by Lexi Blake
He drew her in, his body against hers as he settled in.
Her hands moved at first to balance herself against his body, and then she could feel him, feel his muscles through the thin cotton of his shirt, feel the heat his body gave off.
Suddenly it didn’t matter that she’d begun this as a way to calm him down. All that mattered was the fact that his mouth moved on hers, tempting her, teasing her. Heat flashed through her system and she could feel her whole body softening under his kiss.
She followed him, opening for him and allowing his tongue to invade. She shivered against him as he took her mouth.
She’d been kissed before but not this way. Not in the sweetest, melt-against-him way that made the rest of the world seem to fade into the background.
He was calm and in control when he kissed her one last time and sighed as he pulled away. “Let’s go find somewhere quiet to eat.”
Yes, he was calm but her heart was pounding in her chest. And she could still feel Patricia’s eyes on her. The door to her office closed with a thud and they were alone.
But she was never far away.
“I know just the place.”
—
Bran stared at her over the small bistro table she’d walked him to at the back of the building. She’d put her hand in his and walked him through the office, stopping a couple of times to introduce him to some of her friends.
Somehow he’d thought she wouldn’t have any. Not here. He’d seen her as completely alone since she was basically being forced to work for Cain Corp. He’d seen her as the princess in the tower, but the princess still had some friends.
And one nasty enemy.
He could still feel Patricia Cain’s hand in his, the way she’d squeezed it ever so lightly and held it a fraction of a second too long. He could still feel the way she looked at him, like he was a nice piece of meat and she was suddenly hungry.
He’d been so aware in that moment of who she was. Of what she’d done.
“Are you all right?” Carly leaned forward. “We can talk out here. No one ever comes out here except when they’re filming for the show. Then it’s supposed to look like a place where we all hang out because we’re such a family.”
“I’m good.” He gave her what he hoped was a confident smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming in. The stuff at your place got wrapped up early, and I thought I should warn you that something’s going down this evening. It’s best you don’t know what’s happening, but I wanted to make sure I could be around just in case.”
Her eyes widened. “Something’s going down?”
“We’ve only got a couple of weeks to get her to fire her security team and hire on ours. I thought the best course of action was to get in here and start making myself a familiar figure. You’ve had a week to get them used to the idea of you dating. They needed to meet me before the party tonight.” He hadn’t liked the way some of those men had looked at her. When she’d introduced him to her friend in payroll, a man had come in and forced his way into the introduction, too. He’d openly gaped, as though the idea of Carly having a boyfriend was a revolutionary thing. And then he’d leered as though reconsidering something he’d dismissed before.
Asshole.
“Is it dangerous?”
“It will likely seem that way,” he explained. “I don’t know everything. They want me to react as naturally as anyone else would. Don’t worry about it. I assure you my brother-in-law is a professional.”
Case was an expert, and Case’s big brother, Ian, had supposedly been an actual CIA operative. They were the best and brightest when it came to protection, hacking, or taking an asshole out, as Case would say. Bran was perfectly happy to leave everything in their hands. He would spend all of his time trying to get his own hands back on Carly’s sweet ass.
Likely it would be something small, but embarrassing to Cain and her crew. It would be something that would anger the queen and get her current knights fired.
“All right,” Carly said quietly, her eyes coming up. “But I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about you. Bran, your hands were shaking.”
Damn it. She’d noticed. He’d tried so fucking hard to stay as calm as possible, even when his gut was rolling. “I guess I needed some protein more than I thought I did. If I’m going to stay at your place for much longer, we need to get some groceries. For a woman who loves to cook, you don’t have a lot in the fridge.”
“Because I have to eat out a lot,” she said, her eyes steady on his. “Bran, she was flirting with you.”
He didn’t want to talk about this with her. He didn’t want her to know how sick it had made him, how he’d almost broken down and screwed everything up. He needed to look stable and strong, so he gave her a smile and a wink. Arrogance was better than admitting how weak he’d been. “I get that a lot.”
“Bran, she killed your mother and she was flirting with you and you flirted back.”
He frowned. Was that really how she saw it? “It’s an undercover op, sweetheart. That’s part of the game. Should I have taken out a sword and dueled with her?”
She sat back up, all the softness gone from her bones. She was stiff as she started to unpack the lunch he’d bought. “I’m sorry. You know how to handle it, I suppose. Are the sandwiches the same?”
The idea that she thought he might welcome the attentions of the woman who’d killed his parents made him sick.
Why had she kissed him? Asked him to kiss her? He’d thought she was playing the part well, but why had she really done it?
There was only one reason a woman like Carly might do something like that.
He reached out and grasped her wrist. She set the sandwiches down and he tugged her to him.
Maybe she wouldn’t see it as weakness. Maybe she wouldn’t see him as something so broken he couldn’t be fixed.
“Bran,” she argued as she spilled onto his lap.
