Garrett planted a hand on the counter on either side of Hope and leaned in close enough that she could see the passion gleaming in his eyes. “I realized something today,” he told her soberly. “The soldiers most in need are the veterans who are no longer in the military. More has to be done for them.”
She wished he didn’t look so good, even in jeans, a black cotton polo and boots. She lounged back against the counter, trying not to feel his body heat. “There are existing organizations. Wounded Warriors, for one...”
His gaze roving her upturned face. “And they do a great job. No question. But they can’t be everywhere.” Lifting his hands, he moved away from her, opened up the fridge and pulled out a beer. “Right now, Laramie County has a growing population of former soldiers. Many aren’t physically wounded. But all of them could benefit from more readily available services.”
She watched him twist off the cap. Wished she could join him. She poured herself another glass of milk, instead. “Like support groups?”
He toasted her wordlessly. “And physical therapy, taken alongside other vets. Job training. Assistance making the transition into civilian life.” He smiled at the intent way she was listening to his plans. “Bess Monroe is doing a great thing in starting West Texas Warrior Assistance. But the Lockhart Foundation really let her down.” He shook his head in dissatisfaction. “I’m going to fix that.”
She loved it when he was on a mission.
“Singlehandedly?”
Mischievously, he waggled his brow. “I have sway with the board of directors.”
Unable to do anything but laugh, Hope quipped in return, “So I’ve heard.” His family did seem to adore him.
She was beginning to adore him.
Especially when he looked at her as if she was the most beautiful, desirable woman on Earth.
He reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, gazing at her with the same smitten look she had seen other men give their wives in the maternity ward.
“Seriously, I’m going to make sure the dream becomes a reality for the people here in Laramie County, sooner rather than later.”
She believed him. Just as she believed he was wildly attracted to her—for the time being. But she had to ask, “How?”
Another lift of his impossibly wide shoulders. “That I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I’m working on it.”
For a moment, her optimism rose, while her ability to censor her questions failed—big time.
A veil dropped over his emotions. His lips curved ruefully, as if to say, Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Which, really, was what she should have expected, Hope reminded herself. She had no more business weighing in on his career decisions than anyone else in his family.
This was something he had to decide for himself.
“I have a few weeks left, before I have to give the army an answer.”
Which begged her next question. Did he know what it was going to be? The maddeningly implacable look on his face gave her no clue.
“So, at least temporarily, I can stay right here in Texas.”
Temporarily being the operative word. Hope pushed aside her selfishness. “Well, that’s good,” she murmured, forcing a smile. “I’m sure your very philanthropic mother will be really proud of you.” As would his whole family.
His sexy grin widened. He put his quarter-finished beer aside, lowered his head and scored his thumb across her bottom lip. “What about you? Are you proud of me?”
A thrill soared through her. Hope caught her breath.
He touched his lips lightly to hers in an angel-soft kiss. Paused long enough to undo the butterfly clip on the back of her head. “’Cause if I’m going to get a gold star for good behavior,” he rasped, seductively combing his fingers through the tumbling strands of her hair, “I’d sure like to get it from you.”
* * *
COMMON SENSE HAD told Hope they shouldn’t be doing this again. At least, not while she was still working for his family foundation.
But for now, she thought, as they kissed their way to his bedroom once again, she couldn’t think about anything but the closeness she felt whenever she was with him. What was one more moment in time, one more blissful, passion-filled night, except an interlude to be grateful for? And she was grateful for the feel of his strong arms around her as he disrobed her, and then himself, and stretched out alongside her on the bed.
Sliding one arm beneath her shoulders, he lifted her head to his. He kissed her temple, jaw, throat. “Have I told you how much I like it when you catch your breath and look at me like that?” He caressed his way down her body, then returned to her mouth and kissed her again, deeply and provocatively this time, the kiss a melding of heat and need. “As if you can’t help but want me as much as I want you.”
Hope felt treasured in that special man–woman way. To the point that, if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought she had finally found the soul mate she had been searching for her entire life.
Maybe love wasn’t involved here, but everything else that mattered was present. Which made her feel as if their coming together was a step toward something unconventional—and yet wonderful.
His lips closed over the tips of her breasts. Laved delicately. Sensation warred with the thrill of possession, as he kissed his way lower, across her ribs, her navel, hips. Lower still, he traced the insides of her thighs to the dampness within. His ministrations felt incredibly good, incredibly right. Hope closed her eyes, clung to him and surrendered all the more. The eroticism of his touch flowed over her in hot, exciting waves. Trembling from head to toe at the long, sensual strokes of his tongue and the soothing feel of his lips, she caught his head in her hands and tangled her fingers in his hair. Until, at last, her head fell back; her body shuddered with pleasure. Yearning spiraled deep inside her. And then she came apart in his hands.
