Wild Hawk (30 page)

“No. I didn’t plan on getting that . . . involved. I didn’t think it mattered . . . who you really were.”

Again her breath seemed to lodge in her throat. “And . . . now?”

He grinned. Or started to; the expression faded almost as soon as it had begun. It was as if he’d meant to give her that crooked grin, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

“Now,” he said, his voice oddly strained, as if he was fighting saying the words, “it matters.”

“CHARLES IS GOING to start back right away,” Kendall said as she hung up the phone.

Jason looked up from the copy of the codicil he’d been reading. All his casual dismissal of the figure aside, he’d been more than a little stunned to read in black and white the extent of what Aaron had left him. And one stark, painful phrase, personal amid all the legalese, kept spinning in his mind. “Although there is no excuse for my years of neglect, this is the best I can do to give my son what he should have had long ago.” He hated his own reaction, hated that he could even think of his father without the fierce burst of loathing he’d always felt.

“Jason?”

Her voice was soft, her eyes wide with a concern that told him what must be showing in his face. His jaw tightened at the uncharacteristic lack of control he seemed to be cursed with of late, and he schooled his expression to neutrality.

“What did you say? I was reading.”

She glanced down at the papers he held, and at those lying in front of where he sat cross-legged on the bed.

“You hadn’t really looked at it before, had you?”

“No.”

“And now that you have?”

“He sounds like an old man trying to ease a guilty conscience.”

“Oh, he was that, all right,” Kendall agreed. “But he was much more, too. I think you know that now.”

“Still hoping I’ll forgive him?”

“No. Aaron knew that was too much to ask. He just hoped you might . . . understand.”

Jason grimaced. He did understand, a little, now that he’d seen and dealt with the woman who had run Aaron’s life. He might not agree with what his father’s priorities had been, since he hadn’t been one of them, but once he accepted them, it was easy to see why Aaron Hawk had become the man he’d been. And Jason wasn’t sure he didn’t resent that understanding; he didn’t want to feel anything for his father but the driving hatred that had fueled his entire life.

“I tried to get Aaron to write you,” Kendall said.

“What?”

“To write you. Before he died. A letter . . . explaining everything. Why he did what he did. Or didn’t do. I knew there was more to why he’d quit looking for you than he’d told me, but he would never explain. He refused to explain to you, either. He said he’d never given excuses in his life, he wasn’t about to do it now that he was dying.”

Although there is no excuse for my years of neglect . . .

“And besides, he said if you’d turned into any kind of a Hawk, you wouldn’t accept excuses anyway. I think he was right about that.”

He looked up at that, but saw only amusement in her eyes. Amusement, and something that looked almost like tenderness. That disconcerted him; he didn’t want her looking at him like that. All he wanted from her was . . . was what? He needed her, yes, to help keep Alice occupied, and distracted enough not to pay too close attention to what was going on. And he needed her handy, in case she had some other bits of information that he might want later. Her kind of knowledge could be very useful.

And, he thought, heat knifing through him, he needed her like he’d had her last night, naked and panting for him to take her. And this morning when, to drive home the point that this was her choice, he had made her take him, had made her be the aggressor, the leader, using his body to assure the pleasure of her own. That she had driven him to the brink of madness in the process didn’t matter, he told himself. Nor did the fact that while he held her, he’d never once thought of anything but her. Or the fact that Kendall made him wonder about things he’d never wondered about before.

What mattered was that Kendall would never be able to look back and say she hadn’t really wanted this, that she hadn’t known what she was doing. Why it mattered to him he wasn’t certain; such things had certainly never bothered him in the past.

He saw her eyes widen, and guessed that once again his usual poker face had failed him. Her lips parted, and the tip of her tongue crept out to moisten her lips. Need slammed through him—hot, hard, and relentless—and it was all he could do not to grab her and throw her down on the bed amid the copies of Aaron’s will. It seemed appropriate, somehow, but he knew if he gave in to the temptation, he would embarrass himself with his haste; he didn’t think he could even wait long enough to get either of them undressed.

