She went to the sink and filled a glass with tap water. Her fingers brushed mine when she set it down on the table in front of me.
My dick jumped while the rest of my body flinched.
She breathed out a heavy sound, her chest lurching forward, no doubt feeling it, too. Her voice was soft when she murmured close to my ear, “Before we start, I want you to know how much this means to me. That you’re doing this for us. I’ve felt so alone for all these months, waiting for a miracle. I had no idea that miracle was going to be you.”
I tried to block her words from seeping into that crack in my chest. The girl getting her fingers right in there and tugging it apart. Trying to bust it wide open.
“I’m no miracle, Grace. I could be your worst nightmare. This could all blow up in your face. You need to know, this will not be an easy win. They are going to try to smear you. They will drag out every secret you have, parade around your skeletons.”
Her trembling chin lifted defiantly. “I’m not the only one with secrets.”
Hatred churned. I’d done a little research on Reed Dearborne this morning, stared a little too long at the pompous ass, his record as clean as the floor his maid surely scrubbed every day.
But it was all too perfect.
Wrapped up in a pretty red bow.
An illusion.
I knew it.
Was betting Grace knew it in a way that made my guts curl.
“You’re going to need to let me in on that.”
She breathed out a shaky sound and slumped into the wooden chair beside me. “I’d like to avoid using that if at all possible.”
“He won’t hesitate to destroy you, Grace.”
And that made me want to destroy him.
Her head shook. “I just . . . need to figure out how to do this with him thinking he’s getting the best thing for himself. For his campaign. For his life. I think he’d much rather keep this on the downlow than have the whole thing explode on the media.”
“I think you’re fooling yourself. I think you’re a threat to his pride, and that’s something he won’t settle for.”
“It’s more than that. He’s afraid if I’m outside of his control, I’ll expose the things I know.”
Anger boiled. “Has he ever hurt you before? Physically?”
Wounds streaked through her eyes, and I was half a second from flying to my feet and out the door.
Fuck the case.
The asshole could die by my bare hands.
“Once,” she said, her voice a tremor. “I’d left him back before Sophie was born. He didn’t take so kindly to it.”
She coughed out a horrified sound, like she was taken back to the memory. “He . . . forced me back into the house. Forced himself on me. Made it clear if I ever left again, I was going to regret it.”
That lump throbbed in my throat, my chest squeezing too tight. I really didn’t know if I could stomach any of this. Not when there was this ugly, nasty part of me that wanted to claim her as mine.
Take her and keep her.
My hands fisted. “He forced himself on you as in—”
The hostility on my tongue was cut off when a shouting voice broke into what I was going to say. “Mommy, Mommy!”
Grace’s face split into a forced smile when a little girl came bounding around the corner and into the kitchen.
The child skidded to a stop when she saw me sitting at the table.
My heart got scrambled in my chest.
Big, blue eyes stared back at me. The same color as her mother’s. Kid exuding nothing but love and hope and excitement.
Bile worked its way around that lump.
This . . . this was what I couldn’t reconcile. The fact this woman I wanted to own, to take, had three children.
Three children she was responsible for.
For their safety and their happiness and their wellbeing.
Foolish.
That’s what this was.
Part of me couldn’t help but hold it against Grace. This recklessness on her part. Bringing these kids into this world and then turning around and dumping them into this mess.
“Hey, mister! Who are you?”
She was holding a big brown drawing pad, two times wider than the width of her entire body, little arms stretched around it. Blonde hair straight as a pin and perfectly trimmed at her shoulders, short bangs framing her curious face.
There was no hesitation when she rushed forward and climbed onto the chair on the other side of me. She set the thick pad in front of her on the table.
Instantly, I had the weight of the two of them bracketing me on either side.
My collar felt too damned tight.
Grace stood and moved around me to the little girl and ran her palm over her head. The child tipped her head back, grinning up at her mother like she was the sun.