The SEAL's Secret Heirs (7 page)

She didn't want to give Kyle any sort of heads-up that she was coming or that she'd made a decision. Hopefully, that meant she could get and keep the upper hand.

No more sunset conversations that ended with her wrapped up in Kyle's very strong, very capable arms.

No matter what. No matter how much she'd been arguing with herself that maybe Kyle had changed. Maybe
she
had changed. Maybe another kiss, exactly like that first one, would be what the doctor ordered, and then she would find out he'd morphed into her Prince Charming.

Yeah, none of that mattered.

Kyle and his daughters—that was what mattered. That morning she'd spent two hours in a room with her supervisor, Megan, going over her recommendation that Kyle be awarded full and uncontested custody of his children. With Megan's stamp of approval on the report, Grace's role in this long, drawn-out issue had come to a close.

Hadley answered the door at Wade House and asked after Grace's parents, then let Grace hold the babies without Grace having to beg too much. She inhaled their fresh powder scent—it was the best smell in the world. Out of nowhere, the prick of tears at her eyes warned her that she hadn't fully shut down the emotions from her conversation with Clare and Violet last night.

If this meeting went as intended, this might be her last interaction with Kyle. And the babies. They were so precious and the thought of only seeing them again in passing shot through her heart.

“I'm here to see Kyle,” she told Hadley as she passed the babies back reluctantly. She had a job to do, and it wasn't anyone's fault except hers that she didn't have a baby of her own.

“He's at the barn. Expect that will be the case from now on.” Hadley shook her head in wonder. “I have to say, Kyle is nothing like I remember. He had no interest in the ranch before. Right? You remember that, too, don't you?”

Greedily, Grace latched on to the subject change and told herself it was strictly because she wanted additional validation that she was doing the right thing in trusting Kyle with his daughters. “I do recall that. But he's taking over the cattle side, or so I understand.”

“That's right. Liam's about to come out of his skin, he's so excited about the prospect of focusing solely on his quarter horses. He didn't think Kyle was going to step up. But Liam has admitted to me, privately of course, that he might have been wrong about his brother.”

Liam saw it, too. Kyle had changed.

That was very interesting food for thought.

“Do you think Kyle would mind if I visited him down at the barn? I need to talk to him about the report I'm filing.”

Grace was already on her feet before she'd finished speaking, but Hadley just nodded with a smile. “Sure. Bring Kyle back with you and stay for lunch.”

“Oh. Um...” Grace stared at Hadley gently rocking both babies in her arms and realized that her recommendations were going to affect Hadley and Liam, too. And not in a good way. She hated the fact that she was going to upset them after they'd spent so much love and effort in caring for Kyle's babies in his stead. There was a long conversation full of disappointment in Liam and Hadley's future.

All at once, she didn't want this job any longer. She should have figured out a way to pass the case off the moment she'd heard Kyle's name over the phone when Liam called. But she hadn't been able to, and people's lives were at stake here. She'd have to figure out how to handle it.

“Thanks for the lunch invite, but I have to be getting back to the office. Maybe next time,” she said brightly, and escaped before Hadley could insist.

The cattle barn was a half mile down a chipped rock path to the west of Wade House, and faster than she would have liked, Grace pulled into the small clearing where a couple of other big trucks sat parked. She wandered into the barn, hoping Kyle would be inside.

He was.

The full force of his masculine beauty swept through her as she caught sight of him through the glass wall that partitioned the cattle office from the rest of the large barn. He was leaning against the frame of an open door, presumably talking to someone inside, hip cocked out in a way that should seem arrogant, but was just a testament to his incredible confidence.

Working man's jeans hugged his lean hips and yeah, he still had a prime butt that she didn't mind checking out in the slightest. There might be drool in her future.

And then Kyle backed out of the doorway and turned, catching her in the act of checking out his butt.
Shoot
. Too late, she spun around but not before witnessing the slow smile spreading across his face. How in the world was she going to brazen this out? Heat swirled through her cheeks.

Kyle exited the office area with a clatter. His eyes burned into her back and she had the distinct impression his gaze had dipped below her belt in a turnabout-is-fair-play-kind of checkout.

“Hey, Grace,” he said pleasantly.

She couldn't very well ignore his greeting, so she sighed and faced him, smug smile and all. “Hi.”

“See anything you like?”

How was she supposed to answer that?
Men
. They all had egos the size of Texas and she certainly wasn't going to cater to inflating his further. He was lucky she didn't smack him in his cocky mouth. “Nothing I haven't seen before.”

