by Leah Braemel
“Yes, Momma.”
Despite Jake’s contrite tone, when he met Paige’s gaze, the heat in his eyes ensnared her, whisking her back to the too-brief moment he’d held her earlier. “Which bedroom’s going to be yours?”
What the hell? Ten minutes ago he was brushing her off, now he was trying to get into her pants? Make up your mind. “Trying to figure out how close I am to yours and if you’ll have to sneak past your mother’s room for a midnight panty raid, are you?”
A strangled sound brought her attention back to Cissy whose eyebrows arched high as her gaze flitted over them. Shoot, she’d totally forgotten Jake’s mother was standing right there.
“Jake doesn’t live here.” Was that amusement in Cissy’s voice? Yup, her lips were curling into a smile. “He’s got his own place down the road.”
“Yeah, a guy’s gotta have his space.” His forehead furrowed, he tilted his head and mouthed, “What did I do?”
Cissy had missed the byplay and walked away from them, her booted heels tapping on the white marble. “Let’s start with the suite at the far end, shall we?”
She quickened her pace to catch up to his mother as Cissy opened the door. “What do you think of this suite?”
A king-sized bed disappeared on one side of the huge room, a gigantic flat screen television over a stone fireplace on the opposite side. A couch and two chairs were nestled in front of the wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the valley, the last colors of the sunset reflecting in the lake. A patio door off the far wall lead to another large balcony, sheltered by the overhanging roof. “I must admit, Agnes’ architect did a wonderful job designing this place. And if you want some air the windows fold back—if it were the fall, you could fold them all the way back so the room is entirely open to the outside. Our— My room is the same. In the fall, I love to leave the windows open all night. Eddie used to say it was like sleeping outside but without the rocks digging in your back.” Grief flickered in her eyes, but she marshalled her expression and met Paige’s gaze. “In this heat, you’ll probably want to keep them closed.”
“Bathroom’s around here.” Jake disappeared around a wall at the far end of the room.
Aware of Cissy watching her, Paige followed him to discover a massive bathroom larger than her living room. Double sinks, separate shower with multiple heads and, a step up tub in front of a window with the same valley view. A wide comfy padded bench sat in front of a fireplace on the adjoining wall to the bedroom. The same fireplace, she realized.
“Oh. My. God. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. It’s a dream house, that’s for sure.” Her father would call it obscene. Ostentatious. Pretentious. Then launch into how the house was proof of how the Gradys had raped the land and abused its workers. All the while documenting the floor plans for his own use.
“Closet’s here.” Jake slid open a pocket door, revealing a walk in closet complete with an island filled with various sized drawers, and a revolving shoe rack in one corner.
“Holy Moly, whoever designed this must have been a shoe whore.” She hissed in a breath. Gees, Paige, could you get any more insulting?
“That would be me, I’m afraid.” Cissy smiled from the doorway, showing no sign of insult. “A girl can’t have too many shoes.”
“Or cowboy boots.” Jake grinned. “One day ask to see her collection. It has to be seen to be believed.”
“All right, I admit it. I like cowboy boots. They’re good for any event. Now how about we go down and fix some dinner? Oh and Jacob? Since Paige is our guest, I expect you to stay and be a good host.”
“Yes, Momma.” When he met Paige’s gaze, his eyes were warm, with a hint of amusement. “Does your father talk to you like you’re still eight?”
She shook her head. “No, he talks to me like I’m four.”
* * *
What the hell had he done to piss her off earlier? He replayed the events and came up blank. If you don’t ask, you’re not going to know so you can avoid doin’ whatever it was again. He ran his hand through his hair and lowered his voice so his mother couldn’t hear. “You mind letting me in on why you’re kissing me one minute and giving me the cold shoulder the next?”
“Me giving you the cold shoulder? You’re the one who treated me like I had lice back there.”
“I’m sorry I made you come back on your own. I should have accompanied you back to the house and then gone to look for my phone.”
“Sending me back so I could phone you was the sensible thing to do. Why waste a trip?”
“Sensible.” He snorted. “That’s not how most people describe me.”
“You don’t come across as being an impulsive type.”
What were the terms his last real girlfriend used? Broody was one. Absent-minded. With a tendency to shut everyone out. Especially when he was trying to get the song playing in his head down on paper.
“So are we good?”
She tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not sure. What was going on before you sent me here? I mean, first we were kissing—and you gotta admit, you were really into it. Then all of a sudden you’re giving me the cold shoulder. Then you come up here and you’re all horn dog again. Are you ashamed to be seen with me when we’re around your brother?”
“Half brother,” he corrected automatically. Why would she think he was ashamed to be seen...Oh, she’d thought... “No, you’ve got it all wrong. What happened down by the lake? When I pulled away? That wasn’t about you and me, that was about me and Gabe. I’m not giving you the cold shoulder so much as being pissed at myself.”
“Because you don’t want to cut him in for a share of the ranch?”
“No, I’m fine with that. It’s...” He rubbed his temples. Did he really have to go through all this again? “If you’re going to be living here, you’re going to be hearing the rumors. I guess it would be better if you hear it from me.”
