9. Grace
Grace
I’d been staring at Isabella’s guest room ceiling for what felt like hours. Images of strange men played on a loop in my imagination. I could practically see them breaking into my apartment, rifling through my things, and touching my jewelry box.
Garrett’s words echoed in my head: ‘If you don’t understand the risk you’re facing, I honestly don’t know how else to word it.’
He was overreacting. I wasn’t in danger, and I didn’t need an escort to London.
But a private jet and spending the week with a sexy, hot guy like him? That wouldn’t be so bad, would it, Grace?
Unless I really was in danger.
But I wasn’t. I led a quiet, simple life, not the kind that had people hunting me.
Water. Water was what I needed. Or maybe I needed a distraction. I threw back the covers and padded to the door, slipping into the dark hallway. A thin strip of light came from downstairs. Izzy or Tristan must have left a light on.
I yawned as I took the stairs, heading for the kitchen. A soft tapping sound grew louder as I approached—rhythmic, deliberate, like fingers on a keyboard.
When I rounded the corner, I stopped.
Garrett sat at the breakfast table, hunched over a laptop.
Only the under-cabinet lights were on, so the screen’s glow cast shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp angles of his jaw and the furrow between his brows.
He looked different without the scowl, just as focused and intense, but almost peaceful.
And shirtless. I held my breath. He was definitely shirtless.
He glanced up before I could retreat, his hands stilling over the keyboard.
I was a deer, trapped and unable to take my eyes off his headlights.
Pecs, Grace. They’re called pecs. And they’re just muscles. Everyone has them.
I swallowed hard, trying not to stare at the expanse of muscled torso on display.
He wore nothing more than a pair of black athletic shorts, and holy mother of all things holy, this man was sex on a stick.
My gaze caught on a sprawling tattoo decorating his right shoulder—some military thing with too many images to make out, other than a trident, a mermaid, and a tropical flower.
Another design wrapped around his left arm, made of intricate lines that danced up his shoulder in blacks and blues.
For a split second, the covers of my romance novels flashed through my brain—the ones with brooding warriors whose abs were impossibly defined.
Except Garrett’s weren’t airbrushed or exaggerated.
They were real, marked with at least one scar that told a story I desperately wanted to read.
He ran a hand over his short beard, and another thought crept into my head, of what his beard might feel like against my cheek. Was it bristly? Or was it soft?
He cleared his throat, and I nearly died of embarrassment on the spot.
“Um…” God, that was eloquent. I forced my eyes up to meet his.
He frowned. He’d absolutely caught me staring. “Can’t sleep?”
“Just needed some water,” I said, suddenly conscious of my thin pajama pants and oversized T-shirt. And my lack of a bra. My headlights weren’t showing, were they? I gestured vaguely toward the fridge. “Sorry to interrupt. I didn’t realize you were here.”
“I crashed on their couch,” he said, closing the laptop slightly. “It’s closer to the airport for tomorrow.”
I nodded, moving toward the cabinet for a glass. “That makes sense.”
Did it? If he had a hotel in Brenton, he was exactly as close to the airport from there as he would be here.
One side of town versus another might add five minutes to the drive to Lansing.
Or was this about the job of escorting me to London already being in progress?
Had I signed an invisible contract when I agreed to take the private jet?
I could feel his eyes on me as I filled my glass from the filtered pitcher in the fridge. When I turned back, he’d reopened his laptop, but he didn’t look down.
“I take protection seriously,” he added, as if he’d heard the questions in my head.
“I gathered that when you pulled a gun in my apartment.”
“Standard procedure.”
The little round table had four chairs, and I deliberated before settling on one next to him. Directly across would have been too confrontational. “What are you researching at”—I glanced at the microwave clock—“one thirty in the morning?”
He hesitated, then swiveled the laptop so I could see the screen. An article about Fabergé eggs filled the display, with photos of ornate designs in gold and jewels.
“I wanted some background on what we’re dealing with,” he said. “Especially the history of recovery. When the Third Imperial Egg was found in 2012, the guy had no idea what he had. It sounded a lot like your experience.”
