Exposing the Heiress

by Jennifer Apodaca

  She leaned over the arm of her chair, drawn to him, to the force of Hunt and his words. “What?”

  “You didn’t care either. You let a man treat you that way, and that’s not okay, Lyssie.”

  Confusion tangled with the power of his statement. Old guilt reminded her that she’d been selfish too many times with terrible consequences. “I let him because I wanted a baby, and I wanted it to be right this time. Married, secure, the child loved and shielded. I thought Nate wanted that too. Instead, I just made another mistake, another bad decision that led to painful consequences.” It took an effort to meet his scrutiny.

  “What other bad decisions are you talking about?”

  “I had unprotected sex and got pregnant.” The memories pressed in on her, stealing her breath. Getting up, she reached for her plate.

  Hunt caught her wrist in a gentle grip. “One mistake. We all make them.”

  He needed to know the truth. “Maybe, but not everyone’s mistakes end in a crash that kills their mother.” She tugged her wrist free and headed inside.

  …

  Hunt gripped the arms of the chair to keep himself from going after her. Shit. All these years, she’d been carrying that? He narrowed his eyes on the fire, his instincts screaming. He’d wondered how her stepfather, and later her fiancé, controlled her. Now it made a sick kind of sense.

  The front door opened and Lyssie returned, stopping by her chair. Her eyes brimmed with uncertainty and pain, then firmed into determination. “Eli wasn’t a mistake. I mean getting pregnant was careless and foolish, but a child is not a mistake.” She pivoted on her bare foot and took a step.

  Goddamn. That right there grabbed him by the throat. She cared so much for the baby she gave up and he respected that. He shot up and caught her hand. “Lyssie, don’t go.” He eased her down into the chair, then settled into his own.

  She faced him. “I couldn’t let you believe I think he’s a mistake.”

  “But it’s okay if I believe your actions led to your mother’s death?”

  She pulled her knees up and locked her arms around her legs. “I never told anyone else this, not even the police, but that night, I told my mom I was pregnant. That’s why the two of us were at the restaurant. I thought if we were out at dinner, she’d take the news better.” She tilted her head back, gazing up. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I never saw that look on her face before. Such disappointment. Then she got a migraine and was really sick.”

  Hunt stayed quiet, just letting her talk.

  “We left, but reporters swarmed us as we walked out of the restaurant. They’d heard that Scott had broken up with me to go on tour with his band. They wanted to know how it felt to be dumped by him. My mom tried to pull me back inside to call our bodyguard to come get us instead, but I insisted I could drive us home.” She lowered her chin to her knees. “Parker told me I should have listened to my mother. He could barely look at me that first year after the accident. The truth is, when Carmen took me away to Arizona, he was relieved.”

  That bastard had twisted Alyssa’s misgivings, those what ifs everyone asks themselves after a tragedy, into deep remorse then used that to control her. What she’d needed was love and maybe some counseling to help her cope. Hunt had seen the police report—it was shown by the media every year on the anniversary of Jenna Brook’s death. The accident had been the result of a torrential downpour on a treacherous road. Of course, the press highlighted the part about an inexperienced driver—Alyssa—being stated as a contributing factor. Anger drove spikes into his gut. “You didn’t know what would happen. You can’t blame yourself when you didn’t know.”

  Alyssa shivered. “By the time we got in the car, Mom was even sicker.” She shut her eyes in memory. “Why didn’t I check?”

  Self-hatred weighed down her words. “Check what?”

  She wrapped her arms tighter. “Her seat belt. I put mine on, but never checked hers. She hadn’t put it on. When we hit the tree, she was thrown in the car and the head trauma killed her.”

  That had been in the accident report too, but it was her guilt and pain that roused his compulsion to comfort her. Don’t do it. But his need outweighed common sense. Getting up, he caught her hands and pulled her to her feet.

  She tilted her head up. “What?”

