Allison Leigh - A Weaver Christmas Gift

It was on Jane Cohen.

He stepped up to the security panel that looked like a small wall mirror and stared into the iris scanner.

She wanted to get pregnant. Have a baby.

The scan completed and a numeric panel lit behind the false mirror’s surface.

Why hadn’t he seen it coming? She was a woman. Past thirty. There were enough females among the Clay clan for him to know perfectly well that her desire for a family wasn’t unnatural. Hell, his entire extended family believed in having kids.

It was what the Clays did.

Except for him.

He tapped in another code on the smooth surface and heard the nearly soundless, hollow release that came from somewhere inside the wall. A moment later, part of the wall moved, revealing itself as the door it actually was, and he stepped through into the cavernous communications center they called Control.

“Status?”

Seth Banyon leaned back in his chair and stretched, looking relaxed even though his eyes never stopped roving the bank of screens covering the wall in front of him. “Same.”

Casey felt the automatic door closing behind him and he moved across the large blue-lit room to stand behind his associate. Like Casey, Seth collected a paycheck that showed that he worked for Cee-Vid. But also like Casey, his real employer was hidden deep and well beneath that. “This was a simple assignment,” he said. “All Bax had to do was escort the emir’s niece back to college.”

“Without drawing attention to the fact that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be in the first place. Money,” Banyon muttered. “More trouble than it’s worth, if you ask me.”

The emir had plenty of it. His affection for his only sister’s three children was well-known. When whispers of a possible kidnapping attempt had reached him, he’d reached out to Hollins-Winword to discreetly resolve matters.

Casey had two sisters and from them, four nephews and a niece. They were still children but whatever their ages, he knew there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to help keep them safe.

He stepped around Banyon and tapped a few keys on one of the keyboards that surrounded the room. The uppermost screen on the wall in front of them shifted from a satellite image to a photograph of the emir’s niece and nephews. “This isn’t about money. It’s about a power struggle between the emir and his despot of a second cousin. And a whole lot of oil behind them. Where are the other two?”

“Safe behind the walls of their London estate in the loving arms of their mama.”

“At least that’s something. We’ve only got Samira to worry about. Wish to hell she would have stayed in London instead of going out on this mission trip of hers.”

A series of electronic chimes sounded and a moment later, another interior door slid open and the man in charge stepped inside.

To most of the world—including the regular employees of Cee-Vid, who didn’t know anything else was going on beneath the surface—Tristan Clay was merely the brilliant mind behind Cee-Vid.

To a select few, he was close to the top of the food chain inside Hollins-Winword. And to Casey, Tristan Clay was not only his boss but his uncle.

The older man’s piercing blue gaze went straight to the bank of screens. “Where’re we at?”

Protocols were always followed whenever an asset or an operative went off plan. It was easier for Casey to work through them than it was for him to think about Janie’s “plan,” and he nudged Banyon out of the seat and took his position at the controls. “Last contact was thirty-six hours ago.” His fingers started flying over the console, satellites high above the world snapped to attention, and Casey did the only thing in the world he figured he was meant to do.

He kept Hollins-Winword’s own safe.

* * *

“You do realize that if women could just snap their fingers and find the perfect man, the entire chocolate industry might crumble to dust?” Hayley Templeton’s slender fingers hovered indecisively over the opened box of Godiva delectables sitting on top of the gleaming wood bar at Colbys.

Jane wasn’t indecisive at all. She plucked a heart-shaped piece from the box and bit it in half, sighing a little over the explosion of bliss on her taste buds. “I know I can’t just snap my fingers,” she countered. If her digits possessed such magic, she’d have waved them over Casey and he wouldn’t have bothered offering up his friends and associates to put their heads in her matrimonial noose.

He would have given his neck to her willingly.

Instead, he’d bolted.

Just as she’d known he would.

The chocolate suddenly lost its appeal, but she ate the second half of the heart anyway before rinsing her hands at the bar sink and pulling the latest rack of glasses fresh from the dishwasher built into the cabinets below the bar. “Other women manage to find spouses here in Weaver. So why can’t I?”

Hayley finally selected a chocolate and replaced the lid on the gold box. “Get that away from me before I eat the rest.”

“They are your chocolates,” Jane reminded her. Her friend had brought them with her when she’d stopped by the bar and grill that afternoon.

“And I expect you to save me. I haven’t been running with Sam Dawson four times a week only to have a box of chocolates, given to me by a grateful patient, going straight to my hips.” Hayley groaned. “Sam’s a slave driver. You’d think she’d have a little sympathy for her friends.”

Sam Dawson was a deputy with the sheriff’s department. “She gave me a parking ticket the other day. Sam doesn’t have any sympathy for anyone.” Jane took pity on Hayley and tucked away the golden box of temptation before unloading the rack of glasses onto the shelves on the wall behind her. “I think she was just making up for the fact that I kicked her butt in racquetball last week.”

“I honestly don’t know how I ended up with such competitive friends.” Hayley propped her elbows on the bar and glanced around. At three in the afternoon, the place was busy with families having late lunches or early dinners, but the bar itself was quiet.

It would pick up later, though. Friday nights were always packed at Colbys. The establishment had been a Weaver staple since long before Jane had bought it from the family of a friend she’d known since college. Well, she amended mentally, since her ex-husband, Gage Stanton, had staked her purchase of the place.

What was unusual, though, was Hayley stopping in at that hour of the day. Finished with the sparkling clean pilsner glasses, Jane turned back to her friend. “So what’s wrong?”

Hayley ran her hand down the sleek tail of her ponytail. “Who says anything’s wrong?”

Jane shook her head a little. When it came to the town of Weaver, even after several years there, they were still relative newcomers. As was Sam Dawson. But the three of them had all struck up an enduring friendship. She dumped ice into a glass, filled it with diet cola and set it in front of her friend. “You know bartenders are the best listeners. Comes with the territory.”

Hayley pulled a face and reached for the drink. “Counselors are the best listeners,” she corrected her. “My PhD in psychology says so.” She twisted the glass between her fingers. “Just some family dissension. Evidently, after more than thirty years of estrangement, my grandmother has been trying to mend fences with my dad and my uncle, and they’re not having any of it.”

Because the bar was so quiet and the restaurant section had its own complement of servers, Jane pulled up the stool she kept behind the bar and sat down to sip at her own soda. “This is their mom you’re talking about?”

Hayley nodded. “Vivian Archer Templeton.” She drew out the name, then lifted her shoulders. “She lives in Pittsburgh and has been making noises about visiting them in Braden. I think Daddy and Uncle David are wrong and should be more receptive. They didn’t really take kindly to my input. As far as they’re concerned, she’s just a selfish, filthy-rich snob who’ll never change.”