“Were they?”
That light faded from his eyes. “No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because Linus is very good at what he does,” Declan said flatly. “Which is why, when I applied for a job with Wynter Security, he was able to quickly learn the full truth about what happened to me in the past. A truth he has very kindly chosen to keep to himself because he says it has no bearing on whether or not I would make a good employee.”
“That makes Linus a good man.”
“It does,” Declan acknowledged.
She tilted her head. “What was his real reason for being in the apartment earlier?”
Declan gave her a nod of appreciation for her intuition. “He came to put away the photographs of Connall.”
“Because if I had seen them, I might have started asking questions.”
“Yes.”
“He really is a good man.”
“Yes.”
“Will you show me the photographs of Connall sometime?”
He swallowed. “Sometime. When the pain of this conversation has eased a little.”
“And Linus didn’t find any connection between Connall’s disappearance and that of Rufus’s daughter?”
“None,” Declan stated heavily, that disappointment still a living, writhing thing inside him. “But since then, he’s continued tosearch every avenue, legal and illegal, to see if he can find a single clue as to what might have happened to my son. And I do mean every avenue,” he added bleakly. “Including hacking the records of the groups of criminals around the world who abduct children for the sole purpose of selling them for profit, without a care for what happens to them after they’re sold.”
“Dear God, no!” Fawn gasped at the horror she obviously felt at what he was implying.
“He hasn’t found any evidence that’s what happened to Connall,” Declan quickly assured. “But neither have we found any evidence that he’s still alive and living somewhere safe and happy, but in complete ignorance of the father who has been searching for him for the past sixteen years.”
“But he could be doing exactly that,” she insisted.
“He could be, yes,” Declan conceded before admitting, “It’s only by clinging to that hope, whenever I dwell too much on those other heartbreaking options, that has kept me from going completely insane all these years.”
Fawn stood up, her amber gaze holding his as she walked purposefully toward him.
Declan watched her approach warily, his emotions already so raw, he had no defenses left.
He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue as she came to a halt in front of him and placed her hands on his chest. “What are you doing?”
The fullness of her lips curved into a smile. “I’m going to kiss you.”
Indignant resentment, white-hot and strong, surged through him. “I’m not interested in a pity fuck, even from someone I’m as attracted to as I am you.”
“That’s good, because you aren’t going to get one. It’s equally as good that you’re attracted to me, because I’m attracted to you too.” Fawn used her grip on his shoulders to pull herself up onto her toes before claiming his unresponsive lips with her own.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Declan triedto fight the desire that surged through him at the first touch of Fawn’s lips against his own. He really tried. But it was an attraction he had been fighting for the past four days, five including this one, and her lips tasted so delicious.
His arms moved about the slenderness of her waist to pull her body tightly in against his, at the same time as he gave a groan of capitulation and began to kiss her back with all the pent-up desire roiling inside him.
He was hungry, so fucking hungry for the taste and feel of this slender young woman, that those kisses quickly became a heated devouring. To the point that Declan lost all sense of time and thought as he bent Fawn back over his arm. Because only Fawn, kissing her, touching her, mattered to him in this moment.
