You father is dead. “I have not.”
“But you do know him?” Gigi didn’t wait for a response. “You worked for him or something? Secretly. On something that totally explains his disappearance?”
Grayson swallowed. “I cannot help you.”
The energy she’d exuded up to that point seemed to retract. “I know that he must have had a good reason for leaving. I know that there’s not another woman. I know about the box.”
Clearly, Gigi believed that he understood what she was talking about. That he did, in fact, work for her father. Telling her the truth—any part of it—would have been a kindness, but it was a kindness he could not afford.
I know, she’d said, about the box. “The safe-deposit box.” Grayson made the obvious inference, given her earlier confession about the events that had led to her arrest.
“I have the key,” Gigi said earnestly. “But it’s not under his real name, and I don’t know what name he used. Do you?”
Sheffield Grayson had a safe-deposit box under another name. It took Grayson less than a second to process that—and the possible implications. “Juliet, your father didn’t send me. I don’t work for him.”
“But you do know him,” Gigi said quietly. “Don’t you?”
Grayson flashed back to a conversation, a cold exchange. My nephew was the closest thing I will ever have to a son, and he is dead because of the Hawthorne family. “Not well.”
He’d met Sheffield Grayson only that once.
“Well enough to know he didn’t just leave?” Gigi asked, a note of hope in her voice. “He wouldn’t have,” she continued fiercely. Blinking back tears, she looked down, her riotous waves falling into her face. “When I was five, I had my tonsils out, and my dad filled the entire hospital room with balloons. There were so many the nurses got mad. He sits front row at all of Savannah’s games—or at least, he used to. He would never cheat on my mom.”
Grayson felt each sentence out of her mouth like a slice into bare skin. He did cheat on your mother. He couldn’t tell her that. I’m the result.
“So this whole ‘he ran off to the Maldives or Tunisia for some tax-free hanky-panky’ thing? I don’t believe it,” Gigi said vehemently. “My dad didn’t just leave. And I’m going to prove it.”
“With whatever is in that safe-deposit box.” Grayson heard the way his tone must have sounded to her: calm and cool. But his mind was on Avery and what she stood to lose if the truth about Sheffield Grayson’s disappearance came out.
He pulled his car to a stop in front of a large stucco house. The design was Tuscan, striking and tasteful. If Gigi wondered how he knew where she lived, she gave no sign of it. Instead, she pulled a delicate chain out from beneath her aquamarine shirt.
On the end of the chain, there was a key. A safe-deposit box key.
“I found this inside my dad’s computer.” Gigi gave Grayson a beseeching look. “I’m a computer person. I think he wanted me to find it, you know? To find him.”
“You should get some sleep.”
“After six cups of jailhouse coffee?” Gigi tossed her hair. “I’m pretty sure I can fly.”
Grayson eyed the height of the roof on the Grayson family’s abode. “You cannot.” He brought his gray eyes to meet her bright blue ones. This might well be good-bye. “You cannot fly. You cannot keep breaking into banks. You can’t, Juliet.”
She closed her eyes. “My dad called me that, you know. He was the only one. I declared myself Gigi at age two and brought everyone else over to my side by sheer force of will.” Blue eyes opened again, bright and clear and full of steel. “I’m like that.”
She’s not going to stop. Grayson sat with that thought for a moment.
“Will you at least tell me your name?” Gigi asked.
Clearly, she hadn’t recognized him. Not a fan of celebrity gossip sites, then. He gave her his first name only. “Grayson.”
“Your first name just happens to be the same as my last name?” Gigi gave him a look. “Don’t take this the wrong way, ‘Grayson,’ but I think you could use some lessons on being sneaky.”
If only she knew.
CHAPTER 11
GRAYSON
Twenty minutes later, Grayson pulled the Ferrari up to the Haywood-Astyria and let the hotel valets fight over his keys.
“Name?”
In lieu of replying to the desk clerk’s request, Grayson slid a black card rimmed in gold out of his wallet. He placed it flat on the counter.