Блейк Пирс - A Trace of Hope

“Please come in,” the voice finally said as the heavy gate slowly creaked open.

Keri drove her car just inside the gate, parked, and walked toward the front door of the bungalow. As she got closer, she saw that her initial impression of the place had been wrong.

What had appeared to be an unassuming one-story cottage on a cliff overlooking the Pacific was actually a multi-tiered home built into the cliff itself. From where she stood, she could see at least three floors and an indoor/outdoor pool, but it was possible there were even more below.

The front door opened and Jackson Cave stepped out to greet her. Apparently he was just finishing up a call as he was putting his phone in his in pants pocket. It was not quite 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning and yet he looked immaculate. His thick black hair, with sunglasses nestled softly in it, was already slickly combed back like he was channeling Gordon Gekko in Wall Street .

He wore tight, light blue jeans, a black sweater rolled up to his elbows to reveal his wiry, tanned forearms, and laceless black loafers. He smiled at her with his disturbingly white teeth, which made his over-bronzed face seem even more unnatural. His smile always came across as a sneer but that might just have been for her. Maybe he had a more genuine smile for other people. Somehow she doubted it.

“Detective Locke,” he said, spreading his arms wide in welcome, “had I known you’d be stopping by, I would have prepared breakfast.”

His voice dripped with all its usual smarm, but she noticed something she rarely saw in his piercing blue eyes – uncertainty. He didn’t have any idea why she was here. She had him off-balance.

She was tempted to come back at him with a snarky reply. It was her default position. She was as good at getting under his skin as he was at infuriating her. But that wasn’t the goal today. She needed to appeal to, if not his sympathy, at least his self-interest.

She needed to persuade him that if he was able to return Evie to her, she would leave him be. She needed to convince him that she was not his enemy; that she was not, as Anderson had put it, the “bad guy.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cave,” she said, trying to sound pleasant but not unctuous. “That’s very kind. But I actually already ate – pounded back two coffees too.”

“Ah, well come in then,” he said, visibly surprised by her innocuous reply. He’d clearly been expecting something more biting. “You can tell me what brought you so far west so early on a weekend morning.”

He held the door open for her and she stepped inside a vast living room that was as warm and welcoming as Cave was not. The Polynesian-themed design with bamboo-style paneling was charming, as was the wicker-inspired furniture and the open indoor fire pit. The entire room was windowed with views of the ocean and mountains in every direction.

“This place is gorgeous,” she marveled despite herself.

“Thank you,” he said. “I designed it in conjunction with a hotel magnate client from Fiji. He builds private estates in this style over there. This is a hut to him.”

“If I were you, I’d live here all the time,” Keri said, meaning it.

“Bit of a commute though,” he said, unable to keep the sarcasm from dripping into his voice.

Keri bit back the urge to suggest he just have a helipad built. It would be counterproductive and it was possible he already had. Instead, she looked around the parts of the house that were visible. The kitchen was massive, with a center island larger than her entire apartment kitchen. Part of a dining room could be seen off in a corner with a table that looked to be made of marble.

She saw a hallway that must have led back to the bedroom wing and thought she heard voices coming from that direction. A Hispanic woman in her forties with her hair tied back in a bun opened a sliding door and stepped inside from the small deck.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asked, and Keri recognized the voice from the gate intercom.

“No thank you. I’m good.”

She smiled and then turned to Cave.

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