So what was he doing with a glittering emerald ring in his pocket?
He didn’t have to give it to her today, he reminded himself. Or tomorrow, or even next week.
That had been the final determining factor behind buying it. He could bide his time, wait and see how things shook out with her and Emma, give her the chance to grow more comfortable with her feelings for him.
When the time was right, he would be ready.
As he shoved the car into Park, nerves jumped in his gut. Was he crazy to do this? He thought he was ready for marriage and family when he proposed to Camille, and just look how dandy that all turned out.
But Camille and Grace were about as far apart on the humanity scale as any two people he could imagine.
He closed his fingers around the box again, suddenly fiercely glad he’d bought it, if only to demonstrate to himself that he was committed to a future with her. He would just put it in his office safe until she was ready to accept it—and she would. She had to. He didn’t even want to contemplate the alternative.
No one seemed to be around when he entered the house. It took him a moment to remember today was Emma’s play group, so she and Lily wouldn’t be back for a while.
As for Grace, he would look for her as soon as he put the ring away.
He walked through the house to his office and was sorting through his chain of keys for the right one to unlock the door—kept latched since the day Em used a briefcase full of contracts for coloring paper—when he heard an odd rustling inside.
Puzzled, he tried the knob and found it unlocked.
The door swung open slowly, ominously, and he froze at the sight of Grace sitting in his chair, riffling through his private files.
He must have made some noise. He wasn’t sure he could even speak through the shock clogging his throat, but he must have done something to alert her to his presence.
She glanced up and, under other circumstances, he might have found it comical the way her face drained of all color, like a cartoon character left too long out in the cold.
He couldn’t quite find it in himself to laugh.
He could only stare at her while his mind twisted and looped trying to find a logical explanation for her presence here.
“Jack! You’re…you’re back early.”
He forced himself to fill his lungs with air. “Yeah. I just had a couple of errands to run. Was there something you needed in here?”
A pencil, some scissors, a three-hole punch. Anything. Say anything.
“I…” Her voice faltered and two high spots of color bloomed on her cheeks.
“You what?”
“I can explain.”
He shut the door behind him and advanced on the desk. She edged back in her chair just enough to shatter his heart into jagged little pieces. She was afraid of him. After what they had been through together she was afraid of him.
This vast, devastating hurt turned his voice razor-sharp. “You can explain what you’re doing in my office, the office I know damn well I locked this morning when I left it? How did you get in?”
“I picked the lock. It’s pretty flimsy. You might want to look into upgrading it.”
Anger was beginning to replace the hurt, and he welcomed the hot rush of feeling. At least it helped to fill the stunned, hollow ache. “What’s going on, Grace? If you wanted something in here, all you had to do was ask me for it and I would have gladly given it. You didn’t have to break in.”
“Jack, we need to talk.”
“Apparently.” He sat down on the edge of the desk and she edged back even more in the seat. “So talk.”
She bit her lip for a moment, rubbed her hands on her pants, blew out a breath. Finally she straightened her shoulders and met his gaze. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. It breaks every code of conduct I once swore to follow. If Beau found out I’d tipped you, he’d never forgive me.”
“Beau? Your former partner?”
She nodded.
“What does he have to do with the reason you’re snooping through my office?”
Again she hesitated, looked away from him, then quickly back. “He’s part of a multijurisdictional task force investigating you and GSI.”
Her words startled a disbelieving laugh out of him. “For what?”
“Weapons smuggling.”
He felt hot suddenly and then cold. Very, very cold. “You’re kidding, right? This is some kind of sick joke.”
She shook her head. “I wish it were a joke, Jack. I wish it were nothing more than a stupid, sick joke. But even as we speak, the task force is trying to obtain a warrant to search the company and your home. They will probably be here by this evening.”
She had to be mistaken. She had to be.
He scraped a hand through his hair. “What the hell is this all about? I run a shipping company, completely on the level. We’ve never even had a damn safety violation.”
“You’ve been under surveillance for several weeks now. It’s a strong case, Jack.”
Questions raced through his brain, one on top of the other. Several weeks? Before Emma’s kidnapping? Could the kidnapping somehow be linked to this alleged smuggling ring?
And what about Grace? What was her involvement in this? She was no longer with the Seattle Police Department, he knew that for certain. And he had seen the anguish in her eyes when she talked about that night. She couldn’t possibly have been lying about her reasons for being out on the highway, not unless she was the best damn actress in the world.
“Was Emma’s kidnapping part of this? Did you know about the investigation the night you pulled her from the wreck?”
“No,” she said, so emphatically he had to believe her.
“When did you find out? How long have you known I was under investigation?”
She fidgeted. “A few days after you found me and brought me here. Beau called me. It was the same day you asked me to work for you.”
He thought back to that day, to her vehement refusal of his job offer then her abrupt about-face.
Suddenly everything made a grim, horrible sense.
