I could almost hear his back creaking as he turned to lean toward Ian. He whispered so low I wasn’t certain I’d heard him right. “Not my dad . . . but . . . but his friend.”
Horror raced through my being, my mouth going dry when I realized this was no longer intimidation thrown around by Reed.
I could feel the blast of fury that shivered through the air. This protective anger unlike anything I’d experienced before.
It came from Ian in violent waves.
He edged forward, clearly trying to keep his cool when it was completely fading. “What friend?”
Thomas shook his head with unfound guilt. “I . . . I don’t know. I didn’t see him. They were in Dad’s office. The man . . . he said . . . he said bitches who don’t obey need to bleed.”
Shock jetted from my mouth, and I tried not to show my fear.
The way chills skated my flesh and nausea roiled in my stomach.
Ian’s eyes squeezed closed, and he clutched the pen, seeming to have to brace himself.
Remorsefully, Thomas looked back at me, his voice half apology, half defense. “I’m sorry for saying a bad word, Mom, but he asked.”
“You aren’t in trouble, Thomas. Not at all.”
Ian shocked me when he reached out and touched Thomas’s arm. Thomas jerked his attention that way. “You’re not in trouble. I promise. You can tell me anything, and you won’t get in trouble. You can trust me. Do you understand?”
Thomas gave a shaky nod.
“Can you remember anything else?” Ian prodded.
Shame drooped Thomas’s shoulders. “No . . . I . . . I should have gone right in there and punched that guy in the face. But I was too much of a coward, like my dad told me I am. God . . . I . . . sometimes I hate myself.”
Anger and sorrow.
They surged.
Washing me through.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
That bastard Reed.
I hated him.
Hated that he was manipulating our children every bit as much as he had manipulated me.
“You aren’t a coward, Thomas.” Ian’s voice resembled a growl, his words muttered as he inched closer to Thomas, as if he wanted them to sink inside. “Not even close. Don’t let anyone tell you that. Don’t let anyone make you think you’re less than you are. You’re showing how brave you are, right now, telling us all of this.”
Hesitation rolled from Ian, the man clearly trying to find his words, his tongue swiping across his bottom lip before he started to speak again. “The only thing confronting your father or his friend would accomplish would have been you getting hurt. Our main concern is your safety. The safety of your sisters. Okay? So, if you hear anything, you pretend like you didn’t, and then you come to me. Do you understand?”
Thomas nodded again. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Ian agreed, and I could sense the urgency that rattled him to the bones.
The man so powerful.
So fierce.
The intensity of it ricocheted from the walls.
It made me both afraid and comforted.
“I think that’s it for now. But if you think of anything else, need anything else, or are ever in trouble, I want you to call me. Can you memorize this number?”
Ian shifted forward, took out his wallet, and pulled out a business card. He handed it to my son.
Thomas stared at it, his mouth silently repeating the numbers over and over as he committed them to memory. “Got it.”
“Good boy.”
Thomas grinned in pride.
My heart almost shattered.
Thomas pushed to his feet and glanced over at me. “Can I have my tablet now?”
“Yes, just be ready for dinner in an hour.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He lumbered out the archway.
There was my grumbling boy.
I watched him until he disappeared, my eyes pinned on that spot, unable to look back at Ian who I knew was watching me.
I could feel it.
The heat searing across my flesh.
The way my heart tumbled and thrashed and sped.
Finally, the lure of it was too strong, and I looked his way.
Ian held me in the grips of his gaze. There was something so hard and angry there. Something so volatile and explosive. All of it for me. For my children.
Ian blinked as if he had to break himself from the trance we were under, and he pushed to his feet and flipped the cover of the notebook closed. He lifted it in the air. “Let’s hope Mack doesn’t see me with this.”
A giggle burst free, coming from the depths of the strain and butting against the absurdity of it all.
How had we ended up here?
“Don’t laugh,” he said, but there was something playing at the corner of his mouth.
“How can I not?”
He waved it around. “I better get out of here before she draws me into your story with a tiara and a pink cape.”
“No capes. Don’t you know anything?”
A twitch of a smile danced around his gorgeous mouth before he staunched it and tucked the notepad under his arm.
There he was.
So good under all that brash.
I followed him out of the kitchen and into the small foyer. Voices drifted in from the living room, my grandmother keeping the girls busy while Ian had asked Thomas questions.
Ian opened the door and stepped out into the cool, late afternoon, fall approaching quickly, the leaves on the trees spinning from green into gold.
Stepping out behind him, I hugged myself as another rush of gratitude prepared to gush from my lips.
I didn’t get a chance before I was gasping, shocked when Ian suddenly spun around, the powerful man backing me into the far corner of the stoop.
We were hidden behind a large shrub that crawled up the trellis and reached all the way to the eaves.
He kept coming toward me until my back thudded against the wall, and there was nothing I could do but breathe in the man.
