Page 9 of The Final Gambit

After a long, torturous moment, Grayson looked past me to Eve, emotion etched in every muscle of his jaw. I wasn’t sure how much of his torment was because he thought I considered him weak and how much of it was her. Either way, Grayson didn’t hide from his pain this time. He walked toward Eve, letting it come, like a shirtless man stepping out into freezing rain.

Eve stared at him. She must have felt the intensity of the moment—of him—but she shook it off. “Look, I don’t know whatthisis.” She gestured in the vicinity of Grayson’s face. “But it has been a really long week. I’m filthy. I’m scared.” Her voice broke, and she turned to me. “So are you going to invite me inside and let your security goons figure out what happened to Toby, or are we just going to stand here?”

Grayson blinked, like he was seeing her—Eve—for the first time. “You’re hurt.”

She looked at him again. “I’m pissed.”

I swallowed. Eve was right. Every second we spent out here was a second that Oren and his team were focused on safeguarding me instead of finding Toby.

“Come on,” I said, the words like rocks in my throat. “Let’s go back to the House.”

Oren opened the back passenger door of the SUV. Eve climbed in, and as I followed, I wondered if this was what Pandora had felt like the moment she opened the box.

CHAPTER 8

Ilet Eve use my shower. Given the number of bathrooms in Hawthorne House, I recognized that decision for what it was: I wanted her where I could keep an eye on her.

I neglected to consider the fact that Jameson was still in my bed. Eve didn’t seem to notice him on her way to my en suite, but Grayson did—and Jameson definitely noticed Eve. The moment the bathroom door closed behind her, he swung his feet over the side of the bed.

Shirtless.“Tell me everything, Heiress.”

I searched his expression for some hint of what he was feeling, but Jameson Hawthorne was the consummate poker player. Seeing Eve had to have provoked some kind of emotion in him. The fact that he was hiding it hit me every bit as hard as the way that Grayson couldn’t tear his eyes from the bathroom door.

“I don’t know where to start,” I said. I couldn’t make myself say the wordsIt’s Toby.

Jameson crossed to me, his strides long. “Tell me what you need, Heiress.”

Grayson finally pried his gaze away from the bathroom door. He bent, snatched an undershirt off the floor, and tossed it at his brother’s face. “Put on a shirt.”

Somehow, the comically disgruntled look that Jameson shot Grayson wasexactlywhat I needed. I told the two of them everything that Eve had told me. “Eve wasn’t able to give Oren a lot of details,” I finished. “He’s putting together a team to run recon on the abduction site, but—”

“They’re unlikely to find much at this point,” Grayson finished.

“Convenient, that,” Jameson commented. “What?” he said when Grayson’s icy eyes narrowed. “I’m just saying that all we have right now is the story of a stranger who showed up on our doorstep and talked her way inside.”

He was right. We didn’t know Eve.

“You don’t believe her?” Grayson wasn’t normally the type to ask questions when the answers were already apparent, so this one came with an undercurrent of friction.

“What can I say?” Jameson shrugged again. “I’m a suspicious bastard.”

And Eve looks just like Emily, I thought. Jameson wasn’t unaffected by that. Not by a long shot.

“I don’t think she’s lying,” I said.That wound.

“You wouldn’t,” Jameson told me softly. “And neither,” he told Grayson in a very different tone, “would you.”

That was clearly a reference to Emily. She’d played them both, manipulated them both, but Grayson had loved her to the end.

“You knew.” Grayson stalked toward Jameson. “You knew she was out there, Jamie. You knew that Toby had a daughter, and you didn’t say a word.”

“Are you really going to lecturemeabout secrets, Gray?”

What’s he talking about?I’d never said a word to Jameson about the things that his brother had admitted to me in the dark of night.

“At a minimum,” Grayson enunciated, his voice soft and deadly, “we owe that girl our protection.”

“Because of the way she looks?” Jameson threw down the gauntlet.