“And that’s why you took the job, right? What better way to help your friend investigate me than from inside my own house?” He nearly choked on his bitterness.
She nodded, looking miserable, and he felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut.
Betrayal upon betrayal.
He loved her, dammit. How could she do this?
“You’re not a cop anymore, you haven’t been for a year. How did he talk you into doing this?”
She studied her hands, folded tightly on the desk. “He didn’t. I had to beg him to let me in on it.”
He thought she couldn’t wound him worse but he was wrong. Dead wrong. “You hate me that much?” His voice sounded ragged. “Why? What did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing. Not you.”
“Why, then? Dammit, Grace. Why would you do this to me?”
She was quiet for a long time and when she finally lifted her eyes to his, they glistened with unshed tears. “Revenge. It was all for revenge. I was hurting and I wanted you to hurt, too. I wanted you to slowly bleed to death like I have been for the last year, to know what it’s like to lose every single thing that means anything to you.”
His stomach pitched and churned at her vehemence. Before he could form his chaotic thoughts into words, she continued speaking, her voice now subdued.
“The task force believes nearly every illegal weapon to hit the streets of King County in the last three years is somehow tied to this smuggling ring.” Her gaze met his again, locked there. “All of them, including the AK-47 used to kill my daughter.”
“You think I’m responsible for that? You let me make love with you thinking I’m responsible for that?”
“No! I…I thought so at first, but not after I came to know you. It has to be someone else at your company—that’s the only explanation I can come up with.”
Someone else, probably one of his trusted
employees. He didn’t know which was worse, that he was suspected of this or that one of his employees might be behind it.
“Jack, you have to believe me. When Beau called me this morning to tell me the case would break open today, all I could think about was protecting you. I came in here looking for evidence to clear you.”
“Find anything?” He didn’t need to hear her answer. He could read the denial in the way she refused to meet his gaze and compressed her lips into a tight line.
The cellular phone in his pocket bleated suddenly, knifing through the thick tension in the room. He thought about ignoring it, just letting it go on bleating.
Considering he was apparently about to be arrested, though, he decided he’d probably better answer it and then find himself a damn good lawyer.
“Yeah?” he said tersely.
It was Sydney. She sounded on the verge of hysteria as she told him a whole busload of law enforcement agents had descended on GSI like flies on roadkill. He listened to her babbling, perversely grateful he’d at least had some advance warning of what was happening.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. If I can catch the ferry, I should be there within the hour. And Syd, give them access to anything they want. I have nothing to hide.”
He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket, then turned to Grace. Her complexion had paled another notch. “They have the warrant?”
“Yeah. They’re serving it right now.”
“Jack, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t want to hear this from her. He didn’t want to hear anything. She had lied to him. She had wrapped her arms around him, had given herself to him, all the while knowing his world was about to be destroyed.
It took a Herculean effort but he managed to contain his fury just long enough to speak to her one last time. “I don’t want you here when I get back,” he said in a low voice, and didn’t dare look at her again.
“Take one of the cars if you have to. I don’t want you here when I get back.”
She murmured a soft sound of assent, as if she had expected nothing less.
And then he turned and walked away without looking at her again.
CHAPTER 17
At least it wouldn’t take her long to pack.
Grace stood in the doorway to Jack’s guest room, her eyes itchy with unshed tears and her heart aching. What a mess she’d made of things. She should never have gone to Hawaii with him. She should have stayed here and concentrated on the investigation.
But if she hadn’t gone, she would have been just as willing as Beau to believe the worst of Jack, to see only what was on the surface. Only there, in the peace and beauty of his vacation home, had she come to know him and to recognize the strong vein of decency running through him.
If she had only concentrated on the investigation instead of herself, maybe she might have been able to convince Beau that Jack couldn’t possibly be involved in this.
It was too late for that, though. The damage had been done and now he wanted nothing more to do with her. She couldn’t blame him. She would have reacted the same way if their roles had been reversed.
She gazed across the room at the wide windows overlooking Puget Sound, gray and white-capped. Many of the flowers in the seaside garden had died while they were away, leaving bare, dried-up stalks. Still, the view of the city across the water was breathtaking.
She would miss this place. These people.
Lily, Emma, Tiny. All of them.
But especially Jack, who had dragged her from her monochromatic world into one of color and light and laughter.
She rubbed at her chest, as if she could take away the pain there, then walked inside the room to begin the process of excising herself completely from his life.
She hadn’t brought much with her, and most of it was already packed. A few moments later, she had gathered the rest of her things and shoved them inside the suitcase.
The sound of the lid snapping shut echoed through the room. At the finality of it, she closed her eyes, helpless against the misery weighing down her shoulders, clogging her throat.
She didn’t want to go back.
To that terrible apartment, to the bleak solitude of her life, to that dark, awful place she’d existed in for the past year.