“Yeah, I read his story.” I took a sip from my glass. “He’d bought it at a flea market for about thirteen thousand, and planned to melt it down to make a profit on the gold content.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Good thing he didn’t.”
“It was estimated at around thirty million.” My stomach clenched. With so many millions, I could outfit The Velvet Bean with the best equipment, new furniture, cut prices, and still add staff. “It sold privately, so no idea what it sold for in the end.”
He nodded. “I didn’t see any reports of violence or danger. Ideally, everything goes smoothly in London for you, too.”
“But you don’t think it will.” It wasn’t a question. Given the way he and Tristan had reacted on the phone earlier, they were worried for me.
He turned the laptop to face himself again. “I like to prepare for the worst-case scenario.”
The nervous energy bouncing around inside me hadn’t calmed any. I slid out of my chair and went to fill the electric kettle. “Tea? Since we’re both awake, anyway?”
“I’m fine,” he said, but I filled the kettle and flicked it on.
Rummaging through an upper cabinet, through boxes of tea, I said, “Chamomile might help you sleep.”
“Something green, if they have it.” His voice was grudging, as if accepting tea meant surrendering a crucial battle.
I busied myself with the preparations, grateful for the simple routine.
Nothing but tea bags and hot water—no strainer, no measuring tea leaves, no need to time how long they’d been steeping.
While the water heated, I reached for Isabella’s mismatched collection of mugs, selecting a deep blue one for Garrett and a cheerful yellow one for myself.
The kettle clicked off, and I poured the steaming water over my tea bag.
It wasn’t needed, but I set the kitchen timer to three minutes out of habit.
“Proper temperature and steeping time are important,” I explained when I caught him watching me. “My grandmother always said life was too short for a bad cup of tea. If you’re too fast, it’s weak; if you’re too slow, it grows bitter.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he resumed his research as I moved around the kitchen, gathering honey and sugar. The timer ticked down while an oddly comfortable silence settled between us.
Once the timer finished, I poured the water over his tea bag.
Didi couldn’t stand green tea, but my mother loved it, so I had the timing down.
Three minutes after pouring in boiling water was the right steep for black tea, the minimum for herbal, and the perfect amount of time for the water to cool enough to avoid burning green tea leaves.
After I finished preparing the drinks, I placed a steaming mug in front of him.
“I didn’t hear anything from the police.
Hopefully they have some news before we leave tomorrow.
Or today, I guess, since it’s after one. ”
He pulled the tea close, and the gesture of acceptance felt like progress. “I called for an update about an hour ago.”
I settled back into my chair with my own mug. “And?”
“They found fingerprints on your jewelry box that didn’t belong to either of us.”
I froze, the mug halfway to my lips. Someone had actually been there?
“Looks like you were right about the jewelry box.” There were no emotions behind his words, just facts, which made it worse in some ways. “They’re going to check the building’s security footage tomorrow.”
“It was one thing to worry someone might have been there.” I put my mug down before I dropped it. “It’s another to know they were.”
He nodded, wrapping his fingers around the mug. “Yeah.”
“The police took my prints,” I said, churning through possibilities. “And yours. But Isabella’s been over, and Tristan. Vanessa comes by every few weeks. Plus, my parents, of course.”
“The print was two fingers, one on either side of the jewelry box.” He lifted his mug, blowing steam curls off the top. “Would any of them have been in your bedroom?”
“Izzy, maybe? She helped me pick an outfit for a girls’ night out last month.”
He nodded, his perpetual frown unreadable. “Anyone else?”
In my bedroom? Sadly, no.
“I noticed a photo of a man on your dresser when I was checking the window locks. Boyfriend? Could they be his prints?”
A laugh escaped before I could stop it, high and slightly strained. “That was Peter, my brother.”
“Ah.” He took a sip of tea, his eyes stuck on mine.
“And no, there hasn’t been anyone else in my bedroom recently.” Heat crept up my neck, and an image of him flinging me onto my bed flitted through my brain. “Not for a long time.”
Why did you say that?
