Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  “Could you ask Cheryl to add a check on that for me? Find out if anyone who went to that school might be involved in this? Maybe someone who works in fashion or in Luna’s company.”

  “You think someone from our school is involved?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Wow! I never would have thought of that.” There was a slight pause on the other end of the phone, which was unusual because Skylar never seemed to be at a loss for words. “I thought it had more to do with the investors.”

  “What investors?”

  “Oh, you know, the original five? The cops who all put up money to help out James Winn when he first started Caballo. Her father was one, you know.”

  “He was?”

  “Yeah. And now they’re all suing Ox, saying he cut them out of some of the profits they’re due. It’s a whole complicated mess! When Luna walked into the office, I think Ox assumed it was a joke or something. But then she told him what she needed and… well, he’s hoping that if this case goes well, it’ll bode well on the lawsuit.”

  That explained a lot.

  “Thanks, Skylar. You’ve been a big help.”

  It might be a long shot, but what if somebody from Luna’s past was stalking her now? What if this was all a game to frighten her for some reason? My first thought was that someone was trying to unnerve her so that she would make a mistake here in Paris. But what if it had more to do with the offer Michael Fabre was making her? Or maybe it was more personal. Maybe someone who thought they’d had power over her in high school was trying to get that power back.

  Whatever the reason, the threats were fairly benign. But I suspected they wouldn’t stay that way much longer.

  It was time to figure this case out and finish it once and for all.

  Chapter 11

  Luna

  I heard him come through the hotel door and the relief was so complete that my head started to spin. I wasn’t sure he would come back.

  I was still shaken, near to the core, when Angela had brought me upstairs.

  “What happened?” my assistant asked me.

  “Mind your own business. Did you finish the correspondence I left you with?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s on the desk.”

  I sent her away a moment later, not really in much of a mood to speak to anyone. My hands were shaking, my heart pounding. I remembered what it was like when I was young, when those kids harassed me. Prom night when… well, I tried not to dwell on that too often. My father couldn’t look me in the eye after that night, and I couldn’t look at him. Sometimes a thing is so shameful that it’s impossible to get past. My father and I were once close, but now we barely spoke.

  And it was all because I was a foolish girl who once allowed a boy to know I had a crush on him. The cruelty that followed was not of my making, but a symptom of something I couldn’t even begin to address. But I wasn’t that foolish girl any longer.

  I bathed, soaking in a bathtub full of silky bubbles that should have relaxed me but didn’t. All I could think about were the hands that had touched me, the curses and screams that had reverberated straight through me. And then all I could think about were Brock’s hands on my body, the gentleness with which he’d guided me out of danger. I’d never felt quite as safe as I’d felt in his hands.

  I wanted—needed—to ask for his forgiveness. I’d been confused in the back of the car, scared and stuck somewhere between the past and present. When he’d looked at me, his scars revealed, I hadn’t seen my savior. I’d seen the dark soul of the boy who’d charmed me out of another ballroom five years ago, the boy who’d done all he could to force himself on me. When I’d looked at him, I’d seen the devil that drove that dark act.

  It wasn’t about Brock’s scars. I needed him to understand that.

  Now, as I lay alone in my luxurious bed, feeling more lonely than I’d felt in all my life, listening to him move around the sitting room, preparing for bed, all I could think about was how gentle his hands had been.

  Brock was as far from the kind of boy who’d hurt me as anyone could get.

  I waited until there was silence. My heart still pounding in my chest—or pounding anew, I suppose—I slipped out of bed and walked silently on bare feet. The sitting room was dark, only the light of the moon spilling in through the balcony doors offering any illumination at all. I paused for a moment, allowing my eyes to adjust. I could see him on the couch, lying on his back with an arm over his eyes. His legs were crossed at the ankles and he no longer wore his tux, but a pair of shorts and a white T-shirt that glowed almost unnaturally in the dim room.

