Jake Ryder was a dead man. But he’d have to get in line and wait, because Grace had plans to kill Brian Walker first.
Standing in the middle of the marble bathroom in the villa the hotel had given her, Grace pressed both hands against her forehead. The room spun, and her stomach felt like it was about to hurl up what little she’d eaten today. She couldn’t believe what a complete idiot she’d been. Brian had lied to her. Seduced her. Then fucked her. All for what? To get close to her because her brother had ordered him to? She was nothing but a stupid job to him.
“Come with me, Gracie.”
Goddamn it. If she’d paid attention to the signs—to the way he held himself, the way his gaze noticed everything happening around him, to the fact he’d called her by her real name last night before she’d told him who she was, she’d have known he was a liar and a cheat.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized plotting his demise probably counted as premeditated murder, but she didn’t care. He worked for her brother. He wasn’t a professional skier like he’d told her. He was a stupid Aegis operative.
Tightness pressed down on her chest, a tightness she didn’t like. She waved her hands in front of her face and tried to suck back air. Dropping to sit on the edge of the tub, she breathed deep so she didn’t pass out. That would make things better, wouldn’t it? Prove to him and her son-of-a-bitch brother that she actually did need protecting?
The rage slowly receded, and she focused on the push and pull of her lungs, on the sound of the wind picking up outside and the hum of the heater somewhere in the ceiling. One night. She could get through one night without killing him. Once the storm cleared, she’d head home, forget she ever met Brian Walker, then deal with her brother later. When there weren’t any sharp instruments within reach.
Her phone buzzed, and she crossed the room and snatched it from the counter. Unknown number. If it was her brother…
“Hello?” she answered curtly.
“I want to set up a scene in one of the fantasy rooms tonight, but I need another partner. Do you know if Jessica’s working?”
Grace lost it. Just completely lost it. “This isn’t the fucking Playhouse. Check the goddamn number, prick.”
She punched End on her phone, totally dissatisfied she couldn’t slam the thing down and really make a statement. A knock sounded on the door, and Grace’s head came up.
“You didn’t fall in, did you?” Brian teased, using the same line she’d tossed at him last night. Then, less amused, “Get off the phone and come out here, Grace. We need to talk.”
Grace’s fingers turned white around the phone in her hand. Oh yeah, they needed to talk. She just didn’t trust herself not to let him have it.
Composing herself as best she could, Grace pulled open the door only to find the master bedroom was empty. Glass clinked from the direction of the living area, and, knowing she couldn’t hide forever, she lifted her chin and headed that way.
The villa was exquisite. Even in her questionable mental state, Grace could see that the accommodations here were head and shoulders above what she’d had at the hotel. Travertine floors, marble counters, tall, arching windows that looked out at the snowy mountains, a river-rock fireplace in both the living area and master bedroom, and plush, comfortable furnishings a person could sink into after a long day of skiing. Their villa was situated on the edge of the property, and out the back windows, you couldn’t even see the other buildings around them. It was a tiny slice of heaven in the middle of what Grace considered her own personal hell.
Brian was standing in the adjacent kitchen when Grace stepped into the room. A fire roared in the fireplace and snow fell outside the steadily darkening windows. The TV caught her attention across the room, the image paused on a view of the hallway outside her room in the main part of the hotel.
He was watching the security tapes. Clenching her jaw, Grace dropped into a leather chair and reminded herself to stay calm. One night. She could get through one night without committing murder.
“Here, drink this.”
Brian shoved a glass in her hand filled with rich, amber liquid, then moved around behind her and sat on the couch.
Grace sniffed and grimaced. “I don’t like alcohol.”
“Drink it. You need something to settle you down.”
Her hackles came up. “Who do you think—”
“Grace.” He exhaled a long breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just drink it, okay?”
If he’d been all domineering and demanding like he’d been back in her room when he’d told her in no uncertain terms that they were staying in the villa tonight, she’d have refused. No one ordered her around. But she didn’t hear that. Instead there was a frustration in his voice that for some reason counteracted her rage and reminded her that killing him would only get her life in prison.
She took a sip. Winced at the taste. When Brian said, “All of it,” she tipped her head back and swallowed.
Whiskey. Blech. She really hated hard alcohol more than she hated wine. Wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her white sweater, she set the glass on the coffee table in front of her and muttered, “Happy?”
“No, Grace. I’m not happy.” He set his drink on the coffee table, leaned forward on a sigh, then rested his forearms on his knees. Reaching up with one hand, he rubbed his forehead. “Contrary to what you think, I didn’t plan this.”
