Dirty Little Lies: A Men of Summer Novel (16 page)

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t intimidate her much.

A little, maybe.

Sometimes.

“No confrontation,” she agreed, smiling tightly as she waved one hand, the mockery clearly present. But it hurt—oh God, how it hurt. “Unfortunately, my patience for your bullshit is rather low right now. So I think it would be a good time to take me to work. I’m already late, and Uncle Vince will tear my filing system apart if I don’t hurry and get there.”

“We need to talk, Grace. Now.” The expression on his face would have sent a chill of foreboding up her spine if she weren’t so damned pissed off.

“The last thing we need to do right now is talk,” she ground out, hating the brittle tone of her own voice, hating the tears she was forced to hold back. “You can drive me or I’ll walk.”

Zack’s first impulse was to put her over his shoulder and take her to his bed, exactly what he should have done instead of trying to be noble. Instead of trying to make sure she knew the rules before she gave herself to him.

Until he saw the tears.

Those tears had his chest tightening so hard, so fast, he found his breathing growing heavy and a sense of failure sweeping over him.

Failure?

How the hell did her tears constitute failure, anyway?

“Please, Zack. Now.” Her voice trembled between one breath and the next before she managed to conquer it. Her back straightened, her expression became smooth, though her eyes, like bruised emeralds, stared back at him and betrayed her firmness with the glitter of moisture she hadn’t been able to suppress.

He could make sure she was safe in the office, he knew. Just as he knew Vince, now that he was on guard, would ensure only his most trusted men were anywhere near the house. He couldn’t imagine Vince being as destructive with files as she described, but maybe Grace needed to feel like her uncle needed her that much. With Kenni’s return and her mother’s betrayals, she had to be feeling lost, confused. That hunger to be needed could be relentless, he knew.

She would be safer here at the house with him, though. Every inch of the outer perimeter of the house was wired for heat, video, and sound. If a bird shifted on a branch, then he knew about it. If anything larger moved, then the silent alarm on his phone was instantaneous.

He pushed his fingers through his hair restlessly, arousal still pounding through him, the need to have more of her pushing at him, aware that she’d give in to him, that she’d give him more of the lush sweetness he’d only tasted so far.

That insane urge he’d had to make her understand that once the traitor was found, the affair would be over, to warn her not to fall in love with him had him mentally kicking his own ass now.

“Forget it, I’ll walk.” Evidently fed up with waiting on him, Grace turned and stepped to the door.

“Grace.” He caught her wrist and then instantly released her when she froze and gave a desperate shake of her head. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered. “That’s why I stopped, so we could figure this out.”

“I thought it was women who overthought every damned thing.” She flashed him a disdainful look. “Don’t worry, Zack, I won’t try to claim the heart you don’t have. I’m not completely stupid. If I had no chance at it before, then I damned sure don’t have a chance at it now. Right?”

Dark emerald eyes flashed with a hint of grief before she managed to rein in emotions he might have wanted to understand better.

“Don’t bother denying it.” A husky laugh hinting at pain more than amusement parted her lips. “Just take me to work, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to discuss emotions that don’t exist and rules that go with fucking you. Better yet, I think that’s a discussion we need to table for a very, very long time.”

chapter eleven

Grace entered the office before coming to a stop, her gaze alighting on her uncle as he dug through the file cabinet. Several files lay haphazardly on top of the cabinet, another on the floor, and she could only imagine what the inside of the drawers looked like.

Dressed in silk slacks, a short-sleeved shirt, and dark leather boots, he looked like an executive pretending to be a farmer. It was a look he swore garnered trust in some of the political figures that used the Maddox hunting cabins and lodges for safe houses and “bigwig meetings,” as Cord had once called them.

There were six two-room cabins and three two-story lodges in the mountains, built on Maddox property and patrolled by Kin. Those cabins and lodges were the public face of Maddox financial security, though most people were unaware of who used them. The farm was secondary, with covert funds coming in for the surveillance and security of the mountains they covered.

