a heart condition. I also put a couple of top-notch investigators on him to dig up as much as they could in an afternoon. It does look as if he’s considering retiring. He’s moved the bulk of his money, all legitimately his, into his offshore accounts. It looks as if he’s been having meetings with the man he would have take over for him.”
“You believe he is retiring?”
“He’s taking the steps toward it. Careful ones,” Sam acknowledged, turning them around, taking them back in the direction of the house. “He was looking into real estate here and he really has met a woman he seems to like. This one is closer to his age and doesn’t seem to be interested in his money, although it’s too soon to tell. It appears he was telling the truth about those things.”
“You’re taking a wait-and-see policy with him, aren’t you?” Stella guessed.
“I advised him to hire a very good security firm and gave him the name of one. I have friends I know who are excellent bodyguards. It’s up to him whether or not he listens. Raine’s father should have hired guards. Just because you retire doesn’t mean you’re out of the game. You still have a lot of knowledge. The feds can still decide to come after you. It isn’t like in the old days where there are shoot-outs all the time, but that doesn’t mean criminal activity isn’t taking place. It’s just conducted behind the scenes and the families look very legitimate and stay as low-key as possible. No one wants to draw attention to themselves. So, killing an old man who is living up in the Sierras by putting a bullet in his head would be stupid. Arranging an accident would be easy.”
He opened the door for her and allowed her inside. Before she got very far, his palm curled around the nape of her neck and he pulled her to him, his eyes dark with heat. Her heart immediately accelerated. His mouth descended slowly, in a way that always said she had the choice to stop him, but only made her burn hotter for him.
Then he was kissing her and everything disappeared but Sam. He could make her boneless in seconds, her body melting into his, her mind fading so there was only feeling, this sensation of free-falling, of fire in her veins and that ball of need building in her stomach and in her sex. He lifted his head and gently kissed both eyes and then the corners of her mouth and her chin, giving her time to find the strength to stand on her own again.
“You must be overheated with all these clothes on. Take them off and wait for me in bed. I’ll just be a minute taking Bailey out.”
That gruffness in his normally gentle voice was the only thing that told her he was as affected by their kiss as she was. That and his hard body pressed so tightly against hers. A little dazed, she nodded up at him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mommy, Daddy’s doing the bad thing again.
Stella could see the climbing shoes and gear, ropes and even the edge of a backpack where it lay against a smaller rock. The shoes moved and the base of the boulder came into view. There was an overhang right at the bottom of the granite that seemed to be hollow for a long distance. She immediately knew she had climbed it— or tried to. The reason her memory was so vague was because she’d only gone there once. The boulder had been far too difficult— and high— for her skill set.
She tried to push her memories away and concentrate on what she was seeing. She needed to catalogue every detail, to make certain she got this right. Colors swept up the rock. Reds and dark grays, light yellows and golds, this rock had all the colors of granite with the early morning sun beating down on it. She even caught glimpses of a deep purple in the cracks as the two men paced across the ground, looking upward.
The boulder was very high. When one of them turned slightly and the lens followed that sweep, she caught sight of a second boulder, almost as tall with a jagged top. Both were wide and long. They looked as if they would be a climber’s dream— and nightmare. Neither would be an easy climb, but few boulderers would pass up the chance to work out the problem of ascending to the