Jax rubbed his two-day-old scruff and tried not to look at temptation. “What would she find? I keep my ID with me. And the baggies from the mine are in here. You can sleep on them. I’ve checked for bugs—technical and entomological. The place is clean.”
“Your call.” She shrugged and tapped into her phone. “Huh, did you know it takes five-hundred years for one of those plastic baggies to decompose? That’s even better than a safe deposit box.”
Evie had sent Loretta and Roark home without her. And right now, with his head swirling in fifteen different directions, Jax was almost grateful she’d stayed. He’d be even more grateful if she showed any sign of interest in going to bed with him.
Instead, she and Loretta were entertaining themselves by exchanging text messages while the kid and Roark waited at the LA airport for their flight after their visit to Harry Potter. Roark needed to get back to work, and the desert wasn’t any place for a kid—unless they wanted to buy tents and dune buggies.
Jax had promised to drive his Subaru back across country as soon as he was done. He’d made an appointment for tomorrow to interview the attorney who had taken over Franklin Jackson’s practice. And after that, he had to attempt to find the box to match the brass key.
Evie, being Evie, had perceptively refused to leave him to deal with his discoveries alone. Jax didn’t know how he felt about that. He’d been looking after himself and his sister since he was twelve.
“Safe deposit boxes are lousy places to keep anything,” Jax muttered, while he used his laptop to dig through online files with the abysmally slow internet. “No one has safe deposit boxes anymore.”
But this was very definitely the key to one. And someone had buried it where even a gold prospector wouldn’t find it.
“Loretta says they’re boarding shortly. Want to text her before she goes? Now that your phone is working again,” she added dryly.
Right. The kid was being extraordinarily well-behaved and not protesting being sent home while her guardians remained behind. She was probably planning on burning down his office—except he didn’t have one anymore. Jax pulled out his phone and typedmake roark behave.
he bought me a wand xoxo
Jax thought those last letters were hugs and kisses, and they warmed his icy heart. He didn’t deserve them, but he sent her hearts and flowers in return. Loretta had been a neglected genius all her life and didn’t expect much from adults. He feared Evie’s off-the-wall family wasn’t much of an improvement, but they were at least family of sorts. He wasn’t.
“Will your sister mind looking after the kid for a few days?” Jax glared at Roark’s text, which included a middle finger. Did emojis even have middle finger salutes? He’d have to look someday. He returned to his laptop.
“Gracie’s a teacher and has time on her hands in summer. She has a kid to keep Loretta company. I promised Gracie a proper salary for being chief cook and bottle washer. They’ll be good. My main concern is Reuben and Roark alone in my basement. I hope I have a house to go back to.” Evie bounced off the bed and rummaged in her duffle. “If you’re spending the night on your computer, I’m getting in that tub.”
Working through his files, Jax tried to imagine what she’d wear in the spa. His eyeballs crossed. Evie had curves even a Renaissance artist couldn’t do justice to. She was simply too vibrant to be caught in oil. He thought his head might catch on fire.
He’d been celibate too damned long.
Telling himself she hadn’t offered an invitation, he continued digging into anything he could find on Aaron Ives, Franklin Jackson, the Ives Silica Mine, and Sovereign Machinery, the latter simply because he didn’t know where else to go with this.
He had a storyline worked out to give Jackson’s former law firm since, after all, he had a birth certificate showing that Jackson was his father—even if that photo proved he wasn’t. Probate had been filed twenty years ago, so he should be able to use his letters from the court to open the deposit box—provided it was in Franklin’s name and provided they’d guessed right about the enigmatic notations on the back of the circuit board.
All he found on Aaron Ives was that he’d grown up here, went to Stanford, and instead of getting rich in San Francisco, he’d returned to his family’s land, where his father had apparently ranched and prospected. Jax had already looked up the worthless property. Ives Silica Mining had disappeared with the mine collapse. He had a reported date of death from the obituary listing the victim’s only next of kin as deceased. Poor sot.
Except it must have beenFranklin Jacksonwho had died in that mine since Aaron Ives was very definitely the father Jax remembered.
And then, recalling Evie’s warning about Marge, he realized this was an unprotected internet connection and shut down. He really was losing his edge. As he knew from painful experience, it was much too easy to allow emotions to overrule the brain. Confirming that his father wasn’t who he said he was had shaken him.
He’d been twelve when his parents died in the car wreck. He had photos from that time period. And Jax knew he pretty much looked like the damned mysterious Ives and not Jackson, who’d been lean and small, with lighter-colored hair in the photo. Conan Oswin’s purported DNA connection to the Ives family added one more nail to the case he was building. Jax knew his square-boned face and size resembled Conan more than it did the pretty-boy lawyer in the photo.
Too exhausted to think, Jax stood and stretched. Evie hadn’t returned. He studied the California King bed Marge had provided. He could sleep in the Subaru as he’d been doing. But he’d like to share that tub...
Wine would be good about now, but he didn’t expect Evie to be drinking it. She didn’t even drink coffee. She was an ethereal being from another dimension, certainly not from the world he grew up in. He stepped out on the deck to where the blue lights under the water lit the yard. Evie was no more than a shadow against the night.
Knowing he was out of his mind to do so, Jax pried off his shoes and yanked off his sweat-dried shirt.
He stood over the tub as he unbuckled his belt. Evie opened one sleepy eye and murmured, “Finally.”
With that acceptance, he dropped his khakis and slid into the water with her.
She hadn’t opened the wine, of course. He left it unopened. Closing his eyes on temptation, he allowed the heat to soak into his sore muscles.
“Lust is a good color for you.” She nudged his toes.
Dutifully keeping his eyes closed, Jax let her steer his mind to the inane. Maybe meditation would calm his roiled thoughts. “What color is that?”