He held her through the aftershocks.
“My turn,” she teased.
Wanting to take the lead, she shifted positions, tracing the bunched muscles and hot satiny skin, learning the mysteries of him, just as he had come to know hers. Her hair brushed over his ripped abdomen and hard, muscular thighs. Inhaling the tantalizing masculine scent of him, she teased, tormented and pleased. Tasted the salt of his perspiration and the familiar sweetness of his skin. Aware she had never felt so alive, so safe and treasured and loved, she focused on one seductive plateau after another, until he could not help but groan.
Trembling, he reached for her. He shifted her upward, across his body, then over, onto her back.
The warmth and strength of his body engulfed her. She wound her arms around his neck and opened herself up to him, to the sensation of being taken. He lifted her with one hand and then they were one. All was lost in the blazing hot passion and the overwhelming need. Adrenaline rushed. Pleasure spiraled. And in the sweet blissful satisfaction that followed, Hope realized that the notion that she might one day have an adoring husband, in addition to her amazing little boy, and a loving family of her own, was not so far-fetched, after all.
* * *
EARLY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Garrett’s only sister breezed through the bunkhouse door. Hope blinked in surprise. “Sage?” This was certainly unexpected!
Garrett came in to stand beside Hope, Max snuggled drowsily in his arms. He bussed the top of his little sister’s head. “What are you doing here, little sis?”
Sage set her overnight bag down. “Mom asked me to fly in first thing and meet you all at the ranch. I wanted wheels of my own so I’d have maximum flexibility to come and go as needed, so I rented a car at the San Angelo airport.”
“Mom’s not here yet?” Chance walked in.
“Actually, she is.” Wyatt joined them, with a look over his shoulder at the limo stopping in front of the bunkhouse porch.
Both brothers turned back to Sage and Garrett. “What’s going on?” Chance and Wyatt asked in unison.
“No clue,” Garrett said.
That made two of them, Hope thought with a twinge of anxiety.
Lucille breezed in. Clad in her usual outfit—a silk-and-linen sheath and heels, trademark pearls around her neck, her hair and makeup expertly done—she managed to look both exceedingly well-groomed and as if she had the entire world sitting on her shoulders.
She was followed by Adelaide Smythe.
Wyatt froze at the sight of Adelaide right behind Lucille. His gaze dropped to Adelaide’s rounded tummy and turned dark, then he looked away entirely.
That was weird, Hope thought, wondering what was going on between those two to cause such tension...
Inhaling, Lucille squared her shoulders. “Adelaide and I wanted to talk to you all at once.” She paused to make eye contact with everyone in the room. “And we wanted to do it in person.”
Which meant, Hope thought, the two women had figured out something...and she had a sinking feeling it had something to do with the annual fly-fishing trip Paul Smythe had secretly skipped this year. The trip he might have taken instead with Mirabelle Fanning.
“We need to have a board meeting,” Lucille said, taking her place at the head of the long plank table. “So everyone get what you need to be comfortable, and then have a seat.”
Five minutes later, Max was in his port-a-crib, snoozing away, and everyone was gathered around the table, coffee or sparkling water in front of them.
Lucille stood at the head of the table, practically buzzing with nerves. “There is no easy way to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it. Twenty-five million dollars, or half of the foundation’s funds, have been embezzled.”
The matriarch waited for the reaction to subside.
“All the checks that were supposed to go to the nonprofit organizations we were supporting apparently had the ‘pay to the order of’ information changed, as soon as I signed them.”
Another deathly silence fell.
“How is that possible?” Sage asked, upset.
Lucille turned to the forensic accountant.
Face pale, Adelaide explained grimly, “There’s a very sophisticated Wite-Out that thieves use on checks that allows them to change whatever they want—the date, the amount, who the money is going to—and still keep the authentic signature of the account holder. On all of the checks from the foundation, only the beneficiary of the check was changed.” She swallowed hard. “For instance, Metroplex Pet Rescue became Metroplex Pet Rescue Inc. Meals for Seniors became Meals for Seniors In Need. Preschoolers Read! became Dallas Preschoolers Read! The amounts and dates all stayed exactly the same, which allowed the fraud to go undetected in the Lockhart Foundation ledgers for nearly a year.”
