by Lucy Monroe
She noticed that he used the assassin name to refer to Lester in that role as well. It seemed right, because from what she could tell, Lester had been two different people…at least, he’d lived two very separate lives. “Find anything?”
“I’m not sure about the case yet. I’m going over it as I type it into a database that I will cross-reference with Collins’s report. But I did find something I thought might interest you.”
“What?”
“Arwan didn’t take every job. In fact, he was very particular about the jobs he did take. He refused to kill unless the danger to national security or the security of others could be proven to his satisfaction.”
“What about the private jobs?” she couldn’t help asking.
“There weren’t that many, but the reasons for the contracts being taken out were ones that Arwan believed justified his involvement.”
“Like what?” She desperately wanted to understand.
“Like a man who beat his wife to death and was doing a damn fine job on his children until their grandfather hired Arwan to take him out. There weren’t as many laws in place to protect domestic abuse victims back in the fifties as there are now. That grandfather saw no other way to protect his family, and Arwan agreed.”
She shouldn’t feel relief, but she did. The idea of vigilante justice wasn’t acceptable, and yet, how could she condemn a grandfather for wanting to protect his grandchildren from their violent father? A man who had already killed his wife…the man’s daughter.
Her eyes filled with tears and she averted her face so Brett wouldn’t see them. “You’re right. Knowing that helps a lot. Thank you.”
“If it helps so much, why won’t you look at me?”
She shrugged and surreptitiously wiped at her eyes. “No reason. I’m just watching the show.”
“And that’s more important that what I told you about Lester?” he asked.
“Arwan, you mean.”
“They were the same man.”
So much for her theory. “Well, yes, but…”
Brett sat down beside her and tugged on her chin until she was looking at him. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m relieved—I shouldn’t be, but I am.”
He shook his head. “I’m never going to understand you, am I?”
She shrugged. “Probably not. I don’t think our brains are wired the same way.”
“Does that bother you?” he asked with a probing intensity she didn’t understand.
“Not really. Josette informs me that it’s a man-woman thing.”
“And you think that’s all it is?”
“Yes.” She didn’t get the underlying significance of his question, but she could sense that he wanted something from her. Some kind of assurance, but she didn’t know about what. And since she didn’t know what it was, she didn’t know how to give it, either. “What is it, Brett? What do you need?”
His eyes went smoky, just that fast. “I always need you.”
As his mouth took possession of hers, she was sure that needy passion wasn’t what his odd looks had been about, but she didn’t hesitate to respond to him. He made her burn and she was only too happy to go up in flames.
Afterward, they ordered lunch and took a shower while they were waiting for it. He kept dropping the soap and then going searching for it, his mouth and his hands managing to caress every square inch of her in the process. She was leaning against the wall, panting after a shattering orgasm, when room service knocked on the suite’s door.
Brett did a quick dry-off and then wrapped the towel around his waist to saunter into the main living area. The man had no shame, but he sure was fun.
She finished her shower, threw on a tank top she usually wore under other things and a pair of shorts she never wore in public.
His wolf whistle of appreciation when she went into the living room made her grin and get all shivery at the same time. He was still wearing the towel while he set the food out and she did a little whistling of her own. That elicited retaliation in the nicest possible way, and she thought later it was a good thing her food had been cold already, because they sure didn’t get to it immediately.
After lunch, she called the professor who wore the same cologne as the guy who had attacked her. Once she knew its name, Brett insisted on running downtown and getting a bottle so he could smell it, too. He wanted to be on the alert.
After sniffing it and pronouncing it way too girlie for a real man, he recapped the fragrance bottle and tossed it in the bag.
When they got back to the hotel, she did the comparison of her list with Collins’s report while Brett finished entering the names from Arwan’s kill book in the database.
The phone rang a little later and Brett answered it while she saved Collins’s report with her additions in it. There had only been two, and she figured they were both useless, one being a doctor who had worked with Lester since he first became a resident of Belmont Manor and the other a small group of politicians who had visited the Manor a few weeks before. They hadn’t been there during her shift, but Queenie had told her about the visit. It had upset her. While they had not been Lester’s visitors per se, they had seen him.
She smiled as Brett hung up the phone. “Who was that?”
“Ethan. He identified the men in black at the funeral. They work for a director with a lot of clout in Washington.”
“Who is he?”
“Raymond Arthur. Ethan ran a background check on him. He’s a former military hard-ass with some questionable mission directives in his past.”
“What do you mean?”
“He isn’t known for showing scruples when it comes to getting the job done. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good portion of Arwan’s later hits were ordered by him.”
“Do you think he would have had Lester killed to keep the government’s secrets?”
Brett’s expression was grim. “It’s possible. This guy sounds like the type that would have thrived during the secrecy surrounding our efforts in the Cold War.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“We’re going to call on him while we are on the east coast, and we are going to force a meeting with his two agents. One of them has gray eyes and a medium build.”
“Like the man who tried to smother me with a pillow?”
