Easton's Claim (Colebrook Siblings Trilogy Book 3) (7 page)

Easton didn’t blame him, although he wasn’t proud of being jealous of a damn dog. What he wouldn’t give to have her be that openly affectionate with him, hug and kiss him without reservation. He wanted all of her.

“He’s doing great,” Wyatt said, beaming like a proud father as he stood there grinning at them. “He told me he missed you so he wanted to come over too.”

Piper snickered and looked up at him. “Uh-huh. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you can’t bear to be apart from each other?”

“No, of course not.”

Austen snorted. “Whatever. They’re ridiculous. Inseparable. I swear I don’t know who’s more in love with Wyatt, me or the dog.”

Wyatt shrugged, his lips quirking. “What can I say, I’m just a loveable guy.”

“Yeah you are,” Austen said, and stepped over to plant a kiss on his lips. “Big softie.”

Wyatt grimaced. “Not in front of everyone,” he complained.

“Oh please, like it’s any kind of secret to the rest of us,” Piper said. Grinning, she kissed the brown spot on the top of Grits’s head and set him down. The dog immediately went across the room to greet Charlie, then Easton.

“Any more pieces from your grandma here?” Easton asked Piper as he scratched Grits on the chest and lifted his chin to avoid the lizard-like tongue trying to lick him.

“Just a couple of prints that I now have to get reframed, and a jewelry box.” She pushed to her feet. “There’s nothing hidden in it. I emptied everything out of the furniture and packed it all in boxes before I put it in storage.”

Was worth taking another look, just to make sure she hadn’t missed something. When it came to searching for hidden contraband, Easton was an expert. He did it on pretty much every mission his team went on. “Can I see the box?”

“Sure.” She led him into her bedroom and picked up the art deco jewelry box that had been dumped onto the floor. The air in here smelled faintly of her perfume. “All my jewelry is still here,” she said, gathering up the earrings and necklaces strewn on the carpet. “It’s weird. Greg and whoever attacked him couldn’t be that hard up for money if he didn’t take any of this, right?”

Just means whatever they’re after is worth a whole lot more than your jewelry.
“They weren’t after jewelry.” Her face fell and he changed the subject. “We should go down to your storage locker later and have a look at what you’ve got in there. After that we can check out the stuff in the shed at my dad’s place. I’ll help you.”

“Okay.” She continued gathering up her things from the floor. Jewelry, sexy lace bras and panties he’d fantasize about seeing her in from now on, and other odds and ends from the dresser. He picked up whatever he found and placed it on the bed for her to sort back into the drawers. Piper was obsessed about organization.

A few minutes in, her phone chimed. The insurance company, or maybe the cops? Easton only paid partial attention to her as he continued cleaning up the items on the floor but when she gasped he tensed and jerked his gaze to her.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her face full of horror, one hand flying up to cover her mouth.

Oh, shit, what now?
“What is it?” he asked, stepping close to her.

Face so pale the freckles stood out on her nose, she handed over the phone without a word. Anger punched through him when he saw what the caller had sent. An image of Greg, bound to a chair with his hands secured behind him, face badly beaten. And below it, a chilling message.

Give us what we want or he’ll die a slow, painful death.

“He was doing so well this time. Every time I spoke to him on the phone this past month, it was like talking to the old Greg. I really thought he was going to make it, that he would finally kick the addiction,” Bea said with a sad little sniffle.

Piper rubbed at her forehead and sighed. Her ex-mother-in-law was in Paris right now with her husband and trying to deal with her son being held prisoner and possibly tortured while the police scrambled for leads. “Even if he was, the lifestyle wouldn’t ever let him go,” she said as gently as she could. They’d had this same conversation so many times before. “He’s made too many enemies and burned too many bridges.” Including every single one leading back to her.

A soft sob filled the line. “But he’s been clean for nearly three months, the longest stretch ever. If he can kick the addiction, then he should be able to get his life back.”

