Susie bought the studio and all its equipment off of me, surprising me with her ability and interest. But she was excited, convinced that she could make some good movies with it. I was thrilled that the production staff would have someone still paying the bills.
The company I’d contracted with for three movies wasn’t thrilled that we’d welshed on the final movie in the series. But they accepted compensation that ate up a nice chunk of my savings. But with Susie buying the business, I was able to put some of that back.
I thought I might go back to school while I decided what to do with my life. We sold the house—apparently, living next door to a crazy person and being shot at in the upstairs hallway made a house quite sought after—and bought a condo in an exclusive community about five miles away. It was actually closer to Olivia’s school, so that worked out well.
And then, last week, I got an offer from a book publisher. They wanted me to write a book about what I’d gone through with Beth. They’d even offered me a huge advance. The press had a field day with the whole thing. I think they were disappointed when she took a plea deal from the prosecutor. She would be incarcerated in a mental health facility until a doctor deemed her well enough to be placed in a federal penitentiary where she would serve out what remained of her fifteen-year sentence. The publishers wanted my view of the whole thing.
I was seriously considering it.
Life was pretty good. Olivia and I had been on our own again. We’d be fine, doing it again.
The principal came out and congratulated the students on their first concert of the year. She dismissed the students, and they suddenly flooded the auditorium, laughter and chatter drowning out all other sounds.
I stepped out into the aisle and watched for my child. She finally appeared at the corner of the stage, rising up on her tiptoes to look out over the audience. My stomach knotted. She was looking for Vincent.
He’s not here.
But then she smiled widely and jumped down off of the stage, racing up the center aisle. I turned and…
It wasn’t right that he should look so good. He was smiling, and he seemed darker, like he’d been hanging out at the beach. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but he looked so amazing that it physically hurt to look at him.
I wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.
There were slowly healing cuts on my face that I’d tried to cover with makeup, but they somehow still managed to reveal themselves. And my body was stiff, my back still healing from the small pellets that had peppered my skin there. I was wearing my hair down and I had on a tasteful black dress with a sweetheart bodice and cap sleeves. Yet, I felt like I could have done better if I’d known he was going to be here.
I watched Vincent scoop Olivia up into his arms, laughing as she threw her arms around her neck. He spoke to her for a minute, then his eyes moved around the auditorium, eventually coming to rest on me. I smoothed my hands over my skirt, feeling like a fool for standing there like that.
I took a deep breath and made my way up the aisle to where they were standing.
“Hey,” he said softly, a cocky smile on his full lips.
I inclined my head slightly.
“I told you he would come,” Olivia announced.
“You did.”
“We’re here, too!”
Cole came around Vincent and tickled Olivia’s ribs. She laughed, throwing herself at him so that he nearly fell over as he caught her. And then Amber came up behind me, PJ in her arms.
“Hi, Quinn,” she said. “How are you?”
“Good.”
But I didn’t feel good. I felt confused. What was he doing here?
“You were brilliant,” Cole said to Olivia. “Just perfect.”
“I was?”
“You were. And beautiful!”
“We were late,” Amber said. “Or else we would have come sit with you.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“So where does the star want to eat? We promised you dinner, didn’t we?”
Olivia laughed, and somehow I found myself being pushed out of the auditorium and promising to have dinner with Cole and Amber and PJ and Vincent.
Yay. Vincent hadn’t said two words to me.
***
I found myself watching his hands, watching the way he kept nervously playing with the stem of his water glass. And then he’d pick up his fork, but put it right back down—as if he couldn’t stand the idea of eating. And then he’d be playing with the water glass again, acting like a fidgety little boy who didn’t know what to do with his hands.
Whenever I dared to look at his face, he would be watching me already, as if he knew when I was going to look up. There was something about the expression in his eyes, but I couldn’t…I wouldn’t.
“Vincent just got back from California,” Cole announced.
“Really?” Olivia asked, bouncing on her chair. “Why?”
“My family lives in Los Angeles.”
“The place where they make the real movies?”
“The one and only.”
“Cool.” Olivia glanced at me. “Mommy doesn’t make movies anymore.”
The table fell silent, Cole and Amber exchanging a glance. But Vincent’s eyes never left mine.
“Why?”
I shrugged. “It was time to retire.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. Go back to school, maybe.”
His eyes moved slowly over my face, dipping down over my throat before coming back to my face again.
“Good.”
It hurt. Sitting there, pretending to have a normal conversation…it hurt.
I got up and walked to the bathroom, just barely keeping myself from running. I needed a second. I ran cold water over my hands, then splashed my face, remembering too late the makeup I’d so carefully applied hours ago.
I couldn’t believe he was here. I couldn’t believe that he was looking at me like that and I couldn’t pretend that it didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t believe that he’d just walked out of my life and never bothered to come to the hospital to make sure I was all right.
