Chapter Twenty-One
Ian kissed Breanna’s forehead, then watched her disappear around the corner before he answered the call. “What?”
“Good morning, cousin.” Amused by his annoyed tone, Derek chuckled. “How’s our lovely Miss Dalton? Has she signed the documents yet?”
“No.”
And she isn’t going to.
“That’s not what I was hoping to hear.” He released a heavy sigh. “We have investors waiting, Ian, and they’re growing impatient. You need to convince her.”
“It’s not happening, motherfucker.” Cocksure, Ian propped his booted foot on a tote and leaned back against the wall.
“Make it happen,” Derek clipped, his voice low.
“Can’t. That isn’t Valerie’s Will.”
“So? Breanna will never know that.”
“No? Explain to her then, how your father witnessed the execution of a document from his grave, you stupid fucking fuck.” Pushing off the wall, Ian raised his voice. “Hope you like it up the ass, cousin. You’re going to end up disbarred and in prison.”
And I won’t be able to save you, even though I’ll try.
Derek laughed him off. “You’re so dramatic, Ian. Just a minor oversight. Thanks for catching it, though. I’ll be sure everything is in perfect order before it’s filed with the court.”
“You’ve lost your fucking mind.”
Maniacal laughter came through the phone.
“Hardly. We’re finally going to get what’s coming to us, cousin. Everything that, rightfully, should have been ours all along.” After a long pause, Derek asked with a snicker, “Tell me, have you fucked her yet?”
He answered with silence.
“You forget how well I know you, cousin.” Hearing his devious-sounding chuckle, Ian had no trouble picturing the shit-eating grin on his face. “It’s all right, you know I don’t mind sharing.”
Oh, I know you don’t…
And he knew it all too well.
In the early days of Derek’s relationship with Miranda, Ian was often invited to join them in their bed, and what twenty-three-year-old guy would say no to that? Sometimes there’d be another girl there, too. His cousin would direct their sordid scenes, commanding the woman to eat out his girlfriend’s cunt, or fist her, while they enjoyed the show, and took turns fucking them both afterward. Derek got off having power over her, and Miranda handed it over to him. But then, she’d do anything he asked if it meant getting a ring on her finger.
…but know this, asshole, I do mind. You’re not touching her.
“I’ll be back on Friday. Now, it doesn’t matter to me how you do it, just get her to sign.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Pussy’s that good, eh?”
Once again, Ian refused to give him the satisfaction of an answer.
“Well, if you don’t, then by any means necessary, I will.”
Breanna wasn’t waiting in the kitchen when he finished hauling the red plastic totes upstairs. Neither was anyone else. The living room sat empty. So did the sitting room, the morning room, the billiards room, the library, and every other fucking room on this level of the house.
Gazing up at the black antlers suspended from the ceiling, he shook his head and climbed the stairs. For Breanna to survive his cousin, and for him to have a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping her, Ian knew he’d have to tell her everything, and sooner rather than later. Because there wasn’t all that much time left.
He knew the key code to her door but knocked anyway.
She opened it, and without a word, her fingers threaded in his hair, hands cradling his face, as she slipped that sweet tongue inside. And it was everything. Breanna took what she wanted and gave him what he needed. Willingly. Lovingly. Enthusiastically.
“Look, baby, I got all of you in me this time.”
Fuck, it had taken everything in him to keep from coming when she said that.
Breanna was what Ian had always longed for in a partner, but never hoped to find.
He felt this gravitational pull to her the instant he saw her. She did, too. One look inside those blue, fairytale eyes of hers told him that.
With a rush of blood flooding toward his groin, Ian grabbed the back of her thighs and wrapped her legs around him. He shouldn’t be thinking about fucking her right now when hell was closing in on them. But with his appetite for her insatiable, his veins filled, pulsating with blood, like snakes slithering beneath the skin that stretched taut around his dick.
“Does my princess need another fucking?”
“Is that bad?” Biting her lip, Breanna glanced up at him and grinned.
“Never.” Sliding his hand inside her jeans, Ian’s fingers sought her warm, wet pussy. She hissed. “Are you sore?”
“A little.”
“A soak in the hot tub will fix that.” Dropping his forehead to hers, he smiled.
“That sounds heavenly, except it’s thirty degrees outside.”
Trust me, you won’t even notice.
“What happened to Christmas?”
“I don’t know.” She quirked a shoulder. “When I got upstairs, the kitchen was clean, and they were gone.”
Chuckling, Ian carried her into the living room.
“What?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Keeler must be, uh…busy.” He winked.
“No way.” Pulling her head back, Breanna wrinkled her nose as if what he just implied was utterly ridiculous. “They’re too old to…you know.”
“Think sixty-year-olds don’t fuck?”
“I just can’t picture it, and I don’t think I want to,” she said with a shake of her head.
“Then picture this.” Ian nipped at her lip with his teeth. “I’m going to be fucking this pretty pussy right here when I’m sixty, eighty, and God willing, when I’m a hundred.”
“Think so, do you?”