Even that image, both of them still dressed, jeans merely unzipped and shoved out of the way enough that he could drive home into her body, nearly made the decision for him. It took all his considerable discipline to fight back the compulsion.

He made himself look back at the set of copies he held, only now realizing he’d crumpled them with the sudden tightness of his grip. “What—” He broke off when he heard how he sounded, swallowed, and tried again. “What were you saying about Wellford?”

For a moment there was silence. When at last she spoke, Kendall’s voice sounded much like his had, as if she’d known exactly what kind of battle he’d just fought.

“He’s cutting his trip short and starting back tomorrow night. He has a meeting he can’t miss tomorrow, but he’s going to take a late flight immediately afterward.”

“He . . . believes you, then.” Jason was back in control now. Or he would be, he thought, as soon as his body realized it wasn’t going to get what it wanted right now.

“Some people do,” she said.

He looked up at her again; the amusement was back. And this time he managed to smile back at her. “And some of us are more stubborn, is that it?”

“But worth convincing,” she said softly. And suddenly it was there again, the memory of last night, alive and blistering between them. And seeing it in her eyes had him nearly as aroused as he’d been moments before.

“Damn,” Jason muttered. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Kendall sighed. “I know. We have work to do.”

No one had ever looked at him like that before, with such an expression of honest yearning. It struck a chord in him he’d never known was there before, not sexual but something buried even deeper, something that he couldn’t name but that felt far too softhearted and yielding. He fought it, trying to bury it deep again, back in whatever hiding place it had sprung from. It didn’t want to go.

“Go on,” he said, unable to control the gruffness of his voice. Kendall seemed to hesitate, then acceded to the necessity of moving on.

“He wants us both to write out statements about what’s happened. Including Alice’s threats, and the money she put in my account. He’ll start the challenge proceedings with the probate court as soon as he gets here.”

“Not fast enough,” Jason said, his brain starting to work again.

“What?” She seemed startled.

“Alice will be moving already. To solidify her position as head of Hawk Industries.”

Kendall looked puzzled. “Well, yes, I’m sure she will. In fact, I imagine she’s already called an emergency meeting of the board of directors.”

You bet she has,
Jason thought. And he wasn’t the least bit surprised that Kendall had guessed it; he’d at last come to realize she was every bit as smart and knowledgeable as Aaron’s executive assistant would have had to have been.

“But that doesn’t matter to us right now,” Kendall said. “It doesn’t affect Aaron’s bequest to you, which is purely cash and bearer bonds.”

Uh-oh
, Jason thought. That had been a mistake. He’d lost his focus for a moment there. As far as Kendall knew, he had no reason to be interested in what Alice was doing to assure her position at Hawk.

“He originally wanted to leave you a large interest in Hawk Industries,” Kendall said gently, as if she thought he’d been hurt by what she’d said. “But he was afraid Alice would fight that even harder, and that she might get backing for that fight from the board, since you were an unknown quantity and it could possibly be shown to be against the best interests of the rest of the stockholders to have you hold a controlling interest.”

“And fight she would,” Jason murmured, almost under his breath. He barely managed to repress a mocking smile at the fact that his father had, unintentionally, provided his son with the final piece he needed to carry out what he’d been planning for two decades. He’d make the old man roll over in his grave yet.

“Yes,” Kendall said. “But she couldn’t legally fight a cash bequest, given strictly out of Aaron’s personal assets.”

“Nice assets,” Jason said wryly. “A cool twenty-five million, without even touching the business.”

“But Alice will still be in no hurry to give that away,” Kendall said warningly. “There’s always a shortage of ready cash in businesses the size of Hawk.”

Time to recover from that little miscue, Jason thought. “I know she won’t. That’s why I think we’d better start the ball rolling now, instead of waiting for Wellford to get back here. The sooner we present this”—he gestured to the copies of the codicil—“to the court, the further along we’ll be when he gets here.”

Kendall looked at him for a moment. “You know once we do that, once she knows absolutely for sure that we’re going to fight her, she’ll . . . throw everything into stopping us.”