“Yes. If they are responsible, there will be hell to pay from here to the next election.” The soldier who went into battle and knew how to do whatever it took to win gazed out from Brett’s glacier-cold blue gaze.
She could almost feel sorry for the government agents in question.
Claire’s tension grew with every mile the SUV traveled away from the small municipal airport where Brett had landed his plane.
His parents lived about an hour and a half southwest of Savannah, on the outskirts of a small town named for one of Brett’s ancestors. She couldn’t even imagine. What must it have been like growing up as a member of the town’s founding family? Brett wasn’t a conformer, and she wondered if it had been hard for him.
He didn’t talk a lot about his family…all she really knew was that they were definitely a bunch of overachievers and he loved them.
But the prospect of meeting the rest of his family had her stomach in knots. It shouldn’t and she knew it shouldn’t. She and Brett weren’t a couple. Not really. He hadn’t even said anything about his marriage proposal since leaving Lincoln City.
This was probably the one and only time she would ever meet these people. So, his family’s opinion of her should not matter, but it did. She smoothed down her white t-shirt and the khaki cargo pants she’d worn to travel, wishing her wardrobe stretched to a pair of real slacks.
Brett was silent, too, his usually charming exterior going grim the closer they got to his family home. Was he embarrassed to be bringing her?
“I can stay at a hotel, you know. I don’t have to horn in on your mother’s birthday weekend.”
His head jerked as if he’d been deep in th
ought. “What?”
“The bad guys aren’t going to know where I am. I can stay in a hotel.”
“You’re staying at the house.” That’s all he said and then he went back to brooding.
She watched the green scenery go by for another mile. “How close are we?”
Right then, he turned the car into a long drive lined with trees. “Very close.”
As he pulled the car to a stop behind a huge white mansion, she felt her heart speed up until it was going faster than the Road Runner fleeing Wile E. Coyote.
“Your parents live here?” she demanded in a voice that sounded as awed as she felt.
“Yes.”
“You grew up here?”
“Yes.” He got out of the car and came around to open her door, but frowned when she made no move to step out. “It’s just a house, Claire.”
“It looks like a scene from Gone With the Wind.” She and her parents had lived in a pretty nice house in West Portland prior to her dad losing his job, but it had been nothing like this.
“No chance. My mother and sisters think Scarlett O’Hara gave southern women a bad name.”
“Because she was so selfish?”
His brows rose, as if he hadn’t expected her response. “Yes.”
“Okay…so it’s not a movie set, but it is beautiful—and huge.” She sighed and stared at the house and its incredible surroundings, unable to imagine growing up in such a place…and then leaving it.
He smiled, his eyes narrowing with a speculative gleam. “If I promised to bring you here every holiday and two weeks in the summer for our kids to run riot, would you marry me?”
She gasped. “I thought…”
“What did you think?”
“That you’d forgotten about that ridiculous idea,” she blurted out. But the image he painted of their children—not just child, singular—playing in the green, green grass, or climbing one of the huge trees around the mansion, was totally tempting.
“I’m reserving my resources.”
“What do you mean?”
But he didn’t get a chance to answer, because two boys with dark hair and identical grins had come hurtling from the direction of the house and threw themselves against him with gleeful cries of, “Uncle Brett, Uncle Brett.”
A small, blond girl followed the boys, her shorter legs not letting her reach Brett as quickly as the other two. When she did, she stood back, sucking her thumb and watching the boys and Brett engage in an impromptu wrestling match.
Claire climbed from the car and closed the door, snagging the little girl’s attention. She smiled shyly around her thumb.
Claire dropped to her haunches so she and the child were at eye level. “Hi, my name is Claire. What’s yours?”
She popped her thumb out of her mouth. “Jenny.”
“That’s a pretty name. Is it short for Jennifer?”
Jenny nodded. “Those are my brothers, Derek and Kyle. They’re bigger than me,” she said confidingly.
“I see. They like to wrestle with their uncle, don’t they?”
“Uh-huh.” She looked at Claire for several seconds before asking, “Are you Uncle Brett’s girlfriend?”
“No…um…” Claire hoped her consternation did not show on her face. “I’m, uh…his friend. That’s all.”
Jenny didn’t say anything to that, but popped her thumb back into her mouth, her expression solemn.
“Hey, sugarplum.” Brett had come to stand with one boy hung under each arm like a bag of oats. “Where’s your mama?”
“She’s inside,” Jenny said around her thumb.
“I’m right here, actually.”
Claire surged to her feet and Brett released his hold on his nephews as they all turned at the sound of the melodic voice. His sister was a beautiful woman, dressed elegantly in a pale pink suit and heels, with a superficial resemblance to Brett that was unmistakable.
The woman put her hand out to Claire. “I’m Eleanor Adams-Stanton, this disreputable person’s older sister and these three adorable cherubs’ mother.”
Claire shook hands with her. “Claire Sharp. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“She said she’s not Uncle Brett’s girlfriend,” Jenny piped up. “Nana was wrong.”
