He watched her, reached between them, and those wicked fingers of his danced over her.
“No, Mrs. Kinncaid, what is my problem?”
She paused. Mrs. Kinncaid. Shaking off the stupid thrill that had shot through her, she mumbled-moaned, “You’re too bleeding controlled.”
He grunted.
She reached down and pulled his hand away. “My way. Or I’ll get you just to the point and then go to bed.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’d only do it once.”
She leaned back to study him, even as she took him in her hand and slid herself slowly down on his erection. “Is that a threat?”
His eyes darkened, and his arms came up to hold her, but then he dropped them to his side. “It’s a promise, babe.”
She grinned. “One day when I don’t want you so badly, I’ll have to try it.”
She closed her eyes, moving as gently on him as the water falling on them.
One day?
One day . . .
She had no idea how long they kissed, their hands running over wet skin as she made love to him in the shower, but soon, the tempo increased, his features hardening, a slight blush staining his cheeks. He reached between them and raked his fingers over that one spot that would shatter her.
“Come with me,” he said, his other hand wrapping around her nape to pull her down for his kiss.
His fingers did a wicked dance, his tongue parried and forayed with hers, his thrusts hit deep within her . . . And through it all, she just wanted to hear him . . .
He groaned, thrusting again, his finger pressing her small bundle of nerves against him buried deep inside her.
She shattered, yelling out his name.
One day . . .
Chapter 21
Elianya, or rather Alla as she was calling herself, looked over the files she’d found. Mr. Dimitri Petrolov, with a dozen or more aliases, was no more than a rich boy.
His family owned high-class hotels all over the globe. She herself had stayed in several of their more exclusive resorts.
Ian Kinncaid.
What a little family man.
Four brothers, all but one married with families of their own. Two parents, still married, and a little great-grandmother in Ireland.
She grimaced. Alla simply did not work with the elderly. They terrified her with their eyes seeming to look either through you or all the way down to your soul.
Old people made her very nervous.
Alla wondered at Mr. Ian Kinncaid. What had made him leave the security of that home, that family, to become the person she knew as Dimitri Petrolov.
Did his family know he worked for his government in places the general public wanted to forget existed?
Probably not.
So how could she get to him?
She’d heard the attempt on him had failed.
Idiot. She’d thought the contact would be intelligent enough to handle this situation, but since that was not the case, Alla would handle it herself.
And have a hell of a time doing it.
So who could she get to? Any of them. She could become his mother’s new best friend. Probably couldn’t seduce the father. If he’d been married to the same woman that long, he might not be that easy. Then again, maybe he would. She’d keep her ideas open.
The brothers? The oldest was married to some writer and had twins. She pulled up their picture. Lovely happy little family. He might be doable. Handsome enough.
The next on her list was Gavin. A woman’s doctor. She immediately nixed him. He might see through some of her lies. Then again, he might not. But a man who saw women’s bodies as landmarks and made a living out of noticing deficiencies was not someone she wanted to bed.
The next . . . Brayden. Newly married as well within the last year. And what a lovely little girl he had.
Her business brain tallied what she might get for the girl on the market. Maybe that’s the angle.
But then she remembered the girl had been kidnapped before with some cousin, which meant her parents probably kept a very close eye on her anyway. Maybe not. But she’d think about it.
The last brother’s face flashed on-screen.
Wasn’t he the changeling? He looked nothing like his other brothers, who were all black-haired and blue-eyed. This one, she checked his name—Quinlan—took after his mother. Green eyes, dark brown hair with tints of red. Handsome himself, just different from his brothers and just a bit . . . innocent-looking. She grinned. Oh, she could have fun with this one. Her source confirmed he lived in the D.C. hotel.
She still thought he was probably her best bet on getting an in with the family. He wasn’t around the others much. And even if he had a guard, she didn’t really look like Elianya Hellinski, with the different-colored contacts and new hair color and style.
“The things I will teach you,” she muttered, tapping her long red nail on his picture on the computer screen.
She looked over at the file folder open to a photo of both Ian Kinncaid and Dimitri Petrolov. Even knowing they were the same man, they were so different, she might never have put them together.
Dimitri simply looked different to her. Harder, colder somehow. The Reaper.
Ian Kinncaid was the Saint.
She smiled. “Your time is coming, my friend.”
No one rejected her, especially no man, and no one betrayed her the way he had. Taking a hit on her . . .
She shook her head and looked back at the computer screen. “Quinlan Kinncaid.”
*****
Ian sat in the chair he’d sat in years ago and looked at the man behind the desk. Jock sat, dressed in his normal chinos and a cable-knit sweater, his shoulders more stooped, his hands atop each other on the blotter, and those once leveling eyes seemed almost lost.
He shouldn’t care.
But he did. Damn it.
“Is everyone all right this morning?” Jock asked.
Ian nodded and shifted, putting his ankle on his other knee.
A heavy silence thickened the air between them.