The files her uncle was going through held nothing even remotely connected to Kin activities, so the rule was, he was to stay the hell out of them. He made a mess with files. He might remember whatever his filing system was, but no one else could make heads nor tails of it. Not even Grace.

“Weren’t you banned from my file cabinet?” she asked, keeping her voice firm as she made certain the heels of her shoes snapped against the hardwood floor while she moved toward him.

Her uncle froze, head lifting like a deer caught in headlights before he glared at her. “You’re two hours late!” he snapped, slamming shut the drawer he was pilfering through while gathering up the files he’d pulled free.

“I’m not exactly on my own schedule anymore, Vince,” she informed him, blaming Zack for the good hour it was going to take, if not more, to straighten out the files her uncle had no doubt made a mess off. “Yell at Zack.”

“He looks like Cord after having dealt with the Blanchard girl,” Vince sniffed after looking up at Zack. “I think I’ll leave him the hell alone.”

Her brows lifted at that comment. “You’re not distracting me.” No doubt he had some gossip to impart this morning concerning Cord and “the Blanchard girl,” God knew which one.

“I’m not trying to distract you.” Scratching his head, her uncle frowned down at her, trying for sincerity and displeasure in a single look.

It wasn’t working for him this morning.

The look would have been intimidating if she hadn’t spent the years since turning eighteen dealing with it.

Shuffling through the half dozen files she took from his hand, she could only shake her head. “What are you looking for?”

“Estimates on the new hunting cabin that came in,” he groused, peering over her shoulder at her desk for a second before seeming to give up on the idea of messing it up as well. “I was going to have Zack go over them and tell me what he thought.”

“Did I put the estimate together?” Zack asked in a faintly querulous tone before Grace could answer.

He hadn’t, Grace knew. Vince had never used Rigor Construction for any of the projects on the Maddox holdings.

“No, but you can still look at them!” Vince snapped, his expression bordering on frustrated anger. “Besides, I might change my mind. Jazz is almost family now.”

Almost family?

Grace wanted to laugh at the comment. Jazz and Vince’s daughter, Kenni, had scheduled their wedding for March just before Vince projected to have the new hunting cabin started. Jazz had loved Kenni since before her disappearance, though. Loved her to the extent that he’d never had a serious relationship until her return.

“I’ll give you an estimate on what you want built, but I’m not going to go over anyone else’s estimates, Vince, you know better than that,” Zack snorted. “Now I’ll leave you and Grace to discuss her files. I need to talk to Cord for a minute.”

“Yeah, you do that,” her uncle muttered, casting her a wary glance that almost had her laughing at him. “He’s gonna become a pain in my ass.”

She didn’t comment—she knew better, and she had too much to do to become involved in the debate she knew would follow.

“The file for the estimates is in your office, Vince,” she reminded him as the door closed behind Zack. “I don’t get the file until you’ve approved it.” And he knew that. It was a system they’d used for years.

“Well, I can’t find the damned thing.…” Vince destroyed files. He didn’t lose them, they never left the office, but he could spend hours searching for one because he so hated the hard copy system and because Grace had given up on learning his filing system. He was forced to use hers, which meant if the file was put in the cabinet, she put it there. Once she found it.

The age of the Internet was, in Vince’s opinion, a godsend. All his files in once place, a closed system he didn’t have to worry about losing a page from. Scan the hard copy into it, deposit the physical pages in a box to be stored, and it was over and done with. Until he needed it. Or he needed to show someone else a file not as sensitive as the others on the closed system he used. Then it could take hours, sometimes days to go through all the boxes stacked in the fireproof room beneath his office.

After getting the file her uncle needed from his office, she handed it to him and watched him stalk to the door leading into the house. When he reached the hall, he called to Sawyer and Deacon: “Keep your asses wherever Gracie goes.” Seconds later, the two younger cousins were sprawled out on the couch across from her desk and watching her a little too thoughtfully.

That look was always guaranteed to give her a headache.

“Turn on the TV, amuse yourselves with a magazine or whatever, but don’t harass me,” she ordered them. “Your father, the file-destroyer, has made a mess and I’m none too happy.”