Exactly, Jason thought. And an old feeling he hadn’t had in a long time poured through him, a feeling of challenge, of rising to the fight, of scenting victory and chasing it with all that was in him. It roused predatory instincts in him that he hadn’t used in a long while, and it sent his pulse racing. His blood was up, and he was closing in.

“I’m counting on it,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-one

“I DON’T GET IT,” Darren Whitewood said, sounding genuinely puzzled. “There’s nothing in this for her but trouble, why is she doing it?”

“Because she’s a naive, idealistic little fool.” Alice snapped out the words, her rage making it difficult for her to keep from screeching.

“Don’t know whether she’s a fool or not,” the other man in the room put in as he plucked two blond hairs from the sleeve of his brown jacket, scowled at them, then let them drift to the floor. “But that guy isn’t. That was a very slick maneuver he pulled last night. And they disappeared afterward like pros. The bus, the airline tickets . . . yeah, real slick.”

“Oh, really?” Alice turned on the man, glaring. “Or were you just caught with your pants down?”

The man appeared completely unmoved by her insult. “I appreciate a real challenge now and then,” he said. “This guy just might be one.”

His calm scraped on Alice’s already raw nerves. “Do you know how much time we wasted, after you lost them? We spent all night and most of the day trying to track them down in San Francisco and L.A., when they actually never went more than twenty miles from Sunridge!”

“I said he was slick,” the pale blond said calmly.

“That’s what you’re supposed to be,” Whitewood said derisively, patting his own waves of blond hair, as if in reaction to the other man’s shedding. Then he froze in midmotion as a pair of cold, lifeless eyes focused on him. He slowly lowered his hand.

Whitewood looked, Alice thought, not without some enjoyment, like a man who had just seen a ghost. His own. And perhaps he wasn’t far off the mark; she’d considered the possibility of having to rid herself of the pompous young attorney permanently when this was over. She wasn’t at all sure she trusted him to keep his mouth shut. Like so many others, he was all talk, and turned a little green when faced with reality.

Seemingly unable to speak while pinned by those dead eyes, Whitewood just stared as if paralyzed, until the man finally looked away, studying his sleeve as if looking for more escaping strands of hair.

“I found them again, didn’t I?” the man said. “It was easy, once we found out neither one of them got on those flights.”

“Lucky, you mean, that they were still in that airport hotel,” Alice said.

The man shrugged unconcernedly. “One man’s luck is another man’s skill.”

“Well you should have gotten skillful sooner,” Alice said sharply. “Before they had the time to obstruct my plans.”

“You’re the one who wouldn’t let me do the job properly,” the man in the brown jacket retorted, still without heat, in that calm, almost bored voice.

“I didn’t want to draw that kind of attention,” Alice said.

Whitewood finally found his voice again, clearing his throat audibly and looking a little bewildered by this turn in the conversation.

“Yes, well . . . let’s consider our position, here,” he said. “Presuming we don’t wish to accept the codicil as—”

“Accept it?” Alice felt her heart begin to pound far too hard and far too fast. “Give that bastard twenty-five million dollars that is rightfully mine?”

“I’m merely trying to clarify our options,” Whitewood said, recovering some of his unctuous polish.

“Options? What options? There’s only one reason Kendall Chase went to the Superior Court Building, and that’s because that’s where the Probate Court is.”

Whitewood shook his head. “Why the hell does she care?” he repeated. “I still don’t get it.”

A pair of barren eyes flicked to Whitewood again. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’re a believer in noble ideals?” the lawyer said, apparently having recovered enough to let sarcasm creep into his voice.

“No. But I’ve removed a few people who were,” he said, then, looking Whitewood up and down, added, “as well as rid the world of some scum.”

Whitewood turned the color of his name, and Alice nearly laughed. The pretentious fool thought he could play in the muck without getting any of the dirt on him. It was about time he learned it wasn’t possible.

“We have only one option right now,” she said. “We proceed as planned. We have the evidence we need to prove everything. If they think I won’t go through with this, they’re fools. They can rot in jail for all I care.” She turned to face Whitewood. “You make sure everything’s in place. Including that witness you promised. I don’t want to have any delays.”

