Page 111 of Ruthless Enforcer

A quiet, breathless laugh escapes her throat. She leans her shoulder into mine, the warmth of her body sinking through the wool. “Behave yourself, Gabriel. I want them to buy my paintings, not run screaming.”

“I’m on my best behavior, Duchess. I haven't threatened a single person since we walked through the door.”

"Your glare is threat enough."

So is my gun, and the men I have posted outside the gallery. They’re just more silent than my glare.

We stop in front of the painting she did of my hands. Seeing it here, with all these people around, feels like she's cracked open her ribs and hung the contents on a gallery wall.

“You know,” I murmur, slipping my hand into hers, “most women just tell a man how they feel.”

Clara glances up at me. “Where's the fun in that?”

A distinguished-looking couple is standing three feet away, murmuring in hushed, reverent tones about the extraordinary brushwork of this elusive Claire Laurent woman nobody has ever seen in person.

Clara and I exchange a knowing look. Her green eyes are bright, glowing with a fierce, quiet satisfaction that makes my chest ache with something far too big to name. She isn't bitter about the secret. She’s savoring it. She brought this entire room to life with her bare hands, poured her soul onto linen and wood, and she’s standing in the center of the storm, untouchable and triumphant.

I lean down until my lips brush the shell of her ear. “It’s brilliant, Clara.”

A soft shiver runs through her bare shoulder. She turns her face slightly, her gaze locking on mine with an intensity that hits me right in the gut. “You made it possible by making me a studio.”

“Best manual labor of my life.”

She smiles—that rare, unguarded smile that she only gives me—and reaches up to straighten my lapel. “I need thirty seconds to use the powder room and fix a hairpin. Don't start a turf war while I’m gone.”

“Twenty-nine seconds,” I correct mildly. “At thirty, I’m kicking down the ladies' room door.”

She rolls her eyes, amusement dancing in her expression, and turns toward the private corridor leading to the executive offices and restrooms near the back of the building.

I watch her walk away, tracking the sway of emerald silk and the clean line of her spine.

As soon as she slips around the partition wall, the warmth in the room evaporates.

It’s not paranoia. It’s the cold, prickling sensation at the back of my neck that has kept me breathing through fifteen years of Reyes family business.

The fire at Turner Ranch was too neat. The cellar collapse was too fast. We found scorched bones and a crushed skull in the basement rubble, but Mason didn't have positive visual confirmation before the explosion, and the medical examiner’s conclusion isn’t conclusive enough.

A man like Cole Turner doesn't burn to death in his own cellar if he has a crawlspace or a drainpipe.

My phone gives a single, sharp vibration in my breast pocket.

I pull it out.

Hendricks

Found a secondary French drain under the cistern at the Turner Ranch and a subsurface breach into the north dry creek.

I’m betting he wasn’t in the collapse.

A second text immediately follows.

Hendricks

We traced his vehicle into Bozeman forty minutes ago.

Mandy and I are on-site.

Rear freight dock, behind the gallery.