All Chapters of THE SILENT INHERITANCE: Chapter 41
- Chapter 50
85 chapters
Chapter 41
Max shrugged. “Been busy. K&A’s had a lot happening lately. Amanda had a few bad days, so I’ve been seeing her a little more often. Twice a week instead of once. She’s getting back to an even keel though. I also drove down to Houston and hooked up with Donny to take Jenny and Gayle and her kids to the Gulf for the weekend.” “Did Lewis or Charlie get a text from the neighbors, telling them their wives were stepping out with two good-looking young guys?” Max grinned. “Within twenty-four hours. They’ve got a good community watch in Gayle’s neighborhood. Charlie sent me a note, said I better have satisfied his wife, because she was a demanding wildcat in bed. I told him he didn’t need to come back. After having me, she considered him superfluous.” Dale chuckled. “I’m sure he had some choice words for that. They okay?”
Chapter 42
When he opened the limo door for her, a shaking had started deep in his belly and moved out to his arm, affecting the hand he extended to her. The episode came on him so suddenly, his body was drenched with sweat in a blink. He was about to jerk back, close the door in her face, try to pull his shit together. Hell, forget that, he was going to radio Wade and tell him they needed to send over another driver. He’d just lean on the door until his replacement got there, no Noaher how much she beat on the window. Before he could do anything as absurd as that, Dana had reached out, looking for his hand. Her fingertips brushed his thigh, an intimate touch that might have sent another woman recoiling with a stammered apology. Instead her palm flattened on him, registering how he was shaking. In the next blink, she’d slipped out of the car. He caught her arm by reflex, keeping her inside the shelter of the door and his body. To anyone loo
Chapter 43
Earlier, she’d trimmed the rose he gave her, put it in a glass on her kitchen table. It made him hurt, seeing that single rose, the swirl of dark-blood and vanilla colors. He fished out his keys, held them. Shaking his head, he put them back in his pocket, pivoted and headed back into the house. Things were silent. He passed the couch where they’d had their hot toddies, dozed. The blanket he’d draped over her was still rumpled from where it had folded around her. He took the stairs two at a time, paused where he’d kissed her. During that embrace, he’d thought about her generosity, a thought he knew was at odds with his behavior now. Now he went up the rest of the stairs, moved down the hall to the bedroom doorway. She’d moved. She was sitting in a chair by the window, her knees pulled up to her chest and feet curved over the seat edge. She’d donned a robe. Her head rested against the cushion, her fin
Chapter 44
That seemed important to her. She closed her eyes, her fingers stilling on the glass a long moment before she continued. “He’d brought his own vehicle, no driver. I remember him driving twenty miles without either of us saying a word. I looked at all the empty, flat land around us, nothing significant, but all of it U.S. soil. I looked down at my hands, and saw I still had blood under the nails, staining the cuticles. “It wasn’t until he pulled the car off to the side of the road and put his arms around me that I realized I’d started crying. It took me a couple hours to stop trembling.” She lifted a shoulder. “Shock.” She rose then. “I want you to go home now, Max.” What the hell? “No.” “Yes.” She met his gaze. “It’s not a request. I need the space. You wanted to get a sense of what’s going on betwee
Chapter 45
His fingertips slid into her hair, caressing the sensitive back of her neck. The sensation spread over her throat, her jaw, sending pleasurable signals to everything below those points. She slid her cold hands from the small of his back into his sweats, tunneling under his boxers to enjoy his muscular ass, which flexed beneath her grip. Banding his arm around her waist, he hiked her up his body, still keeping up with that kiss, teasing her lips with his tongue, a nip from his teeth. She curved her legs around his waist and hips and found herself solidly seated on a growing erection. She gripped his broad shoulders. “Yeah,” he muttered against her mouth. “That’s all for you, baby. Now. I need you now.” In answer, she took the kiss to a more violent level, biting his lip. His mouth opened to her so she could delve deep, taste him. He tangled his hand in her hair, pulling her back
Chapter 46
“Will you come visit my sister with me this week? I’d like for her to meet you, if she’s up to it.” She lifted her head, studied him. His expression said he wasn’t sure what had made him go down that road at this exact moment, but she had a distinct feeling he’d been thinking about offering her the invitation for a while. And that made her feel a variety of ways, not unpleasant. “Yes,” she agreed. “I’d love to.” All in all, it was a perfect morning. Eleven They’d showered at his place, which he’d warned her wasn’t much more than a hole in the wall, but the small size of the shower had proven to be a benefit beyond measure. For one thing, he knocked another pin out of the challenge she’d issued about impressing her. He’d taken her up against the wall, driving them both to orgasm.
Chapter 47
“Thank you.” She thought she’d covered that with enough concealer, but apparently she needed clown makeup with these men. She wanted to be horrified, but she’d known them too long…especially Noah. “I told him. About Mexico.” His gaze flickered. “He won’t abuse your trust.” “I know. Else I wouldn’t have told him. I’ve also learned that he and I have some things in common. Only that in his life, unlike mine, isn’t yet closed.” Not many people could read Noah Kensington, and even she had difficulty at times, but this time she caught it. “You know.” Noah nodded. His thigh muscles flexed as he rocked the chair back, his fingers tapping the table surface in a meditative fashion. “I do. I wish it was closed, that he would close it, but I also understand enough I can’t stand in his way. He won&r
Chapter 48
He held her gaze as if she’d said the words out loud. Lifting her hands, he pressed his mouth to them. Then he gave them one more squeeze and stepped out the door. After he was about ten paces down the garden path, Janet slipped out as well. She picked a bench set on a concrete pad encircled by a lovely rainbow of flowers and sculpted dwarf shrubs. As she settled, she watched him move toward a young woman in a blue dress, her dark hair cut to her shoulders. When she turned, Janet saw the curious vacancy in the gray eyes turn to a different kind of light. The way she walked toward Max, jerky and somewhat unbalanced when she got too fast, the listlessness of her left arm, showed the evidence of the brain damage, but the enthusiasm in her face was like a lit candle in darkness. “Max,” she said. “Max Max Max.” The tightening in her throat was unexpected, the sting of tears in her eyes. He’
Chapter 49
Some things worked out perfectly, other things went so wrong it was hard to imagine how they could have been any worse. And like he’d said, it was good and bad. A person just had to learn how to appreciate the one and survive the other. “How about I buy you some lunch, sailor?” she murmured. “That sandwich place off the highway looked pretty good.” He chuckled against her, lifted his head. As he did, she put her hands on his face, her thumbs passing over the dried tear tracks, her heart twisting anew at the sight of them. “That’s what my mom always said, if I came home upset about anything. There was nothing that a good meal couldn’t cure.” “For a teenage boy, I expect that’s true. And even more so for a big, strapping man with a healthy appetite. Just keep in mind I have a secretary’s salary.”
Chapter 50
The things he’d imagined her wearing—boots, corset, tight pants—were things he’d seen her don for this type of play in the past. Things that made any man’s imagination run to hot, wet dreams. Her outfit tonight definitely met that requirement, but it wasn’t something he’d seen her wear before. It was as if she’d worn it specifically for him. She wore a bikini top, the sides shaped so the garment lifted her small breasts and made them swell out and over, her cleavage deep and tempting a man’s tongue to tunnel there. The pale-yellow color showed the dark smudge of her nipples, the silky, thin fabric molding the points. A sarong wrap was tied at her hip, so her leg appeared bare all the way from waist to ankle. She wasn’t wearing anything under the sarong, unless it was a thong so small the strap was hidden beneath the knot of the fabric. She was barefoot, her hair down,