He wrapped an arm around her middle and drew her close, whispering in her ear. “It was horrible. I thought I was going to be sick for a moment. Please forgive me. I almost screwed everything up.”
“It’s all right.” The minute he’d started whispering she’d relaxed in his arms, turning so she could hug him and fitting against him like a puzzle piece that had been missing. “You did good. She certainly didn’t see anything.”
He breathed her in, loving the smell of her shampoo. Strawberries and cream. She tasted like that, too. Sweet and rich. “I’m sorry I got defensive.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered back. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain well enough. I knew that hurt you.”
This felt so much better than arrogance. “I didn’t think I would react like that. It’s not like I haven’t seen her before.”
“Being in the same room with her is different. You’ve seen her on TV. She doesn’t interact on TV. She’s a character there. This is the real woman and she had a hand in your parents’ murder. You reacted, but you covered it up. There was no way she could tell. I could only tell because your hands were shaking. It’s all right. Everything went well and now we’ve gotten the introduction out of the way so we don’t have to do it at the party. I say we call it a win.” She sat up and smiled down at him, the sun making her skin luminous.
She was a gorgeous woman. He had no idea why people seemed so shocked she had a boyfriend. Yes, she dressed a bit plain, but her beauty was in the generosity of her smile, in the glow she got in those brown eyes when she was excited.
The fact that she had a really round ass didn’t hurt. Not at all. Of course, his chances for turning this impromptu meeting into a make-out session had gone way down since he’d figured out why she’d kissed him. “So that kiss was your way of getting me to chill out?”
She blushed and scrambled off his lap, straightening her khaki-colored skirt. “I thought it would help you focus. I a
lso thought maybe if my boss saw you kiss me, she would keep her cougar paws off you.”
Or maybe not. That was some sweet jealousy. It was all right. He’d felt some of that himself. “I’ll make it plain to everyone I’m all about one girl.”
“So the sandwiches?”
She wasn’t ready to talk about chemistry yet, though he was pretty sure he’d proven his point with that kiss. “I bought two different kinds. Turkey on rye and a club. Your pick. You know me. I’ll eat anything.”
“You make things easy on a girl. And I like club sandwiches, but no pickles. Pickles are gross. I have a thing about them. I’m only telling you so we can make it look good.”
Sure she was. She was also subtly telling him she liked lunch service.
He hoped she’d liked being kissed by him. He’d fucking loved it. He was still dealing with the aftermath. Maybe she’d only done it to help him calm down, but at the end she’d been with him. Her hands had been moving on his body, making their way from his waist down to his hips. He had to wonder if they’d had a bit longer, would she have been bold enough to cup his ass? He’d wanted to. For a moment he’d forgotten about everything but how she’d been in his arms, how good she’d smelled. It had been forever since he’d wanted one woman. Not a woman, but one woman.
“I’ll make note of your preferences.” He was already making a list of what she did and didn’t like.
And how she liked to be kissed. She liked to be kissed wholeheartedly, and she offered back everything he gave her.
She sat down across from him. “So we’re going to the art show tonight. I should probably prepare you for that.”
He would rather she prepped him from the comfort of his lap, but it looked like that moment was done. The good news was she was still curious, and she definitely felt something for him. “Should I pick you up here?”
“I have to be there super early. I’ll barely have time to go home and change.”
“Is this an exhibit of Patricia’s work?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s an artist who did some work for the magazine. Well, and her father is a sixties rock icon. It’s not like Patricia picks up starving artists. She only wants them hungry because they’re so thin.” She stopped. “She said you reminded her of someone. Should we be worried about that?”
“I don’t think so. Hatch tells me I have my mom’s eyes. From what I understand, my mom wasn’t too involved in the business. She was a lawyer before she married my dad. She gave up her practice to raise us.”
“Could Patricia have been friends with your mom?” Carly frowned. “Friends is the wrong word. Patricia doesn’t have friends, but then, she might not have always been so cold.”
“According to Hatch she was. I’m sure she knew my mother, but I can’t imagine them being friends. Like I said, my mom wasn’t involved in the business at all. I can’t imagine she had a lot in common with Patricia.”
“This Hatch person . . . Patricia would definitely know him. I read a bit on him after we met. I was wondering why you think you can trust him. He had a lot to gain from selling the technology. He even disappeared for a while after your parents died.”
He didn’t take offense to her question. Bill Hatchard had been like a father to him sometimes. A boozy, obnoxious, vulgar dad, but a dad. Still, it was easy to see why he would be a suspect on paper. “Hatch disappeared into a bottle for about eight years after my parents died. He did gain from their deaths, but he didn’t use the money. He was my father’s best friend. I trust him.”
“If he was your father’s best friend, why didn’t he take you in? Why didn’t he fight the other partners to ensure you kids got your shares?”
All questions Bran had asked and had to shove down. “He wasn’t the kind of man who could raise a bunch of kids.”