I grabbed some paper towels and patted my face. As I turned to toss the towels, I found myself staring into his familiar eyes.
“What are you doing? This is the ladies’ room!”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Now? It’s been weeks!”
“I know. I went to California to put my past to rest. I thought I owed you that much.”
“Me?”
“And myself. I needed to do it for myself, too.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it’s done.”
“Good.”
I started to move around him, but he grabbed my arm and pushed me back, trapping me against the sink.
“I miss you.”
My eyebrows rose. “You could have fooled me. I didn’t get a visit, a phone call. Not even a letter.”
“I know. Megan wanted me to stay away from you. But you’re not our client anymore.”
“No.”
“So…can I take you to dinner sometime?”
I laughed. “You want to take me on a date?”
“I want to do so many things with you,” he said, running his hand slowly over my face. “But we can start with a date.”
“Yeah? What makes you think I want to do that?”
“I think you do. I think you kind of like me.”
“Do I?”
He touched my face again, his thumb brushing my bottom lip. “You were worried about me. Beth was there to do awful things and all you could think about was me. You had debris and gun pellets in your back—and you were searching me for injuries.”
“Yeah, well…”
“You love me, don’t you?”
I looked up sharply, surprised at the use of the “L” word.
He smiled, his thumb brushing over my bottom lip again.
“We’ll take it slow, but we’re going to take this thing as far as it will go.”
“And if it dies out a month or two from now?”
“At least we tried. But I don’t think that’ll happen.”
I pressed my forehead to his chest for a long minute.
“I’m not really much of a catch. I’m broken.”
“So am I.”
“Cole doesn’t approve of me. He’s afraid I’ll break your heart.”
“It’s my heart.”
I looked up at him. “And there’s Olivia.”
“She loves me, too. Like mother, like daughter.”
I groaned. “You throw that word around a lot.”
“Get used to it. You’ll hear it a lot from now on.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He brushed his lips over my forehead. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know me. It’s been, what, a month? That’s not long enough to know something like that.”
“Maybe. But I think it is.”
He lifted my chin and kissed me roughly. And I…I melted into him, so relieved to have him back that I couldn’t begin to express the pleasure that danced though my body at his touch. He was so familiar already. Was it possible? Could I trust what he said to me? Could I trust him?
Something told me I could. He did, after all, save my life.
Temporary. That was one word I was ready to remove from my vocabulary.
~~~
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GRAY WOLF SECURITY SERIES
Prologue
Kate
The bank was locked up for the night. I curled up in my office chair, my shoes kicked off, and went over the last few applications of the day. It never failed to fascinate me, the millions of reasons why people wanted a loan. Some of the applications told a better story than the bestselling novels piled up on my bedside table waiting to be read. Like this one from an older man whose wife died six months ago. I guess he was feeling a new sense of freedom because now he wanted a small business loan to start a small social club for “the social-security-aged youth” of his community. It made me chuckle, some of the colorful ways in which he made his case.
Finally done, I shut down my computer and straightened the surface of my desk. Mrs. Talbot, my manager, was a hard ass about the way our desks looked.
A bank is not the place to leave your panties hanging off the back of a chair.
That was her favorite mantra. Made me wonder what her house looked like. Probably so sterile she could eat off the floor. Either that, or she was a hoarder like on that television show. Boxes and papers and paintings and clothing stacked all over the place.
I slid my shoes back on and grabbed my bag, tugging it over my shoulder. Joe, the security guard—they were all named Joe, weren’t they?—pushed open the door.
“Have a good night, Miss Thompson.”
“You, too, Joe.”
I stepped out onto the front steps of the bank and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath of the cool, salty air. Santa Monica in January. There was a little chill to the air tonight. Nothing that would have my teeth chattering before I could get to my car though.
I made my way to the sidewalk, my thoughts still on that old man who wanted funding to open what would essentially be a brothel for older gentlemen, again chuckling under my breath. Then I turned the corner and the chuckles died.
What was going on? Something wasn’t right.
I hesitated before stepping into the dark alley where the employee parking lot sat. There was just something not right here. I thought about going back, asking Joe to walk me to my car. He’d offered often enough that I knew he’d be more than happy to walk me. And then there was movement, deep in the back of the lot, near where my car was, and…
I ran.
Chapter 1
At the Compound
The office for Gray Wolf Security was actually at the home compound of Ashford Grayson. He bought the property with the company in mind after spending nearly a year wandering the county aimlessly, trying to figure out what to do with himself after he left the military—the Green Berets to be exact. He loved being a soldier. Adjusting to civilian life again was…difficult.
