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That in itself should have shown me the gravity of her situation but I’d been wholly focused on her. Her body. Her scent. That taste of her and the feel of her next to me in bed.
Now her mother was here—at least she thought so.
And if her mother was in my town… Jonah wouldn’t be far behind, and that man was who she was truly afraid of.
I opened the door to my bedroom and peeked inside, finding her curled in a ball around my pillow, her long, thick hair splayed over her exposed shoulders. She looked up at me, her eyes glossy with fatigue.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said with calculated calm even though my heart was racing in my chest. “Stay here. Stay inside. Call me if you need anything.
“Where are you going?”
“The Hallston Ranch, but I’ll be back before you miss me.”
She nodded, a ghost of a smile touching her beautiful mouth.
I left the apartment and locked it firmly behind me before climbing into my truck and driving away. I didn’t know what her mother looked like. I wouldn’t be able to spot her face in a crowd. I made a note not to park the truck nearby when I came home in the event the truck was something her parents and Jonah looked for when on her trail.
I arrived at the Hallston Ranch in record time. It was late, and I hadn’t called ahead.
It was George who spotted me first. He walked up to meet me as I parked in the wide, circular driveway in front of what we all called the “Big House”—Grant’s house.
“What’re you doing here?” George asked. His eyes danced over my face and his expression went stone-cold. “What happened?”
Grant stepped out onto his front porch, squinting into the night. He was dressed in a gray shirt and flannel pants, his feet bare.
“I need your help,” I said breathlessly.
George leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at the computer screen in front of us. I stoodon the other side of Grant, who was sitting in his desk chair in his cozy office on the second floor of his sprawling house.
“They own a publishing house,” Grant murmured under his breath as we all read the bio listed under a handsome older man in his mid-sixties. “That’s his claim to fame, it looks like. Publishing, media, marketing.”
“And her mother?” I asked as he scrolled down.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing about her on this website.”
“Do you know if she works?” George inquired, but I shook my head.
“I don’t. If Sierra is telling the truth about her upbringing, it’s likely she was never expected to work because her mother never did.”
“What was Jonah’s last name again?” Grant asked absently, pulling up a fresh webpage.
“Lawley, I believe.”
“Ah.” He chuckled. “Senator Lawley’s son. I’ve heard of the asshole, you know. That family is very against the private ownership of large swatches of land.”
George stepped forward as a plethora of articles sprayed across the screen. A tall, blond, handsome man in his thirties stared back at us in his official portraits, which were tucked between paparazzi pictures of him in precarious situations with women who were not Sierra.
One especially damning picture was taken on a yacht from afar, but it was obvious it was Jonah with a wraith of a woman straddling his lap, both of them barely clothed.
“Good lord,” George hissed under his breath. “This jackass wasn’t hiding anything about his affairs, was he?”
“I wouldn’t call these affairs,” Grant mused, scrolling down to article that had my heart snapping in my chest.
The article announced the engagement of Jonah and Sierra. Sierra stood next to him, her mouth curved in a soft smile that didn’t meet her eyes. Her eyes were… dead. No emotion. My gaze shifted to Jonah’s hand, which was clutching her hip so tight his knuckles were white from the strain. He was hurting her, but she didn’t show it. And the naked eye wouldn’t have noticed that demanding touch that screamed a command to obey. No, the focus was on the massive ring on her finger, a glittering diamond that was worth more than every building in Hot Springs put together.
If Grant and George hadn’t been here, I would have put my fist through the wall.
“He lost an election this past year,” Grant continued, scrolling down. He didn’t read the article out loud, but I read it. Read the lines where Sierra had explained how much she loved Jonah and was looking forward to being his “First Lady.”