“I see.” His jaw unclenched a fraction. “The Brenton PD are going to run the prints through their databases, and Tristan can stay on top of them from here. He says he’s got an in with some of the officers.”
“Everyone in town knows at least some of the officers. Although I think he’s been more involved since Izzy’s whole…” I waved my hand randomly, shooing the thought away. It wasn’t my place to tell her story.
“Small towns,” he almost grumbled. “Everyone knows everyone.”
“It’s not that bad.”
He scowled. Full-on scowled! Apparently it was that bad for him. “I’ve also asked him to coordinate with one of our old friends.”
“Friends? Someone else you two served with?”
“You could say that.” He took a sip of his tea, placed the mug to the side, and began typing. “Her call sign was Morganna. Tristan’s trying to recruit her for his new company. She was a CIA targeter when we worked together.”
“Targeter?”
“She identified the people who mattered, how they connected, and how we could use the information. Since she left, she’s gone into open source intelligence, using public sources to do sort of the same stuff.”
“Useful skill for the company?”
“It is.” Garrett ‘Galahad’ Cruz did take protection seriously. He’d cleared my apartment like a hero in one of my novels, was researching my egg so he was aware of everything going on, and called in the CIA to help identify whoever was in my apartment. Well, former CIA.
And there was no way he was staying at Tristan’s tonight because the airport was closer. Green tea had caffeine—he wanted to stay awake. He was protecting everyone in this house right now.
He glanced up at me. “You’re staring.”
“Sorry.” I blinked. “I’m trying to figure something out.”
“What?”
“You.” I smiled, lifting my mug again to hide how silly my smile was. “You’re pretty nice when you’re not yelling at me for not calling you.”
He snorted an almost-laugh. “I wasn’t yelling.”
“You were definitely yelling.”
“That was concern.” He closed his laptop fully and folded his arms across his ridiculously broad chest. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” I pulled the mug closer, inhaling the gentle scent of the chamomile, reminding my lady bits to relax. “Yelling is about volume. Concern is tone. Two totally different things.”
“I don’t...” He sighed, flexing the fingers of his visible hand. “I’m not good at this.”
“What? Talking to people without scowling?”
“Something like that.” He came close to smiling. It was no more than a hairline fracture in his outer shell, but I saw it. “When I see a threat, I react. Sometimes too strongly.”
I raised an eyebrow. Maybe my lady bits were on the right track. Nothing wrong with a little flirtation, right? “And I’m a threat?”
“No. You’re...” He paused, the almost-smile quickly returning to a definite-frown. “You’re someone who needs protection because she doesn’t seem to understand the danger she’s in. The real threat I’m talking about is the men coming to your shop.”
Flirting failure. “I understand plenty. I just don’t let fear rule my life.”
“You’d be safer if you did.”
“That’s no way to live.” I slid out of my chair to retrieve the sugar bowl from the counter. More sugar wasn’t what I needed, but I had to move. Had to stop staring at the way his muscles shifted with every breath. “You can’t always expect the worst.”
“It keeps people alive.”
“But does it let them truly live?” I added a spoonful of sugar and stirred my tea, the spoon clinking softly against the ceramic. I returned to my seat, taking a defiant sip of my far-too-sweet tea. “My grandmother used to say fear is excitement without the breath.”
His frown deepened even more, which I would have thought impossible if I hadn’t seen it myself. “Your grandmother never met the people I have.”
“She lived through World War II.” I shrugged. “She spent time hiding in the tunnels under London. She knew about danger.”
Although had Didi been in the tunnels under London during the Blitz? When had she gone to France? What parts of her story had she hidden from us?
Garrett took a deep breath, unfolded his arms, and picked up his tea. “What I’m most curious about right now is whether she knew what the egg was.”
That was an excellent question. She and I had gone through her costume jewelry collection a hundred times, but she’d never shown me the egg.
Never talked about it, never talked about the Russian Revolution, let alone about her spending time in France.
Or about Delphine. How many other secrets had she kept?
He took another sip, his eyelids fluttering closed for a moment. “Or more importantly, did she know the danger that would follow it?”