Reese (3 page)

             
Stone nodded. “Understandable.”
             
“Maybe the Rebecca I know isn’t even the Rebecca you are looking for.” I leaned closer
, trying to read the expression in those hypnotic steel grey eyes
. “You got anything other than a name? You say you are here for her grandfather but have you even met the girl?” He shook his head. “So how you going to know if it’s her or not?”

He dug into his back jeans pocket and pulled out his wallet. The leather was handcrafted and expensive. Stone pulled out a small picture and offered it to me. I refused to let my fingers tremble as I took it and frowned down at the picture.

Long red hair with a mixture of gold and sunshine natural highlights. A dimple in her left cheek that went perfect with the innoc
ent, almost carefree smile. And
vibrant blue
eyes so
full of
sweet little girl
innocence. Her peaches and cream complexion was perfect and nearly radiant. The designer clothes she wore told me that she came from a rich
, well to do
family…One that should have taken better care of her.

I handed the picture back to Stone. “That girl couldn’t be more than sixteen.” Fifteen in that picture, I knew because it had been the last picture I had ever smiled in. Taken my sophomore year—my last year—of boarding school.
I had been happy then. I had had friends at boarding school; teachers that looked after me for the most part.
“The Rebecca I know is in her twenties.”

Wide, powerful shoulders shrugged. “It was the only one her grandfather had. They haven’t seen each other in a few years. But how much can someone change in five years right?”

More than you could ever know, I thought as I moved away to serve a few drinks. I had to have a few minutes to get control on
the
anger that I could feel slipping. Anger
was
the
driving force that had saved me from so much over the years
; anger which
had turned darker than
the
lipstick that I currently wore. Mel had helped me push most of it down, helped me move on from
my past. But Kieran Stone was bringing everything to the surface and I didn’t know if I was ready for that.

It was more than fifteen minutes before I returned to the end of the bar. Stone was sitting patiently, playing with the label on his beer.
That was what had made him so good in the s
teel cage world of MMA, his patience
. He could be as enduring
as a cobra, hypnotizing you into feel calm right before he struck.
I set another
beer
in front of him before he coul
d ask. “So…When you check up on
Rebecca, what do you plan on doing? There must be a reason why her grandfather wants you to check up on her now. You said that they ha
ve
n’t seen each other in years…Why now?”

“I’m just the messenger here…” He frowned. “What’s your name?”
             
“Goth Girl.” I supplied.
It was what everyone called me at Safe Haven.

His shook his head. “Your real name, baby.” The way he called me baby…Okay, not going to go there.

My eyes narrowed, but I found myself giving him my name anyway. “Reese.”

“I’m just the messenger, Reese. I owed the old man a favor and he called it in. I have no idea what went on between the two.
All I know is that he asked me to check in on her and to give her something.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He took another long swallow and I looked away, hating the fact that I had
started to become
mesmerized
by the way his throat moved as he swallowed. He sat the beer down, half empty
after only one drink
. “So can you help me out?”

I thought about that for nearly a minute. I had no reason to believe this guy, but something told me that I
could trust him
. I glanced at the skull
covered watch
on my wrist. It was just after one in the morning. The bar closed at two thirty and I still had to clean up. “I can help you.” I grabbed a napkin and wrote out an address on it. “She lives here. But she won’t be home right now. Best time to try and catch her is between three and four in the afternoon.”
And he was sure in for a little surprise when he found me there.
             
He glanced down at the address and nodded. “Thanks, Reese.” He stood and tossed a few bills on the bar top. “I really appreciate it.”

I inclined my head. “You wouldn’t have gotten that address unless I trusted you. Which is really crazy. I don’t trust anyone.” Except for maybe Mel, but that had taken time. “Don’t make me regret trusting you, Stone.”

He just grinned as he walked away.
His stride both confident and dangerous.

I stared after him for a long moment, my eyes more
fascinated
with
the sight of his rear in those expensive jeans than I had ever been in my life. “Hey, how about another beer over here?” Someone called.

I grunted and returned my mind to work, trying to forget all about Kieran Stone
for now
.

I didn’t get home until seven. I had helped the bouncers clean up, then d
id
paperwork for a few hours so I would
n’t
have to do it when I first got back to the bar that evening.
After
I got home
,
the first thing I did was shower and wash away the smell of booze and smoke. Then I fell into bed in my flannel pajamas and snuggled under the covers.

But I didn’t fall asleep right away. My mind was to
o
alert for that. So I tried to listen to the humming of the AC and count sheep. Instead my mind kept going back to Kieran Stone.
Lord, the man was sexy. On TV during one of his cage fights I had been interested. In person he was so
overwhelmingly
sexy that even I, who had never had such a problem before, had been
enthralled
.

