Hideaway Cove (A Windfall Island Novel) (16 page)

She swallowed again. “It means if there are any descendants, they’re still Windfallers.”

He frowned a little.

She’d schooled her expression, but something must have leaked through. “It’s great, Hold, really.”

“But it means we might have to put someone in danger,” he said, still watching her carefully.

“It means we should stop. Just stop until…I don’t know, until we know…something.”

“We won’t know anything if we stop.”

She walked in, joined him at the chart. She knew it almost as well Hold, could see where he’d finished the Colby family’s lineage to the point where it ended in a blunt double line after Eugenia’s generation.

Not too far away, her own section of the Windfall Island genealogy sat unfinished, waiting. As far as Jessi cared, it could wait unfinished forever.

“What’s troubling you?”

Being the Stanhope heir
.

She’d joked about it before, only she’d refused to send in her DNA because, being the right age, there was an outside chance she could be Eugenia’s granddaughter—and whoever wanted to eliminate the possible heirs had already proven they wouldn’t wait for the results before taking lethal action.

She’d never really thought she was related to the Stanhopes. Since she’d found that blanket packed away in her attic like a cherished heirloom, though, she couldn’t stop thinking about being Eugenia’s descendant. It scared her to death. She slid her gaze away from the place where Claire Duncan, her great grandmother’s name, was listed, managed to meet Hold’s eyes. “I don’t like the idea of anyone being put in danger.”

“We can stop, but that just leaves Eugenia’s descendants unprotected.”

“If there are any descendants. What if we just announced that there aren’t any, Hold? Then there’s no reason to hurt anyone.”

“How do we back it up? If it is one of the Stanhopes behind this, they’ll just hire someone to finish what I started.”

“They won’t get any cooperation from the people here.”

“They won’t ask for it. It might take them longer to trace all the island families using only public records, but they’ll be able to do it.”

Jessi closed her eyes. The truth trembled on the tip of her tongue, just for a second, but she knew she couldn’t take the chance—with her life, maybe, but not with Benji’s.

“I understand your concern, Jessica.”

“No, you don’t.” She spun around, speared him with a look. “You can’t possibly know how it feels to have a child and see him put in danger.”

“I can’t, no. I don’t have a child, and as important as Benji is to me, there’s no way I can understand how you feel.” Hold took her hand in both of his, toying with her fingers. “There’s also no way you’ll hide from the truth, or ignore the logic of finding that truth first, when it gives us the upper hand.”

No, she thought, she wouldn’t ignore a conclusion she’d already come to herself.

Hold pulled her in, wrapped his arms around her. “I missed you last night.”

She tipped her head up, met his gaze, couldn’t speak for the war raging inside her. They were in the office, she reminded herself, where anyone could walk in and find them. But she wanted him, almost desperately.

“Jessica.” Hold cradled her face and kissed her.

His hands slipped down her arms, his scent wound around her, and she laid her body on the long, lean planes of his. Heat rose in her, a sudden inferno of need growing, spreading as his hands feathered over her nipples, eased down to unsnap her jeans.

“Wait,” she managed, catching his hands. “We can’t. Not here.”

“We can’t at your place,” he said, avoiding her hand to slide her zipper down.

Her heart shot into her throat.

“We can’t at the Horizon. People will talk.” He eased her jeans down, feathered his fingers over her.

And her breath slipped out on a slow moan.

“Here’s what we have, Jessica.” He slid his fingers beneath elastic and into her.

And when he dropped his mouth to her breast, hot and wet, when he drew her in even through her t-shirt and bra, when his fingers worked busily inside her, she shot to orgasm right where she stood.

She sighed, holding onto the lovely hum in her blood, the pleasant quiver deep inside. “Who’d have thought talk of logistics could be so…invigorating?”

“Speaking of logistics.” Hold boosted her onto the desk.

“Hold…”

His eyes on hers, he skirted around the desk, shut the door, and shot the lock home, his eyes lighting with wicked intent.

Still watching him watch her, Jessi toed off her shoes and let her jeans and panties pool on top of them on the floor. Then she crooked her finger at him.

And made him grin. He came back, shucking his sweater and shirt, and dropping them on top of her clothes.

“You’re still wearing too much,” Jessi said.

“Funny. I was just about to say the same about you, sugar.” Hold slipped the flannel shirt off her shoulders, lifted her t-shirt away, popped open the hooks on her bra, and stepped back, grinning. “What a picture you make, Jessica.”

