Shadow Keeper

by Feehan, Christine

  Sasha couldn’t help it, she reached up to shield her face, trying to pull her hair subtly to cover her. Giovanni’s mouth was instantly against her ear. “Baby, you’re so beautiful, you take my breath away. Don’t be embarrassed because you love someone and were emotional. That’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

  She leaned her head against his chest and reached back with one arm to circle his neck. The action lifted her breasts and pushed her bottom tightly against him. At once his teeth tugged at her earlobe, and she wished they were home together. She loved their home. She loved him. She wanted all this to be over so she didn’t have to worry night and day.

  “What do you think, Sasha?” Mariko asked. “Would you mind Eloisa coming to your wedding?”

  “She’s much better once you’re actually married. Prior to marriage, she views you as a threat to the family, but after,” Francesca said, “you are family.”

  “She still says things that are difficult to take,” Sasha said. “You’ve been her family for a while now yet she thought nothing of coming in and making you feel bad.”

  “She didn’t know I had two miscarriages,” Francesca pointed out.

  Stefano made a sound like a growling panther. “Baby, you’re the most forgiving person on this planet. Eloisa needs her head examined, and if she ever speaks to you or any one of my sisters, new or not, like that again, she is going to be officially banished.”

  Francesca gasped. “You can’t do that, Stefano.”

  “Watch me, Francesca.” His voice was harder than ever. “I’m not putting up with it. She isn’t mellowing. She’s getting worse. What happens when she starts talking to our children that way? Or taking them out for her kind of training sessions? She learns now that she can’t behave that way, or she goes.”

  Sasha believed him. Every word that came out of his mouth was a decree. “If I invite her to the wedding, is there a way to keep her from Sandlin? I can handle anything she says to me …” She paused and looked up at Giovanni. “As long as you realize I can get ugly. I dealt with bulls and grew up surrounded by cowboys dealing with bulls. I don’t like being pushed around and usually push back hard. As long as Giovanni’s all right with that, I won’t have a problem, but Sandlin’s too sweet.” She hated the way her voice broke.

  Giovanni’s arm tightened and he dropped his chin to the top of her head. “Baby, you can say whatever shit is warranted if Eloisa is ugly to you. As for Sandlin, we’ll tell her if she wants to come, the requirement will be that she has to stay away from your brother.”

  “Then we should invite her. She’s your mother, and I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.”

  Taviano snorted. “Everyone is on the wrong foot with Eloisa, Sasha. Francesca has been the sweetest being on the face of the planet, and our lovely mother is ugly every time the two get together.”

  “She has problems, Taviano,” Francesca excused.

  “Then she’s had them for years,” Stefano said. “Since I was born.” He downed his bourbon and held out his glass to his brother to fill.

  Vittorio took the glass and crossed the room to the crystal decanter. He glanced back at his younger brother. “Eloisa has been down on Nicoletta since the start. Does she know that she’s a rider?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even care,” Taviano snapped. “The fact that she knows what an ugly life Nicoletta has had but she has no sympathy whatsoever for her is enough for me.”

  “She has no compassion or mercy in her,” Vittorio agreed, handing the glass back to his oldest brother.

  “I’ll go talk to Aaron,” Emmanuelle said. “I can get in without being seen, give him an explanation he would believe and ask him the questions.”

  Giovanni shook his head. “Thanks, Emme, I love you for it, but if Aaron is playing bullshit competition games with his male friends, he won’t tell you. It has to be a man.”

  “He sent me chocolates.” Sasha turned her head to look up at Giovanni as realization swept over her, but the position was awkward. She stepped away from him, commanding the room. “James. James Corlege, Aaron’s friend. After the incident in the club, Aaron sent me flowers with an apology.”

  “I remember,” Emmanuelle said. “He did it in person. I thought it was so sweet that he wanted to pick them out himself.”

  “That same day, I received chocolates with a letter of apology from James. One sent flowers, the other chocolates. Were they trying to one-up each other?”