The security firm was born out of not only a need to find a purpose for himself, but to find a purpose for a few soldiers—like him—who also needed a direction. A purpose. Therefore, it was his business plan to hire men and women like himself, retired soldiers looking for something stateside that would have some of the adrenaline of the military without so many of the risks. A few risks. Sometimes more than even he could anticipate. But nowhere near what they’d risked in their day-to-day lives in Afghanistan and Iraq and Korea and wherever else they served.
The main house, a rambling cabin-like structure, served as the office space for the company—with Ash’s living space upstairs. The living room, kitchen, and dining room were advertised as “open-concept living.” Now they held a half dozen desks where Ash’s main operatives were expected to keep up with the paperwork that came along with a job of this kind. That included David, his brother, who spent most of his time working on the bank of computers arrayed in one corner of the room as their tech guy. The dining room housed a large conference table where clients were often given the dog-and-pony speeches over why they should hire Gray Wolf, or the explanation of what was done for them and why they should pay their bill that was often in the thousands.
Twenty-four-hour security was not cheap.
The kitchen was still just a kitchen. Ash had been known to make four-course meals there for his people after a particularly tough case was completed. Kirkland Parish, one of Gray Wolf’s operatives, also liked to cook, but you couldn’t always call what he made edible.
Ash had good people working for him. Each was handpicked for reasons that went beyond their ability to do the job asked of them.
Donovan Pritchard was a member of Ash’s own Green Beret unit. They worked closely together during Ash’s last deployment to Afghanistan. They saw things together that other people couldn’t even imagine, let alone see in their nightmares. Donovan was an expert at explosives. He could work with any material, blow up anything, and predict accurately how it would fall. He could take out a dozen insurgents but avoid the civilians right next door.
Kirkland Parish was also a Green Beret. Although he was with a different unit during Ash’s days with the Army, Ash had heard stories about him. He was something of a character, outgoing and something of a lady’s man. If there was a woman within a fifty-mile radius, Kirkland could find her and get her in his bed in a matter of minutes. Charm didn’t even begin to describe Kirkland. There was just something about him that instantly set people at ease. It was a skill that often came in handy with the kind of frightened, wired clients Gray Wolf served.
Joselyn Grant Hernandez, Joss, was a tiny but fierce soldier who stood up to and conquered every obstacle thrown at her during basic training. And then she served two tours of duty, leaving the Army only because she fell in love and wanted to experience a normal life. She was on Ash’s radar when he began building his company, but she was happy living with her schoolteacher husband and being a stay-at-home mom to her six-year-old daughter. But when her husband and child were killed in a car accident, Ash and his Gray Wolf team stepped in, made sure the driver of the other car received his just punishment, and gave her a place to turn to when she was ready to get back to work. She took it and she was good at her job. The fact that she wouldn’t speak didn’t seem to bother anyone.
And then there was David.
Ash and David grew up in Austin, Texas where their father was a longtime member of the Texas legislature. They were a close-knit family, one of those th
at politicians often parade out in public with big smiles on their faces. The only difference was, it was true in their case. When Ash graduated college with a degree in political science and decided to join the Army, his parents couldn’t have been more thrilled. The dream was that he would one day follow in his father’s footsteps. David, too, was serving his country. After college, he joined the FBI.
And then things changed.
Their father was elected to Congress. There was a celebration that ran late into the night on Election Day. Ash couldn’t be there because he was deployed, but he managed to speak to his parents for a few minutes via satellite phone. If he had known it would be the last time…
David was driving the car. Dad was too tired, and he’d had a few too many to drink. And Mom, well, she just didn’t drive. The car hit a patch of black ice. It was Austin. In November. Not a common occurrence, but it was known to happen. The car flipped. Mom was declared dead on the scene. Dad lingered a few days, the press thick outside the hospital, waiting with baited breath. And David crushed his lower spine. Bone fragments were removed and his potential recovery was optimistic. However, they missed a few, and the inflammation caused paralysis from his upper thighs down. The doctors thought they could restore movement, maybe allow him ninety percent mobility, but he refused to undergo the procedure. He said the risk wasn’t worth it.
Ash thought it was guilt. And guilt he understood.
“Listen up!” Ash called, as he made his way through the room, a handful of file folders in his hand. “Assignments.”
Like good soldiers, his people immediately gathered around the conference table. Donovan in jeans and a t-shirt, dark circles under his eyes. Kirkland looking dapper in slacks and a silk button-down shirt. Joss stood off to one side, still in the wetsuit she wore each morning to conquer the waves on her surfboard. David was always last to join them, moving efficiently in his fiberglass wheelchair.
“Kirkland, you’ll be working with Detective Warren today, tying up loose ends on your stalker case. He’ll meet you downtown at noon.”
VINCENT (Dragon Security Book 2) Page 16