Except she really shouldn't have been all high-and-mighty, when she was the one who'd been ogling his butt. It was her own darn fault she'd gotten caught.

“Really?” His eyebrows shot up and amusement played at his mouth. Not that she was staring at it or anything, or remembering how dark, hard and fierce that kiss had been. “You've been shopping for cattle before?”

“Cattle?” She made the mistake of meeting his glittery green eyes, vibrant even in the low light of the barn, and he sucked her in, mesmerizing her for a moment. “I...don't think... I'm not here to buy cattle.”

Her fingers tingled all at once as they flexed in memory of clutching his shoulders the other night during their kiss. And then the rest of her body got in on that action, putting her somewhere in the vicinity of hot and bothered. A long liquid pull at her core distracted her entirely from whatever it was they were talking about.

“Are you sure? That's what we do here at Wade Ranch. Sell cattle. Figured you were in the market since you came all this way.”

“Oh. No. No cattle.” Geez, was there something wrong with her brain? Simple concepts like English and speaking didn't seem to be happening.

Kittens. Daffodils
. She had to get her mind off that kiss with something that wasn't the slightest bit manly. But then Kyle shifted closer and she caught a whiff of something so wholly masculine and earthy and the slightest bit piney, it nearly made her weep with want.

“Well, then,” he murmured. “Why are you here if it's not to peruse the goods?”

Oh, she was
so
here to peruse the goods. Except she wasn't and she couldn't keep falling down on the job. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Amazing coincidence. I wanted to talk to you, too.”

“So I'm not bothering you?”

“Oh, yeah. Make no mistake, Grace. You bother me.” His low, sexy voice skittered across her nerves, standing them on end. “At night, when I'm thinking about kissing you again. In the shower, when I'm
really
thinking about kissing you again. In the saddle, when I think kissing you again is the only thing that's going to make that particular position bearable.”

A stupid rush of heat sprang up in her face as she pictured him riding a horse and caught his meaning.

It was uncomfortable for Kyle to sit in a saddle. Because he was turned on. By her.

It was embarrassing. And somehow empowering. The thrill of it sang through her veins. Being in love with Kyle she remembered. Being a source of discomfort, she didn't. Sex had been so new, so huge and so special the first time around. They hadn't really explored their physical relationship very thoroughly before everything had fallen apart due to Kyle's strange moods and inability to express his feelings for her.

She suddenly wondered what physical parts they'd left unexplored. And whether the superhot kiss—which had been vastly more affecting than the ones ten years ago—meant that he'd learned a few new tricks over the years.

“You've been thinking about our kiss, too?” she asked before she thought better of it.

“Too?” He picked up on that slip way too fast, his expression turning molten instantly as he zeroed in on her. “As in
also
? You've been thinking about it?”

He was aiming so much heat in her direction she thought she might melt from it.

“Um...” Well, it was too late to back out now. “Maybe once or twice. It was a nice kiss.”

His slow smile set off warning bells. “
Nice.
I must be rusty if that's the best word you can come up with to describe it. Let me try again and I can guarantee
nice
won't be anywhere in your vocabulary afterward.”

Before he could get started on that promise, she slapped a hand on his chest, and Lord have mercy, it was like concrete under her fingers, begging to be explored just to see if all of him was that hard.

“Not so fast,” she muttered before she lost her mind completely. “I'm here in an official capacity.”

“Well, why didn't you say so?”

“You were too busy trying to sell me a side of beef, if I recall,” she responded primly, and his rich laugh nearly finished the job of melting her into a big puddle. She shouldn't let him affect her like that. Quickly, she snatched her hand back.

“Touché, Ms. Haines.” He crossed his arms over his powerful chest and contemplated her, sobering slightly. “Is this about my girls?”

She nodded. “I've provided my recommendations in a report to my supervisor. But essentially, I have no objections to you having sole custody of your daughters.”

Kyle let out a whoop and swept her up in his arms, spinning her around effortlessly. Laughing at his enthusiasm, she whacked him on the arm with token protests sputtering from her lips. This was not the appropriate way to thank his caseworker.

And then he let her slide to the floor again, much more slowly than he should have, especially when it became clear that there was very little of him that wasn't hard.

She cleared her throat and stepped away.

“Thanks, Grace. This means a lot to me.” Sincerity shone in his gaze and she couldn't look away. “So it's over? No more site visits?”

“Well...” She couldn't say it all at once. Her excuse to continue seeing him would evaporate if she said yes. “Maybe a few more. I still plan to keep an eye on you.”