“Anyone can raise kids if they care enough. I came from a mom who rarely paid attention to me and Meri, but at least we were together.”
Together. One day he’d had a whole family around him and the next it had been him and Mia. After Riley and Drew had been taken to the youth home, he and Mia had been taken in by a woman in her forties who had three other foster kids. She’d been nice and taken good care of them, but when she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer she’d had to give them all up, and that meant splitting up him and Mia.
They’d run the night before. He’d shoved their pitiful belongings into a garbage bag and snuck out in the middle of the night to look for Riley and Drew.
When the police found them, they’d been separated and Bran given the lecture of a lifetime on how he’d nearly killed his sister and he wouldn’t see her again.
He’d held on so tight but they’d broken them up and Bran had been alone.
Where had Hatch been that night?
“We did all right.” He couldn’t think about that. It was in the past and there was nothing to do but move forward. One foot in front of the other. That was the only way to get through. “After Drew aged out, he went to look for Hatch. He found him and cleaned him up and they managed to get Riley out of the youth home. Mia had been adopted by then and her parents welcomed us all to visit and spend time with them so they didn’t worry about her.”
“How long were you in foster care?”
About three months too long. “Eight years. Drew managed to get me out when I was sixteen. He had Hatch declared my legal guardian and then I was out. I moved from Dallas to Austin and they made sure I went to school and college and here I am today.”
He wouldn’t mention the scars he had or how he woke up screaming some nights because he was right back in that dingy bedroom where Mandy had died. He wouldn’t mention how he’d cowered and hidden.
He’d survived, but sometimes he wondered if he would ever move past that moment.
“She still puts morality clauses in her contracts,” Carly said. “Not for herself, of course, but for anyone who works with her or she invests with. I think it’s a convenient way for her to get rid of someone if she needs to.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise him. “Hey, it worked once, right?”
“She fired one of her upper-level managers because she got a DUI. Naturally it was right before the manager’s stock vested and she would have owned five percent of Cain Corp. I’ve always wondered if Patricia didn’t set up that traffic stop. The people who were at the party that night swore Gayle had one glass of wine and ate a full meal. Needless to say, that’s not what the reports said, and she found out her contract with Cain Corp was null and void and she was out several million dollars.”
“Patricia has a history of underhanded business practices.”
“So why bother with murder?” Carly queried. “Was your father such a Boy Scout that there was no way to catch him in a net like she did Gayle?”
“Did Gayle sue?”
“She tried, but the clause was pretty ironclad. It got tossed out. I know my boss. She rarely does anything that might bring bad press to her or one of her companies. The business with your father hurt the sale of that technology. According to the reports they should have gotten millions more.”
He wasn’t sure he liked her delving so deep, but at least she was interested. “You’ve been doing a lot of research.”
“I read some stuff before the scary guy with the gun showed up, and then I was all about home security,” she said with the cutest frown on her face. “Seriously though, I don’t know everything about business, but if they could have caught your dad doing something immoral, they could have taken the stock right there. And why allow this Hatch guy to keep his?”
She was asking a lot of interesting questions, but none that meant anything now. “This was twenty years ago. She might not have perfected her methods back then. Like I said, my mom had been a lawyer. She would have kept them tied up in court for a long time. I think they did what was expedient. And afterward they lay low. They paid
off Hatch so there wasn’t more bad press. Maybe. I’m not sure. I only know that she was one of four people to pay for the assassin.”
“And two of them are dead.”
Castalano and Stratton. “Yes, both of natural causes.”
“Are we sure about that? Patricia went to see Steven Castalano shortly before his heart attack. Maybe she put something in his IV.”
He held a hand up. “Whoa, slow down, detective. I love your enthusiasm, but let’s stick to the task at hand.”
She shrugged. “I think she’s capable of anything, although I do doubt she killed Castalano. I think she might have had an affair with him.”
That thought sent a shudder through his system. “Really? Because that’s pretty horrifying. What makes you think that? I know they hadn’t seen each other for years. After Patricia sold off her shares of StratCast, they didn’t spend much time together.”
“She got drunk once, the only time I’ve ever seen her out of control. She got drunk and talked about someone she loved once. I got the feeling she was talking about a long time ago. She said they’d both been young and that she’d thought what they’d done would bring them closer together, but something happened to drive them apart. She said if she had to do it all over again, she would have found a way to keep her lover.” Carly looked thoughtful for a moment. “It was odd. She didn’t cry or anything. She said that maybe it wasn’t worth it since she’d lost that chance.”
“I have a hard time seeing anyone love Steven Castalano. He was married even back then. I can ask Hatch about it, but I think you and I should concentrate on tonight. At some point you’re going to meet my brothers. Don’t be scared of Drew. He’s not as bad as he looks.”
“He looks very attractive from the photo I got of him.”
There was that nasty jealousy again. “When you meet him in real life, he might be a bit intimidating. He’s also kind of pissed that you managed to find some information he didn’t want you to find.”