Bullshit. Her jaw clenched, but she didn’t answer. Didn’t trust herself.
“Look,” he said, dropping his arm. “We’re stuck here for the night, so we might as well make the best of it. I need to get some information from you about what’s been going on at home.”
Grace crossed her arms over her chest and propped her stocking feet on the coffee table. “If you’re my assigned security detail, then you should already know, now shouldn’t you?”
She was acting like a child. She knew it. From the exasperated expression on Brian’s face, he knew it too. Why was this bugging her so much? Not just because he’d lied to her. After all, she’d lied to him too, hadn’t she? Her emotions were all over the map, and she didn’t know why. All she knew for certain was that he’d hurt her, more than he should have been able to in such a short amount of time. And she didn’t know how to deal with that.
“Your brother called me four days ago and said you were headed to Vail and that you were having issues with a stalker back home. Random harassment stuff—e-mail, phone calls, suspicious packages left at your house. He told me the police were on it and that you’d come here to get away from it all.”
That was all true. “What are you asking me?”
He reached for a notepad and pen from the coffee table. “Do you have any reason to believe someone followed you here?”
“Besides you?”
He tipped his head and shot her a look, and pinpricks of guilt needled her. He was just doing his job—at least now he was. She could go on acting like a petulant child, or she could get this over with so she could hide in her room until morning.
“No,” she said, dropping her feet from the coffee table, unfolding her arms, and shifting more upright in her chair. “Until that break-in in my room, I’d pretty much forgotten about the whole thing.”
“How did Ryder know about your stalker? Did you tell him?”
Grace huffed. “Tell Jake some guy’s been harassing me? Are you mad? He’d do exactly what he did—send one of his operatives to babysit me.”
“Well, someone told him,” Brian said, ignoring the dig.
Someone had told him. That was clearly a given. “It could have been Holly. But it was probably my mother.”
“Who’s Holly?” He jotted a note.
“My friend. We write together. Wrote together,” she corrected. “Holly and I have been cowriting songs for several years. She’s the one who encouraged me to come up here and get away from everything so I could finish my contract.”
“Tell me about the contract.”
“What about it?”
“How did you land it?”
This was all shit Grace did not want to get into, but she knew it was inevitable. “Two years ago, I was on that reality music show, American Superstar. I got booted off in the third round. Tate Kendrick, the guy from the bar last night, was one of the judges. They have a strict policy about contestants dating judges, but after I was no longer in the running, he asked me out. It was very casual, we only went out a few times after the show aired and ended, and the media made more out of it than it actually was. I didn’t think much of it, then about six months ago, Royalty Records approached me and offered a contract for twelve new songs. They’re Kendrick’s record label. He put in a good word for me, played them some of my stuff. I guess they were impressed.”
“But not with your friend Holly?”
“Kendrick doesn’t know Holly.”
“Did you know Kendrick was going to be here this week?”
“No. I don’t keep tabs on him.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little coincidental that he is?”
Was he trying to insinuate that Kendrick was her stalker? “Tate Kendrick didn’t toss my room.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. That’s not his style.” When he pinned her with a look, she huffed. “Look, we didn’t have that kind of relationship. It wasn’t sexual, it was friendly. And he spent more time asking me about Aegis than anything else.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Probably because he’s had his own issues with stalkers and unpredictable bodyguards. His fans are intense.”
Brian looked back down at his notepad. “So he played Royalty Records clips of your performances on that reality show?”
“No.” Geez, Grace hated how this sounded. “When we were…dating, I played him one of the songs I’d written. That’s what he showed them.”
Brian’s hand paused against the notepad. “You wrote him a song?”
“No, I played him a song.” I wrote you a song, jackass, and see how that turned out?
The hurt was coming back. The hurt that spurred her anger all over again. She shifted in her seat and told herself to just get through this.
“So why did you get voted off the show?”
He wasn’t looking at her. He was jotting notes on that piece of paper as if he were Sherlock-fucking-Holmes, and as Grace studied him in that black Henley and the loose-fitting, faded jeans, her heart did an involuntary flip. One that pissed her off even more.
“I don’t like singing in front of people.”
He glanced her way. “You didn’t have a problem singing for me this morning.”
No, she hadn’t, had she? Grace’s heart flipped again, and, quickly, she averted her eyes from his sexy sapphire gaze.
“So that means something had to have happened,” Brian went on. “What happened on the show, Grace?”
“Nothing. I already told you.”
“Something had to have happened.”