The vibe between them heated up again in a hurry as he leaned into her space. “But if you're not my daughters' caseworker any longer, then there's no reason I can't kiss you again.”

True. But she couldn't have it both ways. Either she needed an excuse to keep coming by, even though that excuse would prevent anything from happening between them, or she could flat out admit she was still enormously attracted to him and let the chips fall where they may.

One option put butterflies in her stomach. And the other put caterpillars in it. The only problem was she couldn't figure out which was which.

“I'm not closing the case yet,” she heard herself say before she'd fully planned to say it. “So I'll come by a couple more times, just to file additional support for the recommendation. It could still go the other way if anything changes.”

“All right.” He cocked his head. “But if you've already filed the report, there's no issue with your objectivity. Right?”

And maybe she should just call a spade a spade and settle things once and for all.

“Right. But—” she threw up a hand as a smile split his face “—that's not the only thing going on here, Kyle, and you know it. We haven't been a couple for a long time, and I'm not sure picking up where we left off is the best idea. Not saying never. Just give me space for now.”

So she could think. So she could figure out if she was willing to trust him again. So she could understand why everything between them felt so different this time, so much more dangerous and thrilling.

He nodded once, but the smile still plastered across his face said he wasn't convinced by her speech. Maybe because she hadn't convinced herself of it, either.

“You know where to find me. If you'll excuse me, I have some cattle to tend to.”

She watched him walk off because she couldn't help herself apparently. And she had a feeling that was going to become a theme very shortly when interacting with Kyle Wade.

Six

K
yle didn't see Grace for a full week, and by the seventh day, he was starting to go a little bonkers. He couldn't stop thinking about her, about picking up that kiss again. Especially now that the conflict of interest had vanished.

But then she'd thrown up another wall—the dreaded
give me space
. He hated space. Unless he was the one creating it.

So instead of calling up Grace and asking her on a date the way he wanted to, he filled his days with things such as learning how to worm cattle alongside Doc Glade and his nights learning which of his daughters liked to be held a certain way.

It was fulfilling in a way he'd have never guessed.

And exhausting. Far more than going for days at a stretch with no sleep as he and his boys cleared a bayside warehouse of nasty snipers so American supply ships could dock without fear of being shot at.

Kyle would have sworn up and down that being a SEAL had prepared him for any challenge, but he'd been able to perform that job with a sense of detachment. Oh, he'd cared, or he would never have put himself in the line of fire. But you had to march into a war knowing you might not come out. Knowing that you might cause someone else to not come out. There was no room for emotion in the middle of that.

Being a father? It was 100 percent raw emotion, 24-7. Fear that he was doing it wrong. Joy in simply holding another human being that was a part of him, who shared his DNA. Worry that he'd screw up his kids as his parents had done to him. A slight tickle in the back of his throat that it could all change tomorrow if Grace suddenly decided that she'd made a mistake in awarding him custody.

But above all else was the sense that he shouldn't be doing it by himself. Kids needed a mother. Hadley was nurturing and clearly cared about the babies, but she was Liam's wife, not Kyle's. Now that the news had come out about Grace's recommendations, it didn't seem fair to keep asking Hadley to be the nanny, not when she'd hoped to adopt the babies herself.

It was another tangle he didn't know how to unsnarl, so he left it alone until he could figure it out. Besides, no one was chomping at the bit to change the current living situation and for now, Kyle, Liam and Hadley shared Wade House with Maggie and Maddie. Which meant that it would be ridiculous to tell Hadley not to pick up one of his daughters when she cried. So he didn't.

Plus, he was deep in the middle of growing the cattle business. Calving season was upon them, which meant days and days of backbreaking work to make sure the babies survived, or the ranch lost money instantly. He couldn't spend ten or twelve hours a day at the cattle barn
and
take care of babies. That was his rationale anyway, and he repeated it to himself often. Some days it rang more true than others.

A week after Grace had told him he'd earned custody of his daughters, Kyle spent thirty horrific minutes in his office going through email and other stuff Ivy, Wade Ranch's bookkeeper and office manager, had dumped on his desk with way too cheery a smile. The woman was sadistic. Death by paper cuts might as well be Ivy's mantra.

God, he hated paperwork. He'd rather be hip-deep in manure than scanning vet reports and sales figures and bills and who knew what all.

A knock at his door saved him. He glanced up to see a smiling Emma Jane and he nearly wept in relief. Emma Jane had the best title in the whole world—sales manager—which meant he didn't have to talk to people who wanted to buy Wade Angus. She handled everything and he blessed her for it daily.