  He made me think of Chris Pine, of Chris Evans, of Robert Downey Jr. He made me think of superheroes who were humble and kind, men who were fit and sexy in a way that screamed of another time, another world. There weren’t a lot of men left in this world with the sort of chivalrous qualities of those long-ago heroes who were once overlooked and underrated.

  I thought he would look up as I approached him, alerted by the shuffle of my feet. But he never moved, not even when I paused by his side. I dropped to my knees, staring at him like a stalker who can’t get enough of her prey. His breathing was slow and even, his chest moving with a regularity that suggested sleep. His hair fell away from his face, the thick strands with their gentle waves soft and fragrant when I brushed my fingertips against them. I could see the scars on his face, despite the fact that he had his head turned slightly away, almost as if he knew I’d come and steal a peek.

  Why did he hide? Was he ashamed of the way he looked? Was there shame in how he came about these scars? Or was there something more, some feeling that was forced on him by some heartless lover?

  I brushed my finger over his chin, able to feel one twisted scar, one bit of flesh that was puffy and unnatural. He mumbled, but didn’t pull away. I ran my fingertip over the bottom of his chin and around to his jaw, studying the unharmed side of his face. How was he burned? Was he burned in more places than just his face? How bad must it have been to recover from such burns? Was it in the war? Did he sacrifice part of his face for our country?

  I wanted to look it up—you can find just about anything on the Internet these days—but it felt like an invasion of his privacy. I felt as though it would be better to hear it from him. But curiosity could be a killer.

  Was it about a woman? Was that why it was so hard for him to look at his own scars?

  If only he knew about my scars. If only he could see the ugliness that lived deep inside of me. What if he knew that I’d believed I was in love with the boy who’d harassed and tortured me my senior year of high school? What would he think of me if he knew I’d willingly gone out of that ballroom with my attacker? Would he think less of me if he knew I’d reveled in my attacker’s kisses before things had escalated, before he’d ripped the bodice of my red dress, before he’d made it clear he only wanted one thing?

  No one’s perfect. We all have scars we have to live with.

  I pressed my thumb to his lower lip, feeling the slight bit of moisture there, wondering what it was he was dreaming of. Was there a girl somewhere he was grieving the loss of? Or was I in there somewhere, invading his sleeping thoughts? I hoped so.

  We’d only known each other a few days, only shared a handful of words, but I felt like there was a connection there just the same. He was a history buff. He loved his niece deeply. He was close to his brother. He spent a lot of time overseas, fighting other people’s wars.

  Hell!

  I knew facts about him, but what did I really know about him? That he was hot? Everyone with eyes knew that.

  I had no right to sit here and touch him. It wasn’t my place to slide my thumb from his lower lip to his top one, pressing it into that little dip under his nose. It wasn’t my place to rest my forehead against his and breathe deep each breath he exhaled. And it wasn’t my right to press my lips gently against his. But I did. I wanted this connection I felt between us, whether it was real or not. I wanted his kind hands o
n my body, wanted to feel protected in the way only he had managed to make me feel. I wanted what wasn’t mine.

  I wanted him. This was the first time since prom night I could say that about any man. I wanted him. I wanted everything and anything he had to offer. I wanted to forget I was once that weak girl and truly feel as though I was the confident, independent woman I tried so hard to make the world believe I was. And I knew he could make me feel that way.

  Our lips brushed for a moment, for one fantastic moment in which I could pretend I was getting everything I ever wanted. I sighed, ready to pull away and take myself back to the reality of my lonely bedroom. But then his lips moved, a matching sigh slipping from between them as he responded to me. His hands slipped over the sides of my head, drawing me close as he buried his fingers in my hair. He opened to me and I dove right in, taking everything he was offering.

  It was a beautiful kiss. It was everything I had imagined it would be.