She wasn’t one to be self-conscious, but the way he stared had her hands lifting.

Hold caught them in his, pulled them away. “I’m going to have a hard time doing paperwork without thinking of you here, like this.”

She gave him an arch look. “If you don’t get busy all you’re going to be doing is paperwork.”

He grinned, stepped in, nuzzled her neck.

Jessi eased her hands free, but her fingers, nimble as they were, fumbled with the closure on his slacks. “You really ought to try jeans,” she murmured, tipping her head aside to give him better access. “I know how to undo jeans.”

He brushed her hands away, unhooked and unbuttoned and slipped a condom out of his wallet, never taking his eyes from hers. She returned the favor, taking the condom and sliding it on him—slowly, with her eyes locked to his. She smiled when she felt him tremble under her hands.

“Two can play,” he said.

He braced his hands on the desk and kissed her. Just his mouth on hers, his hips between her thighs, a kiss that spun in her head, burned through her body. Her hands reached for him, and a plea pushed at the back of her throat, a plea that turned to a moan when he cupped her backside, slid her forward and took her in one quick thrust that stole her breath. And her strength.

She leaned back on her elbows, everything in her focused on the feel of him filling her, moving in her. She arched, took him deeper, and felt his mouth drop to her breast, hot and insistent. Each tug of his lips, each caress of his tongue was a sharp arrow of pleasure, each stroke of his body the sweetest friction, building, tightening inside her. Reality narrowed to the two of them, bodies moving in an undeniable rhythm, the two of them, rising, hitting that peak together, the two of them, holding tight to one another while the climax ripped and shuddered through them. Fireworks exploded, bells rang—or maybe that was the phone. Jessi didn’t care.

She lay on the desk—with Hold draped over her, just as destroyed as she was, just as breathless. But not—she reached underneath her and pulled out a pen—as uncomfortable. “We really need to find a better way to do this,” she said.

Hold, resting on his forearms, looked into her face. “I thought we did a damn fine job of it this time.”

“Funny guy. I mean a better place.”

He simply grinned.

“I know, this place was damn fine,” she said in a passable imitation of his drawl. “You aren’t the one with paper clips imprinted on your backside.”

“Your backside feels just fine to me.”

Which he would know as his hands were currently checking. “There aren’t any paperclips exactly there,” she said dryly.

“Never hurts to be sure, sugar.”

She shoved at his shoulder, but when he eased away she felt bereft, and a little embarrassed to be sprawled so wantonly on his desk. “Can you hand me my clothes?”

“If you give me a few minutes you won’t need them.”

“If I give you a few minutes we’re going to have company, because some helpful Windfaller will have called George to find out why I haven’t answered the phone.”

“And he’ll feel obliged to check it out.”

“After what happened to Maggie? Yeah.”

Hold sighed. “We’re going to have to find a better place for this.”

“Yeah.” Jessi scooted off the desk, started dressing.

“Jessica.”

When she looked up, Hold kissed her, slow and thorough and deep before he eased back, and left it sweet and gentle. “Have supper with me.”

“Hold.”

“This, whatever this is, it’s about more than just sex.”

“It’s about more than sex,” she agreed. And it touched her that he wanted her to know that. She just didn’t know how to define that
more
. And she didn’t need to. It was enough knowing Hold didn’t want to sneak around. Neither did she. Hiding their…involvement made it feel wrong somehow.

But she didn’t have a choice.

“How about if I come to you and Benji?” Hold said into the silence. “We can see how it goes from there.”

“No. Hold…Dinner is one thing, and I know he’s okay with the ‘kissing and stuff,’ because he hasn’t really thought about what ‘stuff’ means.” In part because he was seven, and in part, she knew, because he had so much to deal with already.

Benji was still struggling to figure out where he fit into his father’s life. She could see the confusion, the uncertainty every time he and Lance were together. It broke her heart whenever Benji looked to her for reassurance now.

He’d been such a confident, happy little boy just two short weeks ago, and now it was as if he needed to know that whatever else changed in his life, she’d be the one constant. No matter what she felt for Hold, she wouldn’t do anything that might seem to Benji like he wasn’t getting all her love and attention.

“Right now you’re his friend, Hold. Spending the night with me puts you in a different category.”

Hold stopped, shirtless. “He already has a father.”

