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My gut clenched. “Ah, Christ, you need to stop that.”
“They broke into my grandmother’s house.” Her chin wobbled as the tears slipped down her cheeks. In the faint light from the bedside table, their watery tracks seemed way too prominent. She blew out a breath. “I know it’s yours now, but it was hers first. It was ours. She practically raised me. After my parents flaked out, Gram was all I had. She never let me feel the lack. I didn’t have siblings or much contact with my parents, but that didn’t matter. She was all the family I needed. Then she left me.”
When I started to argue, she shook her head. “I know she had no choice. It wasn’t her fault. But I’m still alone. The only thing that was keeping me going was getting my house back—and hating you.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “We see how that worked out, don’t we? No house, and here I am. Doing what, I don’t even fucking know. And now someone has it out for the only thing I have left of my grandmother.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t possibly guess at their motives.”
“No, but I’m almost positive they were there before. There are valuables left in the house, but not as many as there were. After speaking with the realtor, I did a short sale on some—”
“You sold items out of the house I’d bought?” Even when I was trying to comfort her, I couldn’t help being a businessman down to the core.
“The contents weren’t included in the sale,” Grace said stubbornly.
“Depends what contents we’re talking about. According to my agent, I was to receive—” I stopped and directed my gaze at the ceiling. Focus, Carson. “We should go through the house and make an itemized list of what’s left and what’s been sold, see if you can note any discrepancies.”
“I won’t remember everything. My grandmother was a collector, and I was in such a state after her passing that whole days blended together. She wasn’t supposed to go then. She’d just been given a clean bill of health at her doctor’s not three days before.”
“Things happen, Grace. Sometimes the doctors don’t catch everything.” But my mind was whirling.
There were way too many questions lately and not nearly enough answers. I needed some, and fast.
“I know that. I’m not stupid, Blake. I’m just saying that I didn’t expect it. If she’d been sick…if there had been some kind of warning…” She sighed and laid her head on my chest, tracing a finger over the light hair on my chest. Somehow I still wore my shirt. It was a wrinkled mess and twisted on my arms, but still on just the same. “You never said how you knew her. The way you’d met.”
It was easier to give her that than any of the rest. What I’d been willing to do to build my company. The risks I’d taken, the people I’d dealt with. Ones I’d still be working with if not for Annabelle’s intervention.
“She knew my father,” I said vaguely, hoping that would be enough for right now. The rest of the story would be distracting enough. “Through him, she found out about me.”
“What do you mean, found out?” She peered up at me, and her still damp cheeks were my undoing. “Odd choice of words.”
“My father had another family. Several of them actually. He liked to spread it around.” I smiled thinly and stroked a hand over her hair in hopes she’d stop watching me so closely. Those shrewd blue-green eyes could pick me apart, and right now, all my cracks and seams were on full display. “My mother worked for him. She was part of his cleaning staff when he was married to Sebastian’s mother. Sebastian is my older brother.”
“Is he like you?”
“Like me in what way?”
She flapped a hand. “I don’t know. Is he a mega mogul?”
I chuckled. “Of a sort. He definitely keeps an eye on business matters, though he has a right-hand man who handles much of that for him. His preference is to dabble with music. And Wicca.”
If her eyebrow had pitched any higher, it would’ve reached her hairline. “He’s a witch?”
“Supposedly there’s some sort of hereditary bloodline as well.” I waved it off. I had never had much interest in the metaphysical. Yet another way I was different from at least one of my half-brothers. “Not something he tells people, though. You can imagine how that would be received, especially since he lives in Salem. He keeps a low profile for the most part.”
“He sounds fascinating.”
I wrapped a hank of her hair around my fingers and tugged. “You would think so. Damn artist.”
“You’re an artist too. That you hide it doesn’t change the reality.”
Ignoring her, I stared over her shoulder at the windows. The pale pink-gray light of morning was slipping into the room. The sky was growing lighter by the moment.
And I had a woman in my bed,
in my house. She was curled up on my chest, her body soft and warm, her tears still drying on my skin.
There were needs in her eyes. Ones beyond sex that I wasn’t capable of filling.
The muscles in my shoulders tensed. I shouldn’t be doing this. Men like me weren’t meant for cuddling up after sex. Not with all the lies and necessary deflections between us. That we’d eliminated hers tonight didn’t change the reality that she wanted something that was now mine. Or all of the things in my past I wasn’t about to share, no matter how relaxed we were after fucking our brains out.
