AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Just as Sierra had suspected, Ace must have been far hungrier than he had imagined. Though the chicken enchilada plates had cooled by the time he’d showered and changed into the clothing his brother had sent with her, he shoveled in forkfuls as if he hadn’t truly tasted food in weeks. Which, she suspected from the loose fit of his storm-gray Henley shirt and jeans and the hollows of his freshly shaven cheeks, might well be the case.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why’d you bring me all the way out here instead of just heading for my condo?”
“Because if reporters catch wind that you’ve been released, I knew they’d be both there and at the entrance of the family ranch with camera crews. You know how those vultures are.”
“All too well, unfortunately,” he said, hating the thought of appearing in the media looking like a hunted animal. “Is that why you rented this place?” he asked, looking around the clean but rustic paneled room in the once-popular family lodge resort, with its faded drapes and dated cowboy-and-cactus decor and location miles from town.
She shook her head. “I’ve been staying out here all along. It’s quiet, and it suits me.”
“There are a lot more modern places with better amenities, closer to everything.”
“I see more than enough generic chain motels in my line of work as it is,” she told him. “And empty as this place is this time of year, it had a great deal on the rates.”
He looked at her suspiciously, as if he sensed the half-truth of her statement. That rather than choosing this place for its old-time Western vibe and low off-season prices, she’d been more focused on finding the most out-of-the-way location possible—one with a room affording a view of the only road allowing access. She’d been grateful, too, to find the manager willing to accept a cash payment and not look too hard at the fake ID she’d presented upon check-in. But clearly, the older woman must have noticed, for when Sierra had turned down a room with a great view of the scenic foothills, asking instead for one that overlooked the road, the eyes behind the manager’s half glasses had softened, and she’d quickly said, Of course, dear. I understand completely, before patting Sierra’s hand with her own short, plump fingers.
As she closed the disposable container on her own half-eaten dinner, Sierra felt a twinge, suspecting the woman believed her to be fleeing an abusive spouse or lover—but if it helped to keep her safe from whomever Ice Veins’s nephew, Eddie, may have sent gunning for her, she was willing to let the misperception stand.
“Seems like a lot of driving back and forth to save a few bucks,” Ace pressed.
Irritated by the doubt in his voice, she snapped, “We weren’t all born rich as your branch of the Coltons,” before realizing what she’d just said.
Anger sparking in his eyes, he fired back, “You mean you haven’t profited enough off my pain lately?”
She groaned, her face burned as if she’d been slapped. “I wasn’t thinking about—about the real circumstances of your birth before I spoke. Forgive me.”
Nodding, he blew out an audible breath. “Only if you’ll accept my apology for being an ungrateful ass, too. Frankly, if you’d’ve taken twice that off Selina, I would’ve been fine with it. Or at least I would now, knowing she’s getting nothing for her twenty-five thousand dollars—”
“Nothing but a whole lot of questions, I suspect,” Sierra said, wondering if he really meant it. “I’m betting that Spencer will be looking hard at her as the potential source of that payoff to Destiny.”
“But Destiny said the caller who hired her to lie and plant that gun was male, and younger.”
“If that woman’s a reliable source, I’m a Dallas debutante,” Sierra said. “Besides, who’s to say that your stepmother—I mean your father’s second wife—couldn’t have disguised her voice? A woman’s voice and a young male’s really aren’t so far off, are they?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Ace agreed. “Though why would Selina frame me, unless she’d shot my father herself? And why would she want to do that, since it would jeopardize whatever sweetheart deal she’s had going to keep her job with the company and her home on ranch grounds all these years?”
Shaking her head, Sierra said, “We’re not going to figure it out now. But there’s an extra burrito inside the bag there. Want it? You look like you’re still hungry.”
“I’m good, but thanks. And thanks for thinking of it,” he said. “I haven’t had much in the way of an appetite this past month. Especially after I was taken into custody, not knowing the family was all convinced I’d—Did you know the ballistics came back as a match on that gun? The one found inside my condo? My attorney told me—”
She nodded. “Yes, I heard that. That’s how they got the warrant for your arrest, I’m told.”
“So all this time, my stepmother, Genevieve, the people I grew up thinking were my siblings—they had to have been convinced that that was why I’d taken off. That I’d really been the one to shoot him.”
“They didn’t all believe it,” she tried to reassure him. But the haunted look on Ace’s face, still marked with fading bruises, told her he didn’t buy it. And that he was as nervous, in his own way, about his reunion with his family as she was about returning to her home in Las Vegas.
“Do you think they’ll accept now,” he asked, setting down his fork as he saw her noticing its shaking, “that Destiny was paid off to set me up? Or will they still figure I’m just a bastard who resents their birthright? Do you think they’ll ever dare trust me again?”
Rising from her chair, she went to him. With the lightest of touches, she stroked the side of his face, running her hand over the barely discernible bump where she’d struck him that first night they had met. “They’re waiting for you right now, Ace,” she said quietly. “Waiting to welcome you back into the fold. Maybe not all of them—they don’t want to overwhelm you—but it’ll be a start. And don’t forget, your daughter’s there, too, with the man in her life. A daughter your siblings have already more than half-convinced to love you, sight unseen.”
“Love me?” He shook his head. “How could—but she hasn’t even met me, can’t know anything about me except the fact I was a deadbeat father—”
“Not by choice, right? You didn’t know, were never told—”
“I should’ve—”
“Cut yourself a little slack?” she asked. “After all, you were seventeen.”
“And she’s not so much older than that herself now, right? A young woman who’s heard only that I’m some kind of jailbird. A man who fled arrest after shooting his own father following his firing.”