Jessi stepped up to him, placed a hand on his arm, met his eyes. And prayed he’d understand. “I don’t know, Hold. Neither does he, but I think we should give him the time to figure it out before anything else changes.”

He nodded, surprising her. Then he gave her that bone-melting smile. “How much time?”

“Not much, I hope,” she said fervently.

Hold’s smile turned suggestive, sexy. “No hesitation, a lot of enthusiasm,” he observed. “That’s something, anyway, Jessica. You’re something.”

And she’d be flat on her back again if she didn’t get out of there. She beat a hasty retreat, but she knew it would be a struggle to keep her mind on her work for the rest of the day. To not think about what she could have just feet away, behind a locked door…

Yeah, they definitely needed to find a better place. But then, she thought with a smug grin, she’d never look at that desk the same way again.

C
’mon, Mom, hurry. Chewie’s barking.”

Jessi climbed out of her ancient Explorer, walked to the back of the car and popped it open. “That’s okay,” she called out. “I don’t need any help.”

Benji, halfway to the front door where the puppy was making a ruckus behind it, stopped, sighed, and dragged his feet all the way back to the Explorer to retrieve a couple of the canvas bags filled with their week’s groceries.

She ruffled his hair. “Chewie will be okay for another minute or two.”

“But he’s been locked up all day.”

She argued with herself briefly, then said, “I ran home at lunch and let him out,” wondering why it had been a struggle to say it. Still stinging that she’d been manipulated into having a dog before she was ready, she decided. And it was time to get over it. She’d fallen for the little mutt. He was good for Benji; what did it matter that Lance had been the one to make it happen?

Benji hugged her hard, then grabbed the bags she handed him and ran headlong for the front door. He couldn’t turn the knob with full hands so he stood there, fidgeting from one foot to the other while Chewie barked even more frantically, having heard their voices.

Jessi juggled the rest of the grocery bags, opened the door, flipped on the lights.

And stopped dead when she heard a bang come from the back of the house. It confused her for a second. Her mind fought to make sense of it, until she realized it was the back door slamming. And then she went cold.

“
Mom
.”

“Outside, Benji.”

“But—”

“Move. Now.” She followed him, dumping her bags and his in the back of the Explorer. “In the car,” she said over Benji’s protests, locking the doors once he’d climbed into the front passenger seat. “Don’t ask, just do it. And stay in there until I say you can get out.”

“Chewie,” he said, his lower lip wobbling.

“I’ll get him. Just stay put.” Jessi could see she was scaring him, but better he be scared than hurt.

She walked back to the front door, pulling out her cell with one hand, grabbing the first weapon-like item she came across with the other.

“Boatwright,” George said when he answered.

Jessi opened her front door, looked around cautiously. “I think someone was in my house.”

“Jessi?”

“When I walked in I heard the back door slam, and now…I can’t put my finger on it, George. Everything appears normal. But it’s not. Something’s off.”

“I’ll be there in five. Don’t go in.”

“I’m already in,” she said. “Benji is locked in the car.”

“That’s where you should be.”

“This is my house, George, and I promised Benji I’d get the puppy.” Which had to be scared out of its little canine wits.

She eased across the family room toward the kitchen, eyes on the shadowy staircase the whole way. They’d put Chewie’s crate in the mudroom off the kitchen, and Jessi could hear it rattling between the puppy’s high-pitched yips.

She opened the crate door and Chewie rocketed out. He jumped on her, nipping and licking her hand when she reached down, racing off before she could actually pet him. He worked his way through the kitchen, alternating between sniffing at everything and whining at her.

“Jessi?”

Chewie, barking madly again, raced into the family room. By the time Jessi got there, the pup had squared off in front of George, growling at him although its little legs trembled.

“Game little fellow,” George said. “You, too.” He eyed the umbrella she’d plucked from the stand by the door.

“Are you mocking my umbrella?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” But his lips twitched suspiciously. “Might not be much use against a prowler, though. A nice sturdy bat, that’s the ticket.”

“I’ll remember that,” Jessi said, vowing to buy one at the first chance.

“You stay here,” George said, heading for the kitchen. He turned back at the doorway, speared her with a look. “I mean it, Jessi. Go out and check on Benji. Poor kid has to be scared to death. And take that noisemaker with you.”

Jessi scooped up the puppy and hurried out to the car. Now that George—and his gun—were there, she let Benji get out. But she kept him in the front yard until the all-clear.