Bea spoke as a mother who loved her only child with everything in her. She couldn’t accept that her precious baby boy was lost to her forever. Piper had no such illusions. He had to hit rock bottom before he made a change, and he had to
want
to change. Piper wasn’t sure he’d ever get there.

“I’m so sorry, Bea. The police are doing everything they can to find him.” It had definitely been Greg’s blood on her kitchen floor though. The hardest part had been telling Bea that the police had no idea who had taken him, or why. Though it had to be drug related.

“I can’t believe this has happened. He was doing so well… I just feel sick, knowing what he’s going through and that there’s nothing we can do to help him, even when we get home.”

“I know.” Her relationship with her ex-in-laws had been strained since she’d left Greg, but they still loved her and in her own way, she loved them too. After all, Piper had worked her ass off for them for years, for nothing.

Shortly after she and Greg had gotten engaged, she’d left her teaching job to dive in and help out full time with all their charities, organizing galas and working on various boards of trustees. While she regretted leaving her job for her husband, she didn’t regret the experience she’d gained from working with charitable foundations.

When she’d left Greg, she’d quit all that and turned to real estate to make money. His parents had been hurt, but they’d understood her decision. She needed distance from them and their world every bit as much as she did from Greg. Until the other day, she’d been well on her way to getting her life back and rediscovering who Piper Greenlee truly was.

“And whatever he was looking for—you’ll keep searching for it, right? If you can find it, then maybe whoever kidnapped him will release him. Or maybe they’ll ask for a ransom. We’ll pay whatever they want if they’ll let him go.”

Piper hesitated before responding. Bea was an incredibly intelligent woman, so her comment had to be borne of desperation. She knew from Greg how ruthless the drug underworld was, and that the chances of Greg surviving this were pretty much nil, whether Piper found the missing item or not.

In the end, she simply didn’t have the heart to extinguish that tiny flame of hope for her. She and Easton had already checked all her grandmother’s furniture with the cops and found nothing, but it wouldn’t hurt to look again. “I’ll keep looking,” she promised. Maybe they’d missed something. Even if she had nothing but contempt for Greg’s behavior and what he’d put her through, she still didn’t want to see him die and couldn’t stand to see him suffer the way he was. If she could save his life, she would.

“Thank you,” Bea breathed. “I guess this is partly our fault, isn’t it? You were right. We loved him too much, tried to protect him when we shouldn’t have. And now we have to live with that.”

Piper cringed inside. “Are you guys flying home then?” she asked to change the subject.

“Tom booked us a flight first thing in the morning. The police are going to update us with any new findings when we get home tomorrow night, but if you hear anything sooner, will you let me know right away?”

“Yes, of course. Safe flight home.”

“Thank you.”

She ended the call and sat there alone on the Colebrooks’ front porch swing for a long while, emotionally exhausted. Staring out across the huge expanse of lush green lawn that sloped away from the front of the house, she cleared her mind.

There was nothing more she could do for Greg at the moment, and nothing she could do to make her ex-in-laws feel any better. She had nothing to feel guilty about and again thought maybe it was a good idea to cut them out of her life entirely, because they were a reminder of Greg.

Pushing out a deep breath, she willed the lingering tension away. It was so peaceful out here, away from town. She’d spent so much time here at the house over the years. Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters after her father died, and before she’d married Greg. This place felt more like home to her than anywhere else, yet some part of her still felt like an outsider, no matter how wonderful the Colebrooks had been to her.

Above her the night sky was a deep midnight blue, filled with thousands of twinkling stars. A cool breeze blew through the oak and cherry trees planted on either side of the house, rustling the changing leaves and rippling through the grass. A chorus of crickets and frogs hummed in the background, providing a soft lullaby that soothed her jangled nerves.

Inhaling the cool, clean fall air, she closed her eyes and tipped her head back to rest it on the top of the swing. It had been a bitch of a day.

After receiving that awful text, she’d spent hours talking with the detectives handling her case, then had cleaned and started repairs on the worst of the damage at her house. The insurance company had been great so far but she was glad Easton, Wyatt, Austen and Charlie had volunteered to help her because she was in a rush to get the house ready for showing and didn’t want to wait for all the paperwork to be processed.

