Draven set down his coffee mug. Waited, silently.
“Odell didn’t commit suicide.”
“What?”
“He was murdered.”
Chapter 27
Josh’s pulse was racing as he grabbed Tess’s precious hand, kissed her fingertips.
“I love you.”
“And I you,” she said.
“Let me get that fire going,” he said, turning toward the fireplace. He was stopped by Tess’s hand on his arm.
“It’s already going,” she said softly, and there was no mistaking the intent in her eyes. “It’s been going nonstop since we boarded the five.”
Heat and need kicked through him. He still wasn’t used to the novelty of it. It had been so long since he’d felt anything like it. But he also knew himself well enough to realize if it happened any sooner, he would have felt guilty about it, as if he were being disloyal to the woman he’d thought was the only one he could ever really love.
He’d been wrong.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
Tess grimaced. “You’re not going to start that ‘Are you sure you’re all right, we could wait’ thing again, are you?”
“We could,” he said reasonably. Even as the words came out, his body ratcheted up the heat a notch, and he wished he could take it back. Except that he didn’t think he’d have to.
“The doctor says I’m fine. I asked specifically yesterday.”
That took him aback. “Specifically?”
“I told him I was going to go away with the man I have waited literally years for, and planned to jump in bed with him as soon as possible. He said have at it. And now you want me to wait longer?”
Her blunt honesty and need nearly took the breath out of him. But he reined it in a moment longer, looking at her quizzically. “Years?”
“Since that day in Iowa, when you slid the Hawk IV off the runway to avoid hitting that dog.”
He blinked. “What?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t remember the day, even if it had been nearly five years ago. He did, vividly; the little border collie whose job it was to keep the rural runway free of the birds that too often got sucked into jet engines—a job the dog did better than any mechanical means man had yet to devise—had gotten hurt and, limping, had been unable to get out of the way when the jet had started down the runway. He’d first merely been puzzled at the slowness of the usually quick animal, but when he realized the black-and-white herder wasn’t going to get clear, there hadn’t been any decision to make, in his mind.
“I always loved you,” she said simply. “But that day, I knew I Loved you. Capital L.”
“Five years, and you never said?”
“Please. Woman employee in love with the boss? I try to avoid clichés so corny you could pop them in a microwave.”
Josh laughed. But then he turned and grasped her shoulders in his big hands. “You were never, ever, just ‘an employee’ Tess. You’ve been like a sister, my closest friend and now…”
He trailed off, unable to find the words at the moment.
“Besides,” Tess said, reaching up to cup his face with one of those hands that he so marveled at for their delicacy and strength, “I knew you had to be ready. When Elizabeth died, you threw yourself into Redstone full bore, you built it in to the magnificent, wonderful, incredible place that it is. You had no time for anything else, nor did you want it.”
“I want it now,” he said, surprised by the fierceness of his own voice, and not talking about time at all.
“So do I,” Tess said, her own voice echoing the change in his, and the way she looked at him told him she’d made the switch right along with him. As usual.
She was right, they weren’t going to need that fire. One of their own was simmering just beneath the surface, and Josh had the feeling that once it was unleashed, there would be no stopping it.
He was right. And thankful for the thick rug on the floor in front of the still untouched fireplace. He was glad for the battered boots he wore because they were easy to slip off, glad for the way she just as quickly got her own, much nicer-looking boots off.
“Someday,” he grated out at they shed their own clothes, “I want to do this slowly. I want to peel back every layer, and take my time about it.”
“Someday,” she agreed, giving him a look that nearly drove him over the edge right there. “But not today.”
She kicked away her slacks and tugged off her lovely, lacy sweater, a gift from the talented Liana Beck, who had also once knitted him a scarf that had amazingly, and only when turned a certain way, shown a perfect image of the shape of the Hawk V.
All thoughts of anything except the woman before him were blasted out of his head when, naked at last, she turned to face him. His own jeans forgotten, he couldn’t help himself, he reached for her.
He’d known she was beautiful. He’d caught a glimpse once, accidentally, when they’d been in New York and had been in a suite with a shared bathroom. She’d been like his younger sister for so long it had startled him to realize how beautiful she was, how luscious her petite, curved figure was, rounded and tempting in all the right places, lean and strong in the others.
What he hadn’t known was that she would feel like silk and fire at the same time, that the very feel of that impossibly smooth skin would send an echoing fire rocketing through him to pool somewhere low and deep and begin a heavy, pounding pulse demanding more, and still more.
She was strong again now, the scar that marked her abdomen the only sign of what had happened. But it was a reminder, and he touched her with care, lingering on the puckered, still-red mark.
“It’s fine,” she insisted. “You don’t have to be careful.”
“I wasn’t being careful,” he said quietly. “I was…honoring your courage.”
“Oh, Josh,” she whispered, in a voice he had never heard from her before. It turned to a sharp gasp as he cupped her breasts, savoring their soft fullness even as he realized that some part of him had known, had known they would feel this way, this warm, living weight against his palms. Her nipples were already drawn up tight, and he knew, too, how they would feel. But he waited, waited until she arched toward him needily, before he rubbed them with his thumbs as he continued to gently hold that feminine flesh.
