The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(49)
Author: Catherine Mann

But she locked it. Always.

“Hell.” With a vicious shove, Ethan rolled his chair back and shot to his feet.

“Ethan!” Kelly shouted at his bare back, flinging her tangled sheet aside before chasing him. Modesty would have to take a back seat to speed and keeping Ethan from rushing headfirst into heaven-only-knew what. “Find out who it is first.”

Ethan bolted toward his bedroom. “Didn’t put a camera in your room out of some damned stupid sense of honor,” his voice jabbed at the air, lowering as he darted into his room, “emotional crap that gets people killed.”

Kelly trailed him just as Ethan jammed his legs into a pair of sweats. She yanked on her tights, grabbed one of Ethan’s T-shirts from the floor.

He pulled his 9mm off the dresser. “Stay here.”

“Like hell I will.” She dug in the bag she’d taken with her to her workout, beneath her CD player, her hand closing around the grip of her SIG-Sauer. Her constant companion since Ethan had startled her that first time in the greenhouse.

She sped down the stairs on bare feet, through the great room, just catching the door before it swung closed after Ethan. Damn, he was fast.

She should have been on guard.

But she’d been too caught up in Ethan. Herself. How they felt together.

She tore through the garage, into the hall leading to the back stairs into the main house. He’d been so right about staying apart to keep objectivity. Now she had all those images of him as a little boy, not just the playful images, but also ones of him hanging by his seat belt for hours, staring down at his dead mother.

Had his tears fallen onto her body?

Kelly gasped past a hitch in her side that had nothing to do with running through the endless corridors or the minor aches to her newly loved body. Dimmed lights cast shadows along her path, offering cover for someone to lurk. Her hand clenched around her weapon.

Lush Persian rugs padded her steps. Framed landscapes and portraits marched along the walls, so far her only companions.

She rounded the corner. Ethan stood with his back flattened to the wall beside her door. A crystal sconce slashed yellow light across the hard planes of his face. He lifted a finger to his mouth.

As if she needed reminding.

She plastered her back to the wall on the other side of the door, the flocked wallpaper tickling her arms. Ethan gripped the knob, turned, slowly, until the door creaked open.

Silence.

Ethan swung around into the doorway, gun drawn. Kelly’s heart thudded while she waited as backup, staring at his bare chest, such a broad and vulnerable target.

Silently, he gestured all-clear. She followed him into her room, the soothing blues and pewter grays offering no comfort now.

Light sliced across the carpet in a slim line from the door to her private bathroom cracked open a couple of inches. The beam flickered across the plush carpet as someone moved inside the bathroom. A slight figure in a lime-green sweat suit hovered over the tub.

Adrenaline singed Kelly, along with a hefty kick of anger. How dare anyone break into her room? Invade her privacy?

Ethan crossed the room with pantherlike grace and silence. Before Kelly could more than blink, he kicked open the door.

The figure whipped around.

Kelly stopped. “Brittany?”

Brittany screamed.

Her hands shot behind her back. A bottle thumped to the floor. Kelly’s shampoo bottle spun like a kissing game gone mad, liquid splattering the walls.

Dripping.

Eating the paint from powder-blue walls.

Kelly shivered. Suddenly the cellophane treatment didn’t seem so torturous after all.

Ethan advanced, gun by his side. “What the hell’s going on here?”

Brittany’s belligerent gaze flicked from half-dressed Ethan to Kelly in Ethan’s shirt. The teen’s eyes filled and her chin quivered. “I thought you were doing your Pilates stuff.”

“She was,” Ethan answered, defying Brittany to argue. “And what were you doing?”

“I was helping you realize how wrong she is for you,” the teen whined. Brittany collapsed to sit on the edge of the garden tub, blinking back tears. “It wouldn’t have actually hurt her.”

Ethan’s set jaw broadcast that he wasn’t as forgiving. “Like the weights? Or the Jacuzzi temperature?”

Brittany stared at the floor and flipped the corner of a bathmat with her toe.

While they were on a confessional roll, Kelly went for the whole shebang. “Did you really think you could get away with following him without our noticing?”

Brittany shrugged. “I only wanted to see where you lived when he went to pick you up that day, and maybe check out what you did sometimes. I couldn’t believe it when Miss Williams announced he was bringing a woman here. So yeah, I followed you and messed with the hot tub. Big deal.”

Sympathy tweaked Kelly. Fried hair seemed a pretty juvenile prank from a kid with an adolescent crush, and she knew too well how crush-able Ethan Williams could be.

The teen gripped the edges of the marble tub. “I wasn’t really gonna hurt you or anything. I just wanted him to see what a klutz you are.”

Kelly’s kinder feelings disappeared faster than the paint under Brittany’s toxic shampoo mix.

“I mean, like, really.” Brittany rolled her eyes. “What does he see in you?”

The girl just didn’t know when to quit.

Echoing from the hall, shouts and footsteps saved Kelly from answering. Not that she knew the answer.

The bathroom door swung wide, Eugenie silhouetted in surprisingly sedate blue silk pajamas, the butler and cook standing behind her. “Oh, my.” Eugenie’s eyes assessed Ethan and Kelly side by side, then Brittany, finally landing on the peeling paint. Her face hardened. “Oh, my.”

“Exactly,” Ethan snapped. “Kelly, you were the one she was after so you’re the one to decide. What do you want to happen to her?”

Brittany whimpered.

Kelly mentally flipped through options. Could all of those incidents really be that simple? Or was Brittany linked to someone else? If so, she likely occupied the low rung on the ladder. In which case the best thing would be to let her go and have her followed.

As much as Kelly relished the idea of seeing the spiteful twit carted downtown and deloused, she knew what to do. “Let her go.”

And get to the nearest secure phone ASAP.

Ethan nodded.

He’d been testing her, and she’d passed. A rush of pleasure surged through her greater than when she’d aced her graduate proficiencies.