The front door opened with a slight creak. She lifted her head as Easton stepped out onto the front porch.

Her heart beat faster at the sight of him. He’d been with her all day, had barely left her side through all the police stuff, and he’d worked tirelessly with her at the house afterward. He made it harder and harder for her to ignore her growing attraction toward him, and she was afraid he would notice somehow.

“How’d it go?” he asked, walking toward her. Even the way he moved was sexy. Strong and confident, smooth.

Wyatt’s little brother.

The reminder snapped her out of that line of thinking. “Bea’s devastated. She kept saying that Greg was a changed man, that this round of rehab had finally set him straight.” She shook her head.

“If wishes were horses,” he murmured.

“Exactly.”

He lowered his weight next to her on the swing. She tensed a little. He was so close she could smell the faint scent of his cologne, a sexy, evergreen scent, and had to resist the urge to edge away. “

You okay?” he asked, his warm brown eyes intent on her face as he laid an arm across the top of the swing’s back, the heat of it wrapping around her shoulders.

It was torture, being this close to him and having to pretend she felt nothing more than friendship while her hormones went crazy and her body craved his touch. “Yes.”

She refused to complain. Easton had busted his ass to get where he was in life. As a member of the world’s most elite counter-narcotics team he risked his life on a daily basis whenever he went on a mission, or even during training. He regularly did four-month-long rotations to Afghanistan, one of the most dangerous places on earth, hunting down terrorists and drug smugglers with the threat of being wounded or killed hanging over him and his team every single minute.

So no, she wasn’t going to whine about her current predicament.

“You sure you’re ready to go back to work tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes. I had to cancel all my appointments today.”

She needed the money those house sales would earn her. When she left Sugar Hollow, she meant to do it debt free so she could relocate and begin anew. Her ex-in-laws had offered to pay it all off for her plenty of times, maybe out of guilt or obligation, she wasn’t sure. Every time she’d turned them down because she didn’t want to feel like she owed them anything. If she paid it all off herself, she could be free of the whole family once and for all.

“I’ll go with you to the showings.”

It came out a statement instead of an offer, but she didn’t mind. With this craziness going on, she would feel more secure with him looking out for her. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Okay, then. Thanks.”

“What time’s the first one?”

“Eight, but it’s not far from downtown. We could stop at the
Garden of Eatin’
on our way there, grab a bite first.”

“Sounds good. We’ll leave at seven?”

“Sure.” She covered a yawn, giving her the perfect excuse to leave. “Well. Guess I’ll turn in.”

He stood and offered a hand. She took it and he pulled her to her feet, the feel of his strong hand around hers making something low in her belly flutter.

But he didn’t let go. Instead he wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her into a hug.

When the initial surprise passed she sighed and leaned into him, rested her forehead on his chest for a moment, her hands on his taut waist. Then he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and her heart squeezed. He’d been so sweet to her the past couple of days, she didn’t know what she would have done without him. Being in his arms was killing her though.

Just as she began to pull away Easton splayed his hands across her back, keeping her close. Then he bent his head to nuzzle the sensitive spot at her temple, his beard a soft prickle against her skin.

Piper went rigid and her eyes flew open. Her heart lurched then shot into double time. That kiss felt…way too intimate. Way too far out of the friend zone for her comfort. His embrace was protective. Almost possessive.

Confused, sure she was reading this wrong, she tipped her head back to look up at him. In the warm glow of the overhead porch light, the expression on his face made her heart seize.

Intense. Hungry. The way a man looked at a woman just before he kissed her until her knees gave out.

Her pulse skipped as shock blasted through her. Before she could move, let alone process everything, he cupped the side of her face with one big hand.

She stopped breathing, stared up into his eyes for one heartbeat, two. Okay, admittedly it had been a while since she’d been with a man, but she was
not
misinterpreting that look.