“And your father never once caught on to this?” Wyatt asked skeptically.
Hope was surprised, too. From everything she’d heard, she had deduced that Paul Smythe was a very smart man.
Adelaide’s voice cracked. “My father did the embezzling.”
For a moment, everyone could only stare. Adelaide drew a deep breath, blinking back tears. “Believe me, I didn’t want to believe it, either,” she said hoarsely.
“Nor did I.” Lucille opened up a file and passed around copies of the canceled checks, provided to them by the bank. “But there’s no question as to what happened. Paul Smythe’s signature is on the back of every single cashed check.”
Adelaide nodded sadly. “Lucille and I visited all of the banks yesterday. The various financial institutions where the money was supposed to have been deposited. And wasn’t. And the bank where my father used his position as CFO to open accounts in both the fake charities’ and the Lockhart Foundation’s names, so he could move the money around very easily.”
Wyatt shrugged. “Well, if we know all that, can’t we get the money back?”
Lucille shook her head.
“It’s already been transferred out of the country,” Adelaide explained unhappily. “He moved it to a bank in a country that has a no money-tracking agreement with the United States. And then he withdrew all the funds yesterday.”
Another tense silence fell.
“Did he do this alone?” Chance said finally.
Adelaide grimaced. “Mirabelle Fanning was a VP at the bank where all the fraud occurred. She managed all the transactions and helped my father open all the bogus accounts. She took a long-planned early retirement last week. We assume they are together.”
“Has your father contacted you?” Sage asked quietly, as sympathetic toward her old friend as she was distraught over what had just happened to their family charity.
“He texted me this morning. Said, ‘I left the trail so no one else at the foundation would be blamed. Don’t bother to look further for the money or me—you’ll never find either.’ I tried calling him, but his cell phone provider said the account was canceled right after that message was sent. I’m sure he took the battery out and destroyed the phone so there would be no tracking it, either.”
“Have you reported all this to the police?” Chance asked.
“No,” his mother retorted. “And I don’t plan to until after I’ve personally made this right, visiting every charity in person and paying what is due to them.”
“Are we going to have enough money to do that?” Garrett asked, no doubt thinking about the local group that still needed so much help.
Adelaide consulted her computer. “For all but West Texas Warrior Assistance. There, the foundation is going to have to give them what was offered in writing, five thousand dollars, instead of the five hundred thousand that Lucille wanted to give them.”
Garrett looked extremely unhappy about that. Hope felt the same. She also knew there was little else that could be done, at least for now.
“And then what?” Sage bit out.
Lucille paused. “I need to talk to Hope in private about that.”
* * *
“ARE YOU DOING OKAY?” Hope asked Lucille, as the two set out for a walk. The afternoon was hot, but overcast. A stiff breeze blew across the rolling plains.
The older woman adjusted her wide-brimmed straw hat. “I’ll be better when I’ve made my apology and compensation tour.”
“Would you like me to go with you?”
“No. I need to handle this alone. Although both Adelaide and Sage have promised to be nearby throughout, for moral support. What I want from you is what we initially discussed.”
“A strategic response to what has happened.”
“I want to go public as soon as all the reparations are made and we talk to the police.”
“There’s a chance it could come out before then,” Hope warned, but for the moment she let it go. Lucille had enough to do just getting through the humiliating next phase. “What’s the chance the money will be recovered?”
“Given the extremely clever way Paul went about all this?” Lucille drew an aggrieved breath. “Next to none.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Hope said softly.
Lucille turned her attention to the unkempt family ranch land. Although the area next to the bunkhouse had been kept up, the rest of it had not. She sighed. “I should not have been so trusting, old family friend or not.”
Hope comforted the older woman the best she could. “Once people know what has happened, and I’ll make sure they do, your family will not just be forgiven, you’ll all be revered for the upstanding members of society that you are.”
“I trust you to be able to handle that.”
“And I will,” Hope promised.
Lucille turned to look at Hope and said, “It’s your ability to convince Garrett to stay in Texas and go along with our contingency plan—should the worst happen and it becomes necessary—that really worries me.”
The truth was, it worried Hope, too. When it came to preserving appearances, and/or doing something just because it would look good to outsiders, Garrett had not exactly proved cooperative thus far.
“Have you been able to speak to him yet?”
Guilt flowing through her, Hope shook her head.
Lucille studied her a long moment, which made Hope wonder what the woman sensed. Something, clearly. “Any particular reason why not?” Lucille asked.