Tess moaned, leaning into him. The silken skin of her belly pressed against him, and suddenly the barrier of his half zipped jeans was far too much. She helped him, in fact, demanded that he discard the rest of his clothes, and they went down to that rug in a semicontrolled rush. He wanted to stroke every lovely inch of her, and then taste every one after that. But her hands were all over him, stroking, touching, and he couldn’t think of anything but the stunning trail of fire she was leaving all over his body.
The power of it nearly overwhelmed him. And the sense of inevitability, of rightness was so strong it shattered any flimsy reservations that lingered, leaving him only with a rueful regret that he hadn’t realized all this before now, that they’d had to go so long before he’d awakened to the pure treasure that was literally right under his nose.
But now, he simply wanted her under him. Under his hands, his mouth, his body. The feel of her had his heart slamming in his chest, and his newly reawakened body demanding in a way he’d forgotten he was capable of.
There was little of the fumbling he’d been afraid of, it was as if they’d done this before. Yet at the same time it was so shiningly, beautifully new it took his breath away.
“Slow later,” Tess said, her voice so low and husky it sent yet another shudder through him; she sounded exactly as he felt.
“Yes,” he agreed, then let out a harsh groan as her seeking fingers found him, curled around him.
He’d known it would be good with her, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever realized it could be this good, that he’d ever felt a need this driving, this insistent, this hot. Those kisses during their ordeal had been half stolen, half for effect, but now he knew they had only be
en the slightest hint of what he would and could feel with this woman when it was free and willing and uninterrupted.
And then she was urging him on, guiding him with hot, whispered words of need and urgency that again nearly drove him over the edge. With a tremendous effort, he reined in his body’s surging response; they might be in a hurry, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want this first time to be anything less than his Tess deserved.
His Tess.
He rolled to his back, taking her with him.
“Just to be safe,” he said. “For now.”
She looked startled for a moment, then hotly intrigued. She lifted herself up, straddling him. She trailed a finger down his chest to his belly, a gesture that would likely have sent a shiver through him if he weren’t groaning at the fact that she was straddling him, if he couldn’t feel the heat of her, if he weren’t imagining what it was going to feel like—
She reached for him then, and with a hungry haste that was delicious she began to lower herself, taking him in slowly, achingly slowly.
“Tess….” It hissed from between clenched teeth as her slickness and heat seared him.
She lifted her head. Looked straight into his eyes. And smiled, a knowing, cheeky smile, as if she’d always known how good they would be together. As perhaps she had.
It was his last coherent thought. Because Tess began to move, and with the same care and finesse with which she flew, she drove him to the brink of insanity. And then, with a moan of his name that nearly made his heart stop, she threw them both over edge. At the first clenching of those deep muscles, he groaned out her name again. And then he was shouting it, not caring, soaring with a wild freedom unlike anything he’d ever felt, and knowing on some level that it would, could only be like this with this woman, who knew what it was to truly fly.
Chapter 28
Josh stared through the two-way mirror at the woman sitting behind the metal table. He’d met Diane Odell two or three times, and he doubted she would ever have pictured herself in this situation. Especially in a decidedly unfashionable orange jumpsuit that didn’t go well with the brassier tones in her determinedly blond hair.
He also doubted that she knew Redstone, in particular Ryan Barton, was in large part responsible for her arrest just days ago. Captain Chen’s cybercrimes unit consisted of one detective who was computer literate, and what he freely admitted would have taken him weeks took Ryan a matter of hours.
She looked shaken, something Josh guessed was also unusual; the woman wasn’t just cool, she was cold, and looking back he saw that she always had been. But now she was staring at potential murder charges if they were able to prove she’d been behind the death of her husband.
Draven stood just inside the door; silently, where he’d been since the once imperious woman who looked anything but at the moment was brought in.
Chen and his homicide detective were with Josh on the other side of the glass, watching carefully. It didn’t matter if she guessed that or not, the goal here wasn’t necessarily to get a confession, although Josh had told Chen if there was anyone on the planet who could do it, it was Draven, and Chen had seen enough of the man by now not to argue. What they wanted were reactions, reactions the detectives who had been working her might not get. Not to mention that since they were just visitors, and she had consented to see them, she’d not asked for her lawyer to be present.
“I thought when they said Redstone…” she began when she saw Draven, clearly having expected Josh. Draven cut right to the chase.
“Did you have to kill him?”
Her gaze shot upward, but she said nothing. Her muddy brown eyes looked odd to Josh, and it took him a moment to realize she’d had a botched bit of plastic surgery, making them seem to bug out slightly. But it wasn’t that he was focused on, it was that in all his years in the business world, in all the hard, driving negotiations he’d been through, he’d never seen a more calculating look. He realized she was trying to figure out how she could manipulate Draven, perhaps into helping her. Under the circumstances, it sent a chill through him.