  Giovanni snapped his fingers. “You also received hand-picked flowers. From your stalker. What do we have on them? I know their names were on the list for the investigators.”

  “I have the files on them. It seems Rigina and Rosina spent some time looking into them,” Stefano said, flipping open one and handing the other to Vittorio.

  “James is the up-and-coming fighter in Aaron’s weight division. He can’t compete with Aaron,” Giovanni said. “He can’t get the title away from him.”

  Sasha’s breath caught in her throat. Could this all be about a division title? Not anything to do with her or Giovanni? “A fight title?”

  There was silence in the room while they all gave that some thought. Stefano shook his head, frustrated. “I’m looking at the dates of each incident. Corlege has a solid alibi for two of the incidents. The other times he claimed he was sleeping.”

  “Same with Tom Mariland,” Vittorio said. “He was seen by other fighters at the gym on two of the dates.”

  “So, our suspects all have alibis. That leaves us with Aaron,” Giovanni said. “I still don’t buy it, but I’m beginning to think I could be wrong.”

  “All of us have alibis when you’re guilty as hell,” Emmanuelle pointed out. “They aren’t riders, so none of them move through shadows, but maybe they have another way and we’re just not figuring it out yet.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The weekend was crazy. More people were jammed into the club than ever before, pushing the number to full capacity with people standing in a very long line outside, hoping for a chance to come in. The extremely famous DJ inside, working her magic with the music, kept the dance party going hour after hour. Sasha worked the upper tier, not once looking at Giovanni. The tabloids were full of their broken engagement, all due to Giovanni’s roving eye and his tryst with Meredith Benson.

  Meredith was there, the paparazzi shooting her photograph over and over. Word was, she was a pariah in Hollywood and the one project she’d been about to work on had been yanked out from under her, due, the papers said, to the fact that she refused to come to work two mornings in a row. That was standard Meredith diva behavior, but her numerous absences, causing delays to the film, cost her dearly.

  There was no way for her to fight the decision since they had plenty of evidence. Usually, it was too costly to bring in another actress when the film was a quarter of the way done, but in this case, another producer had funded the project. There was wild speculation who the producer was, but so far, the identity hadn’t been uncovered.

  She sent notes to the Ferraro table, but Giovanni didn’t so much as turn around or deign to look her way. His brothers, as they came down the stairs to dance, didn’t look at or acknowledge her, either. She was the center of attention with the flashing lights on her, but for the first time, she didn’t seem to want the attention.

  The MMA fighters arrived just after one, very pumped up after their bouts. James Corlege and Tom Mariland were the two big winners, and women flocked around them. The other fighters laughed and joked with them, cheering for them and buying them drinks. Sasha took the tray of drinks to their table and set them in front of the various fighters and their women. As she turned to go, Corlege caught her arm.

  “I wanted to apologize for the way I acted the last time I saw you. I was upset over your engagement to Ferraro and I took it out on you in a very ugly way.”

  She gave him a small smile. “Thanks, I appreciate the apology. No worries.” She turned away from him again.

  Tom Mariland
stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “I owe you an apology as well. Aaron was really upset about losing you to Ferraro, and he’s a good friend of mine. James and I stayed up with him all night after the news of your engagement broke.”

  James nodded. “I thought we might have to take him to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.”

  Tom sighed. “He was so upset that we both thought you’d been in a relationship with him and had dumped him for Ferraro. It was only a couple of nights ago that he admitted he’d never been with you and, in fact, barely knew you. I felt like an idiot.”

  “It’s okay, really.”

  “No, it’s not. There was no excuse to talk to you that way,” Corlege insisted.

  “That picture he took of me, the one that ended up in the tabloids, did you know he had it?” She bit her lip and lowered her eyes. “Before it ended up all over the magazines?”

  The men looked at each other.

  She sighed. “I can see from your faces that Aaron shared it with you.”

