"I don't want grandchildren out of wedlock."
Okay, now she was leaving. "Thank you, Mom. Talk to you next week."
Turning on her heel, she fled from the room before their decent moment was wrecked or Dora could say any more about sex.
Ace paced the front yard. As she came out onto the porch, he turned to glare at her with wild eyes.
"If I had known Grayson was your uncle, I'd have begun with him. Now, we've wasted time."
Ace ran a hand over his hair.
Alice rolled her eyes. She'd gone from one crazy person to another, evidently. "I didn't know you needed to know he was my uncle."
"This is part of the problem with having you not talk about anything."
Now that wasn't fair. "Am I supposed to start with my birth? With the birth of my brother?
What part of my life should I start talking about and then I'll give you my personal history from there? Hell, maybe you could write it down for me. Ever think of being a biographer?"
"Ah, goddamn it, Alice." Grabbing her hand, he pulled her to him. "We have to get back to New York City and interrogate your uncle before he has time to disappear."
Disappear? That wasn't likely. She paid him way too much money for doing very little for her. "Ace, do you think it's possible you're getting a little too upset about this?"
"Do you think it's possible you aren't upset enough, considering you are the one The Mask is attempting to kill?"
She needed to do a better job of making her point. "Look, I have no doubt Grayson is capable of doing really bad things. Why would he hire you if he'd also hired The Mask?"
"I'm not sure. That's something we have to find out."
Without warning, he took off into the sky with her in his arms. They'd been flying about five minutes when he finally spoke again. "You might be right. It's entirely possible my reaction may become increasingly aggressive. You don't need to fear me; I would never harm you, but please do tell me if I get out of hand."
"Is this that problem you have? The reason you initially had to live with Draco.”
“Yes. Why am I not surprised you remember that?"
"We just had the conversation yesterday. I don't have dementia."
He laughed and because she couldn't help herself she touched her hand to his mouth. He kissed her hand so she quickly pulled it back. Her fingers tingled.
"I guess I was hoping you blocked it out.”
“Nope." She grinned. "Sorry."
"I have a lot of pent up aggression. My body makes too much adrenaline and I've found ways to get it out."
The wind flapped at her hair and she grinned, snuggling closer to Ace. This was a good excuse to be pressed up against him and not have to worry about it. If she ever went to therapy, she'd have to look into the reasons why she wanted to be held so badly.
No, she silently corrected, she didn't just want to be held. She wanted Ace to do the holding.
Ace—a paid Guardian with his strong muscles and his ridiculously long hair. Who would have figured?
"What are the things you usually do?"
"Exercise usually works, but lately, it's taking more and more of that, and sometimes it doesn't help at all."
That was bad news. She bit down on her lip. "What else helps?”
“Music. Very, very loud techno music in dance clubs."
She pulled back to look at his face. "You're kidding?”
“No. I'm not."
That didn't sound very relaxing. "How does that work? Doesn't it get you more pumped up?"
He shook his head. "No, there is something about the intensity of the music. The beat, the boom—boom—boom. It really works for me."
"So those are your two options? Exercise your brains out or hang out in a dance club?"
"There's also sex."
She rolled her eyes. He was, after all, male. She shouldn't be surprised. "Is that how you justify having so much of it?"
"How do you know how much sex I have? I haven't had sex since we met.”
“That woman, the one who watched Lael over the monitor, she's pretty pissed at you. Did you sleep with her?"
His face fell. Gone was the easy banter, replaced by Ace's serious expression, the one where his eyes went cold. She wished she hadn't asked the question.
"I don't discuss who I sleep with. All I will say is that where Michelle is concerned, it was certainly not my finest decision."
"Because she's your employee?"
He nodded. "Because she works for me."
She put her head on his chest again, listened his heartbeat. She hated the thought of Ace sleeping with a lot of random women. No, he was the kind of guy who should come home every night to the same one. His woman should know what his trigger points were; she should have spent so much time with him she knew what to say, what would make him upset, what could make him laugh.
If she was truly honest, she didn't want him sleeping with anyone but her. Her eyes almost bulged out of her head at the thought. Here she was, at five thousand feet in the air, and she couldn't run away. She had to deal with what she felt.
She wanted to sleep with Ace. So badly.
"Sex is complicated. I'm very strong. I can't really lose myself with every woman I'm with. I might hurt them. It's a rare woman who can enjoy sex with me if I don't contain myself the entire time we're together.”
“You could hurt her?"
"No, I mean, not really. She just wouldn't like it very much. I learned to control myself. But, controlled sex doesn't take the edge off, so to speak."
"There are women out there who could handle you?”
“A few. Very few."
Great, so now she had to grapple with the fact that she wanted him and he wanted her. That much was obvious if for no other reason than the butt groping from the night before, and they might not be compatible enough for him to really enjoy it. She swallowed. What if he did though? Would he want to continue to have relations with her simply to take care of his adrenaline problem?
"Why didn't you keep the girls who could? Why didn't you continue to date them? Marry them?"