“I checked upstairs,” George said when they came back inside. “There’s no one in here now. I’ll check out back before I go, but there’s no snow and the ground is frozen solid. There won’t be any footprints. Tell me again what happened when you got home.”

She locked the front door, turned the TV on low, and left Benji watching cartoons with the pup on his lap.

“Like I told you on the phone, when I opened the front door I heard the back door slam shut.”

George glanced around. “It doesn’t appear anything is missing.”

Jessi circled the room. “Something…” she began, puzzled until it hit her. “The papers on the table have been moved,” she said, pointing to the neat stacks of bills, contracts and invoices she’d yet to take back to the airport office.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” She kept moving, studying. She hadn’t changed a thing since her mother died. Same furniture, same family photos on the walls, same knickknacks she dusted each week and placed precisely where they’d always sat. Some would call it boring, stuck in the past. Jessi found it comforting.

“What’s wrong?” Benji asked, not fooled by the unexpected cartoon spree and lowered voices.

Nothing
, Jessi started to say, until she realized that wouldn’t be fair to him. Benji knew there was a problem; keeping him in the dark would only frighten him more.

“I think there was someone in the house while we were gone,” she told him. She hated to shatter his sense of security, but he needed to take his own safety seriously.

“It was probably only kids from the mainland playing a prank,” George put in.

“They’re gone,” she added hastily. “George already checked. There’s no one in the house now besides us. But he wants me to take a look and see if anything is missing.”

“Were they in my room?”

“No.” George circled the sofa and hunkered down next to Benji. “And they’re not coming back. I’m going to make sure of that.” He reached out to scratch the pup behind his ears. “I have to say, this is quite the watchdog you have here.”

“He was barking a lot when we got home.”

“So I hear, and there’s no better deterrent than a dog. That means just his bark is enough to make most bad guys go away.”

Benji hugged the puppy to him. “Really?”

“Yep, and he growled at me, even when he was afraid. This fellow gets some size on him, and watch out.”

“Why don’t you come upstairs with us?” Jessi said. “We’ll check your room first.”

That was exactly what they did. George looked in Benji’s closet, under his bed, and in his little bathroom.

“Are you okay hanging out in here for a few minutes?” Jessi asked him once George had declared his personal space prowler free.

“I’m gonna go through my stuff,” Benji said.

“You do that,” she said, giving his hair a quick tousle before she joined George in the hallway.

They went into her bedroom, George standing back while she took a look around. “Nothing seems to have been disturbed in here.”

Still, she opened the top drawer of her dresser and sifted through the contents. The family Bible, the pitifully few pieces of jewelry she owned of any value, a gold coin that had been carried in the pocket of the first Duncan to leave Ireland, then passed down so his descendants would never want as long as they held onto it.

“Everything is here.” She looked over at George, the only one who understood the implications outside of Maggie, Dex and Hold. “And I don’t keep any research materials in the house.”

George shoved his hat back, scratched his head. “If this is connected to the research, we have a bigger problem.”

“Yeah.” But George didn’t know everything.

After Maggie’s plane had been sabotaged, Dex had told George about the search for Eugenia’s descendants, if any existed. George knew Dex was really a private investigator, not a lawyer; and he knew Hold Abbot had come to help by creating the genealogy. George knew Maggie’s DNA test had come back negative.

He didn’t know about the blanket. At the moment, Jessi thought with a little spurt of panic, neither did she.

She stepped out of her room, glanced in at Benji and found him still occupied with the puppy, then made her way to the attic stairs. “Just to be sure,” she said when George looked dubious.

He shrugged and followed her up, making his way around the dim space like the good cop he was. As soon as he got to the other end of the room, she popped open the trunk and dug down, breathing a sigh of relief when she spied the flowered paper.

“The dust is disturbed over here.”

“That was me.” She closed the trunk, then went to join George. “I got a wild hair to clean this place over the weekend, which lasted just long enough for me to move some of my mother’s boxes before I ran out of steam.”

George grunted and kept poking around. “Just so you know, I sent Maggie a text while I had you on speaker phone.”

Jessi stopped in her tracks and closed her eyes while she let that sink in. “She had a charter to New York, so it was a long day.”

“That’s not the reason you didn’t want me to call her.”

“She’ll only worry.”

“Maybe, but she’d have my ass for not calling.”