“Hey, boss,” she drawled. “Got a minute?”

She always called him “boss” with a throaty undertone that made him vaguely uncomfortable, as if any second now, she might declare a preference for being dominated and fall at his feet, prostrate.

“For you, always.” He kicked back from the desk and crossed his arms as the sales manager came into his office. “What's up?”

With a toss of her long blond hair, Emma Jane sashayed over to his desk and perched one hip on the edge, careful to arrange her short skirt so it revealed plenty of leg. Kyle hid a grin, mostly because he didn't want to encourage her. God love her, but Emma Jane had the subtlety of a Black Hawk helicopter coming in for landing.

“I was thinking,” she murmured with a coy smile. “We've mostly been selling cattle here locally, but we should look to expand. There's a big market in Fort Worth.”

Obviously she was going somewhere with this, so Kyle just nodded and made a noncommittal sound as he waited for the punch line.

“Wade Ranch needs to make some contacts there,” she continued, and rearranged her hair with a practiced twirl. “We should go together. Like a business trip, but stay overnight and take in the sights. Maybe hit a bar in Sundance Square?”

First half of that? Great plan. Spot-on. Second half was so not a good idea, Kyle couldn't even begin to count the ways it wasn't a good idea. But he had to tread carefully. Wade Ranch couldn't afford for Kyle to antagonize another employee into quitting. Liam still hadn't replaced Danny Spencer, and Kyle was starting to worry his brother was going to announce that he'd decided
Kyle
should be the ranch manager.

“I like the way you think,” he allowed. “You're clearly the brains of this operation.”

She batted her lashes with a practiced laugh, leaning forward to increase the gap at her cleavage. “You're such a flatterer. Go on.”

Since it didn't feel appropriate for the boss to be staring down the front of his employee's blouse, no matter how obvious she was making it that she expected him to, Kyle glanced over Emma Jane's shoulder to the window. And spied the exact person he'd been hoping to see.
Grace
. Finally.

He'd been starting to wonder if she was planning to avoid him for the next ten years. From the corner of his eye, he watched her park her green Toyota in the small clearing outside the barn and walk the short path to the door. His peripheral vision was sharp enough to see a sniper in a bell tower at the edge of a village—or one social worker with hair the color of summer wheat at sunset, who had recently asked Kyle to give her space.

“No, really,” he insisted as he focused on Emma Jane again. Grace had just entered the barn, judging by the sound of the footsteps coming toward his office, which he easily recognized as hers. “You've been handling cattle sales for what, almost a year now? Your numbers are impressive. Clearly you know your stuff.”

Or she knew how to stick her breasts in a prospective buyer's face. Honestly, there was no law against it, and he didn't care how she sold cattle as long as she did her job. Just as there was no law against letting Grace think there was more going on here in his office than there actually was.

She wanted space, didn't she? Couldn't give a woman any more space than to pretend he'd moved on to another one. If he timed it right, Grace would get an eyeful of exactly how much
space
he was giving her. He treated Emma Jane to a wide smile and put an elbow on the desk, right by her knee.

Emma Jane lit up, just as Grace appeared in the open doorway of his office.

“Thanks, sweetie.” Emma Jane smiled and ran one hand up his arm provocatively. He didn't remove it. “That's the nicest compliment anyone's ever given me.”

Grace halted as if she'd been slapped. That's when he turned his head to meet her gaze, acknowledging her presence, just in case she'd gotten it into her head to flee. She was right where he wanted her.

“Am I interrupting?” Grace asked drily, and Emma Jane jerked back guiltily as she figured out they weren't alone anymore.

Yes
, thank God. He'd have to deal with Emma Jane at some point, but he couldn't lie—he'd much rather have Grace sitting on his desk and leaning over strategically any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

“Not at all.” Kyle stood with a dismissive nod at Emma Jane, whose usefulness had just come to an end. “We were just talking about how to increase our contact list in the Fort Worth area. We can pick it up later.”

“We sure can,” Emma Jane purred, and then shot Grace a dirty look as she flounced from the room.

“That was cozy,” Grace commented once the sales manager was out of earshot. Her face was blank, but her tone had an undercurrent in it that he found very interesting.

“You think so?” Kyle crossed his arms and cocked a hip, pretending to contemplate. “We were just talking. I'm not sure what you mean.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “Really, Kyle? She was practically draped over your desk like a bearskin throw rug, begging you to wrap her around you.”

