Billionaire's Baby Bind. Katherine Garbera

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       Three

      Will had just spent the last ten minutes in the barn trying to avoid a confrontation with Amberley—the woman he’d practically run away from. But he had no doubt she would be avoiding him after his foolish reaction to her harmless question about Faye’s mother.

      It was hard to think that at twenty-eight he was turning into his father, but it seemed that way more and more. And it wasn’t Faye who was forcing the change. It was him. It was as if he’d lost that spark that had always driven him. And the therapist he’d seen for two sessions at his mom’s insistence had said that grief took time.

      But as he left the barn and spotted Amberley exercising her horse in the ring, he felt that stirring again.

      It was lust, because even though he was grieving he wasn’t dead, and the feeling was laced with something more. Something much more. She was one with the horse as she raced around the barrels, her braid flying out behind her as she leaned into the curves and got low over the horse’s neck, whispering encouragement, he imagined.

      He watched her and wanted her.

      She stopped at the end of her run and looked over toward the barn. Their eyes met and he felt stupid just standing there.

      He clapped.

      But that felt dumb, too.

      It seemed that he’d left his smarts behind in Seattle, he thought. Everything was different here. He tried to justify his feelings—like he needed an excuse to find a woman pretty or be turned on by her. Yet in a way he felt he did.

      But that was his issue, not Amberley’s. And it wasn’t fair to her to bring her into the swirling whirlpool that his emotions were at this moment.

      She nodded and then turned away from him.

      Dismissing him.

      He’d had his chance and he’d ruined it.

      Maybe it was for the best. He had Faye to take care of and a criminal to catch. In fact, he needed to get back to work. Without another glance at her he turned and walked to the golf cart that had been allocated for his use during his stay on the Flying E. He put it in gear and drove to the house that Clay Everett had been generous enough to provide. To be honest, he knew that Clay had a stake in Will finding Maverick, as did most of Royal.

      He shifted gears as he drove farther and farther away from the barn and the cowgirl that he’d left there, but a part of his mind was still fantasizing about the way his afternoon could have gone.

      His nanny, Erin Sinclair, was waiting for him at the door when he got back.

      “Faye’s asleep and I need to run to town to pick up some more baby food and formula. Are you okay if I go now?” she asked.

      He had hired Erin to help with the baby even before Lucy’s untimely death. His late wife had been a product rep for a large pharmaceutical company and traveled a lot for work. Though Will spent a lot of time in his home office, he tended to have a single-minded focus, so he knew that by the time Faye was born, both he and Lucy would have needed help with the baby.

      “Yes, go,” he said.

      He went into the bedroom they used as a nursery and looked down at Faye’s sleeping face. He tried to see Lucy in her features but he was starting to forget what she looked like. Of course he had pictures of her but he was starting to lose that feeling of what she’d looked like as she smiled at him. The different feeling she’d stirred in him with one of her expressions that a mere photo couldn’t capture.

      Dammit.

      He turned away from the crib and walked out of the room. He had a monitor app on his phone and had a window that he could keep open on one of the many monitors in his office so he could keep an eye on her.

      He walked into the darkened large bedroom that he’d turned into his office for the duration of his stay in Royal. He had four large computer monitors that were hooked up to different hard drives and were all running multiple programs that would determine where Maverick was basing himself online.

      Almost all of the attacks had been cyber-based, so Chelsea was working on the theory that he was very internet savvy. In a way that worked in their favor because there weren’t many top computer experts in Royal. But then hackers wouldn’t be known to many.

      One of Will’s skills was the ability to look at code and see a digital fingerprint in it. Maverick had habits just like everyone and Will was searching for those, looking for a trail back to the creep’s identity.

      He opened his laptop after he checked the progress on the different computers and made sure all of his scripts were still running.

      He launched his internet browser and searched for information on Amberley Holbrook. He wasn’t surprised to see her listed in a bunch of small-town rodeos, stretching from Texas to Oklahoma to Arkansas, as a winner or a top-three finisher in barrel-racing competitions. There was a photo of her winning run in a recent event and he clicked to open it larger in his photo application so he could zoom in on her face. There was concentration but also the biggest damn grin he’d ever seen.

      That girl was happiest on the back of a horse.

      Why?

      He noticed how she was when she was off her horse. On her guard and waiting to see how everyone around her reacted. Given that he was starting to behave that way, he wondered what had happened to force her to build those kinds of walls. She definitely had them.

      Why?