Why was he pushing this angle so hard? Frustration welled inside her. “I didn’t like the cameras, okay? I don’t like people invading my privacy. They were at the house all the time. They put us up in one of those big mansions in the Hollywood hills, and they filmed every moment. I don’t like people hovering.”
“So you purposely sang badly to get yourself kicked off.”
Grace crossed her ankles and shook the top foot back and forth. “What makes you think that? People get cut from those shows all the time.”
“I’ve heard you sing. Remember?”
Was he trying to compliment her now? She didn’t want that. Didn’t want anything from him anymore.
“Tell me why you have an issue with people in the security field.”
“I don’t have a thing against security personnel.”
“Yeah, you do. Most people don’t even notice they’re around, but I saw the way you reacted when that guard stopped us outside your room last night, and I sure as hell can see how agitated you are right now just talking about it.”
The hair on Grace’s neck stood straight, but she clenched her fingernails into her palms to keep from reacting. “You’re obviously reading something that’s not there.”
“That’s why you stopped singing, wasn’t it?” he asked, his voice low. “It wasn’t the cameras. Cameras are temporary during the filming of a show. But you knew if you hit it big, you’d have to deal with paparazzi and fans and inevitably, more security.”
Grace was done with this conversation. She pushed to her feet. “Make up whatever excuses you want. I don’t care.”
She took a step toward the bedroom, but Brian blocked her path. “What happened with the security, Grace?”
“Nothing.”
He moved in front of her again. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened. Dammit. Why can’t it just be that I don’t want to live my life that way?”
“Because I can tell there’s something else going on. Someone with your talent doesn’t just give it all up for no reason.”
The frustration, anger, and hurt finally boiled over, and she couldn’t hold it back anymore. “I grew up with that, okay? Security from the casino was always hovering over my mother because of her shows. And not all of them were nice. Some were downright mean to a kid who didn’t even want to be there. Then every summer when she’d ship me off to my dad’s to get me out of her hair, he was always too busy to spend time with me, so he’d pawn me off on his latest bodyguard, who thought he was too important to be babysitting the boss’s kid. And let’s be honest. He was.”
She waved her hands around, knowing she was out of control but unable to stop it. “I don’t like people watching and criticizing and reporting back to someone else about the things I’m doing. And before you say this isn’t the same, you can save it. I know that Aegis isn’t really in the bodyguard business. I know that their focus is more black-ops style, defense-contract stuff, but that’s not what this is. This is babysitting, plain and simple, and contrary to what you or my obnoxious brother think, I’m not some weak, helpless female who needs a guy to step in and take care of her. And I especially don’t need it from a man who fucked me just so he could claim his freakin’ paycheck.”
“Grace, dammit.” She made it one step around him before his hand closed over her arm, jerking her back to face him. “You weren’t just a job. And this isn’t about my paycheck. Do you honestly think your brother told me to sleep with you just so I could get close to you?”
“No, he wouldn’t dare. You did that all on your own.”
“Yeah, I did. But I don’t remember hearing you protest.”
Her eyes widened. “Because I thought you actually liked me. Because I thought there was something happening between us.”
“I do. And there is.”
She yanked her arm from his grasp, a sea of red covering her vision. “Bullshit.”
“Goddamn it, Grace.”
She reached the threshold to the bedroom, but before she could grasp the door and slam it in his face, his arms caught her around the waist, and he twisted her in the air, hefting her over his shoulder.
She struggled against him, but he held her too tight for her to get any leverage. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put me down.”
“Not until you listen to me.”
He pulled something from the back waistband of his jeans and set it on the dresser. Grace’s gaze flicked that way, and she couldn’t see well in the dimly lit room, but she was pretty sure it was a gun.
Had he had that the entire time? She didn’t remember feeling that on him. Before she could ask what the hell he planned to do with it, he marched across the room and tossed her on the bed.
Her hair went flying, and the mattress dipped. She kicked out and tried to roll away, but he caught her by the arms, climbed over her, and pinned them near her head. “Stop fighting me, dammit.”
“I will when you stop being an asshole.”
“Grace…” His knees flexed against her thighs, holding her still, and his hands tightened around her wrists, but the exasperated sound of his voice, the way he dropped his head like a man defeated stilled her struggling. “Do you think I want this? Do you think I need this kind of complication in my life?”