"Alice." His smooth voice worked like a balm on her frayed nerves. "You don't marry someone because they can handle you physically. My parents did that. It was a disaster and ultimately he left. I would rather hold back sexually for the rest of my life and marry a woman I
loved than stay with someone because we fit well together."
She closed her eyes. She didn't want anything more to do with this conversation. It was making her too prickly, too worried about things she had no business worrying about. She needed to steer it back on safer ground.
"Have you tried meditation or yoga?"
"No, I can't imagine sitting there so still and doing nothing."
"Yoga is not still. It's hard, it's controlled movements. As for meditation, sitting still and controlling your adrenaline might be what you need. Unless you think you can sit all day in a dance club."
Opening her eyes, she looked at the blue of Ace's t-shirt. He smelled awesome, like laundry detergent, soap, and cinnamon, all clean scents.
It was time to regain her perspective. When this was over, she'd go back to her world—the filming, the traveling, the writing—and he'd go back home to his family and continue to help people with their problems.
Ace Hudson, even if she wanted him, would never work in the controlled boxes she used to make her world work.
Chapter Seven
Maybe they needed to wait before they went to question her uncle. Ace cracked his neck as he considered his options. He was really on edge. One false word from Grayson and Ace might shove the son of a bitch through a wall.
Glancing at Alice as they rode to her uncle's top floor penthouse apartment, he saw none of his anxiety reflected back at him. He wanted to swear. He'd told the woman to trust him and now she did. Only she didn't realize that if he didn't get his adrenaline out in the next few hours she was going to be dealing with a raving lunatic.
&nbs
p; He had to speak. "If it ever gets to the point where I can't control myself, where the aggression becomes too much, Draco will take me and lock me up. If they can't solve it, he'll make sure I never harm anyone again." Including himself but he wasn't going to share that little factoid with Alice right now.
She stared at him with confusion radiating in her gaze. "Are we talking about that again?"
He hadn't been totally done speaking about it earlier when she'd closed her eyes and leaned on his chest, falling asleep in his arms. He wasn't going to complain. He'd loved holding her like that. Given the chance, he'd do it again. Given, however, his current amount of pent up energy, he needed to tell her what had to be done.
He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to her. "This is Draco's information. He's on his honeymoon in the South Pacific. He could be here in an hour if he flew fast. Don't call him unless I lose my mind. He's the only one who can restrain me."
She reached up to touch his cheek with her soft hand. "Are you feeling all right?
Do you need to go somewhere to feel better? Somewhere with some music, maybe?"
"We'll talk to Grayson. Then I'll drop you at home and come back when I'm better in control."
She bit her lip, her chestnut-colored eyebrows pointing down in concern. "Are you sure?"
"I'm fine." He hoped.
The door opened right up to Grayson's apartment. "He owns the floor? How much do you pay him?" No one lived like that in New York City.
She sighed. "If he's sent a hit-man after me, apparently he doesn't think it's enough."
"Honey, if he sent someone after you to kill you, he's dead where he stands."
Ace knocked on the door. Loudly. The doorman had called upstairs to announce their arrival so it wasn't like Grayson didn't know they were coming. The fact that he wasn't standing there waiting for them was rude, considering everything Alice was going through.
If Ace hadn't needed her to help him deal with Grayson, he would have left her at home. As it was, his head throbbed as he monitored each and every electrical device in the building.
The door swung open and Grayson stood in front of them. He held a drink of what smelled like bourbon in one hand and a revolver in the other. Ace was more interested in the gun.
Faster than Grayson could see, he pushed Alice behind him into the elevator and ordered the machine to take her down to the first floor and stay there. She screamed as she realized what was happening, but the doors had already closed. They wouldn't open again until he instructed them to. Or until someone managed to break through them with a crowbar.
"Going to shoot me, Uncle Gray?"
He deliberately used Alice's name for him, or rather, the name she was no longer allowed to use since, in the sick workings of Alice's life, business trumped family. At least for her family.
"I didn't mean for this to happen."
Ace stepped into the apartment. With no time to admire the grandeur of the place, he did note the very large, wall-sized window across the room with a view of New York City behind it.
"Why don't you put down that gun and we can talk like men?"
Grayson's hand shook. Ace really didn't think he was going to shoot him. Truth was, he couldn't get out of the way of a bullet. He wasn't that fast. Some of the Guardians he employed could. It would be no problem for Lael to dodge a bullet; the kid was so fast it was almost off the charts. Ace, however, had long since determined his strengths and weaknesses. Speed was not his strongest suit. He was going to have to talk Grayson down or get the gun away from him.
"You'll never believe me. I'm not going to jail."
Ace shrugged, as if adrenaline didn't race through his veins—though it did.
"I'm not the police. It's not my call whether or not you go to jail. It's up to Alice if she wants to press charges or not."
He silently sent a call to the elevator still holding Alice hostage. It was still as he'd left it, safe and closed, although he could feel The Mask pushing at his command instructions to attempt to
get the elevator to move. Unlike earlier, The Mask wasn't putting much effort into his attempt.
That factor caused Ace concern. Why was The Mask being so easy about it? Still, that was something to contemplate later and he couldn't be lax and assume the attempted mechanical takeover of the elevator would remain easy to handle.
