ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) by Glenna Sinclair Page A

tilted his head back, as his movements grew a little more fevered, as his hands clung to me, tugging my hips up higher even though they were already as close as I could get them. And then he opened his eyes, his gaze sliding over my face just before…I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stop the explosion that rocked through my lower belly. I cried out, my nails digging into the flesh of his back. He cried out, too, his cock swelling just slightly inside of me as he lost control of his body, as he filled me again with the potential promise of a life.
    When it was done, he lay back against the pillows, pulling me along with him. I curled up, my head against his chest. I closed my eyes, physically and emotionally exhausted. He, too, seemed to settle into something close to sleep. But then he ran his hand slowly down the length of my back.
    “Would you be okay here if I went out of town for a few days?”
    I nodded my head, as the ache of reality settled on my shoulders.
    I was stupid. So very stupid.

Chapter 15
     
    Ash
    I held David’s file on my lap as the plane took us to the hanger at an excruciatingly slow pace. I should be at the office, meeting with new clients, talking to old clients, trying to get to the bottom of the attack on Kirkland. Six weeks and nothing else had happened, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all related. That Donovan’s accident—the first he’d ever had, according to him—and Kirkland’s shooting had to be related. David thought I was paranoid. Kirkland had upset a lot of people in the three years we’d had him in our employ. Yet, if some jealous husband was going to come after Kirkland, he probably would have done it long ago.
    Rose was moving into Donovan’s old cottage this weekend. Mina had been working all week to get it ready. I needed to be there for that, too.
    And Mina…
    The look on her face when I left this morning haunted me. She wouldn’t even come and say goodbye to me in front of everyone else. She stood alone in the kitchen, Ford cooing in her arms. And that look…how did I explain this to her?
    How did I explain this to myself?
    I needed to know. It was as simple as that. I had to know if Alexi was alive or dead; I had to put the past behind me before I could move forward. And this trip was the only way to do that.
    I opened the file and looked at the pictures that had haunted me all these months. They wouldn’t haunt me anymore. I was going to know the truth, good or bad. And then I was going to move on with my life.
    ***
    I stood outside the elementary school and watched as parents talked among themselves, waiting for their children to be vomited out the main doors as the final school bell rang. A few cast long glances my direction, but most didn’t seem to think anything about the tall, muscular man leaning against a tree across from their children’s school. It was New York after all. Lots of odd creatures in this city.
    The relative quiet of the residential street suddenly exploded as the bell rang and the children, as predicted, came running out the front doors. I found myself watching the little boys, imagining dark-haired Ford carrying a dark blue backpack, the color of his eyes, running out the doors to jump into his mother’s arms. Or blond-haired Aidan, her eyes a darker green than mine, but petite like her mother, walking with a group of similarly dressed little girls as her father waited impatiently on the sidewalk.
    There was once a time when I couldn’t imagine a life filled with children. Now, it seemed like that was all I thought about.
    And then I saw her. She stepped out of the building, talking to a child who was clinging to her dark slacks, her dark hair turned red. No one would ever guess that red wasn’t her natural color, not with her pale skin and the spattering of freckles across her nose. Only I knew, and that knowledge tore me up inside.
    She walked the child to a tall, dark-haired woman who was clearly not the child’s