Chapter 7
Henley
The last thing I expected to see as I rode back toward the house on my horse was Grace’s hunched form on the hood of my truck.
She was painting her damn toenails, which were exposed in her black high heels.
If those shoes scratched the paint on my hood, I'd speed things up and kill her right where she was perched.
I wrapped the chain around the post and hooked it in, giving the gate a tug to be sure it was closed. My horse, Bud, perked his ears at the sight of Grace. He was a sucker for women—they usually meant a fuck ton of treats.
He stopped before the grill of my truck, bobbing his head up and down as if he was trying to get her attention.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I barked.
Grace slid the brush back into her nail polish bottle, twisting the lid tight before running her nail along the side of her toe to wipe off the excess. “Waiting for you.”
I looked from her black-painted toes to her green eyes, my gaze snagging on her lips for a split second.
Did she know the symmetry of her face was perfect?
The fullness of her mouth, how straight her teeth were, the way her brows were nearly identical and just the right amount of bushy to give her that pouty look.
Not only that, but she was tall—only a couple inches shorter than myself—with long, drool-worthy legs.
How a woman like her could murder others for money was beyond me.
I almost couldn’t stand the thought of her having blood on her hands… unless it was mine.
The thought made me feral, when in reality, it should piss me off. She’d tried to kill me, and yet I wanted to see her cut my skin. To see her drag her pink tongue across the wound and make it better, all while lapping down my blood.
My hands tightened on the reins. My body followed the same stiff behavior, eliciting a swish of the tail from Bud.
I took good care of his hair, so it was long enough to whack me in the leg.
He swung his head my way, threatening to bite my boot.
It was like he was gritting out, Don’t fuck this up for me. She’s hot.
Or maybe that was me who was thinking that.
“And why the fuck is that?” I asked, knowing I needed to stop thinking about her.
She set the bottle of polish on the hood beside her thigh, straightening her legs out as she finally met my gaze.
The sound of her heels scraping the paint had me clenching my jaw.
The audacity—
“Angry today, are we?” The slight tilt of her mouth had me biting the inside of my cheek.
“I’ve been out in that field all fucking day. I don’t have time for your games, Grace. All I want is a cold beer, a hot shower, and my fist around my cock. So spit. It. Out.”
Her cheeks flamed, the rose color a stark contrast to her paleness, but her eyes never wavered from mine. “You told me to tell you if I heard from anyone.”
My irritation nearly made me miss what she said. When her words registered, I straightened in the saddle. “What happened?”
She reached into the pocket of her baggy black jeans, the act causing the waistband to slide down a bit and reveal the top of her black lace panties.
Getting a boner on a saddle? Real fucking painful.
And now I was even more annoyed.
She held a paper out to me.
“If you weren’t damaging private property, you might be able to hand that to me yourself,” I said, a little too much hostility behind my words.
She simply waited, hand outstretched.
With a heavy sigh, I sidestepped Bud until my stirrup knocked into the grill of my truck. With more force than necessary, I tore the folded paper from her hold.
Reins still in hand, I unfolded it and read what was written.
Clock is ticking.
“What fucking clock?” I asked, lowering the note to rest my hands on the horn of my saddle.
She eyed her fingernails with rapt attention, giving the impression she’d painted those as well while her ass made a permanent indent on my hood.
“I have a deadline for each target I’m assigned.
It’s not explicitly said with each photo I receive, but it was implied when I took my first job. One week, or I’m in trouble.”
I mentally counted how long it’d been since my trailer was given a bullet hole. “It’s barely been, what, five days?”
She laid her palm flat on the truck. “I never take longer than seventy-two hours, unless they really want the torture drawn out.” She shrugged. “I’m an overachiever.”
Torture? What the fuck did this woman do in her free time to be able to dole out pain like it was double-scoop day at an ice cream shop?
“And this is my problem why? I’m not the one in trouble.”
She slid her ass off the truck, hopping down with barely more than a slight whoosh of her breath spilling from her lips. “You will be if you’re not dead by day seven. And not by my hand. So get to it.” She patted a hand on my thigh before turning and heading for her car.