This discussion with Grayson couldn't go on indefinitely. "Alice hates me."
Ace shook his head. "She doesn't. She's a tough lady with a lot of walls to climb over, but she loves her family even if she doesn't understand them. That much is obvious."
"I didn't hire anyone to kill her."
"Then why does the lunatic who is all over the television screen say you did?"
Grayson dropped the gun on the floor. It hit with a thud and Ace took a protective step back, worried it might go off by accident. He stared at the gun for a second before running for it.
Picking it up, he stared at Alice's uncle. He looked like he'd aged ten years in two days.
"Tell me what happened. Maybe I can help you too."
Crumbling, Grayson landed on the wood floor. In a fit of sobbing and hiccups, he began to explain.
"I got into some financial trouble."
Ace squatted to be closer to Grayson's eye level. "Gambling?”
“Horse racing."
"That's tough."
Ace didn't have a gambling problem; in fact, he'd never made anything but a friendly bet in his life, but he understood it could be a debilitating thing to get involved in.
"I went to the network. I take a cut of all of Alice's deals. They told me the only way she could renegotiate for more money this year was if the ratings skyrocketed." Grayson sniffed. "I came to her with a bunch of ideas. I wanted her to film from a cruise boat surrounded by her fans. We could charge for the cruise. She said she was not spending a week in the blistering sun on a boat talking to strangers all day."
That sounded like Alice. He wasn't sure what made him want to grin more, the idea of Alice in cruise apparel cooking steaks or the way she'd told Grayson no way in hell would she do it.
"Go on."
"I wanted her to branch out to clothing. We'd had some offers..."
Ace thought of Alice trapped in the elevator, probably fuming by now, and he knew this
couldn't continue. Ace's eyes watered from the strain of maintaining control. "Tell me about The Mask."
"Finally, I decided I had to be more original. I thought I could scare her on television. She'd be really freaked out. It would generate interest. New people would watch. Ratings would soar.
He wasn't supposed to kill her; he was supposed to scare her. Then I saw what happened. I didn't know what to do and you showed up like a perfect solution. The one man who could save her presented himself. I thought, oh thank god, I can fix this."
Grayson blubbered. No other word Ace could think of to describe the amount of tears, snot, and desperation pouring from Grayson's insides.
"How did you find him?"
"I went to a bar, a shady place downtown. I asked the bartender if he knew anyone who had Guardian powers and would do this kind of thing. He gave me a card."
Grayson dug into his pocket and pulled out a business card. Handing it to Ace, he sniffed again. "I called the number, told the fellow what I wanted, he told me it would cost fifty thousand dollars."
"I thought you said you had money problems."
"Fifty thousand is a drop in the bucket compared to what I owe. But then it got strange; they called back and said their operative wanted to do the job for free based on the publicity. I thought that sounded great. I had no idea the demon I'd be setting loose on Alice."
Ace had to get out of there or he was going to pound on the man's head so hard it would break him in half. "Here's how this is going to work. You are going to go down to Sarasota on the next flight. You are going to stay there with your sister. She's not nice and you're an ingrate.
You're perfect together.
You'll stay there until Alice decides what she wants to do with you. And know this"—he pointed a finger right in his face— "Wherever you go, I will find you. There isn't a machine in the world that won't tell me where you are."
"I won't run, Mr. Hudson." He sniffed. "Is there any chance you can keep Alice from pressing charges?"
If Ace had his way, she'd be pressing charges the second they got out of the building.
"Sarasota. Stay. There."
* * * * *
Landing outside of his house, he ripped the blindfold off her eyes. She sputtered as he placed her on her own two feet.
"Goddamn it, Ace." She grabbed onto his chest and shook him. "Don't ever, ever throw me in an elevator like that again. I didn't know I was claustrophobic."
"I'm sorry. Your safety was my only concern. The frickin' Mask tried to get at you the whole time you were in there."
He stalked away. This was bad. He had to get out of here before he could go any further with this. He needed to find some music and he needed to find some now.
"Ace?"
He swung around to look at her. "Go in the house. Lael will be home in an hour.
Wait for me."
"No, you don't get to run off until you tell me what happened."
There was no way to sugarcoat it. "Grayson hired someone to scare you, to drive up ratings, so he could get a larger check. He's racked up a ton of gambling debt."
She closed her eyes, as if doing so would negate his words. That's what she did, he knew by now, when she couldn't stand what she was hearing. She closed her eyes like a child might. If she couldn't see it, maybe it wasn't true. Only she was an adult and she knew better.
"He sold me out to pay off some debt."
She screamed as she opened her eyes. It was a guttural sound of pure agony. He rushed forward. Whatever his own pain was, he was going to have to push it aside.
Pulling her into his arms, he held her tightly.
"We'll get him arrested and I'll find The Mask. It'll be over before you know it.”
“No." She pushed at his chest with no actual strength. He wasn't sure if she was hitting him or simply striking out at life in general. "It's never over for me. Don't you understand? My own family, who I support, thought to have me injured."