, as long as he’d checked it first, either personally or with that little surveillance drone he handled with such skill. If she had questions about something she saw out there, be it wildlife or vegetation or terrain, he always had the answer.
She wondered if there was anything he wasn’t good at.
And that gave rise to a flood of heated thoughts that made her consider walking out into that cold November rain just to cool off.
She stole a glance at him, certain she must have mistaken the times before just as she had mistaken what had happened out by the downed tree. He was once more in the chair opposite her favored place by the fire, reading a rather thick tome that he said belonged to his uncle—she presumed the uncle of the tree planting he’d told her about—on naval history. He seemed intent on it, and she was about to look away, convinced now her imagination had just been overactive, when he looked up at her.
“Sorry about the rain. Feeling antsy?” he asked.
Yes, but not because of the rain. “I’m fine.”
“Sorry you can’t talk to your folks.”
He’d explained yesterday morning, with regret she didn’t doubt was real, that while this line was secure, he couldn’t guarantee the other end would be except for Elite, his police detective sister, Jordana, and his criminal attorney brother, Neil, who also had access to secure, monitored lines.
“They know you’re okay,” he had relayed from Mitch, who had
spoken to her parents. Then, with a slightly puzzled look, he added, “And they said to tell you to remember Ashworth.”
As it came back to her now, she sighed. She hadn’t wanted to explain then, but it had been nagging at her ever since. She closed her book. “Ashworth,” she said, “is the private school my parents sent me to when I was a kid.”
He didn’t even blink at the abruptness of it or the delay. “I know.”
Of course he did.
He didn’t push or pry, just waited silently, giving her the option to go on or end it. It occurred to her that he did that often, gave her the choice, whether it was where to explore outside, what movie to watch or this. Making up for the choices she didn’t get to make? Interesting thought. But then she found many, many things about Ty Colton interesting.
“I didn’t want to go. But it turned out to be the best thing in the end.”
“Why didn’t you want to go?”
Interesting, she thought, that that was his first question, not about the school or why it had turned out for the best. “I didn’t want to be...different.”
“You’re Ashley Hart. You were always going to be different.”
“I know that now. At aged ten, not so much.” She gave him a curious look. “And you’re a Colton. Everywhere there’s a branch of your family, they’re in the middle of things.” Surely that meant he could understand what it was like? He was connected to the former president, even if it was distantly. “Didn’t you find that difficult sometimes?”
“That’s one thing about us heartland folks. We generally take people at their own worth—or lack of it—not their name.”
She caught herself sighing again. “That sounds...wonderful. Hard to believe, but wonderful.”
“Hard to believe in your world, maybe. That’s one reason I stay right here. So I can just be myself.”
“I envy you that,” she said softly. The longing that filled her at that moment surprised her both by simply existing at all and by its power.
Then, with a rather crooked smile she found oddly endearing, he added, “I’m not saying the name isn’t a factor, but I’ve always looked on it as something to overcome, not trade on.”
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