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“Cait, precious, I don’t need to be at the Albany office. I am perfectly okay with Houston, and hell, I’m pretty chuffed about this supervisory role.”

“Chuffed?” Amusement softened her voice and her stance, and he grinned.

“My wife likes foreign films.” He shrugged. “The vocabulary seeps in.”

“You would tell me, though . . . if you needed something other than Houston.”

“Baby, believe me.” He tightened his hold on her hair, leaning in to kiss her, murmuring against her lips. “Houston has absolutely everything I need. It always has.”

She linked her arms about his neck, pressing into him, and he caught a glimpse of her smile. Trailing a single finger down his nape, she shifted her thigh between his, an experimental little drag of smooth skin against his balls. Desire tugged in his belly, and he muffled a groan, anticipation firing along his nerves. It had been a long time since lunch, but the South Kitchen stayed open late. They could go for slow and easy this time.

Kissing the side of his neck, she slid a palm down his chest, over his abs, and lower, fanning that familiar touch over his balls so he hissed between his teeth, eyes falling closed. Holy hell, the woman was lethal, and apparently, he’d had enough recovery time. She wrapped her fingers around him and scraped a tiny bite on his clavicle. He pulled in a breath, arousal buzzing through him, spine to gut to balls as she made him so hard he hurt.

His phone jangled to life, somewhere in the tangle of their clothes on the floor. She stilled, releasing him so he could move. On a different groan, frustration instead of arousal, he planted a palm on the bed and levered up, swinging to sit on the side of the mattress. That was Gene’s ringtone — he couldn’t ignore his grandaddy calling, as much as he wanted to. Snagging his suit coat, he fumbled in the inside pocket and withdrew the offending device.

On a sigh, he swiped to answer and lifted the device to his ear. “Hello.”

“Tick.” His cousin Colt’s hushed voice, taut and shaky and calling from Gene’s phone, clenched his gut, icy knots of dread. Shit, it was bad. “It’s Grandma.”

Head bent, he listened and stared at the carpet pattern between his bare feet, interlocking geometric shapes in gold and brown and some kind of rich red. That carpet wouldn’t imprint quite as hard, as deeply, as a plume of dark smoke on a pristine blue sky, but it would hit hard enough.

He cleared his throat. “Where’s Gene?”

Behind him, Caitlin sat up, the sheet rustling, and seconds later, she whispered a gentle touch down his spine. He resisted an urge to shake off the barely-there caress. Daddy hadn’t raised a fool, and she wanted to comfort him. He got that, he did, and comfort was part of what they did.

There simply wasn’t comfort for this, in this exact moment.

Finally, he extricated himself from the conversation — he couldn’t just leave Colt bawling on the phone. The screen dark, he stared at the device.

His hands shook.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. He needed to shave, had to shower, then he was on the road.

“Tick?” She laid a soft hand on his shoulder, and an exhale shuddered out of his constricted chest.

“It’s Louise.” The words scraped his throat raw. “Heart attack. She’s gone.”

“Oh, Tick.” The broken whisper had him closing his eyes. She wrapped her arms about him, resting her cheek at the base of his neck. “I’m so very sorry, tesoro.”

He folded his fingers around her wrist. The stunned pain suffocated him, but pulling her arm down, away, so he could breathe wasn’t an option. Instead, desperate to move, he scuffed his other hand through his hair. “I need to go.”

“Of course.” She released him, and sheets rustled again. He pushed to his feet, forgotten phone toppling from his thigh. “We can—”

“I’ll go by myself.” He swallowed hard, trying to even out his tone. He loved her — he did not want his reactions to hurt her. And he didn’t miss the pained glint in her eyes. “Can you catch a flight back to Houston and get the girls?”

“Of course, but I can come with you and Vince could—”

“I don’t want them on the jet without us.” Something about that wasn’t completely logical, because both girls had been on his brother-in-law’s private plane without them more than once, but he wasn’t firing on all cylinders. He sucked in another breath, trying to clear his brain. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel rejected. Kneeling on the bed, she watched him, and he leaned down to cup her face in both hands. “I don’t want them hearing about this from anyone other than one of us.”

She nodded, gaze clinging to his. “Eleanor will be devastated.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t even think about that. If he let himself—

“Get in the shower.” She nudged him toward the door. “I’ll book a flight and get your clothes together.”

“You’re the best, Falconetti.” Even with his heart clawing to get out of his chest, she warmed him. Lord, how was Gene going to get by without Louise?

He couldn’t think about that either, because then he’d have to think about getting by without her. The idea made him want to throw up.