“You’re not afraid of her.”

“If you say so,” George said equably.

He followed her out of the attic, waiting while she turned off the lights and closed the door. George waited again while she stopped in Benji’s open doorway and asked him to stay there until dinner.

For once her son didn’t argue, barely taking the time to nod absently while he played tug-of-war with Chewie.

“What do you think would happen if one of us didn’t call Maggie?” George said as she led the way downstairs.

“I would have told her. I just don’t see any point in dragging her out on a cold, ugly night like this.” The early November sky was spitting ice pellets and the wind had begun to howl around the eaves.

“Maybe she should spend the night with you.”

Jessi shot George a look, then went down the rest of the stairs. There was Hold, in her living room. Maggie stood behind him, the spare key Jessi had given her years before in her hand.

“Perfect.”

“George caught me at the office, dropping off my paperwork,” Maggie explained. “Hold was still there working.”

“Of course he was.”

“What’s going on? All George’s text said was
Jessi’s. Now.
”

Jessi opened her mouth, closed it when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Benji came down the stairs, wide-eyed and big-eared, no doubt. “Chewie’s hungry,” he said. “So am I.”

“Chewie first,” Jessi said, sending Benji toward the kitchen with a pat on the seat of his jeans. “Go ahead and feed him, and make sure you give him fresh water.”

Benji sent a look toward the kitchen—the big, empty kitchen.

“C’mon, Ben. It appears we’re not needed here.” Hold put a hand on Benji’s shoulder and steered him out of the room.

But he reappeared almost immediately to lounge in the wide arched doorway, sideways, so he could see Benji but still hear the conversation in the living room.

“Someone was in here today while we were gone.” Jessi kept her eyes on Hold, daring him to comment.

And he did, just not with words. She could tell by the way his eyes narrowed, the way his body tensed, that he was pissed.

“You should have called,” Maggie said.

“I called George.”

“From inside the house,” George added helpfully.

“Whose side are you on?”

“Yours.”

Jessi looked around, found three faces staring back at her with varying degrees of accusation and disappointment. “Right. So this is the part where you all gang up on me. You know, I am capable of taking care of myself.”

Maggie tipped her head, smiled a little sadly. “So am I.”

And look what had happened
, Jessi finished silently, as they all probably were, remembering how close Maggie had come to dying at the hands of a friend. The Stanhopes had deep pockets, more than deep enough to hire betrayal.

“There’s no reason to target me,” Jessi pointed out.

“You’re helping Hold with the research,” Maggie said.

“None of which is kept here. And besides, George thinks it was kids from the mainland.”

“No way an islander would be caught here when you get home,” George said. “We all know your schedule.”

“Except you left early,” Hold said. “It was dead at the office, and you wanted to spend some extra time with Ben.”

“Then it could have been an islander,” Maggie concluded.

“And if it was, they’re aware I don’t have anything…classified here.”

“Well, I’ll be looking into who
they
are,” George said, “even if there’s no cause for anyone to bother you again, Jessi.”

She breathed out carefully, almost lost it when Maggie slung an arm around her waist and squeezed.

“It’s odd, though,” George continued, “that someone went to the trouble to break in here and didn’t take anything. Although I doubt there was much breaking involved. A five-year-old could pick the ancient lock on your front door, Jessi. You should have changed it— Hell, your mother should have changed it.”

Hold jerked around to stare at her.

“This isn’t the big city,” Jessi said before he could put the outrage on his face into words. “Hardly anyone even locks their door.”

“That’s going to have to change,” George said. “I’ll be telling the other Windfallers—discreetly—to upgrade their locks, too.”

“Great, then it’s all settled.”

“No, it’s not settled.”

“No, it’s really not,” Hold echoed Maggie.

“I’m not needed here anymore,” George decided.

“Coward,” Maggie said good-naturedly to him as he started for the door.

“I only take on hardened criminals,” George said. “A woman on a rampage is way beyond my skills.”

“I’m not on a rampage,” Jessi said to his retreating back. “It was just a little mischief by some bored mainlander kids.” It couldn’t be more, she told herself. It couldn’t have anything to do with Eugenia. The research wasn’t the only reason for someone to break into her house, though, and as unsettled as it made her to think about finding a stranger in her home, she’d be even more unsettled if it wasn’t a stranger at all. “There’s a possibility we haven’t discussed.”