  He sat up, pushing me back even as he pulled me close. One of his hands slid over my shoulder, slipping down over the silk of my dressing gown. Hope bloomed anew in my soul as he sought the belt that held the gown in place. I touched him, my hand sliding up from the center of his chest to the curve of his neck and along the angle of his jaw. Little bumps and twists of flesh greeted my fingers, the ruined side of his face absent of its mask under my curious touch.

  It was a mistake.

  He jerked back, grabbing my wrist and yanking it away from him. “Don’t!” he said, his voice a tangle of emotions.

  “It’s okay.”

  He shook his head, tilting it forward so that his hair fell over his face in that perpetual curtain he was always hiding behind. I reached for it, using my free hand to try to part the curtain, but he grabbed that wrist, too, forcing both my hands away from him.

  “It’s okay,” I repeated. “I want to see you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do, Brock. I really do.”

  He pushed me back and climbed off the couch, storming away from me on bare feet that managed to make quite a racket in the silent room. He was out on the balcony before I could get to my own feet, standing against the railing, leaning forward like he was thinking of taking a header from the fifteenth-floor height.

  “We all have scars. Yours are just more visible than some people’s.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then explain it to me!”

  He shook his head, all that hair flowing around his shoulders.

  “When I was seventeen, a boy I thought I was in love with tried to rape me. He would have, too, if the mechanics of the situation had worked out. Turns out he wasn’t the kind of guy who could maintain an erection after drinking a whole bottle of stolen vodka.”

  Brock stood very still; that was his only reaction to my words.

  “I had to call my father to come get me. My dress was so damaged that I couldn’t go back inside, and I was afraid to call a cab. Reporting it to the police was out of the question because the boy who’d done it was the son of the man my father was currently working a ten-dollar-an-hour job for, the only job he’d been able to secure since he was injured in a riot at the prison. We needed that money to survive! But keeping quiet, pretending nothing had happened… something like that really fucks you up, you know?”

  Brock remained silent, that silence sitting so heavy on my shoulders that I thought my knees might give out. I wanted him to acknowledge me, needed him to understand that I was telling him something I hadn’t spoken about to anyone since the night it happened. I needed him to see that I was trying to show him my own scars.

  “My father was so ashamed that he hasn’t been able to look me in the eye since that night. Five years and still… we talk about the weather and football, but we never talk about anything that matters anymore.” I grunted. “It’s always been just the two of us. We used to be able to talk about everything!”

  “My brother slept with my girl.”

  I was so wrapped up in my own grief that it took a second for his words to sink in. “What?” I mumbled.

  Brock shook his head. “My twin brother. My high school girlfriend, my first love, manipulated him and they had sex at a party. She got pregnant and he chose to do the right thing. He moved in with her, took care of her and the baby. They even got married for a short time.” He made a sound deep in his throat. “He did the right thing—more than I probably would have done at the time—and I hated him for it. I refused to speak to him for nearly eight years.”

  “Your niece?”

  “Yeah.” He pushed the hair away from his face, still facing out over the city, his back to me. “And then I met this beautiful, intelligent, perfect girl. She thought I hung the moon and I saw stars in her eyes. I knew we had this perfect future waiting for us, that as long as we stood by each other, nothing could hurt us. She moved in with me, and then her career took off and I was planning to follow her, finish law school and then marry her, spend the rest of my life by her side. But then the fire and…” He shook his head again. “I took one look in the mirror and knew I couldn’t ruin her life that way. She was a fucking model, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I’m sure if she loved you—”

  “That’s what everyone said. Including my brother.” He started to laugh, a sad, bitter sound. “It’s so ironic, you know?”

  “How?”

  “She came back. A month ago. By the time I knew, he was already in love with her and she was in love with him. What was I supposed to do but let her go?”

  He laughed again, and it was my turn to just stand there, to not move or comment. What did I say to that? Some scars, they went far too deep.

  “I did the noble thing, walking away from her. And he did the noble thing, coming to me to ask if I was over her before he told her how he felt. We’re fucking noble-ing each other to death!”

