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Forget years, she realized as they passed an open bar and several closed stores outside the downtown area. She had never felt a connection like that or been touched in such a way by a man who clearly knew his way around a woman’s body. Rather than glossing past what he had to deal with to gain his own pleasure, as her previous, on-and-off-again younger boyfriend had so often done, Ace had seemed to relish wringing every last gasp and cry of delight from her before he’d finally—It made Sierra dizzy just to think of the moment he had thrust inside her... She was even more moved, remembering how solicitous he’d been afterward, how concerned that he might have caused her injured ribs pain.
What ribs? she’d moaned, floating on a raft of pure bliss.
“You don’t really have to go home, do you? Not right away, at any rate?” Ace asked her. “I know I have no right to ask, with my life such a mess now. I know there’s nothing I can promise you, but—”
“It’s not that. It’s just—I have some things, some business back home I really need to deal with,” she lied, not wanting to add her worries to the mountain he already had of his own.
“Some business...” he echoed. “And afterward?”
Words crowded into her throat, vows to call him when she could or maybe even come back for a visit. But she bit her lip against the pain, telling herself it was better to hurt him by remaining vague than by making promises she wouldn’t be around—or possibly alive—to keep.
“I can’t really say,” she finally told him. “It all depends... I know you’re going to have a lot on your plate coming up, too. Things you can’t put off.”
After taking a turn he pointed out, they passed the low, dark
hulks of several warehouses, an area where the streetlights of downtown gave way to the more widely spaced and dimmer, golden, sodium-vapor security lighting that marked the area.
“Definitely. But that doesn’t mean...” he said, before interrupting himself to point out a narrow opening between two storefronts. “Why don’t you hang a right here, at this alleyway, and then take the second drive on the left? We’ll see if we can get in through a rear entrance and avoid any photographers who might be lurking near the condo’s main entrance.”
“Will do,” she said, checking her mirrors once again to reassure herself they didn’t have company before making the turn.
“That doesn’t mean,” Ace continued, “that you’re not near the top of my list of priorities. Which is why I’m warning you—”
“Warning me?” A chill of alarm ran through her. Because she’d never gotten any sense that Ace Colton might be the possessive type. But maybe that was what came of falling head over heels for a fugitive she’d been sent to hunt down, a man she couldn’t truly know, regardless of what the lies her heart had whispered.
“I’m warning you, Sierra, that I damned well am going to get justice for my father, figure out who I really am and make things as right as I possibly can with my family—and afterward I intend to cut a swath straight to Las Vegas to claim you.”
She darted a glance his way. “Claim me?” Did the man think she was a diamond ring he’d left at a pawn shop?
“Claim you, woo you, throw myself at your feet,” he said, sounding completely serious, “whatever it takes to make it clear that the only future I’m interested in building is one that includes getting to know you a whole lot better.”
As narrow as the alley was, there was no place to pull over. So Sierra turned into the second drive as he’d instructed before stopping next to the warehouse-style garage where condo owners stored their vehicles to stare back at him, her mouth as dry as cotton and her blood rushing like a river in full flood stage in her ears.
“I know I’m coming on damned strong,” Ace went on, “with all this crazy talk about a future when we’ve only known each other such a short time. But Sierra, if these past few months have taught me one thing, it’s been that I’ve wasted a lifetime chasing the wrong dreams, the wrong women, the fancy cars and exotic vacations and all the things that it turns out can be whisked away and shattered with a single email—or a few lies to the wrong people. But in you, I’ve found something real. I know it. Please just say that you think there’s a chance someday that you might. Or at least that I’m not scaring you half out of your mind.”
She forced a smile to keep her tears back. “I’ve never been accused of scaring easy, cowboy. Never.” Leaning to her right, she pressed her lips to his, a kiss bittersweet with the knowledge that the future that he dreamed of was never going to happen, that there was no way to avoid endangering Ace Colton and the family that he cared for—except to break his heart.
Chapter 9
Something was wrong with Sierra, Ace realized. If he hadn’t been so distracted with his own problems, and so emotionally off balance after his release from custody, he would have demanded answers earlier, on the way over to the lodge where she was staying, when he’d first noticed she had been so jittery. But just now, when she had kissed him, he’d sensed her tensing, holding back—and when his younger brother Rafe walked over and gently tapped on the car window, she nearly jumped out of her skin, her body coiling into what he recognized as a fight-or-flight posture.
But there was no time for questions now, not with his joy overriding all else as he bailed out of the car to embrace the chief financial officer of Colton Oil, whom Ace had not only grown up with, but also worked with closely throughout their adult lives.
“Not so hard, man. You may’ve heard I’ve got some stitches,” Ace reminded him, laughing with relief when his blond sibling’s bear hug finally eased.
“Sorry, but it’s just so damned good to have you back, Ace,” Rafe said, backing off to clap him—somewhat more carefully—on the shoulder. “And we’ve missed you so much. You’ve had us all so worried.”
“I’m sorry, so sorry for taking off without a word like that,” Ace said, more choked up than he’d imagined at the concern in his brother’s blue eyes. Uncomfortable with the emotion, he cleared his throat and abruptly changed the subject. “Allow me to introduce Sierra Madden, the woman who tracked me down and then pulled the pin out of that garbage case against me.”
“Helped a little,” Sierra corrected. “And Rafe and I have met, when I was interviewing various family members, trying to figure out your whereabouts.”
Her mention of family brought to mind the pictures she’d shown him of his family members. Including one of Nova. His stomach flipped as he wondered, would his—his mind could still barely form the word—daughter really be here this evening? “Should we—should we all go on up, then?”
“Absolutely,” Rafe said. “I came down to run off any reporters, but it seems the coast is clear for now—and Ainsley and Grayson have covered up those big windows of yours with enough sheets so no one should be able to sneak any photos through them, either.”
“That’s great,” Ace said, wondering how celebrities survived the feeling of being stalked like big game, year after year, by paparazzi, when the past few months had worn so badly on him and his family.
Feeling like a stranger returning to his own place after so long away, Ace went to the recently replaced digital access pad that allowed them into the garage. There, a glance assured him that the car he usually drove around town remained, still covered, in his corner parking spot in the underground parking lot. He led them to the elevator and keyed in the code that took them to the third floor, which was solely occupied by a modern-styled unit he’d had built back when things like exposed brick, towering, floor-to-ceiling windows and a custom spiral staircase had mattered to him. He’d wanted a private place to entertain his more sophisticated friends and out-of-town business associates who often passed through Mustang Valley.
