Chapter Twenty-Three
“Change of plans,” Lori announced when she walked into the room at the hotel.
“You finally decided to try skydiving?” Reed teased. He was sitting by the window, his laptop open.
“You wish. No . . . but horseback riding might come into play.” She moved to the closet and removed her suitcase.
He closed his computer. “Horses include luggage?”
“You’re a funny guy.”
Reed moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “I crack myself up all the time.” He kissed her neck.
Her spine chilled. “None of that. We’re going to Trina’s.”
“Across the hall?”
“That would be a bit crowded. No . . .” Lori rolled out of his arms and into the bathroom to gather her toiletries. “Alice left a ranch to Trina.”
Reed moved to the doorway, leaned against it. “Let me guess, one of those houses is right here in Texas.”
She picked up her makeup bag and patted Reed’s cheek as she walked by. “Funny and wise.”
“I take it today’s visit to the oil company went well.”
“It did. Trina is finally starting to absorb all of this and has decided to spend the next few months here to see if she wants a part of Everson Oil.”
Reed continued to watch her as she bounced around the room, packing.
“What does Trina know about oil?”
“Nothing. But she’ll learn.”
“You sound very sure of her talents.”
She paused. “I think anyone who has been through as much as she has this year and isn’t rocking to the voices in her head in a corner somewhere is capable of just about anything.” Lori zipped up her suitcase, turned, and placed her hands on her hips. “What are you just standing there for? Pack.”
Reed moved to the table where he’d placed his laptop and grabbed his suitcase from the closet. “Ready.”
An hour later, they descended upon Alice Everson-Petrov’s miniranch.
The humidity slapped Lori’s face once again as they exited the car. Only this time, instead of looking over a parking lot or a tarmac, she had something better to take her mind off the uncomfortable heat. The rolling landscape of the ranch was as green as the hills in Southern California were brown. The single-story ranch home sprawled behind a circular driveway. A huge barn sat to one side and beyond that appeared to be a guesthouse.
The twenty-five acres that surrounded Alice’s ranch appeared larger in person than on a map. Acres of adjacent properties buffered one home from the next.
Lori watched Trina as she tossed her head back and opened her arms. “It’s so quiet.”
“Peaceful,” Avery echoed.
Carl stood to the side of Trina and moved when she did.
The front door opened and a woman in her late sixties walked out. “Mrs. Petrov?”
Avery swung her arm around Trina and walked her up the steps.
Lori hung back with Reed. “This is a little crazy, even for us.”
“What do you mean by that? Even for us?”
“I have some wealthy friends, but this landing in Trina’s lap is beyond imagination.”
Reed narrowed his eyes. “She had to know she married into a wealthy family.”
“Yeah, she knew . . . we all knew. But just because you marry wealth doesn’t mean you’re going to be wealthy.”
“I’m missing something.”
“Trina married a wealthy man, but she wasn’t.”
“They were married, it became theirs.”
“Nope. Remember, prenuptial agreement. Compared to what she made as a flight attendant, that agreement made her wealthy, but not this rich. This would set Trina back her entire paycheck.”
“Paycheck?” He laughed.
“Divorce settlement.” How had she let that slip? “You know what I mean,” she backpedaled. “What I mean is this . . . this is wealth.”
Reed looked around. “Which is why security for Trina is paramount.”
“Yeah.” Lori’s smile faded. “I should probably call Sam.”
Reed was starting to see the connections inside Lori’s head. Security and secrecy were Sam’s role. Legal was Lori’s.
He shadowed Carl as they walked around the house.
Lori slipped away to make a call while Trina and Avery were given a grand tour.
Carl was close to Reed’s age, had the military haircut that men who have been in the service either embrace or run the opposite way from. “Didn’t I hear Lori say something about Trina’s home in New York being bugged?”
“That’s what I was told.”
Reed ran his hand along the frame of a massive window that overlooked the back of the property. Fences housed several horses that grazed on the grass growing in the field. “Might be a good idea to see if there are any here, don’t you think?”