Looking relieved to be escaping, Whitewood nodded. “I’ll make some calls,” he said.

“It’s your choice, of course,” the man in the brown jacket said mildly after the lawyer had gone, “but there is still another option.”

Alice turned to look at him. She knew what he meant. And she knew that he knew she understood him perfectly well. But she let him say it anyway.

“They could rot in their own graves, instead.”

So the tiger wanted off the leash, Alice thought. She savored the idea for a moment, setting loose a tiger that already knew the taste of human flesh.

“Yes,” Alice said softly, “they could.”

She meant it; she had little enough time, and she resented having to waste any of it to keep her money out of the hands of Aaron’s bastard. But she would do it. No matter what it took.

But now, since Kendall and that bastard had taken this irrevocable step, it would be more difficult than ever if she had to resort to such a final option; suspicion would naturally fall on her if the heir to such a large chunk of Aaron’s fortune were to turn up dead. But if she had to, she would do it. She would do anything to foil Aaron’s final insult.

And she couldn’t deny that the thought of Aaron’s son dead and buried gave her a great deal of pleasure.

JASON HAD NEVER felt more alive. Kendall was taking him deep and hard and home, and he wanted this to go on forever. He’d worried at first, she seemed so small, and he was so incredibly aroused, but the fit was perfect, tight, sweet. His pulse was hammering, his body throbbing, gathering itself for flight. He drew back, then thrust deeper, harder, again and again, savoring Kendall’s cry of pleasure every time he did it. He heard his own breathing, coming in heavy, rapid pants, felt the burgeoning heat building low inside him as the luscious friction of her body around his ripped a harsh groan from deep in his chest.

She clutched at him then, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she lifted her hips to meet his next thrust, urging him more eloquently than with any words to drive harder, faster, deeper. With a strangled growl of sound he did it, slamming into her repeatedly, so hard he wondered again that he didn’t hurt her. But she slid her hands down his back, beyond his waist to his hips, fingers curving around the muscles of his buttocks as she cried out his name.

That intimate touch, and the sound of his name murmuring sweetly from her throat, drove him to the edge, and for a long moment he clung there, desperately, trying to hold back, to wait, to prolong the exquisite torture that was teaching him things he’d never known about his body and his capacity for pure, hot, voluptuous sensation.

But then Kendall cried out, her body undulating beneath him, her hips twisting as she ground herself against him. He felt it begin for her in the instant he heard her cry out his name again, felt the clenching of deep, strong muscles around him, milking him, demanding he give himself to her. And in that instant he wanted to give himself to her, all of him, not just the explosion of seed that was boiling up in this last moment. He wanted to give her so much of himself that she was never completely without him again, that no matter where she went for the rest of her life, he would be there.

He heard someone say her name in a prayerful voice, low and deep with wonder; he knew it had to be him, even though he’d never sounded like that in his life. And then thinking was beyond him as his body gave up to the coaxing, relentless demand of hers. Her body clenched around him again, and he exploded in a burst of light and heat and a pure, pulsing pleasure that seared him to the boundaries of his body and back again, until he was straining in her arms, grasping at her frantically, not able to get close enough, knowing that even if he could get so deep inside her, he could never really leave, it still wouldn’t be close enough.

He collapsed atop her, barely aware of anything except the aftershock of that wild eruption and the feel of Kendall’s arms around him. Intermittently a little shudder seized him, tightening all his muscles in an echo of the explosion that had rocked him. And he could feel it happening to her, too, felt the tiny convulsions as she clenched around his ebbing flesh.

“My God,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Jason said. It took every bit of energy he had left just to get the word out.

He supposed it should make him feel better to know that it was as explosive for her as for him, but somehow it didn’t at all. He didn’t know if anything could allay this sense of unease. He didn’t feel like this. He just didn’t. Ever. He didn’t get hot just glancing at a woman. He didn’t get thoroughly aroused just thinking about her. He didn’t practically come just kissing her. And he sure as hell didn’t let a woman know he was so out of control that he couldn’t even sit across a table in a restaurant from her without wanting her beyond his power to resist.