Yeah. She pretty much had been. He bit back a grin at Grace's colorful description. “I didn't notice.”

“Of course you didn't.” Her eyebrows snapped together over brown eyes that—dare he hope—had a hint of jealousy glittering in them. “You were too busy being blinded by her cleavage.”

That got a laugh out of him, which didn't sit well with Grace, judging by the fierce scowl on her face. But he couldn't help it. This was too much fun. “She is a nice-looking woman, I do agree.”

“I didn't say that. She's far too obvious to be considered ‘nice-looking.'” Grace accompanied this with little squiggly motions of her forefingers. “She might as well write her phone number on her forehead with eyeliner. She clearly buys it in bulk and layers it on even at ten o'clock in the morning, so what's a little more?”

The more Grace talked, the more agitated she became, drawing in the air with her whole hand instead of just her fingers.

“So she's a little heavy-handed with her makeup.” He waved it off. “She's a great girl who sells cattle for Wade Ranch. I have no complaints with her.”

Grace made a little noise of disgust. “Except for the way she was shamelessly flirting with you, you mean? I can't believe you let her talk to you like that.”

“Like what?” He shrugged, well aware he was pouring gasoline on Grace's fire, but so very curious what would happen when she exploded. “We were just talking.”

“Yeah, you're still just as clueless as you always were.”

There was that word again.
Clueless
. She'd thrown it at him one too many times to let it go. There was something more here to understand. He could sense it.

Before he could demand an explanation, Johnny blew into the office, his chest heaving and mud caked on his jeans and boots from the knee down. “Kyle. We got a problem. One of the pregnant cows is stuck in the ravine at the creek and she went into labor.”

Instantly, Kyle shouldered past a wide-eyed Grace with an apologetic glance. He hated to leave her behind but this was his job.

“Take me there.”

Liam had put Kyle in charge of the cattle side of Wade Ranch. This was his first real test and the gravity of it settled across his shoulders with weight he wasn't expecting.

He followed Johnny to the paddock where they kept their horses and mounted up, ignoring the twinge deep in his leg bone, or what was left of it. He could sit in his office like a wimp and complain about paperwork or ride. There was no room for a busted leg in ranching.

Kyle heeled Lightning Rod into a gallop and tore after Johnny as the ranch hand led him across the pasture where the pregnant herd had been quartered—to prevent the very problem Johnny had described. The expectant cows shouldn't have been anywhere near the creek that ran along the north side of Wade Ranch.

Kyle hadn't been there in years but he remembered it. He and Liam had played there as boys, splashing through the shallow water and gigging for frogs at dusk as the fat reptiles croaked out their location to the two bloodthirsty boys. Calvin had made them clean and dress the frogs when he found out, and they had frog legs for dinner that night. It was a lesson Kyle never forgot—eat what you kill.

They arrived at the edge of the pasture in a couple of minutes. A fence was down. That explained it.

“What happened?” Kyle asked as he swung out of the saddle to inspect the downed barbed wire and wooden stake.

“Not sure. Slim and I were running the fence and found this. Then he went to the creek to check it out. Sure 'nuff, one of the cows had wandered off. Still don't know how she got down there. Slim stayed with her while I came and got you.”

“Good man. Hustle back to the barn and grab some of the guys to get this repaired,” Kyle instructed, his mind already blurring with a plan. He just had to check out the situation to make sure the extraction process currently mapping itself out in his head was viable.

Johnny nodded and galloped off.

Kyle let Lightning Rod pick his way along the line of the creek until he saw Slim down in the ravine, hovering over the cow. She was still standing, which was good. As soon as a cow lay down, that meant they had less than an hour until she'd start delivering. They'd have to work fast or she'd be having her baby on that thin strip of ground between the steeply sloped walls and the creek. If the calf was in the wrong position, it would be too hard to assist with the birth, and besides, all the equipment was back at the barn.

Somehow, he had to figure out how to get her out. Immediately. Clearly, Slim had no idea how to do it or he wouldn't have sent Johnny after the boss. This was Kyle's battle to lose. So he wouldn't lose.

Kyle galloped another hundred feet to check out the slope of the creek bed walls, but they were just as steep all the way down the culvert as they were at the site where the cow had gone down. As steep as they'd been when he was a boy. He and Liam had slid down the slope on their butts, ruining more than one pair of pants in the process because it was too steep to walk down. But that had been in August when it was dry. In March, after a cold winter and wet spring, the slope was nothing but mud. Which probably explained how the cow had ended up at the bottom—she'd slipped.