Aegis Security 02 - Sinful Surrender (7 page)

Doubt pressed in. A doubt that told her the music wasn’t as good as she thought. That she’d freaked him out by telling him he’d inspired her. That something that was too good to be true usually was.

She stared off into the distance, taking in the view of the snowy mountains, and told herself she was being silly. This wasn’t a relationship, it was just fun. And she needed to remember that. As she stood on the side of the run, staring out at the view, Brian skied up next to her and cut his skis in the powder, sending snow all over her.

“Oh my God.” Grace shrieked. “You did that on purpose!”

His boyish laugh warmed her blood and pushed aside the doubt. “You were way too deep in thought there.”

“I’ll show you deep in something.” Grace let go of her poles and launched herself at him.

Her boots, trapped in her bindings, prevented her from getting a good push off, and she fell more than threw herself into him. But it was enough to knock him off balance, and he landed on his side in a puff of white.

His laughter echoed around her—a laughter she loved because it meant he was enjoying himself, not brooding about something he wouldn’t tell her—and his arms wrapped around her. He rolled her over, and she found herself trapped. One leg hanging over his hip, her skis tangled with his in the snow, and his muscular body blocking out everything else—the view, the snow, the other skiers on the hill—everything but him.

“You shouldn’t have thrown snow on me up there at the top of the hill,” he said. “Or ducked behind that couple to get away from me. I almost took them out.”

His gloved fingers pressed into Grace’s side, and she laughed and tried to move away from the pressure, but all her wiggling did was force her legs and hips into closer contact with his.

Tingles permeated her skin, even through the thick fabric of the snow pants. Tingles she liked way too much and couldn’t give in to out here in the middle of the run. “Okay, I give. I give!”

He stopped his relentless tickling and leaned over her. “We’re not even. I still owe you for cutting in front of me on the last run and making me crash into that snow bank.”

“Oh, come on. You look adorable in white.”

He scowled down at her and reached for a handful of snow. “You do too.”

Yelping, Grace scooted closer, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled herself up so she was plastered to his chest. “Stop! Stop. I’ll make it up to you in other ways. How about that?”

His hand was still clutching the snow, but his other arm slid under her torso to hold her close. “Depends on what you have in mind.”

Grace lifted her mouth to his jaw and pressed her lips against his cool, scruffy cheek. Why was it so damn sexy when men didn’t shave? “Well.” She moved her lips a fraction of an inch. Kissed another spot. “If you don’t have plans tonight, you could come back to my room and we could open a bottle of wine.”

“You don’t particularly like alcohol.”

He’d figured that out, huh? Grace’s lips turned up in a grin. She kissed another delectable spot. “Okay, then, we’ll have diet root beer.”

“I hate to tell you this, honey, but that’s not overly enticing.”

“Naked.”

He drew back from her and stared down into her eyes, and Grace saw that look again. That dark, brooding look that told her there was something going on with him. Something she might not want to know.

“Grace, I need to tell you something.”

Her stomach tightened. “This isn’t the part where you confess you have a wife, is it?”

“No.” A strange look passed over his face. “Not a current one, at least.”

“You’re married?” Grace asked, pushing away and sitting up on her own.

He let go of her and frowned. “Divorced.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what to say. A lot of people got married and divorced. It definitely shouldn’t bother her. But she couldn’t stop wondering what kind of woman he would marry.

“She was young,” he said. “Really young. And it didn’t last long. Which is why I don’t get involved with women in their twenties.”

Grace glanced at all the snow around them. Then her gaze shot back to his. “That’s why you were asking me how old I was last night.” When he nodded, she couldn’t stop herself. “What happened?”

He yanked off his glove and scratched the back of his head just under the edge of his knit cap as if he didn’t want to tell her. “I was already in the military when we got married. We met through a friend, and I knew she was quite a bit younger, but I thought she could handle the whole wife-of-a-soldier thing. I got shipped out to Afghanistan only a few weeks after the wedding. She didn’t adjust to the separation so well. Used to send me these long e-mails about how lonely she was. Anyway, I’d been there about six months when we had this really intense mission. After it was over, my CO gave us all an unscheduled two-week furlough. I didn’t tell her. Thought I’d surprise her instead. And I did. Surprised all of us, actually.”