Cinnamon and orange and delicious, mind-numbing sex.
I could almost taste him on my tongue.
My mouth watered, and my tummy tilted.
“You and I . . . we need to talk. Lay this all out. I need to know everything.”
I could barely nod. “I know.”
“I . . .” Ian curled his fist against the wall at the side of my head.
It was palpable.
The way violence skated across his skin.
“I hate him, Grace. I hate him for putting you through this. For putting that fear in your son’s eyes.” His voice dropped in menace. “I hate him that he ever touched you.”
He dipped in closer, his breath gliding across my face and sinking into my soul. “How fucked up is that? That I want to destroy this guy, take him out, because you once belonged to him?”
Emotion tangled around my heart. Tightening and tightening. “I thought you said this was just another case?”
Ian laughed a bitter sound. “I think you and I know better than that. You . . .”
His head angled to the side, the man searching for restraint. “You drive me insane. How’s it possible I let you get under my skin like this?”
“Do you think I don’t feel the same? I don’t even recognize myself around you.”
He dropped his forehead to mine. “I can’t have you.”
“I wish you could. Maybe in another life.”
Somberness bled out, his lips parting on a soft chuckle that rang with pain. “That’s too bad, considering we’re only given one.”
A tremble rippled between the two of us.
He inhaled against my temple. “You’re going to ruin me, Angel Girl.”
“And you’re going to save me.”
“That’s the intention.” He pulled back, gazing down at me with those penetrating eyes. “Do you trust me? Do you trust me to do this? If I fail you—”
I reached out and pressed two fingers to his lips before he could get it out. “The only thing I e
ver asked is that you take a chance on me. On us.”
He was still right there, in my space, the distance between us bare and alive. Blistering and boiling with that energy. He ran his nose up the curve of my jaw and to my ear.
Oh God.
This was so not good.
His lips moved against the sensitive flesh. “Just one thing . . . did you love him?”
He pulled back to take in the truth he knew he would find in my eyes.
“I did . . . once I did . . . before he ruined all the faith I had.”
He stepped back and nodded. “Tomorrow. Be in my office at nine. You tell me everything.”
“Okay.”
He reached out and grabbed just the tip of my two fingers. He swung our arms between us for a moment, so much there, electricity in his touch.
Fire and need.
The hardest part was feeling the undercurrent of sweetness that passed through it all.
“Tomorrow,” he told me.
Then he spun on his heel and bounded down the single step, leaving me standing there against the wall heaving for a breath.
I shook myself off and forced myself to go back inside.
I could hear Wheel of Fortune blaring from the family room, my grandmother’s favorite show. Of course, she wasn’t even in the room, instead moving around the kitchen as she started to prepare dinner.
Mallory’s voice was elevated over the television, the child singing about an affinity for big butts.
Apparently, our lives really had spun out of control.
I went into the kitchen where my grandmother had put Sophie into her high chair, my baby girl shoveling orange slices and dry Cheerios into her mouth. I kissed her head and then looked up at my grandmother, who stood facing away at the stove.
“Good meeting?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
She looked at me, one hundred percent appraising and just as accusing. “He’s awfully handsome.”
“Yes, he is, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what he’s doing for us.”
She arched a brow as she dumped fresh green beans in to boiling water. “Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
She chuckled under her breath. “I might be old, but I’m not senile.”
I moved across the kitchen and leaned against the counter.
“Where were you the other night?” she asked so casually. As if her question didn’t punch me in the gut.
God.
The woman was a bloodhound.
“Out.” I went for casual, too.
“With who?”
I shrugged and murmured, “No one special.”
She shook her head. “You think I didn’t notice you sneakin’ in here at four in the mornin’, hair all matted and wild, looking like you’d gone a round or two with the devil. What’s that they call it these days? Freshly fucked?”
Horrified, my eyes darted around the kitchen, praying my daughter hadn’t heard. “Gramma,” I hissed under my breath.
She shrugged, all nonchalant. “Oh, come on, Grace, you have three children, so I don’t think it’s necessary for me to sit you down and give you another talk about the birds and the bees, and there you are with your cheeks as red as a clown’s.”
My lips pursed. Maybe she was right. That was what it’d felt like with Ian. New and overwhelming and perfect.
Being touched that way.
Powerfully controlled and knowing I couldn’t be in safer arms.
Letting myself go.
Getting lost.
It was something I’d never experienced before.
My grandmother grabbed me by the chin and searched my face. “That’s what I thought. You did take a tumble with the devil.”
I’m the devil.
Ian’s warning spun through my mind. I wondered if my grandmother had heard it, too.
“Is that what you think he is? Because it sure seems to me as if he’s here to help us.”
“Or get back into your pants.”
“The exact opposite. Us never mentioning what happened the other night is one of his stipulations for helping.”