He lifted his head and looked down at her, pinning her with deep-blue, stormy eyes that wouldn’t let her go. “I still have a shitload of shrapnel in my shoulder from a roadside bomb that pretty much ended my career in the military. And after months of doctors and surgeries and more rehab than I ever want to deal with again, I finally have a good job and a new career that gives me a reason to get up in the morning. I also happen to be damn good at what I do, and the last thing I need is to fuck that up with my boss because I went mad for his little sister.”
He’d just thrown a truckload of information at her, but right now her emotions would only let her focus on one thing.
“You’re mad about me,” she mocked, not believing him, knowing he had to be lying. He worked for her son-of-a-bitch, controlling brother.
“Crazy mad. Certifiably mad. I’d have to be, wouldn’t I?”
Something in his gaze made her heart bump, made it pick up speed against her ribs. Something that left her feeling hot and…unsettled.
“I wish I could regret last night, Grace, but I can’t. I’ve wanted you ever since you marched up to the bar and told me how hot my thighs were. And every moment we’ve spent together over the past day has only made me want you more. I didn’t go back to your room last night because you were just a job. I went because I couldn’t stop myself. And even knowing I’m probably fucking things up for my future, I don’t care. Because I’ve wanted you every second of every minute since we met.”
Grace searched his eyes, looking for the deception that had to be in there. She couldn’t see it. Her pulse pounded in her veins, echoing in her ears. Her chest rose and fell with her erratic breaths. “Don’t lie to me right now,” she whispered.
“I’m not.” His grip loosened against her wrist, but he didn’t look particularly thrilled with that revelation. He looked as frustrated as she felt. “I’m wild for you. And I… I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”
Thoughts spun out of control. Her body heated, and every muscle tightened. He wanted her. He still wanted her. And she still wanted him. Even after everything that had happened. “It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out.”
She felt the shift in him where his knees pressed against her, where his hands held her down, felt the white-hot need pulse from him into her everywhere they touched. And she saw it in his eyes. Saw the stark, raw craving lurking in their deep-blue depths just before he whispered, “No, it shouldn’t be.”
He lowered his mouth to hers. Grace opened at the first taste, licked across his tongue, and groaned. His hands released her wrists, his body lowered and lengthened over hers. She gasped at how hard and hot he was already pressing against her, and she opened her legs to draw him closer, fisted her hands in his hair, and held on while he kissed her deeper.
Sensations bombarded her from every side. His mouth, frantic and needy as it ravished hers. His tongue, forceful and seductive. His hands, pushing up her sweater and closing over her breasts until she groaned. And the best part… The length of his erection, rocking against her sex, making her hotter and wetter with every slip and grind.
But it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be enough. She wanted more. Wanted him. Hooking her leg over his hip, she flipped him to his back. He groaned against her lips. The mattress dipped. She yanked her mouth away and ripped the sweater from her body, then threw it over her head.
“Grace.” He sat up, captured her mouth again. His tongue tangled with hers as his swift fingers found her bra clasp and released it. He tugged it free of her body and threw it away. His fingers found her nipples, pinching, tugging. Grace rocked against his erection and cried out at the exquisite tremors rushing through her core.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he whispered against her lips. “You’ve been driving me absolutely crazy since we met. You know that?” One hand streaked down her belly, found the snap on her jeans, and wrenched it free. “God, you’re so sexy.” He lowered his head to her neck, her collarbone. One hand closed around her breast and lifted it to his mouth. “I want you all the time.”
Oh… She wanted him too. Now. Right now.
His tongue was like heaven, flicking, licking, his mouth sucking, his fingers pinching. But Grace was in hell because it wasn’t fast enough. She needed fast. She needed hard. She needed deep.
She yanked her mouth from his, scrambled off his lap, then dropped to the floor on her knees between his legs. Her fingers grappled with the button at his waistband. “Get these off. I need these off.”
With frantic fingers, he helped free himself from his jeans. She pulled them from his legs and tossed them aside. He reached back to tug off his shirt. And while she waited, Grace’s entire body vibrated with the throbbing need to take him deep inside her, but then she saw his cock jutting out toward her, his shaft long and hard, the head engorged and thick, just waiting for her attention.
She salivated, and her sex clenched tight. He threw his shirt on the floor, the muscles in his abs rippling, drawing her attention to the cut V of his hipbones pointing downward like an arrow toward what she suddenly wanted most, and that need went supersonic.
He reached for her. “Come here, Gracie.”
She pushed his arms back. “Not yet.” Lowering her head, she wrapped her fingers around the hot, steely length of him, and drew him toward her mouth. “I need to taste you. I need to fuck you with my mouth. Come in my mouth, Brian.”