Deacon snickered. The twins seemed to have rediscovered their jokester sides after finding their baby sister alive. For a while, Grace had worried she’d never hear Sawyer’s deep laughter again, or watch Deacon play his little pranks on the family or on the men who worked around the farm.

“Sleep late, did ya?” Sawyer drawled from where he slouched back in one corner of the couch.

“No, I didn’t.” She turned her back on them and went to work on the file cabinet, more so they couldn’t glimpse the reason behind her lateness in her expression. “Zack had to debate all the reasons I shouldn’t come into work. Then I had to argue all the reasons I should. It took a minute.” Or so, she amended silently.

She could almost feel those two fiends as their minds worked. She knew Kenni had worried so much about the missing gaiety they once possessed that she’d started playing pranks and pushing to reignite that male humor. When they were practicing on someone else, it was funny as hell. Not so much when they were practicing on her.

“Minute man, huh?” Deacon murmured.

Her face flamed.

Giving herself a moment to collect her composure, she turned her head and gave them the bland, no-nonsense look she’d had to learn to adopt with all the Maddox men and certain Kin commanders. “Really, Deke?” she stated in disappointment. “Am I known for being so easy that all a man would have to take is a minute with me?”

She was known for being completely unattainable, and she knew it.

“Yeah, but you’ve been hot for Zack since you were eighteen,” he snorted. “And I know the signs of a man that’s just as hot for some woman. That boy’s been known to leave a gathering within an hour of your arrival simply because one of us had to punch him in the gut for the way he looked at you.”

She was shocked. She’d had no idea her cousins ever did such a thing. “Why would you do something so idiotic?” she asked in disgust.

Sawyer rolled his dark green eyes in amusement. “Sweet cousin, every man you’ve went out with has gotten a punch in the gut and a warning not to play with you. Hell, it’s the only way to keep men like that in control. If they really liked you, they would have come back.”

Where the hell had they gotten that idea? She could only stare at them in disbelief, amazed that they had come up with something so infantile.

“For more torture? Who would be that stupid?” That was insane—no wonder she’d had so few second dates. She’d assumed it was because she wasn’t willing to just hop into bed with them.

“Zack,” they answered at the same time, looked at each other in surprise, then snickered before Sawyer followed it up. “That boy’s brains have been in his pants since you come of age, Gracie. Everyone knew it but you.”

She was calling bullshit on that one.

She couldn’t deal with these two today. What had ever made her think she missed their boyish high jinks? There had to be a way to distract them.

“Did you see the email from our DOD contact?” she asked as casually as possible. “He has a few toys he thought you might be interested in.”

Toys
being military hardware the Kin had access to through their affiliation with the Brigham Agency.

“We got it,” Sawyer drawled. “Stop trying to distract us. Come on, Grace. Tell us if he needs his face bruised. If he made it past first base, then we’re definitely bruising his face.”

She paused in the act of returning a file to its proper place before sighing heavily. This was going to get old fast.

“He doesn’t need his face bruised,” she assured them, lying through her teeth.

“Did he make second base?” Deke inquired with no small amount of interest. “That’s two punches in the gut.”

God help her.

“Leave.” Turning on them in frustration, she pointed to the door. “Now.”

“He made second base,” Sawyer assured his brother. “Look at the blush on her face. Both of us get to hit him in the gut and in the face.”

Carefully, she stepped across the room, her eyes narrowing on them as they suddenly deserted their slouched positions to sit up straight, tensing as she reached the couch, where she sat between the two of them slowly.

Reaching out, she gripped each cousin’s knee and gave a little squeeze. “Do you remember when you made the last mistake in teasing me over Zack?” she asked as she crossed one leg over the opposite and gave them each a tight smile. “I still have the pictures. Should I share them?”

Sawyer’s eyes widened. “The doctor said those pictures would never be seen by anyone!”

“But he handed me the camera when he stepped outside your bedrooms to get the bag I’d brought up for him,” she informed them gently. “It was so easy to steal them.” And she was lying through her teeth again.