  Tom nodded. “I’m sorry. It seems I’m always owing you an apology.” He sighed. “Aaron thought you were beautiful. He had dozens of pictures of you on his phone. He showed them to us. That’s why I thought you two were a thing and you had cheated on him with Ferraro. But …” He hesitated. “He also liked to share his women. It was a thing. I think he’s a bit of an exhibitionist.”

  Sasha had to turn her head away. Tom and James were painting Aaron with an entirely different brush than Giovanni had. Who was right? If it had been just Tom or just James, she would have thought one was lying, but both of them? As a rule she could hear lies, and she was hearing a mixture of truth and lies, but what was true and what was the lie? Did they have it wrong? Had Aaron been the one trying to kill her? If so, what could possibly be his reason?

  “Sasha, if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know,” Corlege persisted.

  Another woman caught his arm and pulled on it in an effort to remove his hand from Sasha. She glared at Sasha. “Run along, honey. You’re supposed to be serving drinks.”

  “Candy, don’t talk to her like that,” Corlege reprimanded, his voice harsh. He bunched his fist in the woman’s hair.

  Candy winced, turned red and, when Corlege returned to his seat, pulling her with him by her hair, she curled up at his feet. He held a glass of vodka and grapefruit to her mouth and she gulped it down, some spilling down the front of her. Several of the men laughed and turned to kiss the women sitting on their laps.

  Disgusted, Sasha turned away. She made her way down to the bar where Alan looked her over. “You look tired, honey.”

  She glanced up the stairs to see Tom and James both watching her. Immediately she looked away, not wanting to see them anymore. “I’m all right, just need a little break. I’ve been at this for hours. How did Nancy ever work both tiers? It seems just when I serve a round of drinks to a table, they’re already asking for more. One tier is all I can handle. Thank God, I don’t have to work both.”

  “She didn’t work both tiers unless her partner was ill,” Alan corrected. He glanced at his watch. “Take your break. It’s only a couple of minutes early. If you’re back a couple of minutes early, it will even out.”

  “Thanks, I think I will.” Being too close to Corlege and watching the way he treated the woman he’d brought with him turned her stomach. She was tired of seeing so many women debase themselves in order to try to marry money.

  She went down the stairs and headed straight for the employee lounge. She’d just gotten her heels off and was sitting back, her head against the very comfortable back of the chair, when the click of heels told her she wasn’t alone. Cautiously, she opened one eye. Meredith Benson stood over her, hands on her hips.

  “Go away,” Sasha said. “I mean it. Go away, or I’ll call security and have your ass hauled out of here.”

  Meredith’s breath hissed out of her like an angry cat’s. “How dare you talk to me that way! Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “You’re the skank who had her tongue down Giovanni’s throat for show.”

  “I came in here to tell you that he had nothing to do with it.”

  “I know that. You made a scene, kissing my man, making him look bad just because you’re so vain you wanted to be the one to dump him. One doesn’t get dumped if it’s a one-night stand. Go away.”

  Meredith ground her teeth. “I’m trying to be nice and repair the damage I did.”

  “You’re trying to get Giovanni to let you have your career back. That’s the only reason you would follow me in here and tell the truth. Have you forgotten? Or don’t you read the crap you contribute to? Giovanni and I are a thing of the past. I have absolutely no influence on him at all.”She shooed Meredith away. “Go. Maybe one of your many lovers will take you back after you dumped them for the publicity.”

  Meredith pulled her arm back to hurl the heavy glass she held in her hand at Sasha. A hand caught her wrist and yanked her backward. James Corlege took the glass from her hand as Sasha slowly sat up.

  “Get out of here,” Corlege advised.

  Meredith backed out of the room, her face twisted with malice.

  Sasha sighed. “Thanks. She doesn’t like me. I’m not certain why, not when she’s the one trying to screw things up between my supposed fiancé and me.”

  His eyebrow shot up. “Supposed fiancé? I saw the ring on your finger. Tabloids lie all the time, but that ring was real.”