  “You still love her.”

  He turned, tucked his hair behind each of his ears as he looked at me. “I think all these years I thought I was afraid that she’d want me out of pity. I’ve never wanted anyone’s pity, and the idea that Eva would feel sorry for me was just so offensive that I couldn’t stand the very idea!” He studied my face for a long moment. “It’s the last thing I want from you, too.”

  I snorted. “Well, you can just put that thought back in your head. I’ve never wanted anyone’s pity and I’ve never offered my pity to a single soul. I learned a long time ago that we all live the life that we want, taking what we can from every experience and using it to either move forward or not. I don’t feel sorry for anyone, least of all you!”

  He tilted his head slightly. “There’s this way that most people look at me, this look that comes into their eyes when they see the mask and the gloves. A sadness.” He came toward me a few steps. “I saw it in her eyes just like I’d always known I would. But I don’t see it in yours.”

  “You never will.”

  He came to a stop in front of me, his fingers twisting my hair into a sort of rope that he wound around his hand. He pulled me forward, tugging my head back so that I was forced to look up at him. For a long moment, he studied me, or maybe he was forcing me to study him. I did. I let my eyes move over the terrible damage to the side of his face, the lumps and drips that looked almost like the melted edges of a candle; at the way his eye drooped, the absence of eyebrow over that weak eyelid. I studied the damage and the way it melted into the undamaged side, the handsome angles of his once beautiful face, and saw a new beauty that was just as perfect as what he’d been born with.

  “I’ve been alone for a long time,” he said in a voice that was choked with his past. “I’m used to it now. I don’t need some beautiful broad with her own damage coming in and thinking she can make everything right for me.”

  “Good. Because I don’t need some guy with baggage wasting my time thinking I can fix him.”

  “I can’t change what happened to you.”

  I lowered my head slightly. “I ca
n’t give your life back to you.”

  “Then what good are you?”

  I might have laughed if I hadn’t believed he was dead serious. Yet in that moment he discovered exactly what I was good for. He pulled me so close to him that it felt as though he might crush my ribs or break my jaw with the intensity with which he came in for a kiss. I opened to him, gripping the front of his shirt in my fist to keep myself balanced in his demand, in the urgency with which he attacked me. It was almost a painful kiss, almost more than I could handle. But then he began to slow his attack, pushing me back against the wall as he unwound my hair from his hand and began to explore the length of me, his gentle fingers moving along my jaw and down my throat, exploring the length of my neck, the tender flesh that curved from throat to shoulder. When he touched me like that, he was the man I knew he was: kind and tender and chivalrous.

  He worshipped me with his fingers, allowing them to explore above my dressing gown. And then he worshipped me with his mouth as his lips slipped from my mouth to my chin, sliding slowly down over my throat and down to that hollow between my collar bones. His hands found the belt that held my gown in place and… my heart stuttered a little as I wondered if I was happy I’d chosen not to dress after my bath, or ashamed of the nakedness I was unabashedly sharing with this man. But then he made this delighted sound deep in his throat and I knew a second of delirious delight myself. And that delight turned to exquisite pleasure as his mouth found my breasts.

  Brock wasn’t the first man I’d ever allowed to touch me, but I wished in that moment he was. The few-and-far-between love affairs I’d had over the past few years were nothing compared to this. He knew how to touch me, knew what would drive me wild and what would make my toes curl. He knew how to be rough, and he knew how to be gentle. He knew… he just knew.

  I’d never felt more grateful to be a woman than I did on that balcony that night. It was all I could do to just stand there and allow him to explore, to touch, to offer more pleasure than I thought my mind could possibly handle, only to begin all over again. Between his touch, the cool breeze, and the very idea of sharing that moment with all of Paris spread out around us… it was like something out of a fairy tale. And when he took me to the bedroom sometime later, it was just as perfect, just as incredible.