Wait for Me (10 page)

"Then I'll catch a pint and check in with the other men," Aiden said. Hands in his pockets, he climbed the slight incline up to his jeep and the truck roared off down the dirt path.

Slipping an arm around Morgan’s waist, he waved off his niece, slipping off to the paved trail toward the castle while maneuvering Morgan through the thick trees to his private cabin. He’d kept his home on the other side of the estate secluded from the family. “Now, Morgan, let’s find out your experience level. See what the Claiborne women have that my son can’t pass up.”

~~~~

Jonathan walked the grounds with Kenya. Bracing a hand to her back, he ushered her up toward the mouth of the woods. He turned at the sound of someone walking. He caught Jamie crossing the cobbled walk around the river; his tall, proud gate told Jonathan something had happened. The air blew wisps of water off the river over their faces. Wiping spray from Kenya’s face, he greeted Jamie.

“Cousin?”

Jamie’s hulking form crossed the grass, halting before him and Kenya.

“Well, Brian’s at it. Security saw him bring a woman on the grounds.” Jamie took in Kenya then the sky before staring up the mountains behind them. 

“Jamie, you can speak in front of me if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kenya said, picking up on his weary posture.

“
Mo Ru’n.”
Jonathan led Kenya off the path, nodding to his cousin to excuse them. “Wait for me up by the bench while I speak with my cousin, please.”

“Jonathan, you don’t trust me?” she complained, shifting her glance between the two men.

“This is where I need you to not question me.” Kissing her face, he held his woman to his body.

“Tell me again what
Mo Ru’n
means?” she prodded and poked him in the chest.

Leaning in, he cupped the smooth skin of her chin, whispering along her cool earlobe, “It means, my dear. I’ve told you before.”

She whispered over his mouth, “I think you need to hear it because the loving phrase, dear, and get up the hill contradict one another in my book.”

“Get up the hill—please,” he urged. “Babe, there’s things I don’t want you involved in. I want your help on the farm accounts, but I want you clear of all the other stuff going on. Enjoy the grounds while I speak with Jamie.”

“Do you always have meetings out in the field? Why not hold it in an office with a conference table?”

He held her by her lapels, moving in close to brush his chest against her breast. “For farmers the field is the office and early mornings are too busy.”

“Oh, right.” Kenya slid a hand over his heart and all his fight left on the breeze between them. “I wanna talk to you before we go to dinner.” Why was that the sexiest thing in the world to him? Power looked good on his woman.

“Important?” She nodded. “Then let me speak with Jamie then we’ll take in the grounds and you can tell me then. I need to take care of this family matter.” He kissed her nose.

“You’re making this hard for me not to get attached to you, Jonathan, even when you’re being obstinate.”

Brushing soft curls from her face, he covered those sweet lips he couldn’t get enough of and dragged his hand on her hips under his jacket still draped around her shoulders.

“Go before I drag you into our room and tell you more words…from over your shoulder, in the shower,” he teased. He watched her blush as she bit one corner of her lip. 

She held up a palm in surrender walking away up the berm to the bench, holding the hem of her dress down the cool air whipping around her thighs. Jonathan turned to find his cousin shaking his head.

“You got it bad, cousin,” Jamie uttered, pulling at a length of tall grass from the ground.

Jonathan had it more than bad and it was becoming harder to picture Kenya going back without him in a few days. He slipped his hands into his front pockets. More men, including Uncle Calder, stalked across the grass up the pathway.

“Who is this woman security witnessed with Brian, Jamie?”

“According to what they told me, she favors, Kenya.” Jamie set his attention up the hill on Kenya picking dried flowers. “Did she come with someone?”

All his concerns and suspicions returned on those words. “You met us on the plane when we landed.”

“Aye, cousin, I'm looking out for our family. Did she mention anyone she needed to call a lot or use the phone on the plane? They could've come on a commercial flight.”

Nothing stood out in his mind. She'd made a call right before they boarded to her mother, but she's been at his side ever since. In the penthouse, she'd accepted his explanation of the death of the three men without much resistance. Rubbing a hand over his face, Jonathan hated being suspicious of Kenya. His life had too many coincidences the last few weeks. Why kick him from her life then take him back so easily?