But tonight he’d done just that.

They’d gotten back to the hotel and stopped in the restaurant, pleased that they had gotten their tasks done today without being stopped by Alice or whoever she had hired. They had felt a sense of relief that they’d taken some action, had even laughed about spending so much time on the bus in the past two days. They’d been pleased by the simple fact that the healing cut on Kendall’s temple was beginning to itch, and Kendall had even laughed a little over Alice’s certain consternation when she found out what they’d done.

They had even kidded about the likelihood of winding up in adjoining jail cells if Alice went through with her threats, although he wasn’t sure Kendall’s heart was truly in it.

But when they’d gotten back to the hotel, the mood had shifted. And Jason had lasted about five minutes, watching her across the table, her eyes lowered as she read the menu, her soft lower lip caught between her teeth, before he’d utterly lost it. He’d yanked the menu away, then taken her hands and pulled her to her feet.

“We’ll order room service,” he’d said, his voice already thick and husky. “Later.”

She’d understood with one glance at his face, so he could only imagine what he must have looked like. But she hadn’t resisted, had, in fact, gone eagerly. So eagerly that he’d damn near had their clothes off in the elevator, ready to take her up against the wall and be damned to anyone who came along and discovered them.

As it was, they hadn’t made it to the bed the first time; the minute he’d had the room door closed she was up against it and he was tugging at her jeans. The fact that she’d been yanking at his as well, and ripping his shirt away, had only aroused him more, and by the time she’d unzipped him and he felt her hands on him, he’d been in a frenzy. He’d clawed her panties away and lifted her, and her legs came around him as if they’d been lovers for years. And they’d both climaxed so quickly after he was inside her that when they slid shakily to the floor, she was still clutching in one hand the key she’d opened the door with.

And despite the fury of it, it had been bare minutes before they’d begun again. And again, it had been . . .

He didn’t know what it had been. Now, still panting slightly, he drew in a deep gulp of air, trying to slow his breathing. And the spinning of his mind. He didn’t understand this. Sex was pleasant, at times necessary, sometimes self-indulgent . . . but it was never, ever the kind of cataclysmic thing that happened between him and Kendall. Each time, he’d expected it to ease, to be less than it had been. But each time it had been, impossibly, more.

When he could move, he shifted himself off of her to one side. But he couldn’t quite let go of her, and was glad when she turned on her side and snuggled close to him. He closed his eyes and waited, a little tensely, expecting her to speak, to say something about the extraordinary fire that burned between them. He remembered what he’d thought, that Kendall was the kind of woman who would have to dress it up and call it love. And that had been before he’d had any idea what it would be like; now she’d probably be even more convinced this was something more than just unbelievable sex. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t convinced it was more.

God, you’re losing it,
he told himself acidly.

“You know we probably won’t be able to prove Alice killed your mother.”

His eyes snapped open. “What?”

She gave him a smile of understanding that told him she knew perfectly well what he didn’t want to talk about. He supposed she must have sensed the tension in him, and made one of her uncannily accurate guesses as to its cause. He let out a breath he hadn’t really been aware of holding. And he tightened his arm around her, the only thing he could think of to let her know he understood what she’d done and was . . . grateful, he supposed.

“It was so long ago, how could we find the man who did it? And prove it? You said he was a pro, so he surely isn’t going to confess all, not after twenty years, even if we could find him.”

“Unless he’s here, now.”

Kendall stared at him. “You were serious? About her using the same man?”

“Why not use him, if he’s still around? He obviously did a nice tidy job the first time.”

He kept his voice carefully even, but Kendall was looking at him as if she knew exactly how much effort it was taking. She probably did, he thought sourly. She read him better than anyone ever had.

“Well, I suppose, if he is still around . . . But if it is the same man, he’s even less likely to confess.”

“I know. I didn’t say we could prove it.”

“Especially since we can’t exactly use the book as evidence,” she said.