Carl shrugged. “Mrs. Petrov lives in New York, her place was an expected target.”
“Yeah, that’s true, but her trip to Texas would have been a likely event, given she inherited a portion of the company.”
Carl chewed on that for a few minutes.
“And considering Alice Petrov’s ex-husband is the reason for your service, and that man knows about Alice’s assets . . . I don’t know. Seems like if he had the New York house bugged, he might have gone through the trouble of bugging anything that Trina now owns.”
Instead of agreeing or disagreeing, Carl turned and worked his way back to Trina’s side. “Mrs. Petrov, a minute, please.”
Reed watched from a distance as Carl spoke to Trina in hushed tones.
“Really? How likely is that?”
Reed stepped closer, pulled out his phone, and opened up a Google page.
“I’ll bring in a team to sweep the place just to make sure.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“What’s ridiculous?” Lori asked when she walked into the room.
“Carl seems to think he needs to look for bugs.”
The housekeeper overheard her and gasped. “I keep a clean house.”
“He means microphones. Spy stuff.” Avery lowered her voice as if it were a joke.
The older woman squinted. “Why would someone spy on us?”
“Have you had any work done recently on the house? Any maintenance from outside companies?” Carl asked.
“It’s a home, we have our share of problems. The Internet could always be better.”
“Service people coming in the house?” Reed asked.
“Of course. We know horses here, not technical stuff.”
Lori turned to Carl. “It won’t hurt to look.”
He took that as his green light and picked up his cell phone.
“In the meantime,” Lori looked between Trina and Avery, “private conversations should be taken outside.”
Which was what Reed would have suggested had he been given the chance.
The question was, how many private conversations had taken place in the hotel before he’d found the bug?
And what had Sasha learned?
“I know it’s not skydiving, but hey . . . horses.” Lori leaned over and patted the mare’s neck.
It was close to dusk, and the temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees, making the ride pleasurable instead of a sweaty mess for the horses and the riders.
“I haven’t been on the back of a horse since I was a kid,” Reed told her. He stood in the saddle and repositioned himself. “I’m not sure I’m going to be of any use to you when we get back.”
Lori glanced over and giggled. “Ah, are you having a hard time there?”
“Tease me now . . . go ahead.”
She licked her lips. “I’m sure I can manage to make it all better.”
He groaned. The only thing harder than riding a horse when you had a dick was riding one with a hard-on.
“Are you sure it’s okay that you’re here? Your boss isn’t going to be upset with the time off you’ve been taking?”
The tangling of the web he’d been weaving was starting to thicken up. “I get paid by the task, not by the hour. I’m good. Don’t you have enough to worry about other than my job?”
“I do. But I’d feel terrible if something happened between you and your boss.”
He really hoped the guilt down his spine wasn’t showing on his face. “Nothing is going to happen. I promise.”
They’d turned the horses back toward the ranch house and had to keep them from running home.
“If you ever wanted to change professions, Avery seems to think you have the perfect fit for a bodyguard.”
“And what does Avery know about bodyguards?”
“She said you have the perfect resting bitch face.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“Not sure. Probably.”
His horse tossed her head. “I wanted to be a cop, once.” A half-truth was the best he could give her without more questions.
Lori tilted her head. “What happened to that dream?”
The memory of blood running down his neck from the slash in his cheek while he watched his partner struggling to breathe flashed. “It didn’t work out.”
“I think you would make a great cop.”
As if he’d ever go back. Just thinking about it made the faded scar on his chin itch.
Reed glanced at Lori’s bouncing boobs as she bobbed around on the back of her horse. He’d gotten so far off his investigation surrounding Shannon and overwhelmed with everything Lori and Trina, he would have lost his job if he were still on the force.
He reminded himself that there was still a connection between Shannon and the others to warrant his interest, but he’d be lying to himself if he said he was doing his job as a PI.
What had Sasha learned? Was she working for Ruslan?
“Someone got quiet.” Lori pulled him out of his thoughts.
“I was just thinking.” He scrambled to come up with something distracting from the subject.
“About?”