“Nae, Jamie, Kenya slept on my lap the entire flight, well after the first hour. If she’d been looking out for someone she did it in her sleep."

“Has she been alone since you arrived? Called someone? I’m trying to help, cousin.”

“I spoke with Fiona alone in the back hall and she went up to the room alone." He'd been arguing with Fiona, she could have made a call.

"How long was she alone?"

"She wasn't. According to Kenya, Mother and Judge met her the moment she stepped on the landing.” Jonathan thought about what he’d heard as he entered their suite, Kenya didn’t wanna tell him what she and his mother had spoken about. He blew it off as women talking. A breeze of the river rustled the dying grass and he lost his attention on Kenya stepping through the grass on the berm. His woman had better not betray him. 

“How about any family?”

“Her sister favors her, same nose with a darker complexion, but Morgan doesn’t support Kenya. I don’t believe she knows where Kenya is staying if she cared enough to even ask.” He paused. “Was the woman older? Maybe her mother or aunt? They were concerned with her coming on this trip. It bothered her they hadn’t backed her but she's never had their support, not her sibling's.”

“I’ll call Andrew to get more details.”

“Check with the front desk manager and get names of everyone checking in over the last twenty-four hours. Whoever she is, the woman had to check in to be on the grounds.”

“Brian drives his guest directly to his cabin, could be any woman."

That was nothing new. No love lost between his parents from what he’s been told, his parents were divorced before they got married. Brian had never like Sophie and Sophie despised Brian. But to bring the families land and possessions together the neighbors wrote up a marriage contract. 

“All right, let me know what you find out in the morning,” Jonathan ordered.

He watched his cousin walked down the crooked path around the lake until he disappeared behind the trees. Turning his attention to the shapely form at the top of the hill, he eased up behind Kenya wrapping his arms around her waist.

“Ready?”

“Everything okay?” she said, turning in his arms.

“It will be, don’t worry about it,” he urged before kissing her mouth. He led her up the berm. “Come over here and slip on one of these gloves.” They walked over to where his falcon's handler was exercising his bird and slipped the long leather glove up her arm to protect it from the sharp talons.

His prized bird, Red, swooped low then arched up anticipating the signal to land. Kenya’s body trembled the closer the bird came to landing on her arm and pride coursed through him. She held her ground on the ridiculously high heels. 

"Oh Lord, he's humongous, Jonathan, he'll break my arm."

Cuddling in closer, he braced his right arm under hers clasping her forearm in the leather glove. Crowding her hips, Jonathan cradled her between his legs.

“
Mo Ru’n
, he’s smaller than an American eagle.”

“We’re not in America and that’s not an eagle looking to land on my arm, Blakemore. From this angle that falcon looks like a 747 with talons.”

"Be still.” He grinned, brushing a kiss over her face. “He's a bird of prey, he'll carry you away, babe," Jonathan teased.

Kenya flinched, eyes wide and he couldn’t help laughing at his woman. “Great day in the morning, Jonathan! If he poops on me, you are so sleeping alone tonight…after you wash my hair.”

Red, his falcon, made a few passes overhead before his talons splayed out preparing to land. Kenya angled her face into his chest as the bird landed on her arm, had him laughing in her hair, something he was doing more and more of since meeting this woman.

"What's so funny, Blakemore? You said he'd carry me off. That's not funny, Jonathan," she berated, shaking her arm after he placed the bird on the perch.

"You don’t believe—"

"Of course not, just hurry and put the cap on him, so he's not freaked out."

"What do you know about—?"

"I know covering the eyes of certain predators calms their fight."

"Impressed, pretty lady,” he said with pride. She enjoyed the outdoors more than he’d imagined.

“How old were you when you touched your first falcon?” Kenya asked.

“Five. Learned to call him in at seven. Did you have any pets, Kenya?”

“No…I was the pet.” She folded her arms under her breast and walking in place as if waiting for a cab to pull up out of nowhere and take her away. What had he opened?