Still smiling, she shook her head. “All I’m saying is he is a man. Most men know exactly what it is that they want. And that one looks at you like he’s bound to eat you.”
I wished.
“Two of you were about to light up this room. That’s why I didn’t start dinner . . . couldn’t risk turning on the gas stove. Whole place might have blown.”
“Gramma.” It was all a scolding. “Besides, what were you doing up at four in the mornin’ when the kids weren’t here?”
“Might have been out taking me a tumble with one of those old devils myself.” She winked, stirring the pot.
I faked plugging my ears with my fingers. “Na-na-na-na.”
“Na-na-na-na,” Sophie mimicked, laughing manically when I looked her way.
I turned back to my grandmother. “You’re a horrible influence.”
“Nothing wrong with a little fun.” Something went soft about her, and she was watching me in a different way. “You know that, right? Especially with a man that looks like that.”
She was right back to waggling her brows.
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not going to happen. He’s my attorney. That’s it. It can’t go any farther than that. He’s doing this for me, and the last thing I want to do is get him into trouble. He laid out the rules, and we’re going to follow them.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you rules are made to be broken?”
“Says the woman who had me grounded for half my life.”
“You were a troublemaker.” Her voice was all a tease.
I huffed out a sound, words going dry. “I’m pretty sure I’ve broken enough rules.”
Gramma shook her head as she placed breaded chicken legs into sizzling oil in a frying pan. “You broke Reed’s overbearing rules because that’s what a mother does—anything it takes to protect her children.”
She was right.
And I’d gladly do it all over again.
Twenty-One
Ian
I jumped when my office door swung open without warning. Was it wrong I was disappointed that it wasn’t that gorgeous girl blazing through like she did a couple of mornings ago?
Especially with the irate expression Kenneth Millstrom was sporting.
Was I surprised?
Nope.
Irritated and worried and fucking itching like a motherfucker?
Hell yes.
I sat back in my chair and acted like it was any other day. “Good morning, sir.”
He stalked in to stand across from me at my desk. “Don’t good morning me.”
With a frown, I looked up at him, trying to play it off that I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re going to be. Care to tell me about the contract I saw you signed with one Grace Dearborne?”
I tugged at the tie around my neck and cleared my throat. “I’d be happy to. I was contacted a couple of days ago by the potential client. We spoke, and I felt hers was a case I could represent. One that deserved to be represented. One that will be an asset to our firm.”
He planted his palms on my desk. “An asset?”
I kept my chin lifted, refusing to cower. “Yes, an asset.”
“How the hell is going up against Reed Dearborne an asset?”
“You know the kind of recognition and attention a case like this will bring to our firm.”
“Yes, and I also know the kind of trouble it will bring. We’re talking about Reed Dearborne here. He has the entire state eating out of the palm of his hand. We go up against him, and we become the enemy.”
“He’s scum.” I tried to staunch the emotion that wanted to become a part of the word. It trembled with violence anyway.
“Maybe. But you and I both know that doesn’t matter. It’s all about perception. And his ex-wife is about to get dragged through
the mud. We take her on, and we’re going to get dragged right along with her.”
“She deserves to be represented, just like anyone else in this country. If we refuse her based simply on who her case is against, we become the bad guys. And you know I’m not afraid to get dirty.”
His eyes narrowed, searching my face.
The guy was a bulldog. There was a reason he was in the position he was. I could only pray he couldn’t sniff me out.
The fact I’d been lost in all that skin and that body and that sweet, broken heart.
“Do you know she came to me the night of the gala and asked me to represent her?” he demanded.
A hard swallow and a short shake of my head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Reed Dearborne showed up that night as well. Introduced himself. You know in this world, a shake of a hand is an alliance. You understand the position this puts me in?”
“When I win this case, you won’t care about that position. The win will speak for itself. You taught me from the beginning that we don’t climb to success by taking the easy route. The easy cases and easy wins. We get there by achieving the impossible. By beating every odd. This one might not be easy, but I assure you, in the end, it will be worth it.”
A win against Reed Dearborne would give the firm an allusion of power and strength.
Tenacity.
Exactly what men like Kenneth and I were made of.
He pushed off my desk. “You better hope you win. Because if you don’t? You’re done. This loss won’t be pinned on me.”
Throat growing dry, I gave a tight nod.
I was putting myself on the line.
My career.
My partnership.
My future.
Everything I’d worked for.
But I refused to consider it a risk.
I was going to win this case. Whatever it took. This win would be the last rung on the ladder to the top.
“I won’t let you down.”
I wouldn’t let myself down.
And for the love of everything that was right, I wouldn’t let Grace down.
He moved for the door and pulled it open, pausing to look back at me. “I hope not.”
He started out, only to fumble a step, and my heart went racing when I saw her. She was dressed in some kind of goddamned skirt suit, pink and cream and gold, the jacket fitted and the skirt not quite landing at her knees.
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