Chapter 8
NOTHING FELT BETTER than having a woman draped over your body, her skin still hot from a passionate night of lovemaking.
Charlotte had been more than he bargained for in and out of bed. The shy girl next door not only made his body hum like the engine inside the perfect sports car as it took the corners of Mulholland Drive, but she was by far the smartest person in any room. She had a certain sass to her when she was around people she felt comfortable with and she carried herself with a confidence he hadn’t seen before.
Not that he’d seen her in many situations outside of hiding in her apartment working.
He kissed her forehead.
“What time is it?” she whispered, letting out a long breath. Her hand glided up his stomach and rested on his chest.
“Three in the morning.”
“My mom said breakfast was at eight. We should set an alarm.”
Sleeping in a different building, far away from her family, was one thing. Having breakfast with them was something entirely different. His pulse kicked up a notch. If she were any other woman, he’d find a way to get out of it.
“Who will be there?”
“All my siblings, their spouses and kids, and at least my father’s brother, but I’m sure others will show up.”
He swallowed. He didn’t want to see Lydia again. Everyone at the party noticed his scars. It was impossible not to, but no one eyed them like Lydia had. The second she tilted her head to get a better look, his skin burned. No one had ever made him feel like his scars made him less of man.
Except Lydia.
Charlotte kissed his chest, her fingers gliding across his body, and his scars, with a loving caress. She too had studied his scars, but she did so the same way she explored his body, as if getting to know every texture of his skin, all the contours of his muscles, brought them closer together. She didn’t treat his scars any differently than any other part of his body.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, snuggling closer.
He sucked in a deep breath, inhaling her fresh flowery scent. In the distance, the faint sound of what could be a home alarm tickled his ears. “Do you hear that?” Carefully, he undraped her body and sat up, craning his neck, trying to focus on the sounds of the night.
“Hear what?”
“Sirens.” He slipped from the bed, finding his jeans.
“I don’t hear anything.” She clutched the sheets to her chest, the moonlight shining through the window, hitting her profile in just the right manner, showing off her glowing skin.
He paused, tearing his gaze from Charlotte, glancing out the window, which wasn’t angled to where he could see the main house.
“Come back to bed,” Charlotte cooed, before her eyes went wide as the sound of police cars and fire trucks filled the air.
“They aren’t too—”
Knock! Knock!
“Charlotte? Gavin?” Ned, her father called out. “Sorry to wake you.”
“We’re awake,” Gavin said, snagging his shirt before opening the door to the bedroom. He glanced over his shoulder. Charlotte had scooted to the edge of the bed, wrapping herself in a blanket. He pulled the door closed, giving her a chance to get dressed, but really, no reason for her father to see the unmade bed his daughter shared with her boyfrie… he blinked. He’d deal with that thought later.
Her father stood at the front door in a robe. He raked a hand through his thinning hair.
“What’s wrong?” Gavin met Ned in the center of the room.
“Our alarm was tripped and I didn’t like you two out here alone if someone was on the grounds.”
“How long ago did it go off? I didn’t hear it.”
“With the number of guests we have in the house, I didn’t have the alarm set as I normally would. But someone tripped the alarm going into the pool area.”
The hair on the back of his necked prickled to attention. “Sir, you shouldn’t have come out here. You could have called.”
“First, don’t ever call me sir.” Ned arched a brow. “And second, that’s my daughter in there and I would never leave her alone.”
Gavin swallowed, nodding his head once. “I was just concerned for your own safety.”
Ned reached in his robe and pulled out a handgun. “I appreciate that.”
More than half of all of Texas had some kind of weapon, so the gun should come as no surprise to him.
“Until I know what is going on, I’d like for you and Charlotte to come to the main house.” Ned put the gun back in his pocket.
“Of course,” Gavin said, glancing over his shoulder. “My father is a police officer, and I know he’s on duty tonight. I can give him a call if necessary.”
“You didn’t follow in his footsteps?” Ned asked.
“My mom is a firefighter, so I followed hers.”
“Wow. I’m impressed.”
Before he could respond, Charlotte pushed open the bedroom door.
“Daddy, what’s going on?” She tiptoed across the room, giving her father a hug.
“Probably nothing to worry your pretty little head about, but better to be—”
“Don’t patronize me, Dad. We both know mom defends some pretty nasty people, which is why you have such an elaborate security system. So, what happened?” She slipped her arm around Gavin’s waist.
He tensed, though it wasn’t from her touch.
“It’s possible someone tried to break in,” Ned said.
“Let’s all go to the main house,” Gavin said, pressing his hand against the center of her back. “I’m sure I know the first responders, so I’d like to talk to them.”
He followed Ned across the cement patio. All the lights had been turned on, illuminating the green water rippling in the pool. He expected to see the remnants of a major party, but everything had been cleaned up. The only thing left behind were the extra tables and chairs.
Three large double sliding doors lined the kitchen. He’d never seen a kitchen the size or magnitude of this one with its two side-by-side double ovens, a freezer the size of a fridge, an island that sat at least twelve people, and a floor to ceiling wine cooler. The counters were an off-white color with swirls of grey and light green. He wasn’t sure, but he assumed they were granite.
The room was filled with all her siblings. Her nieces and nephews were sprawled out on the sofa and floor in the family room, watching something on television.
“We’d like to view the videotape now,” the sound of his father’s voice rang out strong.
“My Dad is here,” he whispered in Charlotte’s ear. “I should go talk to him.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Stay here with everyone else.”
Her right brow twitched.
He’d hurt her feelings, but now was not the time or the place to introduce her to his father. He kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be back shortly.”