  She shrugged. “My boss did me a favor. My brother was in a car accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. I don’t have a lot of money or clout. The Ferraros do. Giovanni was nice enough to offer to help. Being engaged made it easier to breach patient confidentiality. Being a Ferraro made it so much easier to get to the administrator’s ear. Meredith actually did us a favor because we would have had to find a different way to break up.”

  He was silent a moment. “None of it was real? Not all those hot looks?”

  She laughed. “I should have been an actress, right? No, none of it was real. The Ferraros are very loyal to anyone who works for them. They’ve been extraordinary with me. I was so worried about Sandlin, that’s my brother, and they straightened things out. I can pay for the facility, but I couldn’t get to the doctor and I needed to do that in order to understand why they hadn’t scheduled another operation.”

  “You work too hard.” He pulled her foot between his hands and began a foot massage.

  It was intimate. Too intimate. It also felt good when her feet were screaming at her. She knew she should stop him. Giovanni was going to have a fit, and James made her want to curl up and hide, but her feet hurt so bad, she didn’t care.

  “Isn’t your girl going to get upset with you, James?” Deliberately she used his first name.

  “She isn’t my girl. She’s a groupie. Women like fighters. She’ll do me and then the same night crawl into someone else’s bed.”

  Her stomach lurched. Wyoming wasn’t that far away. Cattle ranches weren’t the end of the world. She’d never considered herself sheltered. She always believed men were the ones doing very bad behavior and playing ugly games, but she was getting her eyes opened about the women who pursued fighters, the wealthy, athletes and diplomats. It was no wonder these men didn’t have much respect for women. They had become conditioned to get anything they wanted. She let her breath out slowly, once again feeling that maybe she didn’t belong there.

  Still, she had a job to do. “I was so shocked to see on the news that Aaron had been arrested for starting the fire and stalking me. Have you been to see him?”

  James frowned and shook his head. “It doesn’t surprise me. The cops were by to interview all the fighters. Tom is his closest friend. He wasn’t surprised, either. We knew he’d fixated on you after he got so drunk when he found out about the engagement.”

  His fingers moved over her bare feet until she wanted to groan in appreciation. The door opened and slammed closed behind Tom Mariland. He glared at James
, his hands on his hips.

  “What’s going on in here?” he demanded, his gaze dropping to James’s fingers stroking along her heels.

  “Just giving the lady a foot massage, Tom. She’s been working all evening in those high heels. We were talking about Aaron.”

  At once Tom crossed the room to sit down on the edge of the lounge Sasha was sitting in, forcing her to scoot over. “That’s such a tragedy, Aaron going off the deep end like that,” Tom agreed. “He was drinking too much, and I think it just got to him. I’d tell you he was a good guy, but I’m pretty certain I’m not going to convince you of that.”

  “You know, neither of you is supposed to be back here,” Sasha said, uneasiness creeping into her voice, as if she didn’t want to get into trouble. “How did you get back here? Security is everywhere tonight.”

  “They’ve got their hands full with drunks,” James said. “I slipped a couple of guys some money to start an altercation. Just pushing and shoving a bit on the floor.”

  Tom nodded. “It isn’t that difficult.”

  Sasha was very uncomfortable being so close to Tom, especially with her feet in James’s hands. “Aaron burned down my apartment with everything in it”—she continued their earlier conversation—“so, no, I don’t think you’re going to convince me Aaron’s a good guy. Worse, he could have really hurt my brother by setting off charges in the ceiling of the place where he’s getting care.”

  The door swung open again, this time slamming shut so hard the crash was louder than the music. Tom jumped to his feet. James swung around to face the threat, and Sasha jerked her feet out of his hands as Giovanni stalked in. Anger darkened her fiancé’s face. He wasn’t acting. Yeah, the foot massage, as good as it felt, probably wasn’t the best idea.

  “What the fuck, Corlege? Keep your fuckin’ hands to yourself.”

  Corlege stood up slowly, straightening to his full height. Sasha could see the muscles rippling in his body. He looked coolly confident. If he knew that Aaron trained with Giovanni, he clearly hadn’t bothered to assess his fighting skills.