Chapter 19
L ooking supremely unconcerned by his niece’s comment, Brett ruffled the girl’s golden curls. “Claire was being shy, sugarplum. She’s my girlfriend, all right.”
Eleanor’s brows rose. “Maybe she’s not shy so much as ashamed to claim you?”
The twinkle in her blue eyes so like Brett’s indicated the words had been meant to tease, but a tiny clenching of his jaw said that he’d taken them to heart.
Claire moved a step closer to Brett. “Of course I’m not ashamed to claim him.”
“But you said you wasn’t his girlfriend,” Jenny repeated.
“Weren’t,” her mother corrected with a gentle pat on her daughter’s shoulder.
“It’s all pretty new and it’s not exactly official,” Claire said by way of an explanation.
“What does that mean?” one of the boys asked. “How do you get an official girlfriend, Uncle Brett?”
“It means, you hooligan, that I’m still working on convincing her to marry me. Once I do, it will be as official as it gets.”
His sister’s eyes widened in shock, and then a grin at odds with her elegant demeanor spread across her face. “Mama is going to be thrilled.”
“Do you have to wanna marry a girl for her to be your girlfriend?” the other boy—she thought it was Kyle—demanded.
“No, but I’m going to marry Claire and she is my girlfriend. She’s just not used to it yet.”
“Oh.” The young boy looked at Claire. “I have a girlfriend, but I don’t wanna marry her.”
Claire was going to kill Brett, but thought she’d wait until there were no children around to witness the deed.
She smiled at Kyle. “That’s probably best. You’ve got years before you should start thinking about marriage.”
“My daddy says the same thing, but he likes being married to my mama a lot, so I don’t know.”
Eleanor laughed, looking pleased by her son’s remark, and then took Claire’s arm. “Come along. Mama is dying to meet the first woman Brett has ever brought home to the family.”
First woman? He hadn’t told her he’d never brought another woman home to the family. No wonder his sister was looking so much like the cat that ate the canary.
Claire shot him a hot glare over her shoulder.
He just shrugged, a smile creasing his face in sexy lines. Then he mouthed, I warned you.
And he had, but he hadn’t warned her he intended to tell his family he wanted to marry her. Being the first woman he brought home would have been bad enough, but that just cinched it. Brett had put her in an untenable position. She supposed that’s what he’d meant by saving his resources.
He planned to turn the women in his family loose on her and from her brief glimpse of Eleanor, that was a scary proposition. The next time Claire got Brett alone, she was going to make his ears ring.
Jenny’s tiny hand slipped into hers and squeezed. “I like you. You’d make a nice auntie.”
Claire felt a funny little flip in her heart. She smiled down at Jenny. “I like you, too.”
But she went speechless when they walked into the mansion. Even coming in through the back hall was impressive. The moldings were solid wood and carved from a time when workmanship really meant something. As they filed into the spacious entry hall, her breath caught. Its huge dimensions were eclipsed by the grandeur of the staircase and artwork gracing the walls.
“Oh, my.”
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Eleanor asked without so much pride as a practical appreciation for the beauty.
“Yes.”
“It’s hard to believe Brett left all this to live in an army barracks, and who knows what other forsaken places, when he was eighteen.”
“Sometimes a person’s dreams require sacrificing things that matter.”
He was suddenly beside her, his arm going around her waist, the “hooligans,” as he called them, tearing off ahead to enter a room off the opposite side of the cavernous entryway.
“You two stop running right this instant,” their mother called in a stern voice, but was overridden by a southern drawl so like Brett’s that Claire sucked in a shocked breath.
“Leave them be, Ellie. They’re too full of energy to move in slow motion all of the time.” A man who looked as she imagined Brett would in twenty years, with some silver in his blond hair and a few laugh wrinkles around his eyes, stepped out of the room.
“I don’t recall you ever allowing me to run in the house,” Eleanor replied wryly.
“Certain privileges are reserved for grandparenthood,” the man who had to be Brett’s father said, and then turned to her. “You must be Claire.”
“Yes.”
They shook hands, his grip firm but not crushing. “Loren. I would like to say that my son has told us a great deal about you,” he said as he led her into the living room, “but he’s been typically closemouthed, and now you will have to endure a family’s curiosity as we satisfy ourselves about you.”
Were they going to give her the third degree? That scenario was the last one she wanted contemplate. “I—”
“You make it sound like we’re going to cross-examine her, and I realize being a lawyer and then judge for so many years is hard to overcome, but do try to be civilized. You’re scaring the poor dear to death. Can’t you see how tense she’s gotten?” This came from a woman sitting on a low sofa, Kyle and Derek on either side of her.
She was every bit as elegant and beautiful as Brett’s sister, but her eyes and hair were dark and she was probably a good three inches shorter than her daughter. Though she looked much too young to have given birth to either Eleanor or Brett.
She shook her head at her husband. “Sometimes I wonder where you hide that charm that convinced me to marry you.”
“Brett’s must have gone missing, too. He hasn’t been able to convince Claire to marry him at all and he’s looking for us to help.”