“Arrogant, pigheaded, impossible man,” Cara muttered fiercely under her breath as she glared out the window of the guest bedroom Rosie had brought her to before dinner so she could tidy her appearance.
A dinner which the family had eaten in the formal dining room. Five courses, prepared by the full-time chef they employed and served to them by the male housekeeper. Afterward, the Kingston brothers remained seated around the table and indulged in brandy and cigars brought to them by the same gentleman.
Malachi, as Darius had predicted, had given her disapproving glares throughout all of it.
No one had so much as mentioned the traumatic events of today. As if James Langley hadn’t been released on bail this morning and another member of the Kingston family wasn’t currently lying in his bed with six inches of bandages covering his abdomen and the stitches beneath because one of Langley’s men had shot him.
None of the Kingston family had so much as mentioned the possibility of informing the police of the shooting. Cara had been more than happy to excuse herself when the men reached the brandy stage of the evening.
Rosie had offered to come upstairs with her, but Cara had refused. She knew that Rosie, having only just found and fallen in love with Max, would rather spend the rest of the night with him.
But if Adam thought he was going to get away with having asked Sinclair to remove her from his bedroom earlier, or thought that was going to stop her from visiting him again, then he was going to be disappointed.
Sinclair had excused himself and gone up to his tower at the same time Cara left the dining room. But the moment she heard the rest of the family and Rosie retire to their suites of rooms for the night, Cara had every intention of going back to see Adam.
If only so that they could talk about the paintings hanging on the walls of his bedroom.
Her paintings.
She’d been utterly stunned earlier when she’d entered Adam’s bedroom and seen so many of them hanging on the walls.
She’d always loved drawing and then painting as a child, had known even then it was the degree she intended pursuing when at university.
But, on the advice of her counselor, it had become her salvation after the kidnapping ten years ago. Because at the time Cara had been unable to actually talk about any of it, her counselor had encouraged her to put those emotions onto canvas.
Rosie didn’t remember that last day of their kidnapping, and Cara couldn’t forget it!
Because of that, some of her paintings didn’t make for easy viewing.
One of the paintings hanging on Adam’s wall, a sunset shown in dramatic swirls of reds and purples and oranges, was typical of the inner anger that sometimes overwhelmed Cara when she couldn’t stop thinking of the kidnapping and the futility of her mother’s violent death. She certainly couldn’t imagine it as being something that gave Adam sweet dreams if it was the last thing he saw before he fell asleep at night.
Not all of her paintings were of her anger, of course. She had happy emotions too. These were shown in her paintings of children playing in the park, depicted in happy daubs of greens and blues and yellows.
Others, of wildlife and scenery, could be calming.
But Adam hadn’t chosen to buy any of those.
No, Adam owned at least a dozen of her darker paintings.
Most notably, a quartet of them that showed a midnight-blue sky. The first painting showed the beacon of a single star. The second one was a cluster of stars in the darkness. The third expanded those stars outward. The fourth was a blaze of light as the sky lightened to dawn.
Until today, she’d had no idea Adam owned a single one of her paintings.
Her work had been shown at several art exhibitions over the past year, but as the artist, she preferred not to meet the patrons who had bought what was basically a part of her soul she had painted onto canvas in vibrant and sometimes violent colors.
Knowing Adam owned so many of them was unsettling, especially the midnight sky quartet.
Those four paintings were an unmistakable sequence of the way in which her inner emotions sometimes became so overwhelming, there was only that single beacon of light stopping her from falling completely into the darkness. Each subsequent painting slowly became lighter, less tumultuous, until dawn burst across the canvas.
Emotions she was sure Adam could read too easily. Because if anyone knew why she sometimes felt that utter helplessness and anger, it was him.
Because he’d been there ten years ago. Had witnessed her total devastation over her mother’s death after the kidnapping was over. Her inability to speak, let alone function.
Adam hadn’t spoken a word to her that day either, respecting her need for silence as he continued to hold her in his arms until she stopped shaking.
Once she’d settled, he’d handed her off to the waiting paramedics, again without speaking.
Rosie and Cara were taken straight to the hospital to be checked over and then kept overnight to rehydrate them. The following morning they had been discharged into their father’s care.
Cara hadn’t seen Adam again.
Until a year ago, when she’d instantly recognized him as one of the people entering the art gallery where ten of her paintings were on display, along with half a dozen other artists’ work.
Recognized him?
It was impossible to miss someone as large and imposing as Adam Kingston when he entered a room as if he owned it. Adam hadn’t seemed aware of the sudden frisson of interest from the women in the gallery that night. Not because he was too arrogant to notice them, but because he simply didn’t see or recognize their interest for what it was. Pure sexual lust.
Cara had felt that same lust.
Her teenage self had never forgotten the tattooed man from ten years ago who had held her tightly in his arms while she clung to him as if he was the only real thing left in her universe.