  The loneliness mixed with remorse in her eyes cut him with an all too familiar knife. His self-preservation warned, Don’t do this. Keep your distance, but he couldn’t fight the need to care for her. “You’re cold and upset, and I don’t like it. Come here.” He sat and tugged her down onto his lap. She filled his arms with a weight that stirred a longing for more. So much more. Things he couldn’t have.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yeah, I do.” No one had protected her. Hunt had left the day after her mother’s funeral to go back to duty. His mom and Erin went home to their lives and they left her at the mercy of her stepfather.

  She’d been young, stricken with guilt and grief, and pregnant. She’d needed someone to stand for her until she was strong enough to stand for herself. And he’d had the gall, the utter nerve, to tell her that it wasn’t okay that she’d let her ex not care for her pleasure. No one had taught her that she was worthy and that was changing now. This wasn’t about sex, it was about showing her that she was a woman of worth.

  “Why?”

  Considering that, he asked, “Remember that first day your mom brought you here for the summer? You were six, I think, and carrying that stuffed dog.”

  Her eyes softened. “My dad gave him to me. After he died, I carried him everywhere for a year.” A smile ghosted her lips. “I still have him.”

  That sounded like her, so sentimental. “I’d broken my arm the day before you got here. The plan had been for me to go on my dad’s rock sculpting job to Australia for a few weeks but I couldn’t go with a broken arm. I was so pissed.”

  Alyssa frowned. “You were crying in bed that night.”

  Hunt rolled his eyes. “Men don’t cry.”

  “You weren’t a man, you were a sad boy. You wanted to go with your father.”

  He stroked her silky hair. “You came in and gave me your dog, told me he helped you when you missed your daddy.” He would never forget that little girl comforting him. Her dad had died, but she was trying to comfort him because he missed out on a trip. Even then, Lyssie was special.

  “It made sense to me at the time.”

  Hunt tugged her head back, looking into her eyes. “And this, holding you and being your friend when you need one, makes sense to me now.”

  She curled into him, her warmth pushing back years of loneliness, her sunshine and vanilla scent chasing out the stench of death that clung to him.

  She stirred in him a longing to be a man capable of love, but that part of him had died out in the deserts of the Middle East. What was left was a man with a switch—when triggered, Hunt went right into sniper mode. A cold hard killer.

  …

  The nightmares woke him. Hunt didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep and got up, dragging on a pair of sweats. In the hallway, he paused by the closed door of Lyssie’s room. Tonight she’d let him pull her into his lap. But if she knew the things he’d done, she’d never have let him touch her.

  Turning away, he headed through the family room, out the sliding glass door, and strode through the gloom of night until he reached the locked studio. He punched in the code to unlock the doors. Once inside, Hunt flipped a switch, and the big space flooded in light, revealing his dark side.

  This was what he’d become.

  The big shelving unit held dozens of sculptures of war and death. It was the only way he knew to rid himself of the nightmares, and the emotions that broke through his control to boil up in his sleep. For his years as a sniper, he’d disconnected, gone cold. He hadn’t looked at his targets as human, but as a job he’d had to do. One that would safeguard hundreds and thousands of lives.

  That detachment came home with him
and at first he couldn’t sculpt at all. Then he’d had the piss-ass luck to be in the mall when a shooter erupted into gunfire. Hunt had been armed and took out the gunman to stop the carnage. Once that was over, his nightmares started. Then all he could sculpt was the death and suffering lining his shelves in the studio.

  Shaping, carving and molding his nightmares into three-dimensional clay shapes wrung him out, forcing him to feel every bit of shock, revulsion, regret, fear… All of it that he’d refused to feel at the time he’d done the job. But there was one memory he’d never sculpt, his last mission as a Marine sniper. Hunt had been sent to track another sniper that had completely snapped and started killing. Rand Oliver was highly trained and exceedingly dangerous.

  And he’d also once been a friend.

  The mission had sucked. Hunt had hoped to get Rand to surrender. Instead, it’d come down to a shootout where only one of them survived.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday morning, Hunt glanced at the laptop on the kitchen island where Sienna stared back via Skype. “No problems on Griff’s end?”