“You wanna tell me about it?”

“I guess everyone feels that way when they’re the youngest. Can we walk along the river before we go into the stables? I wanna see the salmon.”

Without a word he led her around the path to the grassy edge of the river. Kenya squatted low to the ground, brushing her dress beneath her hips and watched the fish swim in clusters. Jonathan squat down behind her, cradling her in his embrace. What had her life truly been like as a child to compare herself to a pet? Kenya was good at keeping secrets. What wasn’t she telling him and did she hold secrets just in her family or in every aspect of her life?

As the air fed the scent of the salmon off the lake, he thought of the farmers billed extra and his good mood left. Fiona had showed him the new bank account the fisherman and the farmers were depositing their money into and the attorney going MIA with millions of his family money, could feel the veins in his neck tighten.

Then it hit. Kenya worked with American and foreign banks. Replaying Jamie’s concerns in his mind, Jonathan’s stomach roiled. This lifestyle created an automatic suspicion for anyone claiming to help without a charge. Kenya’s raised questions of doubt he couldn’t shake. Had Kenya called anyone? Had she come to distract him from the family estate? If anything he’d expected Brian to have attempted to pay her to get him to walk away from his inheritance. Her entering his life had been too convenient for his taste. Just when Seamus is to sign over his shares of the estate this beautiful woman falls into his world. Maybe Brian set it up so Cedric would bring her to him. Ready and willing to be with him when she was not accustomed to men like him. If she were playing him, he would find out tonight. No woman would doop him, not even the beautiful, Kenya Claiborne.

Saddened that he held suspicion like a weapon, Jonathan walked Kenya around the lake and down the path to the back entrance to the stables. He pointed out all the places he played when he’d visited as a boy. The places he came when his parents fought and the tackle room which neither cared to be. They'd never found him in all those years. Remembering his childhood, he rubbed a hand along the worn boards, touching the reins hanging along the stable wall.

Sophie never made the trips just sent him along with Seamus and his gran. They’d fly up and ride back down with him until he could fly alone. When he arrived, Brian always made a point to tell him only girls needed someone to ride the plane with them. He hated that about the man, he thought, rubbing a hand over Kenya’s back. His father had taken him out, taught him falconry, and taught him to ride too. Hell, the evil man had even taught him how to swim. He always hated that his parents didn’t get along.

Brian was a scoundrel, but he would do unexpected things for Jonathan and confuse everyone. Jonathan declared when he was just a boy, he would be a better father than what he had, and his wife would never live away from their family. Here he was on his family estate with a woman he could see himself with and now he suspects she’s not what she says she is because Brian has made him suspicious of all women. Not only that, but Brian had gotten to her before they came down. Had she told him everything Brian said to her?

The cool air pushed Kenya’s dress between her legs, caressing the body he’d become mesmerized by. She wore such clingy clothes…to distract him? He fought the thought casting a slow gaze down over her.

The way she rocked side to side it was obvious she was uncomfortable in the high heels. Who wears heels to walk through the grounds of an estate? Jonathan thought back and never recalled telling her they were going to walk the estate only that he would take her to the whiskey vault in the jeep. This wasn’t his style, he didn’t operate this way. He needed to find out where she stood and if they stood together.

The large doors creaked as he led her deeper inside the second stable. Straw floated over the floor with every step they took, past his best horse, Max. Stroking a hand down the big boy’s nose, he had to get a grip on his growing doubts and anger. His chest tightened with every intake of her scent.

Inside the tackle room, Jonathan angled a hip on the well-worn desk, pulling her in between his legs. The strong scent of fresh hay and horse filled the room. Kenya’s gentle sweet scent still found his nose and he inhaled it like a drug, could smell a hint of her arousal beneath the surface of the candy.

He drummed his fingers along her waist eyeing the soft pulse at the base of her throat. He said nothing for what had to be a minute and just sat there watching her breathe.

“Honey, you okay?” Kenya asked, peering up, care and true concern in her words.

Here he stood questioning the very thing that drew him to her, her kindness. However, the niggling never left. Had she betrayed him?