Ian sat, not saying a word and wishing he knew what to say. His skin itching, he stood and walked to the window, looking out at the back lawns. The workers had arrived already and were working on replacing windowpanes. Should keep them busy for an entire day.
The lawns were brown, dormant for the cold winter to come. The leaves that had vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow only a month before were now a dull brown upon the ground beneath their bare-branched trees.
His mother’s rosebushes were bare. He’d forgotten how she’d like to plant a new one every year.
“I’ve called all your brothers. Your mother wants her damn dinner tonight. Quin doesn’t know if he can make it.”
Ian smiled. “The workaholic wouldn’t know what to do without a timetable.”
Jock grunted and Ian looked over his shoulder at him.
“And you don’t think family dinners are important?”
Ian closed his eyes and shook his head. “Jock, don’t start.”
Silence again. This time longer than before. Ian needed to call Johnno and check again to see if he’d learned anything else. He needed to get to the office and meet with Pete, there were things he needed to see to ahead of time.
A lawyer. He’d call his uncle Brody, see if he could draft up a new will. Never before did he care what happened to his stuff. He’d just left it all to Aiden.
Now?
Now he had someone to look after. Darya. And legally Rori . . . and then . . .
“Why is someone trying to kill you?” Jock broke the silence.
Ian sighed. “We’ve been over this, I can’t talk about it.” He didn’t turn from the window.
“You said your cover was blown.” A pause. “What cover?”
Ian finally turned from the window and walked back to sit in the chair. Steepling his fingers, he looked at his father. “Do you really want to know?” He held his father’s stare. Not that he could tell him everyt
hing.
Jock stared at him, then blinked and finally shook his head. “I guess not.”
Ian looked at his watch. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have meetings. Did you need something?”
Jock started to shake his head, then he tapped the top of his desk. Tilting his head, he said, “Do you remember when you were a boy?”
Where was this going? “Yeah.”
A smile lifted one side of Jock’s lips and a chuckle danced out. “You used to pull so many pranks I didn’t know if I wanted to strangle you or if I wanted to laugh.”
Ian laced his fingers over his stomach and listened, frowning.
“You were going to work side by side with Aiden. Always were since you two were little. I’d take you to the hotels with me. Your mother and I used to argue over what you’d do when you grew up. She wanted more kids in medicine. I said more hotels.” Jock’s smile turned nostalgic and he looked not at Ian, not at himself, but at some memory Ian couldn’t see.
“You boys grew up on us. Faster than we ever imagined. Aiden went to the hotels and . . .”
Ian took a deep breath. “And I didn’t.” He grabbed the armrests, intent on standing.
“Sit down for a damn minute,” Jock barked, his eyes their old sharp self.
Ian leaned back.
“I know you’re busy. I know you haven’t been back here in years, and when you do come home we don’t have three words to say to each other.” Jock frowned, and twirled the gold band on his finger. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I never meant . . . That is . . .” He raked his hand through his hair and stood. “Hell.”
Ian waited.
“What made you come back now?” Jock asked, looking out the window Ian had vacated earlier.
Ian licked his lips and shifted. “I had to.”
“Because of your job?” Jock looked at him.
Ian shook his head. “Partly. Mostly to make certain everyone was all right.”
Jock nodded, looked down and ran his fingers along the windowsill. “Ryan said something the other day and I’ve heard him and Tori whispering.”
Damn.
Those eyes pierced him to the chair. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been back, is it?”
Ian thought about lying. He propped his elbow on the armchair and his temple on his fist. “No.”
Jock nodded then shook his head, and his shoulders rose on a deep breath. His voice so quiet Ian had to lean forward to hear him, Jock said, “Did you really think I meant what I said that day?”
Ian didn’t move, didn’t speak. Another lie rose easily to his mind, but he shook it off. “No.” He shrugged and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’d hoped not, but I wasn’t about to test it.”
Jock walked back and leaned against the desk. “You said some things that day that pissed me off.”
Ian cocked a brow. “I remember it the other way around.”
Jock crossed his arms and glanced down, then back up. “But what you said that day was right. I was wrong.”
Ian blinked and stared at his father. Hell had frozen over and he’d missed it. Not because his father was wrong, but because the great Jock Kinncaid had admitted he was wrong. Ian took a deep breath and knew that was as close to an apology as it could get.
“None of the other boys ever knew, but your mother and I . . .” Jock shook his head and waved his hand, walking back around the desk.
“You and Mom what?” Ian asked.
“She figured out what happened and wheedled the rest out of me.”
Damn. Ian stared at him, then grinned, then started to laugh. “I bet that was fun.”
Jock didn’t grin, but narrowed his gaze at him. “I don’t remember it too fondly, as it’s the only time in all our years of marriage she made me sleep somewhere else.”
“Oh.” What else did he say?
“Where’d you go when you left here?”
Ian leaned back as Jock sat in the chair beside him. “Around. I dropped the car off, checked my bank accounts, and had Aiden put anything I made from then on into stocks, since he’s so good at that sort of thing.”
