Chapter 9 #2
The pillow shot through the air like a padded cannonball and stifled the jeer she’d been about to make. Within seconds, she found herself eating more feathers. But there was an upside to his latest attack. She now had both pillows.
“Aha!” she shouted, waving a pillow in each hand. The glee on his face made her nervous. When he started toward her, she began to retreat.
“Aha? What the hell is aha? I’ve never been hit with an aha before. Do they hurt?”
Casey panicked, threw both pillows at once and then ran. “No fair,” she screamed.
He caught her in a flying tackle in the middle of the bed, at once mashing her face into the mattress and himself onto her.
The weight of him was so great that breathing was almost impossible, and then just when she thought her lungs would burst, she found herself flat on her back and gasping for air.
When she could talk and breathe at the same time, she looked up.
Ryder was sitting on her legs with his arms above his head in a triumphant gesture.
“I hereby declare this bed has been thoroughly christened.”
Casey doubled up her fist and thumped him in the middle of his belly.
“You cheated,” she said, and tried to hit him again.
“Easy,” he warned, and caught her fist before it could do any more damage. “Justice men never cheat. We just rearrange the odds.”
Casey tried to stay mad, but the grin wouldn’t stay off her face. “That’s priceless.”
“What’s priceless?” he asked.
“Rearranging the odds. Delaney Ruban would have loved you.”
Ryder’s expression stilled. He couldn’t quit looking at the woman beneath him. At the joy in her eyes. The smile on her face. Her hand on his leg.
He touched her. First her hair, then her face. And when she bit her lower lip and looked away, he heard himself asking, “What about his granddaughter? How does she feel?”
Casey felt as if all the breath had been knocked from her lungs. She was all too aware of his weight on her legs, his hand on her face, the need in his eyes.
“I…”
“Never mind,” he whispered, and braced himself above her with an arm on either side of her face. “I think I’d rather find out for myself.”
She knew what the shape of his mouth felt like.
They’d kissed before. Once, and just before dawn, in Judge Harris’s front parlor on the day of the wedding.
She thought she was prepared for what was about to happen.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. The man she’d kissed before had been a stranger.
This time it was different. She’d seen this man wearing nothing but a towel—walked into his embrace on the day of her wreck—slept in his arms—laughed with him—cried with him—fought with him.
She closed her eyes and tensed as his breath swept her cheek.
The gentle brush of mouth-to-mouth contact was familiar, even comfortable, and all of that changed when Casey’s arms automatically wrapped around his neck.
Ryder groaned and then rolled, taking her with him until she was the one on top and he was pinned beneath.
She heard him whisper her name. Felt his hands in her hair—down her back—cupping her hips.
Urgency sparked between them as their lips met again, then again, and then again.
* * *
Her pulse was racing, his body was betraying him. It was all there—from the wild glitter in his eyes, to the need coiling deep in her belly. She lowered her forehead until it was touching the space just above his heart. In spite of the heat between them she started to shake.
Ryder groaned. They’d gone too fast. But, dear Lord, who could have known they would go up in flames? They’d blindsided each other with nothing more than a kiss. He was almost afraid to guess at what might happen if they ever made love.
“Easy, Casey. Easy, honey,” he said softly, rubbing his hands up and down her back in a slow, soothing motion. “That just got out of hand. I didn’t mean to scare you, okay?”
She rolled off him and got as far as the side of the bed before covering her face with her hands. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
Ryder silently cursed himself for starting something they hadn’t been ready to finish.
But he’d gotten his answer. Delaney Ruban’s granddaughter might not love him, but she wasn’t immune to him either.
There was something there. He just wasn’t sure what it was.
He rolled over on his side and reached out, touching her back with the palm of his hand.
“Casey, look at me.”
When she flinched, he got up with a curse and walked out of the room.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All she could do was remember his weight pressing her down and never wanting the connection to stop. Of feeling his mouth cover hers, of mingling breaths and racing hearts and resenting the clothing that separated her skin from his.
The phone rang, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. Moments later, Ryder walked back in the room and tossed the portable phone near her leg.
“It’s for you.”