Ned followed him through the kitchen, down the long corridor and to the foyer where Rosie and Charlotte’s oldest brother Ethan, stood talking with his father and his partner, Edward Hayes.
“Here is my husband,” Rosie said, holding her hand out. Ned took it and moved to stand next to his wife. “As I said before, we had a large party last night, and still have a house full of guests. He went to get our daughter and her boyfriend from the pool house.”
Gavin cleared his throat, making his presence known.
His father turned his head. “Son? What are you doing here?”
“Your son is our daughter’s boyfriend.” Rosie said.
Gavin’s mother was going to have his head on a platter, especially if his little sister had said anything.
“Why don’t we focus on what tripped the alarm,” Gavin said, looking down, realizing he was barefoot. “You mentioned something about surveillance video?”
“Yes. We have cameras set up all over the property. They run on seventy-two hour tapes,” Rosie said.
“My wife is a criminal attorney, and I always worry someone is going to—”
“Darling, do we need to get into this now?”
“No dear,” Ned said, pointing down to the north side of the house. “We can access everything from my wife’s home office.”
“Mind if I take a look around the property?” his father’s partner, Hayes asked.
“Be our guest,” Ned said, leading the way through a maze of rooms, all decorated in a shaker style with a mixture of dark leathers, wooden chairs, and pieces of artwork that depicted an outdoor lifestyle.
It was difficult for Gavin to reconcile that Charlotte came from this much money and lived the modest lifestyle she portrayed. The only experience he had with wealthy people had been Lydia and the occasional fancy house he had to enter due to a fire or other emergency.
All the way at the far end of the house, through a set of French doors, was Rosie's home office. It had a large white, u-shaped desk, with a set of computer screens displayed prominently on the back wall. Ned sat behind the desk, pulling out a keyboard drawer. The monitors buzzed to life.
“The call came in at 2:38,” his father said, leaning over Ned’s shoulder. “If we could look at every angle you have from 1:38 until now.”
“Sure thing.”
“Why don’t you pull it up, and my son and I can go through the footage and if we see anything, we’ll let you know.”
“That’s fine.” Rosie stood at the door, waiting for Ned. “I’m hoping that it was nothing, though I hate wasting your time.”
“Not a waste of time at all. It’s our job.” His father sat behind the desk, taking over the controls of the recorded video.
Gavin leaned against the desk, behind his father, scanning the screens. When he’d been younger, he dreamed of being a police officer. He’d spent much of his youth reading and watching police shows. He spent summers working for the Sheriff’s office, admiring his father. He still revered his father and his job, but one day with his mother at the fire station when he’d been eighteen-years-old, had changed his world forever. Watching his mother, and other relatives, deal with a three-alarm fire, and the lives they had saved, put the fireman’s bug in his heart. Not that his father’s profession was any less admirable and important to the safety of the community, but the call of the flames had burned deep in his blood.
“So, you have a girlfriend now?” his father said, glancing over his shoulder. “How long?”
“Since yesterday.” He saw no point in lying to the old man. He’d never done it in the past, not even as a stupid teenager, so why start now. “She’s my next-door neighbor. I’ve kind of had eyes on her for a while, I just didn’t think she had any for me.”
“Care to tell me how you ended up spending the night here if it’s so new and why they are calling you her boyfriend?” his father’s tone was neither accusatory, nor laced with disappointment, but it did have a certain edge to it.
“I had enough to drink that driving wouldn’t have been safe. They were kind enough to let me crash here after the party.”
His father let out a short laugh. “You must have made quite the impression that they allowed you to sleep in the same bedroom with their—”
“She let them believe we’d been dating longer than we had.”
His father whipped the chair around.
“Let me finish.” Gavin held up his hand. “To make a very long story short, her ex-boyfriend married her sister and since then, she’s been withdrawn from her family, and they in turn have been concerned.”
“Rightfully so.” His father had turned his attention back to the screens, pausing, rewinding, fast-forwarding, searching for what had breached the security area. “So, what you’re telling me is she’s using you to get her family off her back and there is no relationship?”
“No. We’re dating.” The words rolled off his tongue easily, leaving a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Then I can tell your mother you’re bringing your new girlfriend to dinner this week.”
He was about to balk at the idea when a car rolled to a stop across the road from the main driveway with no lights on. “You see that, Dad?”
“I do.” His father punched the keyboard, zooming in on the car.
Gavin inched closer to the screen. “I’ve seen that car before.”
“Where and when?”
“Outside my duplex this morning just as Charlotte and I left to come here.”
“Can you be sure?”
“The car had an insured by Smith & Wesson bumper sticker on the right fender.” Gavin studied the man, dressed in black, getting out of the car, trying to pull memories of the person he saw this morning from his mind.
“Looks like we found our guy,” his father said, following the man from one camera to the next until he disappeared near the side of the house.
“That’s where all the cars are parked.” Gavin tapped the screen. “No idea how many are left, but I know that’s where they put my truck.”
His father pulled out his cell and called Hayes, asking him to take a look in that area.
“Dad, look.” Gavin tapped the top screen where the same man he’d seen this morning jumped the back gate to the pool. “I remember that the man I saw this morning had dark rimmed glasses. That’s him. I know it.”
“Did Charlotte know him?”
“She said she’d never seen the car before.”
“I take it you didn’t notice if he followed you or not?” His father pulled out a small notebook and jotted down a few notes.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t.” Gavin watched as the man from the white car bolted back over the fence and across the yard just as sirens echoed in the background.
“No reason you would.” His father’s phone buzzed. “What’s up, Hayes?”
“You and Gavin need to come to the detached parking garage.”
Gavin glanced down at his father.
“Why does my son need to come?”
“His truck has been vandalized.”