Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(26)

His hand tightened beneath hers into a stony fist. She rubbed her palm over it, wishing she could comfort him. As she touched him, a memory flickered before her. A party. His mother saying something about a piano.

“Do you think she met her lover at a party? Your mom mentioned something once about a party with a piano.”

“You remember those kind of details?”

She nodded. “I have a ridiculously good memory. I remember her making a dress. I asked her what it was for, and she told me.”

“A party with a piano?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She nodded, then told him bits and pieces from a brief conversation she’d had with his mother in passing one afternoon. “I don’t know if that’s helpful, though.”

His expression seemed grateful. “It’s all helpful. Every detail matters.”

They finished lunch, and he walked her back to the shoot a few minutes early.

“I can’t wait to spend some time together in New York,” she said, cupping his cheek. His eyes blazed, and his breathing intensified from that simple touch. For a moment she felt powerful, eliciting that reaction in this strong, stoic man. She stood on tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

“I’m counting down the hours.” He’d said he had a dinner with a client that night, so the flight would be the next time she saw him.

Then, because she was feeling frisky, and because things had been one-sided so far, she pressed a hand to his flat belly through his shirt. “Don’t think I’m selfish. I’m not,” she said, whispering in his ear. “I want to taste you. I want you in my mouth. I want to feel you in my throat.”

He swayed closer, a sexy sigh escaping his lips. “You’re killing me,” he growled.

She wiggled an eyebrow, turned on her heel, and left with a spring in her step, knowing that tomorrow she’d come again.





CHAPTER TWELVE


His grandmother kept everything. Which meant it took him nearly an hour to find the box of photos from when he was sixteen. If his hunch was right, his mom had met Luke that year. He grabbed a shoebox from the top shelf in the garage, cluttered with tools, old toys, and clothes headed for donation.

“Found it?”

“I think so,” he said, tucking the box under his arm as he climbed down the ladder to join Victoria Paige, the woman who’d raised him and his brothers and sister after his mother went to prison.

“Let’s go inside and paw through it,” she said, gesturing to the door into the house. Michael had come straight there after lunch with Annalise.

They parked themselves on stools at the kitchen counter, and Michael took the top off the shoebox.

“What exactly do you think you’ll find?” his grandmother asked as she grabbed a thick handful of curled-up photos from nearly two decades ago.

He shook his head. “Honestly not sure, Nana. But I want to look to see if anything gives me a clue about that guy. Any photo at all. I know he had to have been involved somehow. It can’t be a coincidence that she was trying to run away with that man.”

She nodded resolutely. If anyone understood the drive to leave no stone unturned, it was Victoria. Michael had lost a father; she had lost her son. That loss tethered them more tightly than a grandmother and a grandson should be. Now they were driven by the same need—the one for justice.

What if it was in their grasp? What if there was a clue in the family photos? Annalise had said photos sometimes held surprises, that when she looked at them again, she’d find things she hadn’t noticed the first time. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but hell, if there was a speck of evidence under his nose, Michael wanted to find it. He wanted to know if there were any photos that would tell him about his mother’s relationship with Luke Carlton, and how it had played a part in his father’s death.

He flipped through picture after picture from that fateful year, from posed school photos, to shots of Ryan playing hockey, to pictures of Shannon dancing.

“Let me have that one,” Victoria said, grabbing at a photo of his sister on stage, leaping high. “I need to frame that and give it to her.”

Michael smiled and draped an arm around his grandmother, squeezing her shoulder. “She’ll love it.”

His sister didn’t dance after she tore her ACL in college. She’d become a world-class choreographer instead.

Michael and his grandmother thumbed through more pictures. Shots of dance recitals, pictures of sunsets, images of family barbecues, including one of his dad flipping burgers with his grandfather, then one with Michael standing at his father’s side, laughing together.

A lump rose in his throat, and his fingers lingered on that shot.

“I remember that day,” he whispered.

His grandmother’s eyes shined with wistfulness. “You do? Tell me more,” she said, resting her chin in her hand.

He shook his head, surprised at the clarity of the memory. “It was just an average Sunday in the fall. October, I think. Dad grilling with Grandpa. Nothing special. They were placing bets on whose barbecue sauce was better, and at some point the stakes were so crazy, we all cracked up. We were all there. Hanging out at your house. I think Ryan and Colin were watching college football, and Shannon was playing with the dog you had then.”

Victoria smiled widely, her eyes misty. “Rusty. He was a good dog. Your dad liked him. I can see it all now,” she said, then tapped the photo. “Why don’t I have this one framed, too?”