Razed (Barnes Brothers #2)(96)

Not yet.

She went back to staring over the courtyard. He followed her gaze because if he kept staring at her, he was just going to haul her up against him and . . . do what? He didn’t know.

The courtyard might look desolate and deserted, but he saw it with a practiced eye, saw the promise of what waited.

He could do this. If he could get the loan. If he couldn’t get it on his own . . . he braced his shoulders. Hell. He’d do what he had to. He’d talk to his folks. Zach, if he had to. Pride wasn’t shit when it came to her. This was the one thing she’d let herself want— “I need to tell you about my father,” she said quietly, moving deeper into the courtyard.

Her words sliced through his own brooding thoughts and he jerked his head up, stared at her.

She wasn’t looking at him, her gaze focused now on the slowly darkening sky. “My dad was . . . well. Brilliant. Studied engineering. Wanted to make things. The problem was he didn’t have a focus on the things he wanted to make. He’d come up with a couple of different ideas—or improvements on current inventions—technology . . .” She glanced over at him. “I don’t have his brain. I don’t even completely understand the stuff he did. But he was smart. He’d already made his first million before he married my mother. That was why she went after him. She saw that he was going to be rich and she set out to twist him up. She did it. But then she got pregnant . . . she hadn’t planned on how not fun that would be. She wanted a nanny. He wanted a family.”

She turned to face him now. “She left before I was even two. She wasn’t happy about it, either. But she’d cheated on him and there was a prenup. Apparently, he’d offered her a lump sum if she just left. There was . . .” She paused, looked down. When she looked up at him, her eyes were vulnerable. “Seems he came home early from a business trip and I was locked up in a closet somewhere. I’d been crying, interrupting her me time. Rude of me, right?”

Zane curled his hand into a fist.

“After that, he told her she could take the money he’d offered her, or he’d see her in jail. She left, signed over custody. If he hadn’t died . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway. Right around the time my mom left, my dad and his partner came up with something pretty revolutionary. They’d founded a small camera manufacturing company and it was gaining a lot of attention.”

She walked closer, stopping to nudge at a loose stone with the toe of her boot. “They had a lens design that was apparently unique—something my father and his partner had helped come up with.”

Lens—

She looked up at him, a faint smile on her face. “My father’s name was Michael Lord.”

Michael Lord.

Otto Leonard.

Leoto—Zane felt poleaxed, standing there staring at her. “Son of a bitch.”

Now the smile split across her face. “Yeah.”

He turned away, swiped a hand down his face. “The first camera I ever owned . . . it was a Leoto. That was the one that had belonged to my grandpa. I used it when I took that picture of the owl. I still have it.”

“They last forever,” she murmured.

“The lenses . . .” He stopped. Then he narrowed his eyes. “The lenses were unique to that company—they held the patent.”

“Yep.”

“And Leoto was bought . . .” He stopped, scrubbed his hands down his face. “It was bought about ten years ago. For a very fat chunk of change.”

When he lowered it, she’d gone back to studying the house.

She glanced back at him. “I didn’t get it all. Otto was a full partner. They had bequests. But . . . yeah. I inherited. He’d left his estate to me. It’s why my mother came looking for me. She didn’t know he’d died until a few years after the fact. Paul Jenkins—I told you about him—he was the lawyer who handled the estate. She fought to get her hands on the money for a long time. It was a losing battle. My dad knew her very, very well.”

Zane looked up at the house, then back to her.

“So you’re buying this place.”

A serene smile curled her lips. “I am buying this place. And all the land surrounding it, if I can manage it.”

He squinted, decided he was glad he hadn’t mentioned any of the thoughts running through his head. As she came toward him, he went to pull her close, one hand coming around her waist, the other molding the back of her skull. “So I guess I get to be the first to hear the news, huh?”

“Yes.” She smiled and leaned in, pressing her mouth to his. “Although that’s not the only reason I’m telling you.”

She caught his hand and drew him over the patio that led up to the house. There, she leaned up against one of the columns, crossing her long legs at the ankle. Zane tried not to notice just how much leg was left bare under the hem of her snug black skirt, or how the boots rose to hug her legs to the knee. Only Keelie was crazy enough to keep wearing knee-high boots all throughout the year in Tucson, he thought. And able to pull off the look, too. He slid a hand down the satin length of her thigh—he had to touch her. Just touch, that’s all.

“I’m telling you,” she said quietly, “because this is the start of the life I want . . . for me.”

She bit her lip and tipped her head back to look at him.