“How I would have been a sucky cop, but a pair of handcuffs might have come in handy.”
Lori’s eyes widened.
And when she didn’t immediately deny that fantasy, he said, “Time to step out of your sexual wheelhouse, Counselor?”
Once again, she didn’t say no.
And Reed finished the rest of their ride with a raging hard-on.
“So you finally let Reed take a day off.” Danny moved around her kitchen as if he’d lived there for months rather than two weeks.
“He doesn’t live here.”
“Tell him that.”
Lori washed the tomatoes and pulled out her cutting board. “He goes home.”
Danny placed a hand on her hip, making her move so he could throw away the box that once held the spicy rice he was preparing on the stove.
“What’s the story with him, anyway?”
“We’re dating.” As if that wasn’t obvious.
“Dating exclusively?”
“There isn’t anyone else on my speed dial right now.”
“And his?”
Lori moved from one tomato to another. “I don’t think so. We haven’t really discussed it.”
“Not that you give him any time to play with someone else. Oh, Reed . . . I need a bodyguard, wanna step up?”
“I don’t talk like that!” But hearing her brother talk in a high octave, attempting to mimic her, made her laugh.
“What is it he said he does for a living?”
Lori tossed the end bits of the tomatoes into the garbage disposal and moved to the carrots. “Data processing . . . of some kind.”
“You don’t know?”
“He doesn’t talk about it.”
“Huh.” Danny stood over the stove, stirring the rice. Inside the oven was the chicken he’d marinated most of the day. “It doesn’t fit his personality.”
Lori sliced the carrots, concentrating hard to miss her fingers. Nobody liked bloody salad. “What doesn’t fit?”
“Data anything. He seems like the kind of guy who works with his hands.”
“Isn’t data processing working with your hands?”
“You know what I mean.” Danny removed two plates from the cupboard.
Carrots are done . . . what dressing? Lori opened the refrigerator and found vinaigrette and a pear. “Do I have walnuts?”
“What?”
She opened her pantry door to look. “Never mind.”
“I’m just saying . . . it doesn’t really fit.”
Along with the chocolate chips she’d bought a good six months before, when she was on a baking kick, she found the walnuts. The expiration date was still one month out. “Score.”
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes.” She looked up and couldn’t for the life of her remember the last thing Danny had said. “No . . . what were you saying?”
“Reed. He doesn’t completely measure up.”
The walnuts in her hands forgotten, she paused. “Measure up to what?”
“Where did you two meet?”
“On the cruise in Barcelona.”
Danny leaned against the counter, arms folded over his chest. “Barcelona . . . as in Spain?”
“Yeah, I know . . . crazy, right? What are the chances of that?”
“Probably like point a zillion zeros to one.”
“That’s what I thought. But you never know.”
Danny had that look in his eye that reminded her of their father. The one that made her sit back and wonder what she’d said wrong. “What?”
He shook his head. “So, am I sleeping on the couch now, or can I keep the guest room?”
She grinned. “Has it been two weeks?”
“Yeah, not that you’d know it. I’ve been here more than you have.”
“When are you due to hit the fisherman sea of Mexico?”
“When I get there.” Danny pushed off the counter, leaned forward, and kissed her cheek. “Your choice, guest room or couch. But I need to crash here a little longer.”
“What do you mean by need?”
“Do I really need to spell it out for you?” Danny stared her down.
“I can take care of myself.”
“Never said you couldn’t.”
When had her brother grown up enough to put someone else before himself?
“My couch is meant for sitting . . . not sleeping.”
He smiled and walked away.
Later that night, while staring at the ceiling and hearing the snores of her brother in the other room, Lori closed her eyes and thought about Reed’s hands. Rough, working hands. She thought of her own in comparison. Soft hands of a woman who worked with paper and a computer. Reed didn’t talk about his work at all. Or maybe she wasn’t being a reciprocating girlfriend who asked enough questions. Either way, rough hands usually equated to harder work, not data processing.
Falling asleep didn’t come easy, and when she woke in the morning, she’d almost forgotten what had kept her awake.