Without a single rational thought flowing through my mind, I nudged Bud. He sped on instinct, knowing exactly what I wanted from him without me even having to click my tongue.
We rounded Grace, stopping directly in front of her. She paused, crossing her arms. Her brows rose in question—and attitude.
“How’d you get this note?” I asked, looking down at her—which was a mistake, because the way those eyes of hers turned up at me was way too fucking suggestive for me to handle right now.
“It was on my front porch,” she answered.
“You don’t have cameras?”
She stared at me blankly for a minute before saying, “You really think I’d have cameras at my own house when I kill people for a living? That’s, like, asking for the FBI to hack my feed and catch me coming home bloody.”
The thought of her covered head to toe in red had my balls aching.
Fuck.
I shifted in the saddle. “Have you received notes before?”
She dropped her arms to her sides, then seemed to remember she’d recently done her nails, because she instantly raised her hands and checked the paint. “No.” Her head angled down farther. “You got dust on my toes!”
I didn’t care to look. She was on a ranch in open-toed heels and thought dirt wouldn’t stick to wet paint?
Her smarts were subjective, then.
She eyed my horse, a sense of fear lingering behind her obvious curiosity.
“You can pet him,” I told her, reading her thoughts.
Her gaze shot up to mine. “Pet him?”
I dipped my chin. “On the nose, if you want. But his favorite spot is under his jaw.”
Potentially still-wet nails forgotten, she lifted her hand. So slowly it nearly killed me, she reached forward. Bud had no patience and lifted his nose, nudging her palm. The act moved her entire arm, but she held her ground, not so much as stumbling back.
In the eyes of a beast probably fifteen times her size, she was brave.
Her fingers moved, itching his muzzle. His eyes became hooded as he lowered his head more, leaning into her touch.
I swallowed as I forced my gaze to the backs of his ears and not on her. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d grow a soft spot for the woman simply because she was showing my attention-whore horse some affection.
She moved under his jaw like I’d suggested, and immediately, he craned his neck and stuck his lip up.
A fucking suck-up, he was.
A smile crested Grace’s lips, and fuck, if there wasn’t a speck of jealousy in my stomach that she was aiming it at him…
There was no doubt in my mind that Grace was intriguing in all aspects of the word—in the way her mind worked, why she did the things she did, how she looked, what hobbies she partook in—
Wait, what were her hobbies besides obviously loving plants? Was that even a big interest of hers, or had she feigned facts at the pool hall for the sake of pissing Dalton off?
No, she had to like them to some extent. She’d gifted Brynne a leaf in water. Apparently it would grow roots or something, but I only knew that because Brynne took it upon herself to inform me when she’d caught me studying it in the kitchen window.
I’d told her the only reason I was looking was because I thought I’d seen a spider eating it.
I’d lied.
But I wouldn’t even admit to myself why I’d taken a small interest in the thing.
“He’s a little show-off,” Grace said, her grin wide as she craned her neck to look up at his big lip flapping in the air.
“Big show-off,” I corrected. “He loves women, especially. Thinks they bring all the treats.” As if my supply of three carrots a day wasn’t enough.
“He see a lot of women?” she asked, feigning curiosity for his sake, but I knew it was for her, too.
Though it didn’t make sense for either of us to care.
That wasn’t the point of our association with each other.
“No.” Any hint of lightheartedness that might have coursed through me moments before was wiped clean, replaced with irritation at her existence.
I should’ve killed her when I had the chance.
Or never untied her from that chair.
Her hand dropped back to her side, and I noticed small smudges in the polish. I hoped it annoyed her.
“I’ll take care of the note,” she said.
Confusion struck me for a moment before I realized the topic she was steering us back to. I’d honestly forgotten about it for a moment, getting lost in her once again.
“What’s your plan? To write a letter back, or snipe them from the woods?”
She rolled her eyes as if that was the most outrageous thing she’d ever heard. “I don’t know who sent it to be able to do that, but good idea.”
She turned, strutting back to her black sedan.
I almost called after her, wanting to know what the hell she was thinking. But when I realized it was because I didn’t want her to do anything irrational alone, I stopped myself.
Let her get herself hurt.
Maybe that’d teach her not to keep secrets from me again.