A Wicked Song - Lisa Renee Jones Page 0,60
Kace’s big hand closes around mine, and he starts walking, taking me with him. My heart is racing, our energy like a bouncy ball, volleying back and forth between us. Wordlessly, he leads me up the stairs and we don’t stop until we’re in his office, where the vault is set-up.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, opening the vault door and entering on his own.
I stand there a moment or two, waiting, my heart still racing. I begin to pace and I can’t take it. I enter the vault to find him standing next to a giant drawer that’s open and built into a wall. He’s facing away from me, leaning on the wall, chin to his chest, tension in his broad shoulders.
“Kace?”
He straightens and shuts the drawer before he rotates to face me. He crosses to halt just in front of me, the tension still in his shoulders also rippling along his jawline. “When I visited your father, I was with him for two full weeks.”
“You were? I don’t remember that.”
“I do. Every day of my life, in some way, be it conscious or not, I know he’s there. I connected in a way that I never connected to my own father. He was a man of honor. A man to admire. A man to aspire to please.”
“I know. He was. I—miss him often.” I touch his arm. “Tell me about the daisy in the wind.”
“After only a few days together, he told me that I was the true daisy in the wind, the only true daisy in the wind and that I must not ever forget that. We wrote a song together. It was the first song I ever wrote and I promised him I’d never use it for profit.” He hands me a sheet of music. “It’s called ‘The Daisy in the Wind.’”
I glance down at the song, my chest tightens. I read over the musical notes and glance up at him. “This is special. And it’s going to make me cry because it’s a part of you and him together, but I don’t understand why you’re as upset as you are right now.”
He repeats the text message. “Look for the daisy in the wind. Be careful or you’ll end up dead. Someone knows about the song. Someone knows I’m the daisy in the wind. Not ‘a’ daisy in the wind Aria. The message says, the daisy in the wind. Someone is trying to scare you away from me.”
“He told me the daisies represent our family.” I show him my ring. “That’s why I wear the ring. I didn’t know he called you the daisy in the wind. I wouldn’t know this meant you and why wouldn’t they just say beware of Kace?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that someone is playing a game with us. And our paths crossing again doesn’t feel like such a coincidence any longer.”
“What are you thinking?”
“You said your brother would never have left that letter for you to find. You also think someone has the security code to your building.”
“Which I didn’t change, I just realized, but where are you going with this?”
“I was always going to be at that auction,” he says. “And once you believed your brother might be there, so were you.”
My mind races with this possibility. “But why bring us together? To try to scare me away?”
“Maybe the same person who brought us together didn’t send you that text.”
“Who would want us together?” I ask.
“And who would want us apart?” he counters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Who would want us together?
Who would want us apart?
Kace and I are still in his vault with those questions hanging in the air when the doorbell rings.
“I don’t want that song given to Walker Security. I trust them, but I gave your father my word that I would show it to no one. I don’t know why that mattered to him the way it did, but it did. You are the only person I have ever shown it to.”
I offer it back to him and close my hands over his. “I believe you were supposed to show it to me just as much as I believe I’m supposed to give it back to you.”
He studies me for a long few beats, an emotion I cannot name in his stare. “The drawer is unlocked and the song is labeled as ‘daisy.’”
It’s an obvious invitation for me to go into the files and pull that song out anytime I wish, but he doesn’t wait