Casey looked up, but he was already gone. She picked up the phone with shaking hands and cleared her throat.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Justice, this is Charles Byner, down at the bank. I just need your authorization to clear a check. It’s quite a large sum above what’s in the account and I need your approval to authorize the draw.”
Casey swept a hand through her hair, trying to come to terms with reality. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to focus. “What did you say?”
“No problem,” he said. “I’m really sorry to bother you at home, but Mr. Ruban had specific orders with regards to these particular accounts and since you’re now the one in charge, I need authorization from you to clear the check, although it is more than a thousand dollars over the balance.”
Casey sat up straight, her mind immediately jumping gears as she realized what he meant.
“Which account? Miles’s or Erica’s?”
The clerk lowered his voice. “It’s the one in Mr. Dunn’s name. The check is for twenty-six hundred dollars. That’s about eleven hundred dollars above the balance.”
Casey stood. “What is the balance, exactly?”
His voice lowered even more. “Let me just pull that up on the screen. Yes… here it is. The balance as of today is exactly $1,400.17.”
Casey gritted her teeth. “And was the usual amount of five thousand dollars deposited into that account at the first of this month?”
“Ummm, yes, ma’am, it was.”
By now, Casey was livid. Delaney had set a precedent years ago that was about to come to a screeching halt. “Honor the check, Mr. Byner. I’ll have enough money transferred into the account to cover it, but I’ll be at the bank first thing Monday morning to make some new arrangements.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the clerk said, and hung up.
Casey disconnected, then immediately rang the bank back through another department and dealt with the transfer in a no-nonsense voice. When she was finished; she headed for the house phone on the kitchen wall.
“Tilly, is Miles at home?”
“He’s in the pool,” Tilly answered.
“Would you please ask him to meet me in the library? There’s something we need to discuss.”
She hung up to find Ryder watching her.
“You okay?”
Casey’s nerves were just beginning to settle. She hadn’t expected it, but knowing that in spite of what had just happened between them, Ryder was still able to ask about her welfare, made her feel safe.
“No,” Casey said. “But I will be.”
“Need any backup?”
“Are you offering?”
The smile on his face was slight. “Are you asking?”
“It might get ugly,” she said.
He dropped the clothes he was carrying onto the back of a chair.
“Honey girl, the last few months of my life haven’t been anything but.”
Surprised by the revelation, she would have given a lot to continue this conversation.
Ryder was closemouthed with regards to anything about his past, and hearing him admit even this much was a definite surprise.
But the confrontation with Miles was long overdue, and this latest stunt was, for Casey, the last straw.
“Then come if you want. For better or worse, you are part of this family.”
“Unless I think it matters, you won’t even know I’m around.”
She nodded and started down the stairs, and it wasn’t until they’d entered the house and were on their way to the library that she had fully accepted the impact of Ryder’s presence in her life. The problems within her world were no longer just hers. They were theirs.
She entered the room wearing an expression the board members of Ruban Enterprises would have recognized.
It was her no-holds-barred-don’t-mess-with-me look.
Ryder had disappeared somewhere between the library and the hall, yet she sensed he wouldn’t be far away.
Unlike Miles, he wasn’t the kind of man who went back on his word.
And Miles wasn’t far behind. She could hear the splat of bare feet on marble flooring as he made his way in from the pool. The careless smile on his face was no more than she expected as he sauntered into the library with a beach towel draped across his neck and water dripping onto the floor.
“I’m here. What’s up?” he asked.
Casey schooled herself to a calm she didn’t feel. “I just had a call from the bank.”
If she hadn’t known him so well, she might have missed the nervous flicker in his eyes.
He strolled over to the bar and poured himself a drink, even taking a sip before asking, “And what does that have to do with me?”
“Everything. It seems you wrote a check you couldn’t cover.”
He shrugged. “Oh, that. Delaney never used to mind when—”
“Delaney is dead, remember?”
Miles blinked. It was his only reaction to the cold, even tone of his half sister’s voice.
“And in the grand scheme of things, exactly what does that mean?” he drawled.
“It means your glory days are over, Miles. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing with your money. I don’t even want to know. What I will tell you is that your world is slightly out of sync, and as your loving sister, I intend to do all that I can to bring it back in order.”