Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Bex laughed. “You never noticed?”
“Usually looking at the food.” I set her coffee in front of her and let my gaze travel slowly over her. “This morning, I had a better view.”
“Can’t complain about the view from over here either.” A grin slipped onto my face, and she paused with her mug halfway to her mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that before.”
“Never had a reason to before now.”
Her eyes brightened. “I’m just going to go ahead and assume that reason is me.”
“Thought that was pretty clear, baby. Now stop distracting me so I can make you breakfast.”
Her laugh followed me as I cooked, warming a room I’d never considered cold before she entered it. She searched through the tote beside her stool, frowned, then checked the side pocket again. “I can’t find my charger.”
“Side pocket of the smaller suitcase.”
She sighed. “That would be more useful if the suitcase wasn’t upstairs.”
I opened a drawer by the pantry and retrieved one of the charger cables I kept stored there. Then I plugged one end into her tablet and the other into the outlet at the end of the island.
Bex’s eyes were warm when she murmured, “Thank you.”
I shrugged and began plating our meal, my mind already shifting to make a mental list of tasks I needed to complete. Most of them centered around making Bex feel like this house was her home.
After breakfast, I led Bex down the rear hallway to the part of the house I used most when I wasn’t sleeping. The study came first, a broad room with built-in shelves, two deep leather chairs, a large desk facing windows overlooking the back of the property, and a long worktable positioned beneath them. I handled household security, personal accounts, reading, and anything else that didn’t need to disappear behind steel in there, while the reinforced door set into the far wall led to the secure office housing Black Castle systems, club intelligence, and information belonging to people who trusted me to keep it buried.
Bex stepped farther into the study, turning slowly as she took in the shelves and the security monitor mounted beside the windows. Her attention eventually caught on the biometric lock built into the reinforced door across the room. “What’s through there?”
“My secure office. Black Castle and club systems.” I placed her class materials on the worktable and met her curious gaze. “Nobody goes through that door but me, Stryker, and Hawkeye.”
“That explains why it looks capable of surviving a siege.”
I moved the chair at the window out for her, then opened my hardened laptop at the opposite end of the table. Sitting at my desk, across the room from her, felt like too much distance between us. “Use whatever space you want.”
Her brows rose as she looked from the chair to me. “In here?”
“In the whole house.” I leaned one hand against the table and held her gaze. “You don’t ask permission to use a room, move something, or change anything that doesn’t work for you. That door is the only exception because the secrets behind it aren’t mine alone.”
Warmth filled her hazel-green eyes before a mischievous smile curved her mouth. “You realize I have opinions about your kitchen.”
“Fix it.”
Her laugh changed the room before she’d added a single thing to it. “That is a dangerous amount of freedom to give me.”
“You’re not a guest, Bex. I brought you home.”
The humor sifted out of her expression as my words landed. Then she smiled as she carried her tablet to the end of the table nearest the windows, spread her notes across the dark wood without asking another question, and tucked one foot beneath her while she settled in. I took the opposite end, satisfied to have her inside my line of sight while we worked.
The study’s household terminal gave me access to every camera and sensor on my property, along with the sanitized feeds covering the public approaches beyond it. The previous night’s alert had produced no physical breach, so I widened the search.
The outermost camera sat where the private road joined the county route, and I skimmed the footage from the night before until I spotted a dark SUV entering the turnout before it stopped, facing our access road. The driver killed the headlights but remained there for almost six minutes, long enough to study my security and decipher whether it had increased after Bex moved in.
I enlarged the footage for a closer look. The rear plate had been deliberately obscured beneath a dark cover, leaving only the final number visible in the moonlight. A crack split the left taillight, and one side of the rear bumper carried a pale scrape that might narrow the vehicle if it appeared on another camera.
By the time the SUV pulled away, I’d determined that whoever sat behind the wheel had been scouting the approach, although I couldn’t yet prove whether the vehicle triggered the alert or merely arrived to watch what happened afterward.