  “No. His team has arrived, everything is in place. If anyone is watching the kid, they’ll catch them. Do you really think this guy would be dumb enough to go after a kid?”

  “He went to the trouble of tracking the kid down and getting photos. I think he’s determined to get Lyssie by whatever means it takes.” No way would he let that happen.

  “Who?”

  Huh? Oh. “Alyssa. It’s an old nickname. Now that Alyssa and the kid are safe, start an investigation on Nate Madden. Everything you can find on him. From what Alyssa overheard, Madden approached her stepfather with this scheme. Her stepfather isn’t the threat.” Hunt knew the man vaguely; he’d been the kind of man who tried to own his wife’s success. No, Alyssa could handle Parker. It was Nate that caused that tingle on the back of Hunt’s neck. “Madden has invested serious time and effort into Alyssa and he’s not going away easy.”

  “On it.” Sienna took off her glasses. “I can’t believe you knew Alyssa Brooks and never said anything.”

  “It was a long time ago, Si.” He’d thought Lyssie had forgotten him and his family.

  “And yet you took her to your home.”

  “Don’t read anything into that.”

  “Too late. Gotta go.” She disconnected.

  Hunt shut the laptop and fought a groan. Sienna had lost her husband, Trace, in the line of duty. Now she filled the void by taking care of all of them—her husband’s friends. If she got it in her head that he and Lyssie should be together…

  Hell no. Hunt wasn’t going down that road again. He’d tried, seriously tried, when he returned from the Middle East, absolutely determined to return to civilian life and be normal, but he wasn’t and never would be again. All he had to do was recall the mall shooting six weeks after he’d come home. Desperate for normalcy, he began dating Rachel Anderson, who was with him when the mall shooting broke out.

  Her horrified voice after it was over rang in his head. I can’t do this. You just killed so easily. One second we were walking along laughing, then the shooting started and you shoved me into a rack of clothes. I didn’t even know you had that gun on you. Then you killed that man and didn’t even flinch. Like it was nothing.

  Rachel had looked at him like he was an unfeeling monster. When he went into sniper mode, that’s exactly what he was. It’s what he’d been trained to be and he’d been damn good at it, maybe the best.

  He hadn’t dated again after that.

  Frustration ate at him. Even sculpting hadn’t helped last night. The piece, the one that had been haunting his dreams lately, wouldn’t come together. Instead, he’d been thinking about Lyssie, the way it felt to hold her, how good she smelled.

  Face it, you got the hots for her. Lyssie was off-limits sexually. He’d brought her there to help her, not seduce her. What he needed to do was sculpt for a while. Last night had been an aberration. Once he got his hands on the cool clay, the drive, that wild thumping obsession to give face to his nightmares, bring them into three-dimensional focus and lock them away in his studio, would manifest. His hands tingled with the urge to feel and shape the clay.

  Relieved, he headed out the doors into the bright sunlight. Squinting, he scanned over the built-in barbecue with the stone bar surround and stools, the heavy, round wrought iron table, the pool and…Well hell.

  Alyssa sat on a lounger. His gaze traveled down her face and slender neck to a strappy white top that left a wedge of her belly bare. A laptop rested on her thighs, and from there her long, bare legs stretched out in sinful temptation.

  His blood thumped with a painful shot of pure want, the memory of her scent, the feel of her warm body in his arms. He jerked his attention to the rectangular pool sparkling in the sun. Get control. Lyssie’s not a hookup, and you can’t give her more than that.

  The studio. It was right there, maybe forty feet past Lyssie. He’d say a quick hi, then lock himself in the studio, but when he returned his gaze to her, he saw her chewing on a thumbnail. Against his will, his lips curved into a smile. She’d always done that when she was absorbed or concentrating. What had her so engrossed? Curiosity propelled him into striding over to her. Once there, he couldn’t help taking another eye-journey over that top with the crisscrossing straps, then down her belly where his attention caught on a small stylized heart tattoo dipping into her shorts between her belly button and right hip bone. A delicate ruby tear was inked in the center of the tat. His hands twitched with the temptation to touch it.