He strode back into the bedroom, and paced the length twice. How much did she need to know? Where should he start?
The air in the room suddenly too hot, the walls too confining, he headed for the outside balcony overlooking the lake. Paige followed, and sank gracefully onto one of the loungers, pulling her feet up beneath her, reminding him of a cat settling in for the night.
“All right, here’s the deal. A couple years after they got married, my parents were having some difficulties. Momma moved out for a while, and while she was gone, Pop met this other woman and figured that his marriage was over and they...well, Gabe was conceived. Except my grandparents interfered and they paid the woman off to leave without telling Pop.”
“And obviously he and your mother got back together...” she added.
“Yeah. Then last year he discovered that he had this other kid. He tried to find him, but it’s difficult sometimes, right? Anyway, while he was looking, he decided to rewrite his will so if anything happened to him, the kid would get his proper share. So he wrote up how he wanted to change his will, and took the notes with him to see his lawyer. Except on the way, he got hit by a transport truck. So the original will the lawyer had never got changed.”
The memory of his mother’s frantic call over the radio echoed in his head. We have to get to the hospital. Your father’s hurt real bad, they want us there now. Except it had been too late.
He faced toward the lake again, his forearms rigid, his knuckles white against the railing. “When we went to the hospital, they gave me his belongings. Momma was in no shape to deal with it.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest, as if it might ease the ache. “I forgot about it until we got home. That’s when I discovered he’d copied out his old will and added a section that included splitting up the ranch three ways. I was trying to figure out how to tell her when Momma came in. Asked me what I was reading. So I gave it to her.”
“She hadn’t known about the affair before?”
“I’m not sure. I doubt it—if Pop didn’t know he had another kid until last year, I can’t see that Momma knew.”
“But your father told Cissy when he found out, right? That he was looking for this kid?”
“I don’t know. Momma’s been pretty closed mouthed about it all.” From the tension between them those last few months, he strongly suspected his mother had known about the search and disagreed with it.
“When she realized what Pop had written, Momma threw all his notes in the fire.” The sobs as she’d knelt in front of the fireplace, long after the paper had turned to ash still cut him down at the knees. He’d wanted to say something, do something to take away the pain but what could he do? “I didn’t know what to do. He’d signed it. Which I thought made it a legal will. And she’d just destroyed it.
“Afterward, Momma swore me to secrecy. Made me promise not to tell anyone, that if I did, she’d get charged with destroying a legal document or sued for fraud or something. So you see? I couldn’t say anything. Even after I discovered Gabe was my half-brother when Gram told us at the funeral home.”
The memory of the room, the scent of the funeral home clogged his nostrils as if he were there, the sight of his father’s dead body, looking as if he were simply sleeping filled his vision. He faced the lake once more, unwilling to let her see him blinking back the moisture gathering in his eyes. “Gabe had been my best friend. But I couldn’t tell him. Not without getting Momma into trouble. I couldn’t tell Ben either. At least then if anything did happen he could honestly answer that he didn’t know anything about it.” After taking a deep breath that burned his lungs, he turned to face her once more. “I hated lying to him, hated lying to Ben too. But I didn’t know what else I could do.”
“It wasn’t fair of your mother to put you in that position.”
“It’s what families do, isn’t it? Protect each other?” He looked up at her, his expression bleak. “Would you have told anyone if it meant your mother ended up arrested or sued?”
Her expression shuttered, giving him his answer—yes, she would have done the right thing. “They put you in a tough position. It must have been tough when Gabe discovered you’d been lying to him all this time.”
Ben too. “Yeah, I’ve apologized, but I don’t know if he’ll ever believe I wasn’t trying to cheat him out of his share. Or that I wasn’t ashamed of him being my half-brother. So you see, I didn’t intend to make you feel bad back there.”
“And I may have been overly sensitive. I’ve been told I have a tendency to jump to conclusions. A family trait I’m afraid.” She pulled her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “I have some issues of my own that make me sometimes question what others think of me. So when Gabe came up, and you pulled away, I thought you were embarrassed by me. That I wasn’t up to Grady standards.”
Grady standards? Wow, if she knew half the stories he’d been told about his ancestors she’d know the Gradys had very few standards. “So are we good?”
“Yeah.” She unfurled from the lounger, still reminding him of a cat. “Shall we go downstairs and help your mother?”
He took her hand, and raised her knuckles to her lips, enjoying the strength hidden in her. “A word of warning, most of the stuff Momma cooks is really good, but her dumplings aren’t edible.”
The warmth and laughter that had been missing earlier sprang into her eyes. Which made him wonder through the rest of the evening about her comment about issues of her own.
Chapter Four
Aware of the man sitting beside her, Paige grabbed a stack of newly printed reports and slid the top print-out in front of him. The movement stirred the scent of Irish Spring, a citrus shaving lotion and leather. An unbeatable combination in her mind. And other parts too. Paige was pretty sure he’d shaved specifically for her that morning. He wore the stereotypical plaid shirt today, the sleeves rolled up exposing his muscular forearms. Blue jeans worn so much they were white at the knees and stress points. They’d be soft too, she bet.