“You never touched those accounts after one large withdrawal that first afternoon,” Jock said.
Ian grinned. “Checked that, did you? Figured you would. I took out what I wanted to that first day and opened a Swiss account.” He shrugged. “Between interest and work, I made enough.”
“And after?”
“Joined the army. Became a Ranger.”
His father pulled back a bit. “You were a Ranger?”
Ian nodded. “Yeah. For a while.”
A slow smile started across his father’s face. Some part of him had hoped to see it again, and another part had always said he didn’t give a damn if he did or not—pride.
“And?” Jock asked, leaning closer. “I always wanted to do that. But your grandfather had no use for a soldier in the family.” He waved his hand. “Things were different then. So I took the road paved for me and found your mother and the rest is history.”
Ian had never known that. “You wanted to join the army?”
Jock shrugged. “I wanted to be a paratrooper like my father. Fought in World War Two. You’d have thought he wanted a son in the military. Grandfather was even against it. But to be fair to them, they’d both lost family members in both World Wars.”
Ian tilted his head. “Learn something new every day.”
“So you’re a Ranger?” Jock asked again, shaking his head.
“Retired. Went to work for a different . . . branch,” he supplied.
Jock frowned. “What does that mean?”
Ian chose his words carefully. “I do undercover work. That’s all you need to know. And this is my last assignment.”
“This?”
Ian waved the question away and sat up. He looked into Jock’s eyes and said, “I have to go somewhere over the weekend.”
“Rori and Darya going with you?”
Ian shook his head. “No.”
A moment passed, then another and another. “And?”
Looking into the eyes so like his own, he said, “If I don’t come back . . .”
Jock sat back, the lines of his mouth hardening, his eyes narrowing. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.
“If I don’t come back, I want you to look out for Darya and Rori. They really don’t have anyone else.”
Which was in and of itself true enough. There was some other man, Nikko, he’d heard Rori talk of occasionally, but he didn’t know who the man was, and he was looking.
A log popped in the fireplace and Ian knew he needed to go. The morning was growing.
“Where are you going?”
He really didn’t think his father wanted to know that he was basically going to his death. And he couldn’t explain a thing to Jock because it was all classified.
“I can’t tell you.”
“I guess I don’t need to tell you to be careful?” Jock said ruefully.
Ian smiled. “I’ve been through worse.”
Jock raised a brow. “It’s usually the things we expect to be easy that turn out to be the hardest.”
Ian frowned. “You’re starting to sound like Mom.”
Jock’s laughter rang out and boomed off the walls. When he quieted, he asked, “If I wanted to go into town today to find something for Darya, what would it take?”
Ian shook his head. “I don’t know. At least one guard. I’d really rather you wait until I had my meeting.” If he left in the next few minutes, he’d be done by this afternoon with all the tests Pete would undoubtedly have all lined out for him and then be back here by dinnertime.
Jock hadn’t answered him.
Ian looked from his watch to the man across from him in the other chair. “I need to get going. I am sorry this has disrupted all your lives. That wasn’t my intention on coming back.”
Jock nodded. “I do understand that much, even if I don’t really understand what the hell is going on.” Those
eyes narrowed on him again. “You better be back in time for dinner, or you’ll have to explain to your mom why you’re not.”
He nodded and stood, wondering if he should shake his father’s hand or what, as Jock stood.
Ian turned away, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. “I meant what I said earlier,” Jock said.
“About?”
“Being wrong all those years ago. Brice was . . .” Jock took a deep breath.
“A liar?” Ian suggested.
Jock nodded. “Woman wasn’t pregnant, or if she was it never came about.”
Ian waited then said, “So you think the baby, if she had one, still could have been mine?”
Jock shook his head. “No. No, I don’t. I didn’t after I had a chance to calm down.”
Why was it, when something was so long in coming, it was almost anticlimactic? He’d waited years to hear those words. And today, they seemed . . . not very important.
“Witch did abort Aiden’s baby.”
“Yes, I know.” At his father’s questioning look, Ian said, “Who do you think got him all the proof he needed? Medical records are rather sticky issues, you know.”
Jock shook his head again. “Part of me wants to know every detail of your life for the last few years.” Without warning, he leaned in and wrapped Ian in a hug. “And the other part of me is too damn scared to find out.”
Ian stood awkwardly for a split second, then brought his arms up and wrapped them around . . .
His father.
When had the big man become so much older?
Ian took a deep breath and disengaged, smiling slightly. “I’ve got to go, or I’ll miss dinner.”
His father sniffed and nodded, his brows doing that damn V thing they did when he was trying not to cry.
Ian opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came to mind.
“Yeah, you better get going. With your mother worrying like she is, if anyone’s late, they’ll hear about it for weeks.”
Chapter 22
Dinner was as strained as he knew it would be. Ian rubbed the back of his neck as he stood alone at the windows. Probably stupid to be standing in front of one, but he really didn’t care at present. He hated debriefings with Pete. There was never enough.
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