Because I was too busy leaning on his big, strong shoulders and making love with him, Hope thought. She drew a deep breath. “I just haven’t found the right time to bring it up.”
“Laying the groundwork?”
“Trying to develop a rapport.”
Lucille considered that. “Makes sense.”
Did it?
Up until now, Hope hadn’t considered her attraction to Garrett would make it impossible for her to do her job well. But that was exactly what was happening.
Fortunately, she could fix that. “I’ll find the right way to broach it with him, if and when the time comes,” she reassured Lucille.
She was still hoping it wouldn’t, because the Lockharts had been through enough.
“See that you do,” Lucille said. “Because the future of the foundation and our family are depending on both of you.”
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, Sage and Adelaide had departed for Dallas. Chance and Wyatt had also gone back to their ranches—but not before Garrett asked them for a favor that he hoped would be well received by Tank and his wife.
In the meantime, he needed to find out what was going on with Hope. She hadn’t looked him in the eye since she had left the emergency board meeting and gone off to confer with Lucille in private. “What were you and my mother talking about for so long?” Garrett asked.
Hope carried her laptop over to the table and powered it on. “Plans to rehabilitate the foundation’s reputation. How and when we’re going to announce our findings. What comes next, once all previous commitments have been met.”
He sat down opposite her at the table and kicked back in a captain’s chair. “What does come next—especially if half the money is gone? Has my mom told you what her plans are?” She hadn’t told any of them.
Hope paused. A-ha, Garrett thought. She did know something she was reluctant to share.
Finally she looked up from the computer screen. Her green eyes lasered into his. “There are too many variables right now to figure that out. What we do know is that anything could happen, and most of it will likely be extremely damaging, at least initially. Which is why I’m staying behind to put together a film that will introduce your mother to the public.”
Hope wasn’t easy to read when she was in work mode. “What do you mean? My mother’s been a fixture on the Dallas social and philanthropic scenes for years.”
Hope made a note on the pad next to her, then tucked the pen behind her ear. She leaned back in her chair. “But that’s all they know about her, Garrett. What they see in news clips on TV or in the papers.” She paused to let her words sink in. “They see photos of Lucille stepping out of a limousine, or pictures of her gorgeous mansion in Dallas. They don’t know how the family charity came about, or why she and your father wanted to do this in the first place.”
Hope shook her head in mute frustration.
“They don’t know where your mother and father grew up, or how life was for them in the beginning. Or how generous and loving your mother is—deep down.” She leaned forward urgently. “We need to shed light on that so people understand that none of this was deliberate, that Lucille’s heart was, and still is, in the right place.”
“So your primary goal remains...?”
She regarded him stoically. “To do what I was hired to do and save the foundation first.”
Which meant what, exactly? Garrett wondered, growing alarmed. His family and his mother were second? All he knew for sure was that once again Hope wasn’t quite meeting his eyes. Never a good sign. He stood, shoving the chair back so abruptly it scraped across the wood floor. He stood, legs braced apart, hands on the table in front of him. “Tell me you’re not planning to throw my mother under the bus.”
“The media and gossip sites have already done that.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she lifted a staying hand. “However, at the end of the day, the only people who should bear the brunt of the blame for this are CFO Paul Smythe and banking VP Mirabelle Fanning. Before all that information is made public, though, we have a lot to do. Which is why,” Hope persisted, all kick-butt scandal management expert once again, “I need the complete cooperation of you and your brothers for the next few days.”
* * *
FOR GARRETT, THAT started with a trip to town to meet with Bess Monroe the following morning. To say the West Texas Warrior Assistance organizer had mixed feelings about receiving a check for only five thousand—instead of the agreed-upon five hundred thousand—dollars was an understatement. So Garrett did what he could to make the situation better, which in his view wasn’t nearly enough. He stopped by the grocery store, got plenty of milk for Hope and enough food for a few more days, then headed back to the Circle H.
Hope had Max in her arms, her phone headset on. She was pacing back and forth on the porch, trying to keep Max entertained while she spoke.
“...That’s right. It’s not common knowledge...Because Lucille Lockhart doesn’t want anyone to know. But I know how fair you are in your reporting, and I thought you should be aware...As we speak! Yes, the checks are going out...No. Lucille doesn’t want to formally announce until every organization has been paid...Of course. I think a sit-down could be arranged here at the family ranch. Maybe the day after tomorrow?...Thanks. You, too.”
Hope swung around to see him standing there. A guilty flush crossed her face.
He had only one thing to say to her.
“What’s going on, Hope?”