Jack had showed her how to laugh and love and live again and she didn’t know how she would survive without him.
“Hi, Grace. Whatcha doin’?”
Startled from her sorrow, she turned and found Emma in the doorway, holding that mangy stuffed poodle of hers.
Emma. Dear God, Emma.
The fist around her heart squeezed tighter. “Just looking out the window and thinking, sweetheart. What are you doing?”
“Playin’ house.”
“Where’s Lily?”
“She said she needed a nap for a while. I think play group tired her out. I’m supposed to take one, too, every time we come back, but I’m not a bit tired today, so Lily said I just had to be quiet in my room for a while. I’m playin’ house,” she repeated. “Betty is my little sister. You want to play, too?”
What would happen to Emma if Jack was arrested? Lily would take care of her, she knew, but she would still suffer trauma if she was forced to be without her father, even for a night or two.
It surely wouldn’t help matters that Grace would be leaving her, too, just one more abandonment. She didn’t have a choice, though. She had to go—Jack had made that perfectly clear.
She could at least stay with her for a few minutes, until Lily woke from her nap. “I guess I could play for a little while,” she answered. “Not very long, though, okay?”
“Okay.” Emma smiled happily and slipped her little hand into hers.
Grace paused for a moment, then let Jack’s daughter tug her down the hall into her own bedroom, a little girl’s wonderland of pink-and-white ruffles, filled with books and dolls and stuffed animals.
She had purposely avoided this room for most of her stay here, just as she had tried to steel her heart against Emma’s dimpled smile.
“You be the mommy, okay? And Betty and me will be your little girls.”
She could do this. She had discovered new reserves of strength these past few weeks. Surely they would be enough to carry her through a simple child’s game.
All Emma seemed to require was for Grace to play at her miniature toy kitchen, pretending to make cookies while Emma read stories to her “little sister.”
They played the game for ten minutes or so, then Emma seemed to grow increasingly pensive and solemn. Finally she sat on her flouncy pink canopy bed and hugged her dog tightly, her green eyes shimmering as if on the verge of tears.
“What’s the matter?” Grace asked. Maybe she was baking make-believe oatmeal cookies when Emma preferred chocolate chip.
“I don’t want to play pretend anymore. I want you to be my mommy for real so you can make me real cookies.”
At the words, raw emotion punched her in the chest and Grace hissed in a breath and felt her knees go weak. She could only stand there, speechless, for several moments. Finally, she forced herself to cross the room and sit next to the little girl on the bed.
She took it as a measure of how very far she had come these past few weeks that she was able to pull Emma into her arms without splintering apart.
“Honey,” she murmured after she dared to trust her voice again. “Lily makes you cookies and cakes and brownies, too. Don’t you like those?”
“It’s not the same.” Emma sniffled. “I want a mommy like my friend Brittany has. Why can’t you be my mommy?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” She rested her chin on Emma’s head. “It doesn’t work that way. Someday your daddy will find someone he loves. Someone you both love very much and who will love you both back, and then she and your daddy can get married so she can be your mommy.”
“Don’t you love us?”
The question echoed in her head. Don’t you love us? Don’t you love us? Don’t you love u
s?
The answer came to her just as loudly—a complete, resounding yes.
Grace looked at Jack’s daughter, with her curly blond hair and missing teeth, and felt her stomach pitch and roll as if she had just jumped from one of Jack’s airplanes without a parachute.
How stupid she had been. How utterly, completely foolish. She thought she had done such a good job of protecting her heart, had been so very careful to keep them out. But Jack Dugan and his sweet little daughter had slipped inside anyway.
She loved them. Both of them.
All this time, she had actually believed she could lose herself in Jack’s arms and remain completely untouched by it. But she must have fallen in love with him that night on the beach, when he had held her so sweetly while she grieved.
In the time since then, her love had only grown stronger, larger, until now it felt more immense than Mount Rainier.
And Emma.
When had Emma come to mean so very much to her? She thought she knew the answer. She had tried to deny it, but there had been a bond between the two of them since the accident that had brought them together, that had led her here.
She cleared her throat to answer the little girl’s question, but before she could form the words, the door to Emma’s bedroom swung open.
She expected Lily, and geared up for more of her quiet disapproval. When Piper McCall walked in, looking completely out of place in the cotton-candy bedroom, she was so surprised it took her several seconds to register the gun tucked snuggly in his waistband.
He looked about as thrilled to see her there as she was to see him. His jaw sagged and he rocked back on his heels, then raked a hand through his already-disheveled hair.
Adrenaline pumped through her as she took in his pallor and the tremors in his hands. She’d been on the job long enough to instantly recognize the signs of somebody running scared.
It didn’t take her long to figure out what he was running from—she suddenly realized she was face-to-face with at least one of the GSI smugglers. He must have felt the net tightening around him and was probably trying to claw a way out.
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