  “You’re staring.” She tilted her head up from the screen.

  He forced his attention to her face. “You have a tattoo.”

  “Wow, no wonder you’re a bodyguard. You don’t miss a thing.”

  He fought a grin. “Careful, smart-mouth girl. The heater’s on in the pool.” He dragged a chair close to her, dropped onto it and nodded toward her computer. “You were concentrating pretty hard. What are you doing?”

  She closed the laptop. “Nothing.”

  “Liar. You were totally absorbed. Spill it.”

  “Just playing with some pictures and video. It’s not important.”

  Given the way she had her hand resting on the laptop in a protective gesture, he thought it was very important. “Can I look?”

  “There’s nothing to see.” She tugged the laptop until the edge pressed into her stomach. “It’s just a hobby.”

  “You used to show me your pictures.”

  She glanced right toward the studio then back to him. “You used to show me your sculptures.”

  Crap, she had him there. “Stalemate.”

  She flashed him her real grin, one side of her mouth tilting up more than the other. “You can always give in and let me see what you’re working on at two a.m.”

  “Were you spying on me?”

  “I heard you get up and looked out my bedroom window. I saw the light on in the studio. Do you sculpt a lot at night?”

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “If I wake up.” Time to change the subject. “I just talked to Sienna. She’s starting the background check on Nate.”

  Shoving her laptop aside, she pivoted to face him and dropped her bare feet to the cement. Glancing at her phone by her thigh, she added, “He’s been calling for the last hour. I send it to voicemail.”

  “Have you listened to his message?”

  “He says, ‘Parker forwarded me your resignation. One chance, Alyssa. Call me before I’m forced to keep my word.’” She twisted her fingers. “He’s in Europe, he can’t do anything, right?”

  Her worry rubbed him like coarse sandpaper. “Not to Eli or you. You’re both safe.” Hunt would repeat that as many times as it took. “But to keep you both that way, we need to treat Madden as dangerous, and find a way to stop him. That may mean at some point it comes out that you gave birth to Eli.”

  She lifted her head, shoving up her sunglasses. “I’m not going back and cav
ing in to Nate. I know I’ve been weak, but this? No. I won’t be threatened, bullied, and blackmailed, and I won’t let him threaten Eli or his family.”

  Weak? What he saw was a scared woman who took steps to protect herself and the kid she cared about. No one else had been there to protect her, but now? She had him. For protection. Not to push her back in that chair and kiss her… Yeah, time to get to work. “Tell me what you know about Madden.”

  She shifted her gaze to the pool. “He grew up in L.A. Only kid of a single mom, Lorelei Madden. She was a small-time actress, got pregnant and never got another role. I think she ended up becoming a hairdresser.”

  “Father?”

  “Nate didn’t know who he was. He grew up without much, and put himself through college and law school. He worked for Clout Law Group until Parker hired him.”

  “Have you met his mom?”

  “She died four years ago.”

  A prickle zinged down his spine. Madden had told Alyssa in that elevator I eliminate problems. Had his mother become a problem? “How did she die?”

  “Accident. She fell down the stairs.” Her shoulders jacked up as she sucked in a quick breath. “Nate didn’t kill her if that’s what you’re thinking. He didn’t even live there, but found her in the morning when he went over.” Alyssa scrunched her nose. “She sounded kind of bitter from Nate’s description. Thought she should have been this great actress but getting pregnant screwed it up for her. She’d had a couple small roles in forgettable TV shows, and one tiny role in a horror film. She never got her big break. In L.A., that’s as common as smog.”

  “I’ll have Sienna contact the police department that was called out to the scene of her accident. Get any reports we can.”

  She took a deep breath. “It’s still hard to believe. A few days ago I was going to marry him, and now we’re wondering if he killed his mother.”