She’d still been a girl then, but now she was a woman, one who knew the lure of a dangerous and sexy man. One dangerous and sexy man in particular.
Not that Adam had appeared to reciprocate those feelings, because he hadn’t acknowledged recognizing her that night by so much as a look given or a word spoken.
“The Sunset” had been for sale at that first exhibition, but Adam had to have bought the Midnight Quartet, and those other paintings, when they had appeared at other galleries during this past year.
Cara might not have seen him at any of those other art exhibitions, but she had occasionally caught glimpses of him when she left her apartment or was out shopping. At first, she’d thought those sightings to be purely coincidental, even if they had never happened before that first art exhibition. But eventually, they became too frequent to be classed as anything more than deliberate.
But as Adam had never approached or attempted to speak to her, and he veered away and disappeared if she tried to speak to him, she’d never had the opportunity to ask him the reason for his having suddenly appeared back in her life.
Not that she was complaining. He was without a doubt the darkest, most gorgeous and powerfully compelling man she’d ever set eyes on. She just wished he’d speak to her so she could let him know she was attracted to him and hopefully, they could do something about it.
He’d been just as elusive this past week too.
Until he’d followed her home from the courthouse this morning, been shot for his trouble, had his car wrecked, and was now refusing to see her because, as Darius and Sinclair both claimed, it’s a male thing not to want a woman to see them in a weakened state.
Cara gave a snort. Male thing, her arse.
Now that she’d seen those paintings in Adam’s bedroom, she was through waiting for him to get over himself and actually speak to her, rather than feeling as if his dark and brooding gaze stripped her naked every time he looked her.
Truth was, she wanted Adam to do much more than talk to her, and had since she’d seen him again a year ago. Damn it, she’d only gone out with James Langley because she’d thought seeing her with another man might jolt Adam into making a move. No such luck. No, instead, Adam had taken a step back rather than forward, with Cara catching only rare glimpses of him for the three months she and James had dated.
Except Rosie had told her that when she’d come here to talk to the Kingston family the previous week to ask for their assistance in finding Cara, Adam had been the first of them to step forward. To the extent he’d been so intensely focused on finding her that—again, according to Rosie—he’d barely spoken to anyone until they found her on the Scottish island.
After which, Adam had once again retreated behind that impenetrable wall.
Cara might not know how to do parkour like Rosie did, but she still had every intention of scaling that wall Adam kept around himself and ensuring he knew their attraction was mutual. That it was past time they learned whether their mutual attraction could become more.
Adam’s injury meant they couldn’t explore the physical side of that right now, but the moment he was well enough she was going to demand he make good on those brooding glances he gave her that stripped her bare.
She couldn’t think of a better time than now to tell him that.
Adam woke slowly, his head too groggy still for him to instantly be able to recognize the low sound he could hear. It sounded much like the steady rumbling of an engine or— Oh fuck!
His eyelids flew wide open, and he struggled to sit up. Fuck, that hurt like a bitch, exactly as he’d thought it would, but he needed to see what—
“Calm down, worry wart,” he was advised softly by a voice that he shouldn’t even be able to hear in his bedroom, let alone so up-close and personal.
Taking his cue from Cara, and aware that rumbling noise had slightly changed pitch, Adam slowly turned his head sideways to look at her. He’d turned the lighting overhead down low before falling asleep, but he could clearly see her sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him. A Rottweiler lay either side of her, with each of their heads resting on top of one of Cara’s denim-covered thighs.
But Thor and Loki weren’t growling, as he’d thought. They were all but fucking purring!
Cara chuckled softly at the obviously disgusted glower Adam sent in the dogs’ direction. “Rosie told me they like raw meat, but as I didn’t have any readily available, and I didn’t want to run into anyone by going down to the kitchen, I found a small packet of biscuits in my bag I keep for emergencies and gave them a couple of those.”
Adam dropped back against the pillow. “They’re guard dogs, not fucking pets.”
She chuckled again. “Do they know that?”
“Not since you and your sister came along, no,” he muttered.
First Thor, and then Loki gave a happy groan as they turned over onto their backs with all four legs in the air and hopeful expressions on their faces to indicate to Cara they both wanted their tummy rubbed.
Under different circumstances, Adam knew he might have asked Cara to do the same for him, except in a lower location.
But these weren’t different circumstances, and the only reason Adam had asked Casper to bring the two guard dogs up to his bedroom earlier was to keep other people—specifically Cara—out.
Traitorous bloody dogs.
A week ago, Rosie had tamed them with raw meat, and now Cara had done the same with fucking biscuits.
Because they didn’t see either woman as a threat? Or would the dogs now react the same way to any intruder who fed them?