“What do you mean by ‘all’?”

“I mean, I caught her with my
ex
-best friend.”

“Oh. Ouch.” Grace cringed. And that would be why he didn’t date younger women. Because to him they were all as immature as his young wife.

“Yeah, well.” He turned to look at her. “You’re not like her. I know that. I just have…issues.”

Any guy would after that.

Grace drew in a courageous breath. “The last guy I dated had a history of indecent exposure. I didn’t know about it until after I broke up with him, when the cops came to question me about a case where he’d exposed himself to some poor, unsuspecting teenager. You’re not the only one with issues.”

One side of his lips turned up, and he rubbed his eyebrow. “That’s…pretty sad, I’ll give you that. But I can top it. When I walked in on my wife and my ex-friend, they weren’t just having sex. She was tied up in ropes and handcuffs and hanging from the ceiling. I thought she was being tortured. They had to explain to me what was going on. I didn’t even know she was into that BDSM shit.”

Grace barked out a laugh and covered her mouth with her gloved hand. “Oh, you win. That’s terrible.”

His smile widened, and a space around her heart contracted at the sparkle she saw in his crazy-blue eyes. His brow dropped, but that glint of amusement lingered. “You’re not into that, are you?”

“What…bondage?”

He nodded.

Grace’s stomach tightened again. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it. You’re the one who was teasing last night about whips-and-chains romances. Have you?”

He shook his head. But his eyes… They were definitely interested.

Thoughts pinged around in Grace’s mind. And every dirty one involving him, and her, a length of rope, and a blindfold. Warm liquid seemed to spread all through her lower body. Suddenly the thought of
him
tying her up and doing all those naughty things to her didn’t sound so bad.

Arousal speared through her body, making her thighs burn with the need to feel him everywhere. She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the edge of his cold lips. “I think
you
could be trouble for
me
, Brian Walker.”

He turned his head and captured her mouth so quickly, so possessively, she groaned. His tongue slipped past her lips, scraping over her teeth as he took a deep, electrifying taste. Her muscles loosened. She sank into his kiss. Forgot about the snow and how cold her nose was and the fact there were people on the slopes all around them. She only wanted more. More of him.

She was panting by the time he pulled back.

“Grace,” he said softly, those deep blue eyes gazing into hers, making her feel like he was looking all the way into her soul. “I really like you. More than I expected. And I want you to know I didn’t plan this. I never should have talked to you in the bar last night, but I couldn’t help myself. You’re just… You’re not at all what I expected. You…dazzle me. You really do. And I haven’t been dazzled in a very long time. I forgot what it was like.”

His words caused Grace’s internal fires to flip to Sizzle. Her lips curved, and she lifted her mouth back to his. “You dazzle me too, Brian. More than you know.”

Snow swished close by as Grace was pressing her mouth against Brian’s again. Laughter floated in the air, and muffled voices echoed around her. Abruptly, Brian pulled away.

“What did you say?” he called, twisting to look down the hill.

Two twenty-something snowboarders had stopped ten feet from them, Grace realized. The one wearing a red cap looked their direction.

“You didn’t hear about it?” he called. “Cops are all over the resort. Someone broke into a couple of the rooms. Dude, it’s like CSI down there. Fucking cool.”

The two snowboarders took off, and Brian was on his feet before Grace even saw him move. He grabbed her by the arms and hauled her up. “Come on.”

“Wh—” Grace wobbled but found her balance. Brian handed her the poles she’d dropped and bent to fix his binding. “Why the rush?”

“I want to check out what’s happening down there.”

That dark look was back in his eyes. She frowned as she brushed the snow off her jacket and ski pants, perplexed by his shift in mood. One second he’d been flirting with her, making her think about all kinds of naughty, X-rated scenarios, and the next he was acting like it was the furthest thing from his mind.

He took off down the hill, made a turn, and looked back at her. “Aren’t you coming?”

Grace’s frown deepened. Yeah, unfortunately she was, but not in the way she wanted.