“Okay, here’s an example of things I’m looking for.” She pointed to the date beside Cissy’s initials. “This is March’s income report.” She placed another report beside it. “And here’s April’s. Do you notice anything?”
He scanned the list of numbers, tracing the column of figures with one finger. His hands were scarred and callused, proof of long hours of hard work. Not like the soft hands of a lot of the guys she’d dated in college. Guys who worried about accounts payable and subsidiary ledgers. Or had a regular manicure appointment like Bryce. She shivered at the thought of the rough skin of Jake’s hands cradling a breast, stroking her belly and a dozen other places.
“I don’t see anything missing.”
She blinked. Huh? Oh, right the list. “Look at the last entry number on March’s report. Four-nine-seven? Now look at the start of April’s report. See how it starts at five-oh-one? So there are three invoices missing. For who knows how much money. Unless your mother had the previous month’s report in front of her, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the missing invoices. It happens once more in November, but most of the months, the omissions are obvious. See, there are four numbers missing on February’s, five on May’s, seven on August’s.”
“I don’t get it. What does it mean?”
“It’s possible Bonnie deposited the check into her own account or pocketed the cash and never recorded the payment.”
He examined the three new reports she laid in front of him. “Seeing them lined up like this it’s so obvious. How come Momma wouldn’t have caught these?”
“You didn’t notice, right? Or perhaps if your mother noticed the missing invoices, your bookkeeper told her she’d had to void the receipts—messed them up or something—when she hadn’t. Most people who embezzle can come up with reasonable excuses.” Trying to ignore the soft brush of his hair on her shoulder, she slid the list in front of him. “I’ve made up a list of firms and people Bonnie wrote checks to this fiscal year. I need you to go through the list and check which companies are real, and circle which ones you don’t recognize.”
“Sounds easy enough.” He scooted his chair closer until his arm brushed hers, then reached across and grabbed a pen from the tin beside her monitor.
Her hand lifted without thought, her body wanting to touch him, to encourage him. To feel the soft brush of his arm hair against hers. To crawl onto his lap and pick up where they’d left off before Gabe had interrupted them.
She’d spent most of the night staring at the ceiling in her big-ass bed, wondering if Gabe would complain about her unprofessional behavior to Ben and if Ben would phone Reba and ask that they assign someone else. Or worse, find a different company altogether.
Damn it, she’d let her judgment fly out the window when she’d kissed Jake.
Using the pretense of adjusting her monitor, she shifted away from him. “If there are any names you don’t recognize, I’ll email a list to Ben.”
He leafed through the print out, his hand curled around at the wrist as he checked off names on the list. Huh, he was a lefty.
“Did your parents ever force you to be right handed?”
He hunched over as if embarrassed. “No, but my grandfather did. Said lefties weren’t dependable. That we were untrustworthy.”
“And your mother let him get away with it?” From what she’d seen of Cissy so far, she couldn’t imagine his mother letting anyone bully either of her kids.
He shrugged. “He and Momma used to argue about it a lot. But most of the times we were out in the fields or somewhere she couldn’t hear, and after a while I just gave in to shut him up, you know?”
Yeah, she knew. “Unreliable and flighty were my grandmother’s favorite adjectives. I wish my father would have argued with my grandmother. But she ruled him with
an iron fist.” Rather like he now ruled Paige.
His eyes widened. “You’re a lefty too?”
She nodded. “I’m sort of ambidextrous now...” out of necessity, “...but yes, I prefer to write left-handed.” Just not when her father was around.
“Cool. Oh that reminds me, Momma texted me to see if you’re going to be staying here on the weekend. She wants to know if you’ll be here for Sunday dinner. It’s just Ben and his girlfriend, me and Momma usually. Nothing fancy. But I think she’s trying to matchmake.”
Or maybe Cissy just liked having female companionship after being surrounded by so much testosterone for so many years. Even so, she bit down on the thrill that they’d consider inviting her to a family-only event. “I’d love to come.”
That lovely warm grin broadened. “Great.” He bent down and nuzzled her neck. “I’ll tell Momma to expect you.”
Was he sniffing her? “What are you doing?”
“Yesterday you smelled citrusy—like oranges or something. Today you smell...” he sniffed again, “...spicy. Ginger?”
“Cinnamon.” Come on body, you have bones in you, stop melting. “Yesterday was an orange and patchouli blend. Are you scent sensitive or something?” No, otherwise he wouldn’t have put on whatever that delicious shaving lotion, would he? Unless he bit the bullet to impress her.
He pulled away, revealing the mischievous look lighting his eyes. “Most women I know tend to stick with the same scent.”
No other man she’d dated had ever noticed she changed scents like most women changed shoes. A warm thrill trickled through her that he’d noticed. “I like to keep things interesting.”
When she realized she was leaning closer to him, close enough to encourage him to kiss her, she drew back and pointed to the list. “Now get back to work.”
He picked up the pen and bent over the list, grumbling, “Anyone ever tell you you’re a taskmaster?”
“Keep it up and I’ll break out my ruler.” Oh man, did that bring out some interesting fantasies.