“Stop scowling,” Cara teased. “They can obviously smell that I’m wearing Rosie’s clothes, and as she’s now family, they’re treating me the same way they do her.” She shrugged. “I’m sure if you gave them the order to kill, they wouldn’t hesitate to rip my throat out.”
Adam gave her a disgruntled glance. “As if I would ever do that.”
Her grin was unsympathetic. “Did you eat dinner?”
“Darius brought me up a tray earlier.”
“But did you eat anything that was on it?”
This woman was too astute by half. “I wasn’t particularly hungry.”
Her humor was replaced with a frown. “Maybe I should have saved some of my emergency biscuits for you.”
His mouth twisted. “Maybe you shouldn’t have come into my bedroom without an invitation in the first place.”
Her eyes narrowed as she gave an obvious glance around the room. “So, you like my paintings.”
“No, I just wanted to add some color to my bedroom.” Sarcasm clearly edged his tone.
She nodded. “You’re right, the décor is a bit monochromic without them.”
“Touché,” Adam murmured appreciatively at how neatly she’d turned his sarcasm back on him for the black, white, and silver décor in here.
“You’re welcome,” she dismissed. “It’s also a very expensive way to add the color. A couple of throw pillows on the bed would have achieved the same result, rather than you having to pay twenty thousand pounds for the Sunset painting alone.” One of her brows rose in challenge.
She was right, of course. Altogether, Adam had paid out over two hundred thousand pounds on the fifteen of Cara’s paintings he’d bought this past year. And not just for their color but because this way, whenever he was in his private suite of rooms here, he felt as if he was surrounded by parts of her no one else saw.
She continued to look at him for several long seconds before she turned to the two dogs. “Down,” she instructed firmly, waiting until they had both jumped off the bed. “Lie down,” she added in the same authoritative voice. “See what good boys they are?” she approved as both dogs dropped down onto their stomachs, their heads resting on their front paws as they looked up at her with reproach.
Again, Adam knew how they felt. Given a choice, he would rather stay at Cara’s side too. But he didn’t have that choice and never would.
Which made his next comment come out all the harsher. “I thought I had made my feelings clear earlier regarding not wanting you in my private rooms.”
Cara turned back to him, eyebrows raised. “And I think we just dispensed with the reason why you felt that way. Get over yourself, Adam, and stop behaving like a growly grizzly bear.” She eyed him frustratedly.
“I’ve never claimed to be anything else,” he rasped.
She snorted. “You don’t have to sound so proud of yourself.”
“What are you doing in here, Cara?” he snapped. “And what the hell time is it?” He frowned after looking out the window and seeing a clear night sky alight with the pinpricks of a billion stars.
“It’s time for me to go and get you a glass of water so you can take two of the painkillers the doctor left for you.” She got off the bed and disappeared into his en suite bathroom so quickly Adam didn’t have the chance to tell her not to bother.
He preferred not to take pain medication, especially when in a combat situation. As far as he was concerned, that’s exactly what they were currently in. Medication tended to cloud judgment and make reactions slower. Something Adam wasn’t willing to allow himself to feel when Langley and his men were out there somewhere looking for revenge on the whole of the Kingston family, as well as the Ferrari-Smythe sisters.
Adam didn’t believe that threat to be any less serious just because they were currently on the Kingston estate behind a ten-foot wall and a barrage of high-tech security.
“Here we go— Will you stop being so damned stubborn?” Cara’s voice changed from cajoling to impatient when Adam waved away the glass of water and tablets she was holding out to him. “It’s a medically proven fact that the healing process is shorter and more successful if the patient isn’t in constant pain.”
“I’m only interested in maintaining a level of alertness right now.”
“You have six cousins who are more than capable of ensuring the estate remains secure.” She gave a shake of her head. “The doctor must be familiar with your stubborn ass, because he made a point of assuring us that these pills won’t make you drowsy, only relieve the pain and make it easier for you to move if you need to. It’s two o’clock in the morning, to answer your earlier question, so I don’t advise you make me go and get Darius and Sinclair,” she added in warning when Adam still made no effort to take the glass or tablets from her.
“Not Malachi?” he taunted.
She narrowed her gaze on him. “I’m really sorry about what happened to your car, but Malachi obviously isn’t happy about it and keeps looking at me as if I’ve committed a murder.”
“Because to him, you have,” Adam dismissed. “And don’t worry about the car. Casper already contacted the insurance company and they’ve agreed to settle.” Not quite what the Lamborghini had cost him to buy, but pretty close.
“I doubt any of your cousins, with the exception of Malachi because I’m going nowhere near him again this evening, will be pleased at being disturbed just to make you take your meds.” Cara’s grin was positively evil. “Which will probably make it all the more fun for them when one of them has to hold you down and the other shove the tablets down your ungrateful throat.”
Problem was, Adam could actually see his two of his cousins enjoying doing exactly that.