* * *

Brian had a bad feeling brewing in the pit of his stomach. And if there was one thing he’d learned to trust over the years, it was that feeling, because it had kept him alive in some pretty shitty situations.

They stepped off the elevator on Grace’s floor, and that feeling jumped tenfold when she saw the collection of police officers halfway down the hall. He leaned close to Grace. “Stay behind me.”

“That’s my room they’re in,” Grace exclaimed, not listening.

She moved in front of him, but he caught her by the hand and pulled her back. “Let me find out what’s going on.”

She nodded, but he could see in her eyes that she didn’t like handing over control.

He approached the closest officer and explained who they were. The man nodded, then turned and yelled, “Hey, Charlie. The guest is here.”

Seconds later, another man, this one dressed in a suit, with salt-and-pepper hair, stepped out of the open door. “Grace Ryder?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” Grace said, tugging off her coat. “What happened in my room?”

“The maid came by and found the room in shambles. The one directly above your suite and the one right below were also vandalized.”

Grace wrapped her arms around her coat and tried to look past the detective into the room. “Can I go in?”

“Yeah. We were hoping you would. We need you to look around and tell us if anything’s missing. Careful what you touch.”

Grace nodded. But as the detective stepped back and Grace moved forward, Brian saw the worry in her eyes, and the fear. And that hum in his blood, the one that told him he’d missed something when he’d been drooling all over her last night, amped up another notch.

Grace moved ahead of him and muttered, “Oh my God.”

Brian’s feet drew to a stop in the middle of the living room, and a sinking feeling consumed him as he glanced around. This wasn’t just a random break-in. Someone had trashed the place. Every piece of furniture was overturned. Every drawer open, every cushion tossed and slashed. Picture frames that had once hung on the walls lay in piles of broken glass, lamps were shattered, the curtains along the sliding glass door were hanging askew and shredded, and her guitar—the one she’d used to play him that song—was nothing but a pile of busted wood.

Ryder’s worry that someone was after Grace wasn’t just paranoia. It was real. And the person who could do this kind of damage harbored more than just animosity toward the woman. They were consumed by hatred.

From the direction of the bedroom, Grace yelped. Looking up, Brian realized she’d moved away from him when he’d been lost taking it all in. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he reached back for his gun, only to realize he’d left it in his room when he’d gone to grab his snow gear.

The bedroom was more wrecked than the living room, and a few officers were milling around, gathering evidence. Grace came walking out of the master bathroom with a dripping ziplock bag wrapped around a blue-checked notebook. Stopping near the bed, Brian’s brow dropped low. “What is that?”

“My book.” She tore the bag open, dropped it on the floor, and tugged the notebook out.

“Where was it?”

“In the toilet tank.”

Confusion hit him square between the eyes. “You hid a notebook in the toilet before we left?”

She flipped through the book. “I always hide anything of value in my hotel room. Something like
this
could happen.”

There she went, surprising him again. She hadn’t hidden her laptop or her wallet or her jewelry or the keys to her car or anything a normal person would consider valuable. She’d hidden a ninety-nine-cent notebook.

Her shoulders relaxed on a relieved sigh. “It’s all here. Whoever broke in didn’t find it.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I can breathe again.”

He suddenly needed to know a whole lot more about what kind of threat was happening back at home. And what the hell she kept in that book.

Turning away from her, he moved back out into the living room and spotted the detective who’d brought them in.

He crossed the room, pulled his business card from his wallet, and handed it to the detective. “I’m Brian Walker. Private security for Ms. Ryder. I’m going to need to see the video surveillance from the hall.”

The detective stared down at the card. “Aegis Security. I’ve heard of you.”

Behind him, Grace gasped, and Brian knew he’d just royally fucked up everything between them, but he couldn’t dwell on that now. This was more important.

“Ryder…” the detective said. “Ryder… She’s not related to Jake Ryder, the CEO of Aegis, is she?”

“Sister,” Brian answered.

The detective glanced past Brian to Grace behind him, and though she was quiet, Brian could all but feel her enraged stare boring into the back of his head. “Is there a situation here we should be aware of? I’m starting to think this wasn’t just a random break-in. The damage in this room is way more severe than the other two.”