“I know so,” he said with the utmost confidence, easing her feet to the floor. “But right now, you and me…” He waved his finger back and forth between them. “…we’ve got some searching to do.”
Taking advantage of an opportunity to go through Valerie’s rooms with Ted and Francie otherwise occupied, Ian took Breanna to the third floor. Rather than chance his aunt or uncle alerting Derek without meaning to, he figured it was best to be discreet about what they were doing up here.
She stood at the unlit fireplace. He watched her gaze flit from the carpets to the walls, seeming to take in the room.
What is she thinking?
He wondered.
Because taking everything in stride so far, Breanna hadn’t reacted at all as Ian expected her to.
He picked up the photo of the teenage girl from the mantel. Red bikini. White polka-dots. Pink ice cream. “How old were you here?”
“Summer before junior year, so, nineteen—almost twenty,” she said, turning around. “What are we looking for, Sinjin?”
“Papers.”
Blue eyes narrowing, her brows pulled together.
“Your grandmother’s Will, for starters—the original one.” Trust documents I’m almost certain exist. “Even a certified copy will do. They have to be here somewhere.”
“Wouldn’t your uncle have kept copies at his office?”
“Without a doubt.”
Breanna tugged on his arm. “Let’s just go to Sacramento and get them, then.”
“Have you forgotten that’s where Derek is?” If they found nothing here, however, Ian would gladly risk it. “Besides, it’s to our advantage if we let him believe he’s holding all the cards.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because I have a plan.” Running his fingers through her hair, he kissed her brow. “But we need those documents.”
They went through every closet. Skimmed the pages of every book. Opened every drawer. Together, they looked high and low but found nothing.
“Where else could they be? Downstairs in the study?”
Ian shook his head. “I use that room all the time, so I think I would’ve seen them, but we can check.”
“A secret safe?” she offered.
He chuckled.
“What if Derek already has them?”
Then we’re well and truly fucked.
If Valerie stashed her copies anywhere else, that was entirely possible. But knowing her as he did, Ian believed the documents had to be here. Somewhere. They just had to find them.
“He doesn’t have access to the third floor. No one does. I have the only key.”
“Why you?” she asked with a slight cock of her head.
Ian placed his arm around her shoulders, and drawing her closer, he smiled. “Your grandmother and I were close. She trusted me.”
“Over Francie?”
“She loved my aunt.” He paused, and Breanna steered them down the hall toward her father’s apartment. “Look, what I’m trying to say is Valerie liked her privacy, and she trusted me to respect that. If the doors to the stairway were locked, that meant your grandmother wanted to be left alone. And Francie is the kind of person who always has to be doing for others—it’s her nature. She tends to hover.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” She watched him punch the code into the keypad, then glanced up at him. “How did she die?”
“Peacefully. In her sleep.”
“How do you know her death was peaceful?”
“She appeared to be.” Tucking her hair behind her ear, Ian shrugged. “I’m the one who found her.”
With a nod, Breanna wet her lips. “I’m afraid to touch anything in here.”
“Why?”
“Because everything is just as he left it,” she said, fingertips tracing over the photo of a family that never got to be. “That is what you said, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. No one was ever allowed in here, though I think your grandmother would have made an exception for you.” He squeezed her shoulders. “You know, we won’t find what we’re looking for in your dad’s rooms, princess.”
“Maybe not, but I want to look, anyway.”
Going through her father’s things was the closest to him she’d ever get to be, so he humored her. Ian watched the tears slip from Breanna’s eyes while she smiled, sitting on Shane’s unmade bed, looking at photo albums and flipping through old CDs of the music he once listened to.
“Godsmack, Alice in Chains, Queens of the Stone Age—he had good taste.” Bands she no doubt knew. “Bachman-Turner Overdrive?”
“I’m thinking that one must’ve been your grandmother’s.” Chuckling softly, he shrugged. “They’re from the 70s.”
“Oh.” Her lips pursed, Breanna got up and went over to her father’s desk.
Frozen in time, with papers strewn about and books in haphazard stacks. A bulletin board, pinned with photos, Greek letters, and ticket stubs, hung over an ancient-looking computer with a tower on the floor.
Breanna sat down at Shane’s desk. Ignoring the mess in front of her, she rummaged through his drawers instead. A pile of spiral-bound notebooks in her lap, she turned the pages in awe. “Look at this, Sinjin.” Her voice cracked, “His writings.”
Ian stood over her, rubbing Breanna’s back as she opened another drawer, discovering an oblong box inside it. She lifted the lid, and there, as if waiting for someone to read them, lay a stack of typewritten sheets, some three inches high, held together with a rubber band. “Oh, my God,” thumbing through the pages, Breanna squealed. “I think my dad wrote a book.”
Seeing her delight, he smiled. It sure looks like it, baby.
“And he wasn’t much older than I am now.” Turning in her father’s desk chair, fairytale eyes looked up at him. “Sinjin, how did he die?”
“Your mom never told you?”
Breanna shook her head, no.
Ian got down on his haunches and took her hands in his. “It was an accident.”
So everyone said, anyway.
“His car slid off the mountain.”