Draven went on, as planned. “I mean, it relieves my boss’s mind to think he didn’t kill himself because Josh said no, but killing him was extreme, wasn’t it? It’s not like he would have had to testify against you, there are protections against that.”
“I didn’t kill him. I swear, I didn’t. I loved Brad.”
The amount of distress and grief in her voice was perfect. Too perfect? Josh wondered.
“Uh-huh,” Draven said, with a coolness that nearly matched what Josh had seen in the woman’s eyes. “You loved the man who destroyed your family’s legacy? Who was about to reduce you to, by your standards, poverty?”
“Brad was…”
It had taken him over a year to start to refer to Elizabeth in the past tense, Josh thought. It had apparently taken Diane Odell a few weeks.
“Incompetent?” Draven suggested. “Misguided? A fool?”
“We had the best of intentions,” she muttered, as if it were an excuse.
“We?” Draven said. “Misguided it is then. By you.”
“My ideas were good, right. He just failed carrying them out.”
“Ain’t that always the way,” Draven drawled, making Josh smile despite everything.
“This isn’t my fault.”
“It never is,” Draven said. “Give it up. They already knew about the throwaway phone you used to call your cousin. Yeah, you paid cash but the clerk identified you.”
She’d gone very still, perhaps surprised that this man from Redstone knew what evidence they had, Josh thought. Because she had no idea they’d been given that evidence by Redstone, courtesy of Ryan.
“And they now have all of your e-mails to that cousin you swore you haven’t had any contact with in years, and they’ve been backtracked to a WiFi hotspot near General Machine.” She was staring at Draven, clearly stunned. “The proprietor there also identified you. Coordinating those times with the times your assistant reported you—somewhat gleefully, I might add—out of the office was simple.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Her demeanor had shifted back to shaken, distressed, and her words seemed oddly convincing. And she wasn’t denying her part in the ransom scheme any longer.
“You work for Josh Redstone,” she said to Draven then.
“You know that.”
“If I could just talk to him, make him see, make him understand….”
Josh went still. What could she possibly hope to gain by that?
“And what?” Draven asked the question for him. “You figure because he’s such a compassionate man, he’ll drop the charges against you?”
Her eyes darted away, and Josh realized that’s exactly the card she’d hoped to play.
Draven leaned over and put his hands flat on the table. The move put him face-to-face with her, and Josh knew this was it, that the woman was going to get a glimpse of the man who had gotten confessions out of some of the hardest men Josh had ever seen, just with the look in his eyes.
“Yes, I work for Redstone,” Draven said softly. “Do you know what that means?”
Diane was staring at him, pulling back slightly.
“It means I don’t have to abide by all the rules cops do. It means I don’t have to worry about making a case that stands up in court.” She had taken on the look of trapped rat on a sinking ship, watching the water rising. “It means I will do whatever it takes to protect Redstone, and Josh. And to pay back anyone who hurts us, or him.”
Captain Chen let out a low whistle; he’d moved slightly and gotten a glimpse of Draven’s face. And his eyes. “I do see what you mean,” he said to Josh.
“So all this compassion of Josh’s,” she said, sounding desperate. “It’s all phony, like I suspected all along.”
“Josh Redstone’s compassion is limitless,” Draven said, leaning in closer. “For those who deserve it. But you destroyed any chance you had at that.”
Draven f
licked a glance at the glass, and lifted a brow. Now, Josh thought, was as good a time as any. He glanced at Chen.
“She does have the right to face her accuser, does she not?” the man said blandly.
Josh smiled. Then he left the small observation room and, with a nod at the uniformed deputy outside, opened the door to the interrogation room and stepped inside.
Diane Odell stared at him in utter shock. But she recovered quickly, and gave him a perfectly crafted, tremulous smile.
“Josh! Thank you for coming. I want to explain, I know you’ll understand.”
He came forward as Draven straightened and backed away a couple of steps.
“It was Brad, I swear, it was. I had no idea what he was going to do.”
“I’ve seen all the evidence.”
“But you don’t understand. You don’t know what a horrible position I was in; I had to do something. You knew my grandfather, you even liked him.”
“I did.”
“I couldn’t let what he built just slip away.”
“It didn’t slip away. You threw it away,” Josh said just as Draven’s cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID, then stepped to the back of the room to take the call.
“You made big mistakes, Diane,” Josh said. “The second-biggest one was using incompetents to do your dirty work.”
“Rich is an idiot!” It was the first time she’d even acknowledged the man existed. Then, as if his words had only now registered, her brow furrowed. “Second biggest?”
Josh let everything he was feeling about this woman show in his face, let every memory of the long hours in the hospital flood him.
“Your first was doing something that got the woman I love nearly killed. For that, I will see you in prison until you’re as gray as your morals.”
She paled, looking as if she realized just what it meant to have the full power of Redstone aligned against you.
Draven came back. It was a moment before Josh realized he was focused on him, not Diane.
“That was St. John,” Draven said, indicating the phone. “He had a name for us.”
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