He was in Phoenix for a fight, that much I knew for sure. But that fight wasn’t for two weeks yet
, or so all the advertisements I had been seeing had informed me: A billboard, a few posters, and of course the marquee outside the Comerica Theatre, even a commercial or two over the last month or so.
It wasn’t uncommon for such a fight to take place in Phoenix, but Stone was such a high ranking fighter in the MMA that I would have thought it would have bee
n in Vegas. His last five fights
had taken place there, after all.

When I thought about his reasons for being in Safe Haven tonight I gritted my teeth. So he had owed Greg Daventry a favor
?
Plenty of
athletes owed the old man favors
. Greg Daventry liked making money, but he loved sports to the point that he was forever investing his money on football players, baseball teams, and boxers. It hadn’t surprised me that Kieran Stone was among the long list of celebrity athletes that Greg
was
involved with. Hell
,
I wouldn’t be all together surprised if he was the money behind the upcoming MMA fight.

When I thought about the man who was my grandfather I couldn’t help a little of the old anger surfacing. It had been five years since I had ran away
, lo
nger really since I had last seen the man who was my
paternal
grand
father. When my father had died
I had been seven
and Greg
had promised to take care of me. Of course that had only meant on the financial end
. I had rarely seen the old man
over the years
, not even on holidays or birthdays
.
I, like everything else in his life, had to be penciled in to so much as speak to him on the phone.

So I was confused as to why Greg was interested in knowing how I was after so long. I had little doubt that he had known about my running away right away.
He hadn’t even responded to my many urgent calls
before all the shit had hit the fan. And I h
ad taken great stakes to make sure I was never found by my mother and stepfather
when I had
first
left
. Not that they would have tried all that hard, I was sure. The only reason my stepfather had cared if I was around or not was to….

Yeah, not going there
!

             
But
it looked like I had not covered ever base
as well as I had thought
if my grandfather now knew where
I
was.
Most likely he had found me through my social security number, which I had used to file my taxes.
Still,
I was a little confused as to why he had sent someone else and
not came himself, but then again I was only his gran
ddaughter, not
someone that was all together that
important.
Not the way his business or his passion for
the
sports
he invested in
w
ere
.

             
Sighing I rolled onto my belly and forced all thoughts from my brain. Breathing deep and practicing the meditation that Mel had taught me. Mel was big into yoga. She was big into all sorts of hobbies lately with so much free time on her hands now that I was running things for her.

A small smile touched my lips as I thought of my mentor. In her late forties, Mel was still attractive even with t
he hard life that she had lived.
She
was
born addicted to crack
then
had been pushed through the foster system from day one. She had quit school, ditched her last foster family and started working on the streets
. Addiction had found her again and she had worked for her next fix until her best friend had been murdered in front of her.

After that she had fought her way out of the drug haze and somehow had bought Safe Haven
, a bar that catered to all walks of life
. I didn’t know all the details, but I was sure I knew more about Mel than most. Just as she knew more about me than anyone in the world…

I had met Mel when I walked into Safe Haven right off the bus from Indiana. I had shown her my fake ID that ha
d
said I was nineteen. Reese Graves was the name on the ID and I had like
d
it the best of the three fake names. She had taken one look at me, seen right through all my Goth paint and offered me a job, knowing full well that I was not nineteen. I hadn’t started tending bar right away. Instead I became Mel’
s assistant. I was great at bookkeeping
and had mad organization skills. I cleaned up her office, started keeping the books for her and took care of all the errands that she couldn’t do herself.

She helped me get my GED and then took me to my first self-defense class when I had confessed my reasons for running away. Mel became the mother that I needed, and I became something more to Mel
:
A daughter, a confidant, a friend.

I stayed with her until I was eighteen and then I started handling everything. Bartending on the weekends, organizing her life through the week.
Mel had gotten sick two years ago, nothing
terribly
serious, but I had stepped in and conned her into taking some time to herself. I had everything covered
, the bar was making more money than it had when I first started working for her,
and she knew that Safe Haven was in good hands…

The ringing of my doorbell, followed by the pounding on the door woke me. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and glanced at the clock. Three thirty. I groaned and grabbed my robe on my way to the door. My apartment was small so it didn’t take long to reach it. I knew who i
t was, but took time to take a
pe
e
k to make sure before opening it.

“Yeah?” I yawned, resting my head on the door and closing my eyes, fighting my way out of the sleep fog.

There was a long pause and I opened my eyes to find Kieran Stone staring at me with…Was that lust in his eyes?
There was certainly something
, an electricity coming off of him that drew me to look at him
.
I pushed my hair from my eyes. My real hair, the red tresses with the gold and sunshine natural highlights, not the black wig I wore to work. With no makeup and simple pajamas on I looked nothing like Reese Graves, Goth Girl, and ruler of everything inside of Safe Haven.

I looked like an old
er version of Rebecca Daventry.

“Rebecca?” He asked, his voice deep and just a little rough around the edges
, c
ompletely different from his voice from the night before.
When he said that name I had that
strange feeling again, the deep-muscles-
coming
-a
live feeling. I didn’t like it. In fact it terrified me.